PDA and the Wandrous Whiteboard Challenge

Last week I was required to teach my first lesson for the Professional Development Assignment (PDA); the diagnostic lesson. As our first session finished my classmates and I started sharing ideas and discussing about what type of lesson we should plan, what would make a good diagnostic lesson, and so on. The first thing to cross my mind was to try and go unplugged to see what the students had to offer and maybe start from there… Well, doing a dogme-like lesson for the PDA wouldn’t really help me for example with lesson planning and I really needed to get some feedback on that. So, I ended up trying a test-teach-test type of lesson.

Anyway…

I’m not really writing about it here – I’ll leave it for the assignment. My mentioning of this lesson is just that it reminded me about one experience I’ve been meaning to share…

Some time ago, a sequence of challenges was triggered by great ELT blog writers and I decided to take part in one of those. And this is what I got…

The wandrous whiteboard challenge:

a 'collatributive' post.

‘What? Has the teacher gone crazy?’ – This was the first thought my 13-16 year-old pre-intermediate students had when I entered the room, sat down on a desk on the corner and shot: ‘Ok, guys, that’s the mouse-pen, that’s the board. Just feel free to write whatever you like on it!’

- Acknowledgments:

That’s how it all started:

@lu_bodeman:

@teacher_prix Hey Priscilla. :) @englishraven Jason's link below has more info on this...a simple yet very nice warm up to get classes rolling.

@lu_bodeman:

@teacher_prix LINK:

http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com/jason_renshaws_web_log/2010/10/global-wave-meets-wandrous-whiteboard.html

- The challenge:

The students kept asking: ‘Anything?’ and I would just ‘hum-hum’. Silence. They were looking at each other with big question marks on their foreheads (picture that!), until somebody decided to take a shot and write:

After this brave soul, all the others felt like contributing. Ones, voluntarily; others, ‘with a little help from my friends’. From time to time, I would interfere – just to rearrange the sentences to make room for new ones. They invited me to have a go (sentence #7), so I gave my two cents.

All very colorful, out-of-context, nonsense sentences were there. Now what? I asked a student choose a sentence and we started from there… And you know how it goes: one topic leads to another, which connects to another one and so on.

There were moments in which extra clarification was needed and ‘Google images’ was our best friend; some other times, it was grammar being discussed. Collabration, turn-taking and language for giving opinions would pop in unexpectedly.

In the end, we referred back to all the discussion we had just had (thx to IWB endless pages!) and reflected upon the amount of learning involved.

What a lesson!

- The following lesson:

Before dismissing the group I told them about Jason’s ‘Wandrous Whiteboard Challenge’ post and they left the room with a bug: ‘what did the word wandrous mean? This was homework. I confess I never really thought they would remember the word itself (they hadn’t taken any notes), let alone that they would research about it (Why do we keep making wrong assumptions? Nevermind…).

The following lesson was all about the challenge. Ops! I had to let go of the lesson plan. When the students entered the classroom there was no ‘Afternoon, P!’ at all. One of the student’s first sentences was: ‘I know what wandrous is, Prix!’.

I couldn’t just let the opportunity pass by. I mean, how often do topics which engage a whole group fall from the sky? We had to go back to the challenge again. This time, I asked them to write their reactions to that lesson. And here is their contribution (the exact way they wrote on paper, no teacher interference at all):

Gabriel:

“I really liked the class, becouse it was different it was new and interesting, also it was funny. When the class ended (?) I was feeling so happy, happy with myself with the world, I was so happy and my mind was so clean that I could flew.

The best thing about it was talking in English, really talking in English, having a real conversation with everybody. I was realyzed with that.”

Bia:

“I think last class was very cool. Based on my classmates said, they said, when they came the class our teacher Prix ask to everybody draw or write any sentence then they have to explain why and analyse grammar and talk about the sentence or draw.”

Carol:

“Last class I was confuse, because when I arrived at the room the teacher just gives us a pen and sayed that we need wrote a sentence but about what? She didn’t sayed.

Was strange in the beginning but after that, I loved. We talked a lot, and discussing we learn a lot of thinks.”

Nina:

“The class was very interesting, because we saied about any foods, and what Leticia’s hate and saied about Jared Leto (singer). This day was cool, we wrote sentences about anything on the board.”

Gustavo:

“The challenge is very. I enjoy differents class because I’m very parcipative and I really think drawing is fun.

I write this sentence because the teacher ask to we draw or write anything so I create the sentence drawing is fun.”

Lais:

“I didn’t like only one thing, I forgot how write SCHOOL, I was ashamed.

On begin I was a little scared, because I didn’t know what write and if I would can write what I want.”

In the end of the day, a memorable lesson is what counts most!

Prix. =)

@teacher_prix