We’re not saying that teachers should be sitting back, relaxing during class time, but what if the teachers job was to support the children’s learning by being available during the lesson rather than running it?
This concept has been talked about a lot. With the few schools who have adopted this method of teaching, its proven to work thus far. Without any specific research or examples to build on, it’s easy to see that the mainstream schools in the UK have not adopted this, not even on a trial basis, but could it work?
The premise of this is that the teacher sets up the class by putting pupils into groups, as evenly as possible, and then poses a question or topic for the pupils to research/engage with/experiment and importantly, work out what they, as a team, are going to do to present their findings to the rest of the class.
For example, the question could be “What happened to the dinosaurs?”
Each of the groups could take a different approach, or follow the same path independently of each other. They can use the internet, the library or even ask the teacher for assistance. This could then be presented at the end of the lesson to the rest of the class. Then, everyone can improve their knowledge together.
At the end of each lesson the whole class has learnt something new by exploring themselves. The teacher has been available to assist the children when needed. Overall, the class is more engaged with the lesson.