Stumbling around

The lesson on potential dividers worked well today, with the students managing to work out for themselves the relationship between the resistance of the 2 resistors and potential difference across one of them. Tomorrow, I hope to move on to more complicated control circuits, where they will have to put their new knowledge to use. This will test my new IWB lesson to the full.

Returning to my journey though...........

I found advantages and disadvantages to my latest style of IWB lessons. Good points - lessons flowed more quickly as students didn't have to wait for me to handwrite on the board, I was able to move seamlessly from talking/discussing to showing You Tube clips and using software from "Absorb Physics". In addition, I was able to print out my lessons which, although not ideal (yet more paper being used!) at least helped move things along at a reasonable pace as I had one student who was incredibly slow at copying notes from the board.

Bad points - it made my teaching more difficult! I found that I wanted to say EXACTLY what I had written on the board, I had almost "pre-played" the lesson in my mind as I had typed the night before. It was difficult not to stand by the board and simply read aloud what was written on it. Granted, there were the other clips, animations and simulations from Absorb etc, but in some ways, my lessons had become predictable and boring. Eventually, my students stopped being pleased at the handouts for saving them written work and started complaining of the extra weight they were carrying around with them.

Was I just going around in circles? I felt frustrated by it all - I knew I was close to the answer, my attempts at using the IWBs had improved immeasurably and I was now producing material that looked good. Some of my ideas were working, my students were happy with the lessons and were gaining something from them but there was still a vital ingredient missing, something fundamental yet so elusive. I was trying to catch an invisible mist.

I might have continued in this way, if it were not for Barbara. I don't know why she chose to lend me a book on CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), nor at the time did I appreciate the implications of reading this book. What I do know now is that it changed the way I approach every lesson, whether I use an IWB or not.

I cannot say that I had a "burning bush" moment of enlightenment. The book did not change me overnight and I do not agree with every word in it. It did make me reflect more, both before and after lessons. It helped to lead me towards my own answers and solutions to problems that I had not realised were problems. Above all, it helped me to stop lecturing and to start teaching.