“That’ll learn ya!” is an enduring and endearing memory of what my mum used to say, as she cheerfully juxtaposed “teach” and “learn”. During our intensive induction programme we grasped the concept of teachers as learners, and conversely the notion of learners as teachers could be explored by skilful use of the correct protocol(s).
The late Middle English word “protocol” is derived from the French “prothocole”, itself via Latin and Greek prótokollo and in the EL context it can be defined as: “a related, well-defined set of actions in a classroom used for a specific academic purpose“. Which protocol(s) might we employ to encourage our learners to be teachers? Which protocols have I attempted to represent below?
As staff new to XP we have been encouraged to offer Praise, Question, Suggestion; to Build Background Knowledge; to offer a fist-to-five, complete an exit ticket and have the final word….but we have barely begun to scratch the surface of some perfectly practical pedagogical protocols. I pledge to widen my repertoire, work my way down the EL protocol list and eventually incorporate them all, over time, into my lesson preparation in order to emulate building a collaborative culture that is promoted on the EL website:
https://eleducation.org/resources/collaborative-culture-protocols
Join me!