what’s a plenary?
It’s classic Eduspeak. They turn an obscure adjective into a noun, give it a new meaning, and then expect everybody to know what it means. I think he means that we should have a brief reflection, a recap, in which everybody participates. We should summarize our lesson by collectively asking, “what did we learn today? what are the key concepts? where are we going from here?”
Of course, students have always been asking this, but they are more succinct: “what’s going to be on the test?”
Anyway, I have told the professional development coordinator to drop in our classroom anytime to observe the way I teach, and he has told me, “when I was evaluating teachers back in England, if they didn’t do a plenary I would fail them.” So, I have started doing plenaries. At first, I got nothing but wisecracks: “what did we learn today?”
Not to sit under the air conditioner
When you stab yourself with a pencil, it hurts
Don’t eat chili at lunch.The Year 10s were the most cynical. Good for them. They recognize Educrap when they see it. But lately they’ve come around to liking it. We’ve developed a routine that resembles a chant from a football game:
Who are we?And they gleefully go off to their next lesson. I don’t think it’s what the professional development coordinator wanted, but it seems to be working. I’m starting to like those Year 10s; there’s some hope for them after all.
WE’RE THE YEARS 10s!
And what are we studying?
MATHEMATICS!
And what’s our unit?
GEOMETRY!
And what’s our homework?
EXERCISE 5! PAGE 124!
4 comments:
er, sir, i thought a plenary was something that one did an advance, like a plan.
am i a failure?
you, ma' am, are obviously a failure, because a plenary is something you sit on, like a plane. arshia, isn't it wonderful that our parents and teachers educated us to the point where we can appreciate wordplay!? i want that for the lovely children that are required to trudge through my classroom every day.
i think you have to have a language firmly under your belt before you can play with words.
sort of like math puzzles . . .
But remember what you said about Hao-Tian after his Tiger in the Pool poster: when you can start to make jokes in another language, that's really special.
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