“There’s a mindset of flexibility and adaptability that comes with us. We don’t mind hardship. We don’t mind somebody saying, ‘Go in and do this nasty job.’ Whatever the job is, we can do it. That’s why the nation has a Marine Corps.” -Attributed to James F. Amos The above quote may have come from someone talking to the context of the United States Marine Corp, but it applies equally to the teaching profession and the jobs that teachers do. This week, all year three and five students, and their teachers are undertaking the annual NAPLAN assessment. Wherever you sit in regards to the NAPLAN Debate, it has to be acknowledged that NAPLAN causes a large level of disruption to the whole school community, and for some students, is a highly stressful experience. Yesterday saw two sessions of NAPLAN testing, and for me, personally, it was the cause of no small amount of frustration. My first class was unaffected, as it was a kindergarten class, however that was only the start of things. After the first half hour with the kindergarten class, I proceeded to a Year three and four composite class. I had been advised that morning that that particular class would consist of only the year fours from it and another class with the years threes from the two classes sitting NAPLAN in the same room. That is okay, I thought to myself, I can work with the year fours first, and then the year three students, as two separate blocks of students, cover the material needed and not double up. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. When the session was finished, and I was packing up, I was told that the NAPLAN session had not yet finished and they needed more time, which was not really an issue, as I simply took my RFF (release from face to face) session then, and came back after that, expecting to have the combined cohort of year three students. Wrong. I had the entirety of the class, both the year three, and the year four students I had previously had that morning. My initial thought was that this was a good opportunity to have the year four students cement their own knowledge, by peer tutoring the year three students on the skills I had just taught them. I did not have enough year four students for this to work properly, and then lost further year four students to errands that needed to be done. At this point I decided that it was not working, and changed what I was doing with the students, and worked through some different topics using my store of videos, which allowed me to work through some different areas of learning with the class. Today has been an even bigger mish-mash. My first session was as normal, with a year four class, I lost my entire second session due to NAPLAN, and then had technical issues with my third session. I was usingmyedapp.com with a year five and six composite class, which was also a BYODD class using iPads. I had created two quests that I wanted the students to undertake, the first being a fundamental computer skills quest, and the second a book study. The computer skills course consisted of a series of short videos, each covering one skill, with formative assessment throughout. Unfortunately, the videos were not working, the upload file (for students) was only allowing photos or videos for the students, and when I tried to upload a video in place of the link, that also would not work. A quick message to the myEdapp team via their in-app contact button resulted in a phone call from Yohan, the CEO a few minutes later, for a quick conversation to let me know what the issues were, while I was live in the room, which was hugely helpful. I have another year five and six composite class this afternoon, and I will be doing similar skills, however will be utilising the school bank of laptops, which unfortunately only have Internet Explorer loaded, a browser that myEdapp does not support. This means that as a workaround, I will be showing the videos on the class projector/interactive whiteboard, and we will be discussing the skills. This will not be as engaging for the students, however, I will be able to intersperse this with some practical hands on activities as well. As always, thank you for reading, and I would like to hear from you as to how you have been impacted by NAPLAN this year, and how you are working around it.
0 Comments
“I will not let an exam result decide my fate.” – Suli Breaks, Vanity Fair, 2009 I recently wrote an article discussing the need to redefine our roles as educators titled Redefining Content. As I was scrolling through my Twitter Feed recently I stumbled upon a link to a YouTube video titled Why I Hate School But Love Education. It is a spoken word video, delivered by a young gent, and is an exposition on his views on schooling and education and it is rather thought provoking. On my first view, I am rather unsure how I feel about it, and am left with a certain feeling of cognitive dissonance, and feel affronted and as if my own philosophy towards teaching has been challenged, a feeling which I quickly quashed as being silly. The underlying principle of this man’s words is one that, on the whole, I think I agree with, that being the principle that we need to redefine what schooling and education are as they are not what they were even a generation ago, let along being the same as the early years of the nineteenth century. I’ll post the video below, and I would very much like to hear what people’s thoughts are. “As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” -Attributed to Amy Poehler No single teacher, on their own, causes great things in the classroom or motivates students. That may sound odd, given that most classrooms are operated by a single teacher, but we do not cause great things to happen in isolation. The great moment in a lesson occurs because we have brainstormed how to deliver a particular lesson/skill/concept with a colleague, we have asked our partner or children for their feedback, we have sought feedback from our own students on how we can be better teachers for them and put that into practice, we have been to a professional development session of some description that has lit a fire under our tail and ignited a passion we were heretofore unaware of, the office staff have printed and distributed notes for any number of reasons.
