Tools just for teachers?

For this week's class, I continued to try out different techniques and methods based on last week's feedback from Margaret.

Mixing learners up for group exercises was particularly interesting. Rather than pick which group people would be in, I asked the learners to get in a line in order by middle name and then sectioned them into 4/5s. In most cases, this resulted in nicely mixed groups who performed well in the task. There was one group however were two of the learners clearly had, how shall I put this, very different personalities. So, my learning point for next time is to be conscious of who's working with who.

The other method I tried out was to ask learners to record the results of the exercise on the interactive whiteboard themselves. This worked well for a number of reasons. Firstly, the learners were eager to try the whiteboard out. Secondly, this cut down on feedback time. Thirdly, the group couldn't then criticise my handwriting. Result!