As a teacher, I am always keen to try and improve my teaching techniques for the benefit of my students. I’ve tried numerous different teaching styles over the years and seen fads and gimmicks come and go. However about 18 months ago, when I joined Twitter, and saw several people posting about how fabulous their new visualisers were, I decided to investigate.
I spoke to my head of department, telling her ‘these visualisers look fantastic, can we get some?’ She replied that we had five still sitting in their boxes in our office, which had been there for some time. I didn’t need telling twice! With a quick request to our IT support service, I soon had a visualiser up and running in each of the rooms that I teach in. To say these devices are a game changer is an understatement. As a geography teacher, I have often struggled to get an entire class to grasp skills such as four and six figure grid references, measuring distances and giving directions. Clunky demonstrations on the board often ensued, bearing no relation to the map that they had in front of them. However, using my visualiser, I am able to place maps and textbooks under it which are identical to those that my students have in front of them, and point to exact features or demonstrate exact skills underneath my device. The image is then projected onto the screen at the front of the room for all to see. The difference in my students’ levels of understanding and ability to grasp the skills has been astounding, freeing me up from having to go around and re-teach several groups after my initial demonstration, to being able to check for understanding and to give next steps whilst they work. Another skill which my GCSE students need plenty of practice with is writing exam answers. I am a big fan of giving them model answers to use to compare with their own so that they can make improvements. However, my visualiser has allowed me to take this one step further. I can now write model answers and model my thinking in front of them on the board, which will help them enormously when they themselves are in the exam room having to think for themselves. My school has recently moved away from a policy of written marking, to one of verbal feedback. A particular favourite type of feedback that I try and carry out every lesson is live marking under my visualiser. This involves taking a student’s work (it does not need to be the best one), placing it under the device, and live marking it for the class to see on the board. Again, this allows the students to think about what makes a good answer, as well as being given time to use the work on the screen to improve theirs. All of these methods have improved outcomes for my students, and the vast majority clamour to have me pick their work to place under the visualiser.! I have only ever had one student decline my request to use their work. One more unexpected bonus of a visualiser is that it can pick up student misdemeanours when they least expect it! Due to the angle of the lamp on one occasion as I plugged it in and switched it on, one poor girl at the front was caught doing a huge, lengthy yawn on the screen for all to see! Not the worst misdemeanour, but it certainly let the class know that there may be another pair of ‘eyes’ watching them when they least expect it! In essence, if a fellow teacher asked me which one piece of kit I could not do without, it would be my visualiser. There is not a day goes by where I don’t use it several times, in fact it features in most of my lessons now. And of course, it has reduced my workload – no longer do I take piles of books home to mark, as my visualiser enables me to give live, instant feedback in class. How did I ever survive without one?! This post has been sponsored by IPEVO, a giveaway prize prouder for TM Geography Icons 2019 Check out their website and visualiser collection herehttps://uk.ipevo.com/products.html
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