In other words, we have collaborated in a variety of ways and with a variety of people. We do nothing in isolation. Ultimately, if we do not collaborate with our students, it will be irrelevant how amazing and inspiring our lesson plan is. Without their collaboration and buy-in, nothing is achieved. I had a conversation this morning with a colleague who delivered my program to some classes on Friday, and her feedback was very useful. She pointed out that attempting to have students save a filed onto a communal USB was very time-intensive, and recommended simply using a class list as a tick and flick sheet, with a particular competency noted at the top of each column, and a tick if the competency was achieved. That was the initial idea, and somehow in the transition to using the class laptops as opposed to small groups, the method was cast aside. I used that method this morning, and it was much easier, and much simpler to put into practice in the classroom, and also when entering the data on the spreadsheet that my records are being kept on. Collaboration with colleagues, especially around sharing what works is vital to a teachers success. How do you collaborate? As always, thank you for reading, and I look forward to hearing from people about the collaboration that is going on. “A good school teaches you resilience – that ability to bounce back.” -Attributed to Kate Reardon The majority of people know what #ThrowbackThursday is and the majority of people also dislike Mondays. I propose a new hashtag – #ResilienceMonday.
Personally, Whilst I enjoy coming to work, I find Monday to be mentally exhausting as it is the day that I spend working with infants. Unfortunately, I only have thirty minutes with each class, which means that although the level of support required is high, the achievement level, or rather the perceived achievement level, is low. The school is a You Can Do It school, and one of the attributes promoted as part of that program is resilience. I find myself dipping into my strategies for keeping cool in the face of frustration on a regular basis on Mondays. Chatting to one of my colleagues, she finds that for her, the day she struggles with is Fridays, and for the same reason – her timetable is predominantly comprised of infants classes. In the face of those days where it feels like nothing is being achieved, where it feels like you are being put through the wringer, what are your strategies for surviving the day and maintaining you mental and emotional well-being? As always, thank you, and I look forward to reading your ideas for getting through the tough days. I am currently sitting in the lunchroom of the business my wife works in, waiting for to finish for the day. I am going out for dinner with work colleagues this evening and have arrived early to spend some time with her as I suspect it will be a rather late night.
I have just had a conversation with her boss, who was telling me about how his daughter learned to play the guitar. The father had purchased said guitar towards the end of the previous school term, but there had not been an opportunity to arrange for tuition until the commencement of the new school term. One afternoon, after arriving home from work, the father hears a guitar being played, the riff from Riptide to be precise, and assumes it must be a friend of his son’s. Upon discovering it was daughter, he asks where she learned to play as she had not yet had any lessons. Her simple reply: “I looked it up on YouTube.” Any skill or concept that educators today, whether primary or secondary, and including more and more of what is covered in tertiary education, can be learned via content on YouTube. Algebra, grammar, string theory, art history, the US civil war, the white Australia policy and how to run more efficiently are merely a small sample of what can be learned via YouTube. Where does this leave those of us who’s role it is to educate the students who can learn anything we could teach on YouTube? It is my contention that we are facilitators of learning, providing contextual knowledge and filling in the blanks, the minute detail that may not be covered. It also makes us troubleshooters, dealing with the misconceptions held by our students. We need to redefine what we are and what we do, because if everything we are supposed to teach can be learned via YouTube, what is our purpose? Thank you for reading and I would one to hear what people think and feel on this issue. “To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” -Roger Zelazny, Sign of the Unicorn Today is my Friday, and those classes who have their library on Friday are split amongst the various RFF teachers. Today, I sat down today with one of my colleagues, who is in fact filling in as relief for a teacher on long service leave to go through what she would be doing with my program in her class tomorrow. I broke it down by grade, and went through things with her, and when I explained what I had been doing as a formative assessment task in regards to the computer skills, she said “why don’t you try this….?” and it was one of those moments where you do a Picard (see image below) where I realised how obvious her suggestion was in hindsight. What I had been doing was asking students to write a brief recount, and somewhere within that recount, demonstrate particular skills such as bold, text justification, borders etc. What my colleague suggested was simply having students write their names, and then format their names to demonstrate the particular skills that I wanted students to demonstrate.
