Something Different

This year I have a Level 3 tutorial group.  Much of what we need to do in tutorials is admin based or building up personal skills - not something many IT students are particularly enthusiastic about.

As something completely different today, I decided to do a general knowledge quiz.  I thought it might be good on a number of levels:

• getting the learners thinking early (ish) on a Monday morning
• giving me a better understanding of their existing general knowledge
• encouraging them to start thinking beyond assignments and criteria based learning and into news (both technology and general news), common sense and life skills

Questions included one capital city, one cooking, one health, several news (politics and sport) and a few other IT based questions.  Learners were asked to work independently, and I tried to generate a bit of a sense of competition to encourage them to do better than their friends.  At the end of the quiz, learners swapped papers for marking, and scores were given by way of hands raised in score boundaries.

The learners all took part, and all engaged really well.  It was fun, but with some serious elements in - after all we should really all know at what temperature water boils, and how long to cook dried pasta. 

Personally, I also really enjoyed it as it seemed to bring about a good, friendly banter in the classroom, and I awarded a Merit badge to the learner with the best score at the end.  It felt like a good activity to bring the group together and to get everyone focussed, and it is something I will definitely do again.