Magic Can Happen: You Just Have To Let Go

Today I had the BEST lesson of the year so far. Yes, I know we are only in week seven, but this one is going to be hard to beat. I’m still on a high… moments like this remind me why I am still teaching… and learning!

Background: Grade 2 students. We have been working on a stand alone music unit with the central idea “Rhythm holds music together“. We’ve been learning about standard music notation: whole notes, half notes, quarter notes and quarter rests. Students have had a lot of hands on learning engagements. It has been great. Or so I thought until today, when it suddenly really DID get great.

Today:

I started to introduce their summative assessment. We talked about what a ‘summative assessment’ is. Awesome discussion just on that alone – I had a feeling then that the students and I were well tuned in to each other today! So I told them what the assessment would be: Compose, and perform, a rhythm matrix using standard notation. Blank looks from twenty five faces. By the way, I secretly LOVE it when absolutely no-one knows what I am talking about – it completely levels the playing field. So I said “Well, we’d better find out what that means then”! 

We spent the rest of the forty minute lesson figuring it out. No. Actually THEY did that. They figured it out. They hypothesised. They tested. They failed. They squealed. (YEP!). They predicted. They evaluated. They questioned. They laughed! They TALKED. Almost a whole lesson of talking and constructing understanding. Animated, enthusiastic, thoughtful learners working collaboratively to learn. INQUIRY AT ITS BEST! All I did was facilitate the discussion and add in a few provocative questions here and there. These young minds truly were AMAZING. By the end of the lesson, they all seemed to have a pretty good idea about what the assessment entails.

What I REALLY liked:

Some of these students have been working with me for three, or in some cases four, years. They know me. They KNOW that I MUCH prefer them to just have a go, take a guess, even if they are not sure… rather than just stay silent and wait for the answer. I have totally stopped giving them the answers anyway! They know that I really do not care if they get every answer wrong. Or right. There were students showing me so much about their understanding of all the work they had been doing throughout the unit. Formative assessment in action! I was also articulating to them very clearly MY observations – e.g. “Joe, you have just shown me that you really understand the note values by explaining your thinking like that”. I wrote anecdotal notes as the lesson progressed… scribbling the students’ words on the board… here’s an example. One student’s definition of what it means to ‘compose‘:

I should also mention that this same student said to me “you know… if you take music by someone like Beethoven, Bach or Mozart and you copy it… that’s not composing”. WOW. He is seven years old. I learnt so much about him, and the other students, today. I wish I had videoed the lesson and captured the moments that I am writing about. I feel that I’m not really explaining them as well as I could!

What was different today?

I actually have NO idea. I was very focused. I was very well prepared. Nothing real new there as I am always pretty good at planning etc etc… I really cannot put my finger on exactly WHY today went so well. Perhaps it was a number of reasons. I used the Promethean board today, which MIGHT have made a difference… I had spent a fair while last night constructing a flip chart that I hoped would spark some discussion. It sure did!

I also think that for some reason today I was not in a rush. I was not thinking about ‘covering’ things. I let go of the reins and handed them over to the students. I find myself doing this more and more lately. The learning seems so much deeper when I do. Why are some teachers so afraid of letting go? I think a lot of it has to do with trust and respect. You have to respect the learners, no matter what their age. Take them seriously. Trust that they are capable of great things, no matter their age. My pet hate is when people laugh at what the little guys say, but that’s a whole different post  – like this one from May 2012.

One more thing…

I realised today that my whole way of teaching has changed and evolved dramatically since I first started teaching twenty years ago. And it is still changing. It’s messier now. My classroom is a lot noisier now. But it is also a lot more ENGAGING now. More student centred. I also talk about learning all the time now with the students. I don’t keep things a secret from them. I vocalise my thinking more and I’m using the language of learning more and more every day. That reminds me of this post that I wrote in February 2013 following some PD with Kath Murdoch. I feel that I have come a long way since then.

I also make it very clear that I am learning WITH the students. And that I am absolutely committed to “Less us, more them”. 

I wish EVERY lesson could be as magical as this one. 

Something to aim for…

Image: ‘A Spot Of Magic‘ http://www.flickr.com/photos/83346641@N00/7082879485 Found on flickrcc.net

#Learning #Inquiry #music #Grade2 #messy #Reflecting