Cassie’s Laws

What is participation and learning? That’s the question I asked myself whilst driving down to Camelon last night for a twilight on the subject. Although I knew what it was I wasn’t able to translate my thoughts into a form that someone else would understand.

The CPD session was in the world cafe format, this really helped me as it meant I could talk about my ideas in a small group as opposed to the normal size of audience. Soon I realised that I use the theories involved in pupil participation within my own classroom everyday without even thinking about it.

Through  the blog I am able to get indirect and informal evaluations of lessons through the comments left by children in the class.

Another way I try to involve children is through our suggestion box and our worry box.

I also try to encourage honest opinions from children about lessons and we discuss things that went well and things that didn’t. When discussing this I realised that this was in fact a barrier to participation and learning as some children are not honest about how they feel. It tends to be the children that sit in the class and absorb everything you say as though they are a sponge. At first I had to spend a lot of time explaining that it was ok to say if they did not like something. I found that quite often they were writing or saying what they thought I wanted to hear and what they thought they should say.

Overall it was a really good course and I’m looking forward to the next one.