My grade 8 student and I are exploring a unit on Basketball and NBA legend, Kobe Bryant. It is a sport he is eager to learn and takes interest in understanding the life of a professional basketball player. I took this as an opportunity to engage him and learn skills in reading, writing and metacognition.
Here is a snippet of our recent activity involving the viewing of Bryant's short film, Dear Basketball.
Let me unpack this simple activity based on pedagogy and teaching strategies.
Pedagogy: Inquiry-Based Learning
Curiosity and critical thinking are fostered by encouraging students to ask their own questions. Instead of feeding them information, guiding them to discover meaning themselves, empowers deeper learning and personal connection to the material. Teaching Strategies:
1. Active Viewing
• Students are not passive watchers of the film. They are given a purpose for watching—to find answers to their own questions which makes the viewing more intentional and analytical.
2. Question Generation (Metacognition)
• Asking students to come up with their own questions encourages them to think about their thinking. It helps them process what intrigues or confuses them, and it activates prior knowledge and emotional engagement.
3. Scaffolded Reflection
• The follow-up task of finding answers, writing them down, and paraphrasing supports comprehension and builds confidence in expressing ideas independently.
4. Personalized Encouragement (Positive Reinforcement)
• Your feedback to Lonzo (“These questions show your engagement…”) reinforces participation and effort, building a positive learning environment and student-teacher rapport.
This activity blends emotional engagement (through the inspiring story of Kobe), cognitive processing (via questioning and paraphrasing), and autonomy (student-directed inquiry).
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