Active Learning Classrooms Learning through inquiry and collaboration

the Active Learning Classroom is designed such that it compels students to participate because of the round tables for example and think that's important for what I'm doing with the students because academic writing is sometimes viewed as something that happens in isolation but really academic writing does happen in isolation we often call upon peers to help us with our work this is an environment that allows the students to sit next to each other share their papers without papers falling on the floor so they can spread out they can work well together here we've got the basket and the garbage so what I'd like you to do for minute is think about which picture corresponds to which sentence Which Way WR yeah two is two is it's the first time I'm work I'm learning in this type of classroom is we can work in group and in small group we can just share what we are learning they feel they can ask for help from peer they can pose questions they don't feel uncomfortable not knowing something they're helping each other with the tools in the classroom too put here at the having to share computers has an impact on the camaraderie among students as well because they decide who will be at the keyboard who will be the talker who's going to direct you don't have that in conventional classroom where they're not sitting at tables and where they're not sharing computers students have misconceptions about language they they think certain things about how language works and then might say well no it doesn't work like that check just for fun test what say go to Lex tutor to the concordance SE type in comma that see how many hits you get do it now like right now that way you can actually check Thea idea online right away and to confirm this idea then we can project from students computer for the whole class and everybody can see that yeah had that misc Inception how many instances of comma that do you get many what does that mean for your own writing it means don't want to see commas before that does it exist it's the immediacy that's think has had really good impact on students learning you have 10 minutes to understand your sentence and to illustrate it on your board if you have question particular activity like is the the activity where we write on the boat no no my sister has two children it's funny to write on the wall it's the first time they we can write on the wall and try to discuss with other student what they write maybe she has maybe she has not we don't know yeah we don't know having the wall boards allowed the students to do their own drawings but then they had chance to see how well they understood from other people's drawings and they could critique their peers drawings as well and say well your drawing doesn't really illustrate the difference which is important as well we got time to actually think about we got time to actually write on the board and we got time to to listen to what other people are thinking about and that's what really makes this course really interesting to me it's my sister who lives in Toronto who has two children that would be sentence number one there's only upside to this you do something in the the Active Learning Classroom it can go back into conventional classroom after in different way this has been one of my most enriching teaching experiences we had breakthrough