I’m feeling nervous about tomorrow. I’m comfortable with the program, and have been making changes on the fly, and going with what works, however tomorrow, three different teachers will be responsible for delivering the program to a handful of classes, not having had exposure to the program other than what information I have given them. The control freak part of me is not happy about handing the reins over, but the rationalist in me knows that this will be a real test of how realistic the program is in terms of actual execution, when others are tasked with its delivery. As always, thank you for reading, and enjoy your weekends. “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” – Attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt The last two days have been, I feel, rather successful overall. I have had mainly primary classes and have been able to get stuck into a few parts of the program that I wanted to test, and have learned a lot about how to administer those aspects of the program.
First of all, my initial thoughts conducting formative assessment was to have the class watching one of my book studies videos whilst I spent time with one, two or three students, depending on computer availability within each classroom. I realised that with the state/quality of most computers in classrooms that that would not be particularly feasible. What I spent yesterday and today doing, with four classes, was quite different to what I originally envisioned when I developed the program. I have fairly free access to the school bank of laptops at the moment, which helps with this. What I have been doing is assigning students in pairs to the laptops, having them log in and open up MS Word. They have been asked to create a recount or narrative, within which they must demonstrate their ability to utilise particular editing and formatting functions, such as changing the font, font size and colour, text justification, lists, bold, italics and underline and a series of other skills. Students then save this document to my flash drive, and I then open each one, assess which skills they have successfully demonstrated and record the date for each skill within a master spreadsheet against their name. It has worked quite well thus far, and I think that I will continue with this process. The other option that I have considered is providing students with a sample of dummy text, and asking them to edit it to demonstrate particular skills. This is how I think I will assess their ability to utilise some skills such as the grammar and spell check functions. It has been interesting noting down which skills students possess, and thus far the skill sets have been fairly consistent, across all students in the primary classes (with the exception of year five students who are away this week on a camp). The majority of students can utilise bold, italics, and underline, as well as change the font, font size and font colour. There have been a handful who have inserted an image, a text box (which was not a skill I asked them to demonstrate) and insert borders, and one student inserted a watermark. I have also now utilised the myEdapp website with a handful of classes, and the more I use it, the more I like it. Creating the units of work (called quests) is incredibly easy, and provides an inbuilt range of activity options, including videos, multiple choice, open text response, class discussion and others, and once the quest has been built in your library, it is there ready to go for next year, and is only two clicks away from being added to a new class. Marking is straightforward, and provides the opportunity to give as much or as little feedback as you want, as each activity/question in the quest can be given feedback. You can also set the quest up so that students are required to self-assess against a sample answer, allowing you to give an indication of what you are looking for (particularly useful for reminding students they need to use full sentences), and they can self mark against whichever marking scale you select (numbers, words descriptors etc). I can also add other teachers to a class. This could be particularly useful for those in a job-share arrangement, or for those teachers in the position I am in, where they are providing relief time for the regular classroom teacher as it allows the regular classroom teacher an opportunity to see what the students are achieving and keep up to date with what you are teaching. The support has been first class thus far. I spoke with Yohan and Daniel at their stand during my time at the FutureSchools Expo in March this year. I caught the tail-end of a walk through of the system that Yohan was giving to another teacher. I spent time after that presentation talking to Yohan about the aspects that I missed in the presentation, and then had another chat with Daniel later that afternoon for another bite at the cherry and the chance to reabsorb the information. The webapp bypasses the YouTube block that the NSW DEC has in place, allowing you to use your teacher judgement and insert appropriate and meaningful videos for your students to watch about any skill or concept (N.b. – this is the prime opportunity to insert the videos that YOU have created for your flipped class). I was excited by this, as there is a large range of quality content on YouTube that is genuinely useful in the classroom for students. Contacting the team for support is a one click option (once you are logged in). There is a message icon at the bottom of the screen, which then opens up a sidebar chat screen where you type in your message, hit enter and the message is sent. Every question that I have sent through has been answered within a few hours (barring a few messages sent through on a weekend), and the team has been incredibly helpful, offering to input my class lists for me when I was having issues having those input correctly. Issues that I have raised have been taken on board, and work-arounds provided, with permanent solutions being in the works. Students have found it to be highly engaging as well. I spent time at the end of the two lessons in which I used the site asking the students for feedback on the site, and they all felt that it was easy to navigate, that it was easy to use and that the structure made it easy to follow through what they needed to do. The only thing that I got caught out on, partly because I missed that it was there, was the chat feature. I ended up having students turn it off as it was becoming a distraction and there was some silliness going on. If it is going to be on, as I can see some value in its use as a back channel discussion tool. Overall however, myEd has been, for me, as someone who is attempting to flip all of my classes, an invaluable tool. I have also just created the first video in what will become a series on fundamental computer skills. My initial thoughts was that I would have two or three skills in each video, but keeping in mind the guidelines for creating flipped videos that Jon Bergmann gave us during the masterclass at the FutureSchools Expo, I am trying to keep them nice and short. This first video focuses solely on the difference between shutting down, logging out and restarting the computer, and and is just under five minutes long, which I am quite happy with. As always, thank you for reading, and if anyone would be interested in attending a TeachMeet on the Central Coast of NSW about the flipped class and BYOD, I would love to hear from you. “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” -Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard Graf von Moltke, paraphrased n The Swordbearers : Studies in Supreme Command in the First World War (1963) by Correlli Barnett, p. 35 After all of the disruptions from the storms over the last two weeks, today was the first day that I have had an opportunity to deliver, or to begin to deliver, my program that focuses on the teaching of technology. I will use the word interesting to describe the day.
