Sometimes little things make all the difference...

Last year after the first Canadian Studies lesson of the second semester, I was very dissatisfied with the lesson. It was disorganized, boring and irrelevant to the students. (At least that's how I remember feeling about it!) Today's lesson went much better and generated lots of comments and questions in the students' written feedback. At one point I looked out and saw all 57 students on task and working. Wow – what a beautiful sight!

When I think about the changes I made to the lesson they really were quite basic...
• I redesigned the handout so that the instructions for the different tasks (graphing population statistics about immigration to Canada) clearly matched the graphs they pertained to.
• I set up the unit on immigration in a way that connected to what the students know (Japan's birthrate is falling and its population is decreasing. Canada's birthrate is falling and its population is increasing. Why? A student says "immigration".) Most Japanese would never dream of immigrating to another country so students are generally quite curious about what would motivate others to leave their countries of birth.
• I connected to the students’ prior knowledge by using a K-W-L worksheet for students to write down what they already know about immigration, what they want to learn about it, and (at the end of the lesson) what they learned so far. (Google K-W-L for lots of resources that explain the K-W-L technique.)
• I didn’t ask the students to do what they’re generally not comfortable doing. They didn’t have to share their answers with the whole class. If they wanted to work with a partner they could. If they wanted to work by themselves, that was all right too. Basically, in a large class, students are going to do what they want to do – it’s too difficult to monitor them all the time. So why not give them permission to work in their preferred style sometimes?

What small changes can you make in your lessons? Sometimes they can lead to big results!