Engaging senior Art Theory students with PPT

Our newly configured group is made up of: Ronelle, Elize, Thea, Sandra, Martinette and Amanda. We discussed the following in our group this afternoon:

• "Method in our madness" - how we are going to move forward, as we have a mix of Science, DT, Art,  Music, Afrikaans and English teachers in our group.
• This could prove to be an advantage, as we could focus more on refining techniques (praxis?) and less on content (more of the same: planning lesson, observing, etc.)
• Thea identified a specific challenge: How to keep a small group of 6 matric students engaged when doing an Art Theory lesson?
• She has tried something different: for Wednesday the matrics each have to prepare a presentation on a specific genre (period) of art and present it to the class.
• She will record the lesson and then the group will discuss the lesson next Monday.
• She does not want members of the cell group present in the class, as she feels the students will react differently when there are five teachers in class.
• The question of PowerPoint presentations came up and Sandra suggested a way to keep students engaged. Each group of students come up with two multiple choice questions relating to the slide/s. They have to email them to the teacher, who will collate and use them as a CFU (check for understanding).
• Amanda and Ronelle felt that they would rather require students to set one lower order and one higher order thinking question, as Languages do not lend themselves to multiple choice questions.
• Ronelle, Sandra and Thea will all circulate their versions of Bloom's taxonomy - for us to see what works best for each of us.

All in all it was a positive, fruitful discussion and we agreed that the present way of doing Staff Development is much more appealing to us, as we became bored with the previous process.