::A Geek in Korea::

The class I find hardest to keep on task is actually full of some of my oldest students. These students are in their last year of middle school studying the dreaded “Internet Based Testing” book series. The books are extremely boring, so we usually can’t do much in class before they start getting restless and start doing other work or chatting with each other. The majority of the students come late to class, so I can’t start. It’s a problem for all the teachers, but since I’m their first teacher of the day, I have to deal with their late arrivals on top of their bad behavior

I had found some online intelligence test months ago and had done them with some friends.
I introduced them to my coworker this week, and he mentioned it might
be a good activity for upper level classes. Since I had to wait for everyone to arrive, I decided to put some questions from an on the board. That way, the students that had arrived earlier would have something to do while I checked homework and waited for the other students.

The thing I didn’t anticipate was that the normally lazy, apathetic students would go crazy for these sorts of tests. I put a set of about ten questions on the board. They got the easier ones immediately, but needed some hints to get the rest. As I went around checking the homework and more students arrived, I soon had the focus of the entire class trying to solve these questions. This is the first time they’ve ever worked on something collectively.

Trying to get them back on task was nearly impossible. What I should have done was erase all the questions unanswered and let them take home a copy of the test at the end of the class period. Instead, I tried teaching while the students kept trying to solve the questions. Dumb mistake on my part. Eventually I negotiated that the entire rest of our lesson would be their homework, and that we’d take a break from the book today to solve more of the problems.

Some of the worst English students in the class happened to be some of the best puzzle solvers. It was strange to see the dynamic of the class turned on its head and students actually trying for a change. If they put the same effort into their work, it’d be a great class. Next time I’ll have to be careful how I introduce this material into class, and will only do it if I have time to burn or I am too far ahead in my book.

technorati tags:IQ, Intelligence test, slackers