Humanities / Technology cell - how to address widely differing needs of our students

Humanities/Technology Cell Wk 2/3 of the Teaching & Learning cycle: 28.01.13: We focused our attention on the preparation of a Gr.12 lesson on EGD. Each of us had a copy of the lesson plan in front of us as the teacher explained and clarified the intentions for the lesson in terms of student learning and the methods and resources that would be used to achieve this end. As time is short for covering all the required curriculum content, only one lesson is available in which to ensure that all students grasp this information. We discussed the challenges for the teacher of having students in the same group with widely differing life experience – at one extreme there is a student who has traveled widely and who has two highly educated parents has a very good general knowledge; at the other, there is a student from a very contrasting background whose general knowledge is extremely limited. The givens in these lessons cannot be taken for granted and the necessity to explain basic ideas and facts can slow the lesson down considerably. We also touched on the pressure for us to deliver ‘best practice’ in all areas of teaching and learning when there were so many elements in each lesson to consider. The teacher is who is planning to teach this lesson hopes there will be more interaction than normal between teacher and students as the electronic/interactive whiteboard will be used.