Teaching Experiment #3 Take-off, Touch-down and Mini whiteboards

I've been experimenting with how to make revision lessons less tedious and more engaging. It's pretty difficult to figure out what the general class' ability is if you can only ask one or two students a question at each time. In this post, I'm going to talk about the 'Take-off, Touch-down' strategy and mini whiteboards

Take-Off, Touch-down

I use this to test the learning temperature and preferences of the class. Basically, touch-down means to sit and take-off means to stand up. Though it sounds simple, the kids really enjoy this because it means they can move around and they like the airplane metaphor. 

I use this for True/False questions, to find out the likes and dislikes, if they understand or not understand - basically, for anything that only has 2 answers to.

Mini Whiteboards

So now, mini whiteboards are my new best friend for formative assessment in class. They are very easy to use, and the kids love them! Note that you should also use DRY-ERASE markers with them, as other markers tend to leave an ugly stain on them. A lot of my kids have their own whiteboard dusters, but for those who don't, I get them to use a small square of toilet paper, or if you want to be environmentally friendly, just any old piece of cloth will suffice.

Here's what I use my mini whiteboards for:

1. Pairwork
Today I got the kids to sit in pairs to do a grammar exercise on Present Perfect Tense . They numbered themselves 1 and 2. For each question, they got to discuss the answer and 1 and 2 took turns to write.
I would time them and give them about 20 seconds, then call out '1, 2, 3...FREEZE', whereupon they would show me their answers.

The kids love this probably because they can legally talk to their friends in class and there's some safe competition going on with their friends.

2. Groupwork
I use this in a few contexts. I usually get the kids to first number themselves and give each number a role (E.g. scribe, leader, material collector, noise controller).

a) Sometimes I get them to discuss a difficult Science application question (or any more difficult question that would help having more discussion), then have them discuss it among themselves and show their answers.

(I also used this in my Sink and Swim game that I blogged about awhile ago. Check out the post here.)

b) I've also found out that magnetic mini whiteboards are fantastic. When I was teaching the topic of light, I was trying to find out if the kids knew how to draw the lines showing the reflection of light into a person's eye. I found that it was really helpful that I got the kids to work in groups and draw them out, then put up all their magnetic whiteboards to point out the right ones and where the misconceptions are.

This also worked really well when I got the kids to brainstorm ideas then put them all up on the whiteboard to draw links and connections to ideas.

You can find magnetic mini whiteboards from Daiso, they come in different sizes!

My mini whiteboards and markers.

You can put them up if they're magnetic! Makes for a good teaching tool.