Silence is Golden

One of the great things about the internet is the range of professional development opportunities that exist for teachers. From Sophia (www.sophia.org) to Coursera (www.coursera.org ), there are a range of MOOCs (massive open online courses) that offer a vast array of courses for teachers of all subjects and persuasions. Last week, I began another online course with coursera.org called Art and Inquiry: Museum Teaching Strategies For Your Classroom. Run by the Museum of Modern Art, it focuses on using art to promote inquiry based learning that models the education programs run in the museum.

One of the most exciting things about the course is the direct and practical way that I have been able to use it in my classes this week. Having not taught history for a few years, this inquiry based learning approach suits history pedagogy and the approach of my school. More importantly, it has made class more fun and a nice change from a content heavy curriculum.

I first tried it with my Year 9 class where we are studying slavery and industrialisation. Previously, class had been focused on source analysis and note taking from PowerPoint presentations. Naturally I was a little tentative, the literature said silence was my best friend and the thought of standing there in front of them waiting for a response seemed a little scary. However, I took a deep breath and just began to write on the board my inquiry question: “How do we stop slavery?”

Silence.

More silence.

A tentative hand went up from one my regular contributors, who made a comment about the Emancipation Proclamation. Then another hand: make rich people slaves for a day, then another: pirates from Somalia, and another and another. By the time I had finished the mind map on the board; my fears had been erased and replaced by genuine excitement. This class had a wealth of ideas and historical knowledge, especially about American history, that had previously been in hiding. Moreover, they were engaging in debates about these ideas across the classroom without prompting. This seemed too good to be true.

Drawing on the two key ideas, the Emancipation Proclamation and whether slavery still exists, I set them a simple pair-share research task with a time limit of 20 minutes. This is where the rubber really hit the road: you could have good class discussion but what I wanted to see was research and detail. And off they went, as everything from Yahoo answers to Wikipedia to newspaper articles to YouTube started appearing on their screens. Even better, this was focused, organised work where I didn’t need about 10 different reminders to get exercise books out to take notes.

To finish the class I held a plenary session where I got each subject area to share their findings. Rather than the usual reluctance to provide an answer, usually where there is only one correct response and it goes to a regular contributor, I had everyone battling to get their voice heard. So much so that my regular contributors were starting to feel left out. Moreover, each person was able to add something new or different to the subject. So class ended with 90% of my planned content, back-up in case the experiment failed, waiting for another day. The lesson hadn’t gone quite in the direction I expected but the students were enjoying it and left the room buzzing.

I next tried it with my Year 8 class studying medieval history. Having done a little more reading, I centred this lesson on some pictures of medieval punishments to get them thinking about law and order. The inquiry based learning literature focused on unsolicited viewing and the use of the questions: “What else do you see?” and “What do you see that makes you say that?” So I just put up the pictures on the Apple TV and waited to see who would speak first.

Unlike my Year 9 class, these guys had no issues in putting forth an opinion. The problem was, so many good ideas were coming out I needed to slow it down so that I could get all these ideas on the board. Importantly, just using these questions, I was able to go beyond the obvious content of the punishment itself to expose some of the social issues involved with crime and punishment.

Also unlike my other class, the content for my inquiry question (How were medieval criminals punished?) was a lot more structured and focused. Using a good video from a Tony Robinson television series and their textbook, I was able to direct them to the key ideas around the topic. However, unlike previous lessons where textbook work was greeted with a groan, the students eagerly delved into the text to find out more information to support what they had seen in the video.

Importantly for me though, when they posted their answers to the inquiry question, it contained all the detail outlined in the curriculum documents and more. They even debated their answers and were suggesting areas in which more detail could be included. This was the best lesson I have had with this group and a quick straw poll at lunch confirmed the success of the class.

So a week into my new MOOC and it is already paying dividends. The inquiry based learning approach has re-energised my classrooms and shown me a new side to my students. I can’t wait for the coming week to see what question we will answer next.