Recently Aybike Oğuz,and I worked together to teach a lesson.  She also blogs about our peer teaching experience here. The lesson consisted of analyzing a YouTube video, The (Secret) City of London, Part 1: History as a model text for using compare and contrast language, using OneNote for annotating a PDF and using Google Presentation for creating a shared phrasal list. Students watched the video and pulled relevant compare/contrast language from it.  Then we briefly discussed the language that was used.  The main point was that transition words like “however” and “also” are not the only way to transition from one idea to the next. Other structures such as comparatives are used; the City of London is smaller than London.

Using Google Presentation to Create a List

To follow-up on compare/contrast structures, we took a look at other phrases that could be used using OneNote (Aybike covers this better in her blog).  Each student was given a phrase to research, such as, “Let’s break this down into the components of…” and “This is much like when…”  Students typed the phrase into Google to see how it was used in an authentic context and see, if they didn’t already know, if it was used to compare or contrast.  All the phrases were put into a Google Presentation, one phrase per slide.  Each student was assigned a slide to find an example, cite the source, and tell whether the phrase was used to compare or contrast.

Here’s an example:

On the first slide are the directions and guidelines for using the document.

A Google Presentation is great for creating a shared vocabulary list.  Students can now refer to this list when they write their own compare and contrast essays. In fact, a great follow-up could be students commenting on whether they think the phrases could be used when they write their papers.

Lesson learned from Peer Teaching

• Watching someone else teach a lesson with the same learning objectives is amazing.  Try teaching a lesson and then watch someone else teach the lesson.  It’s great to see the similarities and differences and how this impacts student learning.  Aybike had her students watch the video twice, once as a whole class where they got to then talk about the content in pairs afterwards.  Then, the students listened individually and pulled out compare/contrast vocabulary.  I instructed the class to listen twice with the headphones.  Something was definitely lost here:  the sharing a video as a community.  When Aybike had the whole class watch it, you could hear laughter and see visible reactions to the video.  This wasn’t present when the students didn’t watch the video together.
• Take notes, share them with the person and debrief afterwards.  This helps internalize the process and allows both teachers to reflect more on how the lesson went.  It’s not an evaluation, but it is a learning experience.
• Try to do it more than once.  Research shows that peer coaching is some of the best PD.  Peer teaching is similar: it helps teachers reflect on their own teaching.