A lesson of two halves

How is it that the same lesson can go SO differently?

If you have by chance read the last post I put up, I mentioned how well a lesson with my 2ESO class went last Friday. We were looking at biographies and reading an example about Shakespeare. I had planned an activity were they wrote their own biographies about random people from different decades. We had a 1950s housewife, a hippy from the 60s and a punk rocker from the 70s. All selected at random with the idea being to give the class the freedom to completely invite a life for these people. And they did, so well.

Today, however, was another story. I had the second half of that year group and I was looking forward to this lesson with them yet it couldn’t have been more different! As there are currently exams going in the school, my normal teacher was out of the lesson invigilating in our  classroom. The combination of a room change + presence of a different teacher + (let’s face it) Monday = clearly enough to send the students off.

So there we are,  squeezed  into a technology classroom with rows of skinny benches and tall tables, positioned in such a way that half the class have their backs to the board. I set up my powerpoint which worked perfectly fine on Friday, and also this morning with other classes, but now of course it decides the pictures won’t load. Getting them to focus and listen to me took the longest it has yet. I finally set them off onto their tasks, only for half  the class to say they haven’t brought any paper with them. This is something I struggle to understand. Every lesson they have to be reminded to take out their books/pens/paper and unless you explicitly tell them to do so, they won’t. Where else do they expect to do their work?

We eventually go to our final activity and, I have to say, some students did a really good job. Others maybe took the creative freedom a little bit too far but at least they were excited about their biography enough to want to share it with the class.

It wasn’t an easy 55 minutes, but it was a lesson in itself. It just showed me how much one or two changes can completely disrupt the lesson and that you have to be able to think on your feet. To be honest though, you learn just as much, if not more, from these lessons than the ones you are happy with. It didn’t run very smoothly at all, but they ultimately did do I wanted them to, even if it was to varying degrees of accuracy. At least they learnt the word “mohawk” - that counts for something, right?!