Teaching without Lecturing

Posted by Kira on November 16, 2011

So, my Principal decided (now, after 1st quarter is over….) that we cannot lecture anymore. What, you say? How do you teach a class like Art History without lecture? Well, I’m having a go at it right now. It is difficult and requires some planning, and I have decided to use a “blended” model. I simply can’t leave lecture out, after all, my students must understand how to look at and interpret art, and I don’t feel that they can do it without my modeling it for them. But as for the learning part, we are trying a project right now.

I have broken the class into 8 small groups of 3. I allowed them to choose their groups, feeling that this way they would have less friction and know what their friends are capable of. I don’t feel that I have any problems (just yet.) I then assigned each group one of eight topics that I decided would cover the material as a whole. Our unit is the Middle Ages, and some topics are more important to cover well than others- so I gave the topics of lesser importance to the lower-performing groups. The good thing is, they don’t know who they are I allowed the groups to first tell me which topics interested them, I made them write me a list of three in priority order. If they chose well, I gave them their topic- if I disagreed with their choice or had ties, I assigned them a different topic.

Next, in class I modeled how to create a GoogleDoc, which can be shared by the group members throughout the project. They will create an outline for the topic in googledocs, and then download it and turn it in to me in two ways- first, through TurnItIn.com, which checks for originality of their work, and second, through googledocs which will allow me to mark it up, make suggestions, steer their course, and share it back to them.

Each day, I have prepared a short powerpoint (keynote) presentation on the parts of the information that I deem Super-Important and deserving of coverage by a professional (me!) After discussing those points for about 20 minutes, I set them free to work on their own presentations.

The projects will culminate 10 minute presentations by all groups, followed by an individual report on the Middle Ages, and a quiz.

In my opinion, there will be some good learning, and some foul-ups. In my experience, when you cover a large topic like this in groups, you become an expert in your topic and not so great at the others- so I don’t really like to do this. But, it’s too much information to make them all do a project on the whole thing. I am running out of time, too. I am avoiding making my students do it all for homework, but not having enough time for them to complete the work at school. There are definitely good and bad things about doing it this way. I enjoy not lecturing and making them work harder to learn, but I need double the time to cover the topic correctly in class….would love to hear how others have done a history class without lecturing.

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