Pair work? Yes!

Tough topic: the crisis in the Catholic Church in the 14th-16th centuries. On the one hand, it is a topic negleted by the government and reduced to the Protestant Reformation. On the other hand, the school I work for is Catholic so the Head is interested in teaching this topic.

What I planned was to allow students to actually acknowledge the situation of the Catholic Church and then examine the solutions. This led me to put together a text sparkled with questions to check comprehension.

Not an easy topic.

I do no know how, but it suddenly hit me: just before students began to read and answer I told them to get together in pairs and each pair to line up with their desks in two lines: Line 1 and Line 2.

Then, every now and then I said "swap". Each boy from the "inner" line would move. In this way everyone worked with almost everyone.

Questions that may arise:

1) What happens if different students work at different pace? This is not a minor question. Differentiation in the classroom is important. However, this activity is not meant to do it at different pace but to include those that are a little slower into the general class work. Most of the boys that were slower could catch up because they had the opportunity to work with people that could help them and were eager to do so. In general, less able students could work and achieve their aims because they consulted with more able students or had their guidance.

2) A typical problem of pair work is that one may do all the job while the other student plays. In this case, half of the class was moving around so at some point everyone had to be working. Moreover, on that day one boy was absent so there was one moment when one of the swapping boys was left alone. In this case, he had the chance to round up what ever he was writing before having to move.

3) Moving around the classroom is disruptive. It is not. I made this activity in a classroom of 13 years old boys. Boys (and teens in general) need to move around the classroom. This activity was great because they could stay focused on the task while actually moving. (On further reading on this type of activities click here).

In the end, it was quite an enjoyable task, students had a sense of accomplishment and we could do the plenary with everyone raising their hand.