Initially, there were issues that meant we were unable to log in to the computers, however that was quickly resolved. Based on experience showing some classes a video, I also made the decision that this week would be about introducing the class to the videos, and getting them used to engaging with them, a decision which I was glad for about five minutes into the session. My first three class of the day were all stage one classes, and I took all classes through the same process, slightly modified based on what had occurred in the previous lesson. The first issue I noticed was that I had failed to re-edit the stage one video to provide more time for students to answer questions. My next realisation was that the phrasing of some of my questioning made the question more complex than what was intended, an issue which needs to be fixed in the next round of videos. There were a few occasions within the video where I would ask a question, pause, which indicated to students that they were to start answering the question, and then re-phrase the question, which some students thought was a new question. I also discovered that I had overestimated what year one students were capable of. I had not allowed remotely enough time for some questions, and as a result, I had to pause the video to allow more time for students to complete the question. Some students struggled with understanding some basic questions as well, which I will need to get feedback about from my colleagues. I will continue with watching the video with the class next week I think, at a minimum, for the year one classes as they need, from what I have observed so far, more support in getting used to this style of education. After the morning break, I had a kindergarten class for half an hour, and given that the class has three desktop computers, and the school has a bank of seventeen laptops, I attempted to do computer skills with them, with moderate success. At the end of the thirty minutes, I had four students logged in, all of whom had some support doing so. Other students were stuck trying to log in, misspelling their names. As a result, the kindergarten class whom I begin tomorrow with, will be structured differently. I will spend time with them on the floor having chosen students practice logging in on the interactive whiteboard to get all students familiar with the process of using control+alt+delete, and then entering their username and password. The additional support that they need is significant. Merely pointing to where the on button on the laptops was not enough. Showing the class where on the keyboard the control+alt+delete keys were also was not enough. I will need to reconsider how I structure the kindergarten classes, as I think that it will be difficult to get them to a point, at this stage in the year, where they will be ok to simply engage with a video with minimal supervision whilst I provide focused instruction to two or three students. The middle session as a kerfuffle. I lost about two-thirds of the time with my first class, a year two class, as the computer was working, but the projector wasn’t seeming to project anything, other than menu images. I ended up having the students gather around the desktop computer, and we managed to engage with about five minutes of the video. I think that I need to use my morning preparation time to ensure that all of the technology I wish to use is ready to go. The next class was similar. I arrived at the room only to be told that the time slot had been switched with another class, but I had not been notified. So I regathered my things and went to the ‘new’ class and discovered that the class teacher had forgotten about the switch and was not expecting me. There were significant technical issues in that room, and I ended up reading through the book, watching the video on my mobile phone, watching it from my YouTube channel. It worked, in a fashion, but it was not ideal. Tomorrow will be interesting, and we’ll see how it goes. Today’s take away points:
I hope everyone else’s Monday went well, and I look forward to hearing peoples feedback over this journey. “…the thing is ‘mobile sets Learning Free’ and we can now learn virtually anything, anywhere and anytime and that’s amazing.” -Attributed to R.J. Jacquez Learning is no longer confined to the classroom or lecture theatre, and this fact needs to be embraced more widely. Learning is also no longer the transference of knowledge from the master to the students. I was getting some preparation completed for my classes tomorrow when I received I received an instant message over Facebook messenger from a colleague, asking about the flipped classroom and asking what my plans would look like in a kindergarten classroom, with some specific, and very valuable questions. “I love the idea of the flipped classroom. I am very much intrigued, what are you doing whilst the kids are watching you on the SmartBoard delivering the lesson? I watched the 2 Kindergarten ones and thought I might offer a suggestion/ thought to process. It is only Term 2 and many Kindergarten sts are still only learning to write, it is asking a lot to keep stopping them through the text to write responses. Do you read the whole book first for the students to gain a full picture of the meaning/ key idea behind the story or do you go straight into the read and stop and question/ respond to text? Would love to watch a lesson like this delivered and seeing how Kindergarten in particular would respond/ stay engaged for the lesson.” My friend is a kindergarten teacher, and these are some excellent questions, raising some issues that, having very little experience with kindergarten, had not really occurred to me as being issues. This initial message, mid-afternoon on a Sunday, started a conversation that continued for some time, with my colleague providing me with some invaluable feedback and some ideas for improving the pedagogical practices that I employ for kindergarten.
