December 2015 - End of Term Teaching Reflection
Dr. Browning's Year 10 Chemistry Class
It has been a pleasure teaching part of the year group this term in Chemistry! A chance to really get to know more of the students in Year 10 and be part of their IGCSE journey. I have also been waiting to try teaching one particular unit in the IGCSE Chemistry course in a very different way. Teaching the Chemical Calculations topic to Year 10 students is always an interesting experience, every student comes equip with some level of Mathematical competence and an ability to apply that in a very abstract context. Differentiating to such a vast range of students can be difficult in this topic and therefore this year I decided to flip the learning so that students dictate their own pace. Through adopting a student centred approach with diagnostic learning checks, I became free to scaffold learning and offer help to those needing it whilst the students who are particularly adept with numeracy are not held back and can even engage in enrichment activities that extend beyond the scope of the syllabus.
In outline, the entire Chemical Calculations topic was converted to a Tackk presentation (an online scrolling presentation: https://tackk.com/emcwf7) and broken into different sections with embedded video clips and an accessible practice question resource bank with answers all uploaded into a shared google drive folder. Students were given the opportunity to master each topic before moving on, practicing as much as they felt they needed to gain confidence with the material. Following key sections in the unit, I also integrated google question forms as checkpoints that when submitted by students the forms would come straight to me to mark and diagnose any areas that needed further teaching and practice before students could move on to the next section.
Through having the general concepts covered in the video clips, I was able to spend more time explaining concepts to those who needed help and trouble shoot misconceptions. Furthermore, as the checkpoints were completed by students, I could move them around the classroom in different seating arrangements to generate collaboration between students working at a similar pace and also strategically position experts with those who would benefit from peer support and teaching. The seating plan was changed every lesson and students could see which section their peers had reached and therefore ask them for support. Being the first cohort to come through Year 10 with iPads has given this opportunity to completely personalise the learning. Allowing student centred mastery of ideas before moving on and giving me the opportunity to offer 1-1 support in lessons when needed. There is certainly a wealth of research that supports this approach to learning clearly showing increases in achievement.
During the course of the unit, I asked students complete an evaluation of how they felt the topic was going and whether they felt the approach was working for them. The feedback was very positive and the students also came up with some good ideas and questions to refine and improve the approach. A selection of their comments are shown below:
So far I think it's really good because it's more independent learning and it's also fair because everyone goes at their own pace
it's really good! I get to work at my own pace and I get private-ish tutoring on the topics I don't understand. I think there should also be a backup plan though, in case the wifi breaks down then we won't have a lesson.
While I believe this is a great method to learn this particular topic allowing us more freedom and letting us go at our own pace, I think that at the end we should have two lessons of quickly covering the content of the topic, i.e. A couple revision lessons for the purpose of consolidation. Otherwise, I foresee the success of this teaching method for this particular topic, which it is well suited to.
It helps me move at my own pace and if I'm not sure with something I can just ask, when we learn at the same pace I will feel guilty of interrupting the class
In conclusion, I feel that for this particular topic the approach has worked really well. The Students who are less confident in their own ability to learn needed more support and this can be given due to the freedom afforded by the video clips that the other students can learn from. I also ensured that periodically we had lessons where topics were consolidated and the class worked together - some individuals certainly seem to take comfort in being led through the topic by the teacher. As learners, I think it is unreasonable to assume that these students can make a sudden change from being in a teacher led to a student led classroom without some form of cognitive dissonance. Also, I imagine that for students who are more easily distracted they would find it hard to direct their own learning throughout an entire lesson - so it is important to have the personalised learning in chunks - teacher led expositions at the start, mid point and end of a lesson would help. For next time, I will also try and make some of the videos myself for the Tackk and even plan to have some of the Year 10 students prepare some as a revision exercise. The class have their end of topic test in the next few weeks so further evaluation of the success of the approach can be made then.
