The students who cheated at a test!

 Hi new teachers,

What do we teach and how do we test? If we stand and just give out information, and the students do not actively engage with it, chances are that they will not remember all the information we dish out.

When I was teaching outside India, an inexperienced and a raw teacher, I was asked by the Social Studies teacher to teach about India as that was one of the chapters in the textbook. I was excited...here was a chance to teach about my country. I prepared extensively and created a presentation. I was planning to teach just as my teachers had taught me - I was planning to just stand there and deliver content.

Come the day, I stood there and talked. And talked. The students did ask me some questions, but there were no activities planned to engage students. There was no check-in with the students to find out how much they had understood. But I thought it was a great lesson. After all, I had put so much effort into it!! Then I had to create a test. The test had multiple questions and I naively thought that the students would read from my presentation notes and the text book. The students were overwhelmed with so much information. Memorising was not something they were used to.

On the day of the test, many of them cheated. They hid notes in the bathroom and referred to it and were caught. I was morally indignant. How could they cheat? On hindsight, after all these years of teaching, I think to myself, poor kids, what choice did they really have?

I have learned from this incident and tell my students now that they don't need to memorise anything, just maybe one or two important names and dates in my subject - I&S. What is important is the ramifications of the events. I make sure I give them audio-visual as well as text sources, I make sure they engage with the material in groups and present their understanding to the class so that other groups have a chance to give their opinion and in this manner, all students get to hear different perspectives. I conduct formatives to check understanding and to know if any re-teaching is needed. I share examples and models. Some facts are always required to build arguments. I revise important facts by creating circle time. I then conduct a summative that is based mostly on demonstrating understanding and skills where facts are used to create arguments based on evidence. I have stopped standing and teaching. I only facilitate learning, which is how it should be. I have come a long way.


Cheers!

#myp,#newteachers,#teaching,#relationships,#students,#behaviour,#school,#ib,#learning,#leaders,#teacher-student relationships, #testing, #assessments



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