I just arrived from the observation of a class at Spring international LC and as professor Leyah Bergman-Lanier said to us in a class some days ago, "I brought my suitcase a little bit heavier " from this class. I`m the kind of professional that always get the good examples to add to what I call "my tools case", today I entered that classroom with no expectations, just following the suggestions the professors gave us, I had a great opportunity to know a new kind interaction activity (at least for me it`s something new) that Teacher Wendy Howard, I don`t know if I can say her name, but as it is a positive aspect of her class I don`t think it will be an issue. Anyway, she asked three of her students in a previous class to research for controversial themes that could provoke different opinions, today each of the students brought a different subjects, they were: "euthanasia", "Using or not an uniform at schools" and "Capital penalty for terrorists", each of those students became the leader of a group of discussion, where they had the leading questions already prepared, in the groups each student had the opportunity to express his own opinion about the text brought by their peers, after some time the leaders changed groups and restart the discussion in a different group.
This activity gives opportunity to the students to develop a critical thinking and to face different ideas that maybe can open their minds to horizons they haven`t looked yet, also create an atmosphere to increase leadership abilities in those young people, beside that, they also can acquire new contextualized vocabulary. I hope I can have more observation classes like this!
I love that you pinpointed how this might help make or build up the leader in our students. This is such an important aspect of teaching youth, and we can do it within our classrooms if we make sure that we are not just thinking about the language we are teaching but how EVERYTHING we do and even how we set up a discussion can also have an impact on our students!
ReplyDelete