Odile Oliver
Eumemmerring Secondary College Year 9 Geography
The course content is extensive and although students have their own (partly correct) views about the earth’s structure, continental drift theory seemed very new to them.
To prepare them to think seriously about what they read and to develop question-asking that would aid their learning I introduced students to the "Write on the Reading" learning strategy.
As an example, I put an unrelated text onto an overhead transparency to show students how the exercise was to be carried out. This gave them an idea of the range of responses possible. At this point students also made contributions.
Students were then given a copy of their own course related text and invited to respond to it. Their work was collected at the end of the lesson (see examples below).
Students’ work showed that there was similarity in the responses made by different students. Some responses were quite exciting and thought provoking.
Two categories of questions arose:
i) Questions that were in the course which I intended to cover anyway.
ii) Questions that indicated students’ particular interests.
It became clear that we would spend at least two to three weeks addressing all student questions/responses. It was an intense reading/thinking lesson that fully engaged all students and gave relevance to the work which followed because there was some student ownership.
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