Mini Olympics iExperience

This week we have held a mini olympics iExperience for three afternoons.  We have crossed it with measurement because we were finding it really hard to fit strand into our maths sessions so this seemed like a good idea!  Each afternoon the learners were broken into three groups which rotated around three different activities, participating in each for around 25 minutes.  The activities covered area, distance, calendars, time, capacity and mass.  The learners have really loved these short, sharp, hands on activities and have enjoyed experimenting with different 'olympic sports'.  

I found the design process interesting. When we were asked to collaboratively plan I found planning on the spot with no prior thinking time difficult.  I didn't actually get much written in that ELT session, going away to finish writing up my design later in the week after some thinking time. Because I found it so difficult I did appreciate having Lisa and Adele sharing their ideas on my design document, it helped me get started. I think we all found it tricky though as none of us got far in the ELT session!

Teaching all of the sessions with one group had two sides to it for me.  On one side it was great because I got to do a variety of different activities but on the other side it would have been nice to do the same activity three times and have the opportunity to make improvements after each one. I'm not sure if I prefer to work with just one group for three sessions or if I would have liked to have worked with all of the groups over the week. Even though we get to work with most of the learners during iDevelop and iExplore some learners really shine in 'topic' type curriculum areas so it might have been nice to be able to see that.