This goes to demonstrate that learning, is now capable of occurring anywhere, at any time, in any fashion. My learning here occurred on a very wet Sunday afternoon, over Facebook messenger, on my mobile phone.No classroom in sight. As always, thank you for reading, and I would love to hear from those of you who are utilising flipped class pedagogies, particularly in infants class contexts. “I’ve said it before, and by gosh, I’ll say it again — don’t be afraid to toot your own horn.” ― Emlyn Chand As my regular readers would be aware, I am currently on a temporary teaching block having been working casually since I completed my undergraduate degree last year. I am currently in the process of writing an application for a permanent position, which I would very much like as I genuinely think I would be an excellent fit for.
The feedback I received from the last permanent position I applied for was that my application wasn’t strong enough. I showed a draft of my application to a colleague to get some feedback, and was given the same advice, with a lot more specificity as to what wasn’t strong enough. The modality of the language I was using in reference to myself was not strong enough. Having taken that feedback, and some examples, on board, I am working through a second draft of my application at the moment. It is an odd and slightly uncomfortable feeling, to write about oneself the way that is apparently required in order to project an image of confidence and to stand out from other applicants. The closing date for the position is next week, so I imagine it will be a month or so beyond that, before I find out whether I move through to the interview stage or not. Wish me luck. “If you want to see the sunshine, you have to weather the storm.” -Attributed to Frank Lane Life has finally returned to some semblance of normality after a week or turmoil as a result of some large scale storms that impacted the east coast of Australia from Wollongong in southern NSW and as far north as Lismore. Personally, the only issue I had was a loss of power for four and a half days, at home and my mobile phone coverage was nonexistent for a few days, other than SOS Only. I do have friends and colleagues who lost no services at all, and some who lost not just electricity and mobile phone coverage, but also water services, and varying levels and types of damage from lost roof panels and broken tiles, to trees through houses.
My local area council and AusGrid, the electricity provider in the area have been fantastic. They worked hard through horrendous, and quite unsafe conditions to get roads cleared, power lines restrained from unsafe locations, to restore power and water to homes and to ensure that homes that had suffered damage were safe to be in, or had been adequately secured. My school was today on minimal supervision as we still have significant damage that has been as yet not dealt with, beyond erecting fences around a large fallen that knocked a demountable toilet block off its foundations and which broke some water pipes. Two classrooms are inaccessible due to being fenced off as a result of safety concerns around the walkway the tree is resting on and two other classrooms have no water services due to the broken pipes. This will remain the case for all four rooms until a particular tree has been removed and the damage repaired and walkways checked for safety. Currently, it appears to be Thursday at the earliest before this will occur, however we have been advised that school will return to regular operations as of tomorrow. School operations will not likely be returned to normal until next week, as there will be a period of adjustment and discussion about what has happened over the past week. Good luck to those of you still dealing with damaged houses and schools, and a huge thank you to the SES, council and power supply crews who worked through dangerous conditions to provide assistance and relief to the rest of us. just a very brief note. Many of you may be aware of the storms currently lashing significant portions of the NSW coastline.
