Taking Risks

Here is what my Year 9 class found as they entered English today... This was our lesson and it was theirs to take in any direction they pleased.

(Secretly, I had lots of powerpoints stored on my pen drive to refer to if all went wrong but I had challenged myself to take a risk today and was determined to see it through.)

The students were asked to write down any questions that they had about the box - after sharing them, they voted that the focus of today's lesson should be to find out what was inside. The challenge was set - they had an hour and a half to convince me to reveal my secret. (I breathed out a little - AFOREST worksheets lurking suspiciously on my desk...)

When asked what they could do to convince me a series of responses followed: stage a protest? Write a letter? Bribery? But then one student suggested that they should work it out by interviewing me - the others agreed that this would probably impress me the most. I warned them that they were only allowed ten questions and if they couldn't work it out -the box would remain locked and that was all it took.

The students (a lower ability group) spent the lesson writing, replacing and proof reading questions (I also refused to answer anything that was grammatically incorrect). Within the hour, they solved the mystery - justified their answer in full sentences and wrote a paragraph to explain what would go in their box.

When I finally revealed the contents - I asked students to explain what they had done to earn this information and was told that they had spoken using full sentences, explained their ideas and written in detail.

Today may not have worked - if it didn't we would have been an hour behind. Was it worth the risk? In the end, I didn't use a PowerPoint or worksheet for the entire lesson. the students drove themselves. The improvement in their writing speaks for itself! (They even set their own homework and are now bringing me an item of their own.)


The moral of the story? We can (and should) monitor and drive progress - but not at the expense of taking the occasional risk. The benefits are priceless...

The first extract is taken from the lesson before - the second is the work from the same student at the end of today's lesson.