Catechist’s Journey

Putting the Spotlight on Your Students

February 16th, 2007 by Joe

Years ago as a student teacher, I completed my first class and was quite proud. My cooperating teacher agreed that it went well but he said that I “talk too much.” His advice was, “You had the spotlight on yourself when it should be on the students. They are the ones who are here to perform, not you.”

I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as catechists by putting ourselves in the spotlight all of the time. We make ourselves the “sage on the stage.” We need to continually shift the spotlight on to our students, requiring that they take responsibility for their learning. Here’s one idea that helps. It’s called the Paired Interview.

If you have a rather large chunk of text to cover in your textbook, divide the class into 2 groups and have group 1 read (independently) a part of the text and group 2 read (independently) the other part of the text. Put a time limit on the reading of the text (always give less time then is really needed to create a sense of urgency).

Then, pair up students, one from each group, and have them take turns interviewing one another about what they read. Have the interviews ask questions such as:

• Explain what the main idea of your text was in a few sentences
• What is one quote (sentence) from your text that you would put on a poster to inspire a group?
• What are some specific things your text helped you to learn or realize about the Catholic faith?
• Based on your text, name some specific things we, as Catholics, need to know, do, or believe in order to live as followers of Jesus

These questions can be written on the board or you can create an interview sheet. You can also adjust the questions to fit your grade level. Again, set a time limit for each interview: 3-5 minutes for each interview (6 to 10 minutes total). Each student should record the answers to the interview questions that their partner provides. As all this is going on, walk about, keeping students on task and announcing how much time they have.

When they are finished interviewing, call on some students to report on what their partner learned from the text they read. Take notes on the board about important concepts they touch on. Then, fill in the cracks, so to speak, about anything they missed and elaborate on key concepts.

The result is that the material is covered but the spotlight is on the students who do most of the work allowing you to facilitate. In the academic world, this is referred to as cooperative learning and by the intermediate grades, kids are accustomed to such activities in their school classes. Of all classes to have students cooperating in their learning, it would seem most appropriate for RE!

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