CLAWS Teaching and Learning Model

During my work as a Head of ICT and Business Studies at Esher High School over the past year or so, the importance of two things has become increasingly clear to me:

1. Students enjoy homework!
Maybe I should rephrase this and state that students enjoy the right kind of homework. They enjoy homework that they see as having value, and for which they are accountable. Homework is an essential element of the teaching and learning process.

2. Students can be sociable!
Yes, we know that given the opportunity, students will socialise rather than work in lessons—it’s not cool to do otherwise. That stated, given the right environment, they really enjoy working in a collaborative and practical way in lessons, much more than they enjoy being lectured to by their teacher.

I am acutely aware of these two points today, just as I was a decade or more go. So what has changed? Well, quite simply, I began reading about the Flipped Classroom model of teaching. You know, the one where the students watch videos at home and then the teachers sit back and watch the students in class? This is the negative view of the model, of course. However, I am not writing this post in support of the Flipped Classroom model, but as a description of how it led progressively to the development of what I am now calling the CLAWS Teaching and Learning model.

CLAWS is an acronym, short for:
Consider
Listen
Answer
Watch
Share

The CLAWS process  is a linear one and is described in the table below:

C	L	A	W	S
Consider >	Listen >	Answer >	Watch >	Share >
Students are set a homework which they consider, as directed by the teacher	Students return to class and listen to a short podcast on the subject	Working individually, students answer worksheet questions	Students watch a video version of the podcast they listened to earlier	Students share their answers and discuss the issue raised in the worksheet
Example: At home, students research the topic of binary using books, websites, VLE quizzes, YouTube links etc	Example: In class, students listen to the 60 second AudioBoo Podcast on binary (link below)	Example: Class answers the questions on the binary worksheet (link below)	Example: Class watches the 1 minute video on binary (see link below)	Example: Discussion followed by Q+A session (see worksheet)

With the CLAWS process in mind I have developed a set of resources on the topic of Binary. The location of these resources is detailed at the foot of this post. I have tried to ensure that:

1. Students enjoy homework!
The homework that is set is seen as having value, and students are accountable for it. They quickly learn that will not do very well in the Answer component if they fail to do their homework.

2. Students can are sociable!
As most of the more theoretical aspects of the syllabus are covered with the CLAWS Teaching and Learning method, this leaves more time for practical activities in class. In my subject, Computer Science, we can do more programming. And that’s the bit we enjoy most!

~meld#1 - - Binary
Files:

~Listen#

~Answer#

download worksheet

~Watch# 

~Share# - see the above worksheet