Something Different

A couple of weeks ago I sent a rather odd email to the two other Year 11 English teachers who are timetabled on the same line as me. it went something like:

Was thinking since we're all on at the same time if we could look at opening the doors and doing some collaborative work, maybe even some rotation style stuff. Are you interested in trying something a little bit different?

My wonderful team teachers jumped on the idea and we talked about it briefly before we got lost in the day-to-day busyness of school and then a week out I sent another email and organised a longer meeting:

Ok, so some idiot (me) had some dumb (aka brilliant) idea about doing some wizz bang thing with three classes of Yr 11 Eng in Wk 8.

This was the idea - in order to give students opportunity to personalise their learning we would run a series of rotation activities complemented by a series of optional lectures. The collaborative week would run over a weeks worth of lessons (three 70 minute sessions across a week) and students would be required to keep a learning passport of their completed activities. As they completed activities they were required to show a teacher who had to verify that the work was completed satisfactorily. Over the course of the week students needed to complete eight rotation activities and attend a minimum of one lecture over the course of the week.

It was an interesting week and the three of us are sitting down together to record a reflection session tomorrow afternoon. I'm really looking forward to hearing their take on it all.