Barak Zluf - class experiment

Introduction:

When our students just look at us and listen to what we are saying they remember only 10% of the given information. When we ask them to write it down they can increase the amount of information they remember up to 50%, but when we ask them to actually practice, they can remember even 90% of the information!

I always think of how to integrate students’ participation in class and truly feel like the textbooks give us great opportunities for that. We, as teachers, have to use them.

Hypothesis:

Last month I started the second unit in the textbook with my 11th grade, 5 points. This unit talks about gender. We read a text about the effects of gender stereotypes and the fact that girls don’t speak up in class as much as boys.

One of the proposed tasks, after reading the text, was to let the students choose a lesson in any subject, and run a class experiment to find out if it’s true and who really contributes more to the lesson; boys or girls.

I found it very beneficial for the students. First, if they run the experiment they can easily learn more new words from the text and additionally great vocabulary related to experiments. That would help them with unseens, most of which describe various studies and their results. Second, using their new vocabulary orally by presenting their results to their peers in class can build their confidence. And at least, to remember what we have learned.

Procedure:

So I prepared an experiment sheet (attached picture) and handed it out to each student. I asked only 5 to make a big presentation and the rest were asked to share their results afterwards, in the final discussion in class.

Conclusion:

When I shared it with my colleges, other English teachers, they said they didn’t even notice that task in the textbook or avoided it since it sounds too complicated. So when you have new ideas, share it! For my students, they enjoyed the research they conducted, remembered the new vocabulary much better and the correct way to use it.

And for myself, I’ll keep thinking about more ideas to make my students more active in order to help them remember the material. It surely works!

Thank you for reading!

Barak