The critical incident in question refers to a dip in performance of several students in my History IGSE class. This followed the Christmas break and became apparent with apathy towards graded essays and preparation for mock exams.
There was the option of disciplinarily action in terms of letters home, meetings with form tutors and key stage managers. The ‘softer’ approach would be to talk as a group about the importance of IGCSE’s and the term being the ‘home leg’. My third choice as I saw it was empowerment. Empowerment in this instance would be giving the students control over their method of revision and allowing them to explore how they learn best. With this in mind they could then take an ownership of their own progression rather than the revision being dictated by the teacher.
After looking at past performance and assessing the maturity level of the students I decided to take the latter option. Through research I came upon Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Test (1983). I took one lesson at the beginning of the week to talk about how we learn and how they learn most effectively. We discussed experiences of revising and studying before exams. Moreover, the class discussion digressed to a discussion about emotions before exams and generally in approaching their final few months at high school.
As a teacher I responded with surprise and enlightenment as I had not considered the life changing process they were currently going through. For instance, we would not expect a professional preparing for a life changing move abroad or to another company to perform in exactly the same way as usual. It is likely that we would be more accommodating towards adults, who should be emotionally better equipped, than we are towards our teenage students.
The students enjoyed the lesson and were clearly very interested in the results of the test. They gauged what the learning strengths were according to the test and then we discussed as a group the best way for individuals to utilize this knowledge. When we talked about the next topic they were visibly and verbally more enthused than they had been the week before. I even had other teachers commenting and asking me for information about the test and how it works.
There was the option of disciplinarily action in terms of letters home, meetings with form tutors and key stage managers. The ‘softer’ approach would be to talk as a group about the importance of IGCSE’s and the term being the ‘home leg’. My third choice as I saw it was empowerment. Empowerment in this instance would be giving the students control over their method of revision and allowing them to explore how they learn best. With this in mind they could then take an ownership of their own progression rather than the revision being dictated by the teacher.
After looking at past performance and assessing the maturity level of the students I decided to take the latter option. Through research I came upon Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Test (1983). I took one lesson at the beginning of the week to talk about how we learn and how they learn most effectively. We discussed experiences of revising and studying before exams. Moreover, the class discussion digressed to a discussion about emotions before exams and generally in approaching their final few months at high school.As a teacher I responded with surprise and enlightenment as I had not considered the life changing process they were currently going through. For instance, we would not expect a professional preparing for a life changing move abroad or to another company to perform in exactly the same way as usual. It is likely that we would be more accommodating towards adults, who should be emotionally better equipped, than we are towards our teenage students.
The students enjoyed the lesson and were clearly very interested in the results of the test. They gauged what the learning strengths were according to the test and then we discussed as a group the best way for individuals to utilize this knowledge. When we talked about the next topic they were visibly and verbally more enthused than they had been the week before. I even had other teachers commenting and asking me for information about the test and how it works.
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