Media and Understanding: Using Think-Pair-Share
I was covering for a teacher the other day showing videos from the Safari Montage system. A couple things jumped out at me. Whether one is using Safari or Unitedstreaming, the providers understand that we should be using very focused clips as opposed to showing entire videos. By providing videos broken down into segments, they remind us that our students need time to digest the material to gain understanding.
The think-pair-share instructional strategy can be very helpful in this situation. After showing a short clip, give the students a few moments to record their thought on paper or in digital form if they have laptops. This is a terrific opportunity to use a concept mapping tool like Inspiration, Cmap, Mindmeister or Bubbl. The teacher could start the lesson by prompting the students with the central concept/idea being covered by the video that the students then place in the center of their maps. Each clip then becomes a new symbol from which the students branch out their ideas.
The class then moves on to watch all the clips stopping at the end of each to record their individual reactions. Once all the media is shared, the students then work with a partner to share what they recorded in their maps. They would also record any thoughts that come from their conversations. The maps could then be used by the teacher in several ways to deepen or connect the learning some place else. The teacher definitely has an assessment to check for understanding to see if he/she met the learning goal for the lesson.
The videos we watched were chosen by students who went into the Safari system with their assigned topics to then create playlists with title slides introducing each segment creating a sort of mashup. I liked that this was a student-centered activity and that it gave students the opportunity to work on the information literacy and communication (ICL) skills of reviewing content and then generating a cohesive presentation from it. When we think of specific ICL skills we focus on the accessing and analysis of the information but we also need to teach how to compile the information from the various media sources into a well-designed and communicated format.
