In the week following residential school I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Emerald and work with a group of people from Semita house who are living with life challenges. We are collaborating on a music project together to write and record songs. We hope to perform at the Central Highlands Multicultural festival. I also visited the Capricornia Distance School of Education to run 2 workshops with Prep-7 students.
I was very excited to find myself tapping in to the information I learnt in res school :-)
For a start I included a much clearer introduction to my workshops than usual. I outlined what we would be doing, the expected outcomes and discussed with the group what they hoped to achieve. This was a great way to put some structure in the workshop and make sure we were all on the same page.
I then used the "I do, We do, You do" technique which I had heard about during the week and at one point even attempted "Think, Pair, Share" - although I couldn't quite remember how this was supposed to go at the time :-/ I also tried hard to remember everyones names and used them regularly - thanks Greg!
I noticed the different ways participants took in information and adapted my approaches to try to include everyone' s learning needs - audio, visual or doing. I had in the past focused primarily on the doing as this is the way that I learn.
I did my best to ensure all participants played a role in the writing process - even if it was just one word or even a sound. This helped give them ownership of the final songs.
We also used plenty of ICTs including youtube videos, online lyrics and chords - mobile phones, ipads and laptops were rampant. We also organised some skype workshops for us to revisit the songs in coming weeks. This helped with engagement and variety in the workshop and brought the outside world into the room.
Finally I discussed at the end what we had achieved after the workshops - which was three great songs which participants created themselves. I hadn't really done this before and found it a great exercise.
Mike Thomas and Abe Stewart from JAM with the Semita House Crew!
Thanks to the beautiful people at Semita House and to CQU residential school..... something did sink in!
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