Groupwork and boys wearing skirts

At the very end of last week, I gave my Form Is a test, which most did fairly well on, but some of the stuff everyone really needed to know 100%. So, I decided to spend all of Monday having the students work in groups of three going over their tests. I divided all of the kids up based on their score, and I had the person who scored the best be the "teacher." The teachers' responsibility was to ensure their two students could get 100% on a certain part of the exam (an impossible task in some cases, but they had to try).

I don't know why exactly, but when I've done groupwork before I've usually gotten mixed results. Some groups are very active and discussing, and others just sit there silently, staring at their assignment. But this time, (maybe because I chose the leaders) all groups but one had a very clear teacher and all were making progress. Only two of the leaders had gotten 100% on this particular part of the exam (and one got 100% on the whole thing. I love him.), but when I gave the class a quiz on the same material, all the leaders but one (so six) did. And most of the rest of the students improved significantly. A good teacher day.

With the Form IIIs, Emily and I are teaching persuasive essay writing. We started with introductions on Friday, and had to come up with some examples. While essay structure is a pretty boring subject (required by the syllabus), we were pretty desperate to get these lumps-on-the-long to pay attention. So, we decided to make our example essay about why boys should wear skirts for the school uniform. That woke them up, for sure.

Our points were pretty straight forward. 1.) The point of uniforms is for everyone to look the same, so the bottoms should also look the same. 2.) Skirts are cheaper to make. And 3.) Skirts stay cleaner longer because they don't touch the ground.

Needless to say, the students were pretty amused, but had to admit we'd made a good argument. The dynamic we have with them is so odd. They seemingly hate answering our questions, so I end up doing ridiculous things like this in class just to get a reaction out of them. And I know one of my professors would hope that us arguing for boys wearing skirts might encourage them to think about why boys don't wear skirts. I highly doubt this will happen, but you never know I guess.