Idea: Free ready-made lessons
The website Onderwijs-enzo.nl offers free good lessons for every subject. Pabo students Frank Dubbeldam (21) and Kim van Oort (19) hope that teachers will let go of the method more often.
Image: Rob Niemantsverdriet
Frank Dubbeldam is a third-year teacher training student at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. In the six schools where he has interned so far, he noticed that teachers give very few lessons outside of the method. 'No time', he always gets in response to his question about the reason. “And that's a shame, for both the children and the teachers,” says Dubbeldam. "Standard lessons, in which students answer questions after reading a text, often take less time and are also much less fun to teach."
Play
For example, Dubbeldam likes to offer history in the form of a play. In a lesson about Napoleon, a student wearing a paper hat and saber gets to play this little general. Dubbeldam tells the story and the student portrays this on the spot. “When Napoleon goes to icy Russia, the student is shivering in front of the class. They no longer forget such an image. Pupils remember exactly what was said in a lesson, that's what I like the most about teaching. ”
He found a kindred spirit in classmate Kim van Oort. “She teaches preschoolers and developing lessons themselves is a matter of course, in contrast to the middle and upper years. We decided to do something about it together. ”
Simple
The two students started an account on Facebook, but that medium turned out to be unsuitable for file sharing. “We did get a lot of enthusiastic responses”, Dubbeldam recalls. “Someone wondered why we didn't start our own website, like many other teachers and masters. But we don't just want to share our own lessons. So the idea soon arose to set up a national database. ”
Pabo student Frank Dubbeldam: "Standard lessons, in which students answer questions after reading a text, often last less and are also much less fun to teach."
When it turned out that such an up-to-date database did not yet exist, they went all out. Dubbelman applied for the domain name Onderwijs-enzo.nl for eight euros a year and immersed himself in the design of websites. “I'm not really into ICT, but a website turns out to be quite easy to build. There are now more than two hundred lesson plans and that number is growing rapidly. ”
The strength of the database, according to Dubbeldam, is that all lessons, complete with extensive instructions and worksheets, are completely free and that they have been devised and tested by PABO students and teachers themselves. The lesson preparations are ordered by subject and by group. For example, there are nine lessons in geography.
The 'Province lesson' for group 6/7 for example. The accompanying document explains exactly what the goals for this lesson are and what is needed for students to design their own flag. Dubbeldam: “The website is very accessible, so teachers can easily find the lessons and download them immediately. This makes it easy for teachers to use these lessons. It doesn't take them time to come up with something themselves and children still get the lessons they deserve. ”
I'm not really into ICT, but a website turns out to be quite easy to build. There are now more than two hundred lesson plans on it and that number is growing rapidly.
Dubbeldam works every day to make the site more convenient and fun: “I don't mind. Something only takes time if you don't like to do it. This actually gives me energy. This also applies to Kim, she manages the Facebook page. We are constantly working on coming up with new teaching ideas to share. ”
Fidget Spinner
An example is using the Fidget Spinner, the craze of last summer. Dubbeldam came up with a way in which the colorful turntable can be used in several subjects, for example for practicing topo or arithmetic. The worksheet can be downloaded and he put an instructional video online. “You can ban such a spinner from your class, but why not do fun things with it? That idea appeals to teachers. In a week's time, the number of visitors per day has skyrocketed from fifty to five hundred.”
“I think it is great that we have already come this far and that the reactions are positive,” the future teacher continues. “The site is free because our goal is for everyone to give these good lessons. We therefore want to create the largest possible database, so that ready-made lessons exist for every subject. It's a long way to go, so I hope that teachers from all over the country will decide to share their lessons. ”
Would you like to share a lesson idea? That can be done via www.onderwijs-enzo.nl
