Student Led Learning - The Power of YouTube

Whilst they worked on competing the sheet they had the advantage of working completely at their own pace (with their headphones in) and I was free to move around the room and offer individual support and advice where it was needed.

This is a similar activity to one where you would get the students to create presentations and then present them to the whole class. The difference here is that the use of YouTube allows the students watching the presentations to work at their own pace and rewind where necessary without holding the whole class up. Learning becomes more personalised.

The students had a lesson to research and prepare their videos and then about 40 minutes of the next lesson to complete the video and upload it to Edmodo so all the students in the class could watch it. They then spent the last 20 minutes of the second lesson and their homework completing the table by watching each others videos.

Each group had to showcase what they had learned in a video which answered the four questions I had set for their topic.

The A3 sheet that I created that all students had to complete.

The students were told that they had to make their work both memorable and filled with information. As this was the first time the students had completed this type of activity I created the questions that needed answering. When I do this later in the year I will get the students to create their own questions and thus put more of the emphasis on them.

The students led the learning and I was able to support those students that needed it. These topics vary in difficulty which allowed me to differentiate and pick groups relative to the difficulty of the topic. By having to explain to others and teach their peers in this way all of the students deepened their own understanding.

After they had completed the sheet the students had to think of two or three questions they still wanted answering and we discussed those in the next lesson. The aim was for them to pick 'bigger' questions than just those on the sheet.

• By making the work student led it meant that they had to take responsibility for it and this encouraged them to be independent. 

• It encouraged the students to be creative. I explained that they needed to make it memorable but also genuinely informative and the results were interesting. This hopefully made the work more memorable for both the students making the videos and those watching it.

• It allowed me to give help where it was needed and not be 'tied down' by having to 'give' the lesson.

• It was a great method to showcase teamwork and leadership.

Reflections
• The students were engaged throughout the series of lessons.
• The resulting videos were really creative and informative. My concern is always that the students will make something fun and amusing but not produce a video that actually aids learning. This was proven wrong as all the videos were tightly focused around the information and all were memorable as well as explaining key content.
• This type of activity always allows students to shine. This occasion was no exception. The video on the right is one of my students singing about the 'Red Scare' of the 1920s.

A student watches a court scene from the 'Monkey Trial'

• It was obvious from the subsequent lesson that the students had understood a great deal about the topic of Intolerance. They asked really thought provoking questions that showed both a deep level of understanding and a genuine engagement in the topic.