Interlude

What a hectic week! The Summer is meant to be a quieter time, but I seem to be at least as busy as ever. At least my GCSE class was peaceful today. I had one student absent out of the 3 in total, so didn't want to go too far, then have to set work for 2 while I do catchup with the missing one, next week. So, they did some consolidation questions this afternoon, which is no bad thing anyway.

Thought I'd pause today and tell you about some practical tips that I have found that have worked, as well as some that haven't, while I was using the IWBs. While I was too busy to read more of the CLIL book I tried out various ideas in order to produce IWB lessons quickly, trying to keep pace with my September starters.

The good stuff:

• Anything humourous. Students do like to be entertained and it helps to keep them focussed on the lesson, especially during the "graveyard shifts". 4-6pm lessons can be tough on everyone. A title banner that read "Oh no, hard stuff!" almost backfired on me once, though, as I'd forgotten that I wrote it, didn't read the IWB page as I advanced from the previous page, then wondered why my class started falling about, laughing. Once they had calmed down, they did concentrate and cope with the hard stuff, so I guess even that worked!
• Anything personal. A scrolling banner which read "That's the end of the course. Good luck with your exams!" brought about a round of applause from the students and a lively discuss about revision.
• Short activities from the Interactive Toolkit, but not too many of the same type in too short a time. I try to vary the lessons as much as possible and try to have as many different activities available to use as possible. I don't use each one. Each class is different, some students like one type of activity, others do not. I have to try to remember to cater for all tastes.
• Pictures. They can help students to think of the right words, guide then towards answers and give them confidence that they know what it is I'm talking about (well, sometimes anyway!) Photos of pieces of equipment can aid memory and vocabulary. We have a wonderful technician at Bellerbys, Eva, who is a keen photographer and has taken many photos of the Physics equipment I use in class. These are invaluable in IWB lessons as there is nothing quite like seeing the actual equipment they use, rather than a picture which doesn't look anything like it. Besides, a page with just text looks boring.

This list is only a beginning, but I don't want to stay up all night writing, tonight, so I'll leave it there for now.

Bad stuff:

• Too much writing on a page. It is a dead cert to turn off students and have them stare into space instead. Or else they are so busy trying to read everything, they don't listen to me at all. Worse, some try to copy everything down and that takes forever, holding up the rest of the lesson. I'm currently going back over some of my lessons, which I thought were fine, stripping them down to the absolute minimum of words per page......but that's part of the latest phase of my journey, so I'll leave it at that for now
• Scrolling banners which ask students to hand in their homework now, please. These are invisible to students, so are a complete waste of my time to prepare. I've stopped doing so.
• Scrolling banners or any text intended to offer instructions to students to do anything while I fill in the register at the start of a lesson. These are also invisible to students and are not clever. Now I just tell them.
• Anything which forces students to leave their seats. Most just want to be entertained where they sit. They are willing to take part in activities, so long as they can call out the answers and I move the text around etc. Some students do like coming out to certain activities - ones involving anagrams, for instance.
• Coloured backgrounds, especially grey. I used to like this, but the IWB lamps tend to become less efficient after a time and a dark background makes it too hard to read text from the back of a class. Now I stick to white.

Again, this list is far from exhaustive, but is typical of my own learning, by trial and error, during those exhausting few months at the start of this year.