In the run up to the upcoming Final Year Exams, here at the SWiSS school, we’re switching into full gear and pulling out all the stops: it was now time to put all that drama conventions and processes that we had been using as platforms to increase our understanding, literacy and oracy of the text into good use.
Serious pure academic work was underway, and our students knuckled down to hard slogging to ensure that their EL targets that they set for themselves would be achieved in the Final Year Exams that would be happening in 3 weeks time.
The SWiSS teachers engaged the students with an Academic Goal Setting exercise that was implemented to help students focus on their targets and to continue with the culture of peer teaching and learning that had been started during the drama segment of the year’s classes, and students were now arranged in a Learning Centre configuration where weaker students were paired with stronger students, and each had to help the other whenever necessary.
Each student was also given a Goal Sheet to be displayed in front of their desks at all times – this is a culture of openness and sharing of one's journey to become better that we are encouraging in our SWiSS classes, where each student can see how much he or she has to improve (e.g. 58 -> 78)in order to reach their target score, and all the other classmates are validating that effort and promise to reach that higher mark and improve together as a group by displaying their Goal Sheets for everyone to see on their tables.
Because of their Learning Square configuration, students are able to see each other when peer teaching goes on, and explanations can be given face to face without volume or speech being impaired as it often is when seated all facing the direction of the board in a classroom. This is an attempt to allow students to take responsibility for their own learning, and to encourage the use of peer teaching as a tool to further the understanding of the class as a whole - this acts as an additional reinforcement of the teacher's facilitation of the class.
In true battle style of approaching the Final Year Exams as the last hurdle for the year, the SWiSS Trojans (Grp 1) and the SWiSS Spartans (Grp 2) are the 2 groups from the Sec 2 level who are undergoing this differentiated learning style for this term, with the hopes that this will help them make it through the last lap for their results this last few weeks of the academic year.
The SWiSS SpartansThe SWiSS teachers salute both groups, because we know you will all give it your 100% for your Final Year Exams – all the best:
You Can Do It!
