I am quite lucky, I have an amazing Year 10 class - top band, enthusiastic learners and they also trust my wacky ideas: where I encourage them to try and take risks with their learning. After a term of getting to know them, encouraging them not to be afraid of mistakes, to question, and take risks and try new language, or styles of writing , or develop their own questions - I feel confident enough to take my own risk, get out of my comfort zone and try something new!
Usually when I teach War Poetry I show them some clips from movies, we look at war songs, propaganda, analyse some poems, write some poems - look at some poetry slam and generally students really enjoy it and so do I. But I was thinking how can I 'flip' this.
This is what I am thinking:
This is what I am thinking:
I will ask the students to come up with the poetic devices and to become experts in 3-4. The they will get into groups with other experts. They can pick their own war poem. The end result will be them delivering a mini lesson/seminar analyzing a poem and students learning from each other not just me. How-ever in between all this I want them to try and find an expert, come up with their own questions then develop their own learning path. They will also create their own visual representation of the poem, e.g movie, slide show, music video etc. Obviously their will be guidance, modeling etc. So I plan on telling the students what skills they will be developing and the learning intentions for the term - We are not limited with technology and even have a writer in residence - I have organized some poetry workshops between her and the students. I am hoping I am on the right track with the flipping of the classroom, not limiting it to four walls or just my ideas. I am hoping there is enough structure but not to much that I limit the students.
Last term I had some amazing 'Hunger Games' assignments where students had compared the Capitol to North Korea and I was really surprised and impressed with the questions and learning students did when left to pursue a learning path of their choice and interests but with guidance from myself and our community of learners.
Let me know what ideas or thoughts you have.
I plan on using Moodle, Myportfolio and the ideas behind Knowledge Building to drive this
