My mentor observed me with the Year 8's on Monday. They can be quite a difficult class at times and abilities are very varied.
I played an 'interdependence trade game with them.' The higher ability students seemed to really enjoy it. However, I added extra parts into the game such to encorporate arithmetic. I thought all weekend as how to do it and ddecided upon preparing each group (designated country) with a list of the goods they would start with. From this values were assigned and I asked them to jot up their total, some values were given. e.g Gold = 5 points, you have 2 units of Gold, so the total = 10 etc. I thought given examples in their work would help them to incorporate basic maths whilst also then having to think Geographically about trade/development and so on.
Like I said the higher ability flew through it and the lower ability jujst got confused. When it then turned to actually doing the trading, certain lower ability students just didn't get the concept of trading like goods for like, so the rich countries become very poor and the poor very rich-Nothing like reality!
The game was fun for some but possibly too complicated and pitched too high for the lower ability. This lead to some behavioural issues and low level chatting- my mentor did mention that the chatting was to do with the lower ability asking higher ability students questions and attempting to keep on task. I felt this wasn't a good sign though.
In reflection: possibly I need to explain the game and it's intended outcome in greater detail and clarity. More consideration needed to be put into place for those students who are of lower ability and to be a bit more flexible in my approach.
No comments:
Post a Comment