Active Learning

I was recently told that I’ll be teaching just in the sixth form next year and not any of my adult classes. I’ve enjoyed teaching the Access course and my evening classes. But I’m taking this as an opportunity to rethink teaching and learning strategies, chase out the old and make a fresh start. I think the younger kids are a lot less tolerant of 40 minute talks where they are expected to take notes, even if they are encouraged to ask questions. The challenge is to develop a greater active learning approach – with a much greater variety of activities than just group discussions and feedback that I do. It is very easy to fall into one way of doing things. I think changing things around like this could be a good way to save me from this rut. So I’ve been trawling Amazon - as you can see from the links - for activities and ideas about teaching today I want to get to work redesigning my teaching with as many new ideas as I can. Also it’s an opportunity to really go to town with PowerPoint. But again I want new ideas: I don’t want to just by transfer my notes from handouts to screen but to go beyond bullet-points.

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