After students did not perform well on an open-note assessment in my class, I had to ask myself, where do I go from here? We had gone through the topic in class in many different ways. We had done activities in different depth going up and down Bloom's taxonomy. I had made them videos that covered the information. So, I was feeling pretty stumped.
This is when I went back to a conversation that I vividly remember from a science methods class in college at the University of Iowa. I very much respected this professor and this always stuck with me. He asked the class, "What is the most important conversations in a classroom? Teacher to Student? Student to Teacher? Or Student to Student?" In my naive pre-teacher ways, I volunteered the answer of student to teacher, because then as an educator I can understand what the students really know. He very politely told me I was wrong - and that it was student to student because of their comfort level with people their own age and students are going to be able to talk to each other in "their own language."
This is the conversation that pulled me forward at this educational crossroad in my classroom and I made a shift towards students learning from students. I have done things in the past with this approach, but I have tried something new. I was inspired by the show the Amazing Race. On the Amazing Race, teams have to complete Road Blocks that are supervised by clue givers. I showed a clip of this show to my classes and we talked about the role of the clue giver. The students told me that the clue givers were experts, who showed little emotion, who had to be tough and fair, and who to deal with people who were mad, frustrated, or happy. We talked about how this related to learning and the role of a teacher.
I went back through the test and broke down the areas of the test and which areas students struggled with. I created mini-activities based on these test areas. I personalized the reteaching through the voice of a student. At each table group, some students were clue givers and some students were learners. The clue givers changed based on how students performed on tests and the other students had the opportunity to earn points back on the tests - if it was approved by the clue giver. The clue givers listened to students and share their process and tips for how they solved this topic. Some clue givers even led mini-lessons based on the topic.
It was really awesome to observe the power of student voices. After the mini-lessons, I asked students for feedback. And most of it was positive. They liked to talk with their classmates about the problems. They felt like their classmates did a good job of explaining the information. Some BD students in my class who will not work with teachers or associates became engaged in class because they will listen to their classmates. Two suggestions I'm taking into consideration was to make some of the activities more "game-like" and to be able to offer the clue giver and added incentive during this time.
Overall for me, it was a great reminder about the importance of student to student conversations.
