4th grade (10 years old), 30 students
Discipline: History
This is the first year when they are studing History (once a week).
Time of the lesson : 45 minutes
Theme: Romanians' ancestors ( The Romans and The Dacians)
Pedagogical goal: To know and understand facts related to Romanian history
Previous activity: The students already have information about The Romans and The Dacians from the previous two lessons and a historical movie they saw.
Also, the students already used the passport technique in previous lessons (grammar and litterature).
Type of lesson: the aim of the lesson is to consolidate the students' knowledge about Romanians' ancestors
OTSM-TRIZ tools: the bank of objects, the passport, the game "My friends".
The bank of objects: cards with pictures and words related to Dacians and Romans (the location of the two nations, their way of living, their political and social organization, their leaders)
1) The game "My friends"
Every student has 3 different cards.The teacher is the leader of the game . The pupils have to pay attention to teacher' requests and show the proper card for each situation.
Examples of teacher' requests:
-My friends are all those whose cards are related to the location of Dacia/ The Roman Empire
-My friends are all those whose cards are related to the political organization of the Romans / the Dacians
-My friends are all those whose cards are related to Romans '/ Dacians' way of living
-My friends are all those whose cards are related to the first /second war between Romans and Dacians
-My friends are all those whose cards are related to the names of the leaders of the two armies during the wars.
The last question drives the students to the next activity- the passport.
2) The students have to fill in the passport made for Decebal ( the Dacian leader). They answer the questions (the" name of feature column") and fill in the column for the value of feature.
After that, the students are asked to recognize the element (which is Traian, the Roman leader) of another passport on the base of the name of feature and value of feature already written.
3) Riddles- the evaluation
This activity is organized as a contest.
Divided into 6 groups the students have to create riddles about the 2 leaders. After 5 minutes every team reads its riddles and the other teams have to guess the answers. The team that gives the biggest number of correct answers wins the game.
Reflection:
-for students, the techniques I used represent an interesting way of learning, very attractive
-for me, as a teacher, these techniques were helpful to motivate the pupils (learning trough games always attracts them) and to achieve the pedagogical goal.
Comments
1. You're saying that the main plus you've observed is an increased motivation of your pupils. Can you please say a few words on how this was reflected?
2. Could you also share how you introduced the passport in the previous lessons?
3. Did you also explicitly deal with the ENV model as long as the tables had columns named 'name' and 'value'?
4. Did I understand correctly that the bank was collected by the teacher and offered to pupils?
Looking forward to your reply.
1. All the teachers know that the little students are always attracted by new things, by new ways of working.
Being different from a traditional lesson (when the teacher presents the historical facts and the biography of the historical personality)in my History lesson the students were, first of all, interested in the new techiques I used. That made them more attentive. Secondly, the new type of lesson motivated and enabled the children to do their own "research" on the facts/historical personalities, to express their own point of view, to work in groups and to cooperate in order to have the best team and win the contest(riddles contest).
All of these helped the students to better understand what I teached and to consolidate their knowledge.
2. For the first time I introduced "the passport" in a literature lesson.
In prevoius , traditional lessons, during the years, the students learned to answer questions related to the features of a literary character and to ask questions for already done answers. On the base of these questions and answers the children could made a list of features in order to characterize the literary "element". That is why was easy for me to introduce "the passport" in the lesson and to fill in with the students.
3. Because the childrem were already well acquainted with the search of the features and with asking and answering questions it was also easy for me to name the columns. I have to say that also the translation from English to Romanian fits perfectly: E= "element", N="numele insusirii" and V="valoarea insusirii".
4.Yes, the bank was collected by me. I thought it could be hard for the pupils to select the cards that best fits with my requests.
I wanted to ask if you've had any context for the pupils to apply the ENV model since your last post. If so, did they manage to apply it? What were the difficulties if any?
I also wanted to make a comment re the banks. You're right, it is normally difficult for the pupils to collect the bank you expect them to. At the same time, it's important to remember that the actual process of collecting the bank is already the learning experience. Therefore, it may often be an advantage to choose this path rather than pre-select the bank for the learners.
Since my last post I didn't had the opportunity to apply the ENV Model again because the students had the winter holliday. We just came back to school.As soon as I will do it I will post some materials on "Teachers diaries".
You are right, collecting the bank of objects is a learning experience, so, next time , I will ask my students to do it.