revision time

It is challenging to find out ways to indulge students into educational tasks. By educational, I mean tasks where students raise questions and find ways for answers on their own, do healthy discussions and reach to conclusions, do required mechanical tasks that are required by the education system and so on. It is equally satisfying for the teacher to see such processes taking place into the classroom.
Annual examinations are knocking on the door and it is time for revision. The question was : How to make the mechanical task of revising content interesting and by which means the slow learner can also participate actively into this task ?

We worked in groups. One History lesson for each group. The task is, the group has to develop five new questions in 15 minutes. The group members will read aloud questions with answers. One mark for each question. The teacher will ask question after all the presentations and will check who remembers the answer.

The idea was, framing question is a higher task then just answering. One has to understand the answer and the pattern of the question for it and also has to read each line of the unit carefully. Students came up with difficulties in framing questions and that one to one interaction is quite useful which is not possible otherwise. Mark encourages the effort. And this time the group members have to participate actively as they are representing their group instead of the group leader, so its their responsibility to gain marks. The group leader became active differently. She framed the questions and made it sure that the members understand them and present them properly. It is self satisfactory task for her as she is a brighter one in the group. In this task, each one has a role to perform and that is according to their ability plus a little bit challenge.

Day one went this way. in next class, we modified the task a bit. The teacher asked to frame questions with 'Who' in it. Some students came up with the name of places or incidents or time and then we discussed the question pattern and re-framed the questions. One group initiated to present the questions without looking into textbook. It was given half grace mark for each question. That encouraged other groups and next day all the groups , i.e. whole class tried to memorise their questions-answers. Then we also included minus marking for wrong question pattern.


Coincidentally, Priyanka's group has slowest learners today. Still they managed to present their group work. The class asked the teacher not to consider mistakes in the question pattern and give the group full marks. Even Priyanka was given grace mark for her efforts which goes to the total marks of the group. And the whole class clapped for them.

There is challenge not competition in this task. It may be because we were able to built an atmosphere of one group as a class.