Teachers always have to be ready to think on their feet and make adjustments through the day when things don’t work out as they had planned.
Upon arriving to school this morning, I discovered that 12 students were away (some sick, some at the Zone Athletics Carnival).
What was I going to do? I could continue with my normal teaching program, but half the class would miss out and I would probably need to revise it.
I decided that this would be a great opportunity to give the students an open task to research some of the questions that they had about Vietnam when we introduced the unit a couple of weeks ago. This was their chance to get some answers to some of the things they were wondering about.
Their task was simple…
- Discuss with their Collaborative Cluster an aspect of Vietnam they would like to investigate
- Spend the morning researching information and put together a Prezi to present their findings to the class at the end of the day
They were able to use Britannica Online and Oddizzi to find information.
The groups quickly got to work and I overheard outstanding discussions from the students as they investigated different aspects of Vietnam.
They were able to collaborate and share information or good websites that they found using TitanPad. This site also has a chat feature which allowed students to send instant messages to other groups to ask questions or clarify understanding.
Here are some photos and a video of the students intently engaged in their task…