Teaching with a difference.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at how we will do things different after lockdown. One of the promises I made was to move away from boring. So I tried one of the lessons from Te Rito Toi.

With Gretchen's support, we started off really easy games that introduce freeze frames and being creative. Then we started the L3 lesson plan for regulating Robot which teaches students the value of self-regulating. 

Initially, the students were a bit sceptic, a few sat out on the outer skirts of the class as they were uncomfortable with the unknown, however, later they started joining in. And today, after 6 days of doing drama, all students but 1 participated. 

The shifts I noticed was the students were more relaxed after the activities, the class was a bit noisy while doing the activities, however, when I counted down and said freeze they froze beautifully. The topic was of great interest to the students and they enjoyed working in design teams to design robots. They were capable of a lot more than I anticipated. The topic leads itself perfectly into reading and writing. Their listening and dialogue skills have improved tremendously. I am looking forward to seeing if they carry this through to our science discussions. 

Video Clip of the first lesson, where they were acting out a story that we read called No, David, No! One person had to act out the wrong thing they were doing, and the other person had to say No, David, No!. 

I really enjoyed teaching drama and this unit just confirmed the importance of making learning fun and engaging in order to lift the reading and writing standards. Now I am looking forward to seeing their designs and writing on the topic of robots.