A teaching idea: 'Market Place'

My mentor shared with me what I thought was a brilliant teaching method called 'Market Place'.

My lesson: 

I had to teach the advantages and disadvantages of trial by jury. I had gathered a range of resources that I wanted to share with the students (e.g. cases, statistics, research, newspaper articles etc) that they would have to understand and incorporate into their answers when evaluating the jury.

My mentor suggested that I use 'market place' to deliver the lesson. Basically, I set the classroom up like a market, on each table (or 'stall') would be a different resource. My students (the customers at the market) would go and visit each table and write down the significance of it i.e. whether it was an advantage or disadvantage and why. They had 30 minutes to do this and then 30 minutes we would feedback and I would draw a table on the board putting each resource in a certain category with a title.

How it worked in the classroom:
Despite me telling the students that they could get up and walk around, no one did, they all sat in their seats and read the resource in front of them which was disappointing.
However, I had students, mostly boys, who usually answer very few of my questions but are very interested in their own conversations, discussing in depth the resources. I was so pleased that I had actually managed to engage these learners that I let the activity run on. We had to finish the topic the next day but I felt it was worth it just to have them discussing cases and the law.

This is also a very easy lesson to deliver because as the teacher I did absolutely nothing - they did all the work.

The Drawback:
When I asked my students whether they had enjoyed the lesson and would like to do more, similar activities in the future the answer was very underwhelming.

Although I thought the lesson was fantastic and my mentor agreed (she was also very happy to see engaged learners) the students reported that they prefer just me talking. I was gobsmacked. And there was me thinking that I was boring the life out of them.

However, this has not put me off from putting on more lessons like this. Although the students were not so keen, the fact that I had them all discussing what I wanted them to talk about means that I achieved what I wanted to achieve in that lesson - whether they realise it or not.