Team Teaching!

As wonderful as it is to be teaching, I really love any opportunity to invite in other individuals to the class to share their knowledge. I feel that students really benefit from team teaching and guest speakers. Students interests are captured because it is someone new, and the guest teacher can offer different views and perspectives to the class.

Today, Diana, another volunteer at the home, came to class with me to team teach. Diana has many more years of experience teaching than me, so not only were the students learning but I was also learning by watching the teaching strategies and techniques that Diana used. Although, not currently teaching, Diana once taught at the university level.

Diana in the school courtyard! 

I began our lesson with the Form 3 girls, reviewing our reading strategies. Students eagerly came up to the board to fill in and explain how to use our before, during, and after reading strategies. We then practiced those strategies as we read a piece of short fiction that covered the topic of dilemmas. We discussed what dilemmas were as well as specific examples of dilemmas that we have experienced.

Students are very familiar with our reading strategies since we talk about them every class.

A student summarizes a paragraph. I have drilled my students in the importance of summarizing. 

If they can summarize it shows that they were able to comprehend.

Students listening as we discuss the topic of dilemma.

Next, Diana shared an article from The Standard, a Kenyan Newspaper, about child trafficking. Diana then asked students to infer from the paper the dilemmas that the people faced who were talked about in the article. Students were able to apply what they had learned from the lesson to the newspaper. This was also a great opportunity for students to see directly how the strategies they were using applied to real life as well as the information and topics they were learning about!

Here is Diana as she shares the article with the class.