I am unfortunately in that zone and have had no power since just after midnight on Monday night/Tuesday morning. I am OK and I have no damage to my house or those around mine, however there is significant damage to large portions of the coast with hundreds of trees down, flooded roads, and according AusGrid, over 205,000 houses without power. There have also, tragically been some deaths with three killed when a house was washed away at Dungog. My school has been closed all this week, as a tree has come down and knocked a demountable toilet block off its foundation, however there are schools that have had more significant damage. I won’t get another blog up until power is back on and some semblance of normality has been restored. This is a sneaky post at my father-in-law’s house as we drop off some food that, remarkably, is still semi-frozen. Stay safe if you’re in the storm zone. Keep your thoughts with the emergency service personnel, SES and power company personnel who are out working in these dangerous conditions. “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” ― Attributed to Mark Twain Today’s professional development day opened with a session about Focus on Reading. Part of that discussion was around the drop-off in students’ engagement with reading, the so-called fourth grade slump and what we, as teachers, could do to re-excite and reengage students with reading.
There are, I believe, a number of things that we can do. Some of them are simple, and others will take a little more effort, while some will open up doors for lessons or discussions that you would be doing or having, at some point any way. The first idea is, I think, fairly obvious. Select texts that will engage readers. You may have a text that you have been using for the last ten years with every cohort you teach. Look at retiring that text and trying something new and more contemporary. Consider the cultural context withing which that book was situated when it was published and taken up as being a quality text and ask yourself if it is still relevant. I certainly am not advocating removing all old books, just suggesting that we be more selective about the texts which we ask our students to engage with. When doing class reading, or readers theater, encourage, strongly, the use of expression, or where appropriate, character voices. My supervising teacher whilst I was on my internship was reading The Hobbit as the class text. It was an over and above novel deliberately chosen for the complex language structure, the rich vocabulary and imagery and as something separate to all the learning that was going on, as an enjoyment read. When Gollum had dialogue, the students were required to read it in their impersonation of Gollum’s voice, as made famous by Andy Serkis in the Lord of the Rings movies. Expression and character voices can liven up the often monotone sounds of class readings. Another option is to ban a word for a week (or a different time frame appropriate within your context). For example, I might ban the word said for a week. The word is not part of the permissible vocabulary in writing or speech for that week. This then requires a conversation about what are our alternatives – synonyms and antonyms, and understanding what the various words mean and how they can be used, and why whispered and muttered are not the same, even though they are both synonyms of said. Create a word wall, or have students create their own word wall in the back of a writing book or somewhere similarly easily accessible. I wrote recently about using newspapers in the classroom. They are also tools that can be used to increase engagement with reading, and some of the strategies I discussed in that article will be relevant here. I would love to hear from people about what ideas they have about how we can excite our students about reading. Please leave your suggestions in the comments section. “Investing time to learn something in your professional life makes you RICH in your KNOWLEDGE, if you are not then it will make you POOR in your PERFORMANCE.” ― accredited to Sivaprakash Sidhu Term two is upon us! Tomorrow morning many of us will be returning to school for staff development days. For some, it will be a day of great learning and engagement, for others it will be a long painful and boring day. I would like to think that there are more people in the former category, but realistically, I suspect it is probably an even spread.
Good luck to everyone for the upcoming term, and remember that no matter how busy you get, particularly those of you with NAPLAN testing looming in the not too distant future, that you need to take time for your own health and well being, and for your own family. Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together. -Attributed to Paul Ryan I stumbled upon this article via Facebook today, and it is so powerful, beautiful and heartbreaking all at the same time that I felt it had to be shared. Colorado Teacher Shares Heartbreaking Notes From Third Graders Kyle Schwartz teaches third grade at Doull Elementary in Denver. Schwartz encourages other teachers to use the same lesson in their classrooms. Although she says her students are a pleasure to look after, the educator of three years adds that many of them come from underprivileged homes. “Ninety-two percent of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch,” Schwartz tells ABC News. “As a new teacher, I struggled to understand the reality of my students’ lives and how to best support them. I just felt like there was something I didn’t know about my students.” In a bid to build trust between her and her students, Schwartz thought up a lesson plan called “I Wish My Teacher Knew.” For the activity, Schwartz’s third graders jot down a thought for their teacher, sharing something they’d like her to know about them. “I let students determine if they would like to answer anonymously,” she says. “I have found that most students are not only willing to include their name, but also enjoy sharing with the class. Even when what my students are sharing is sensitive in nature, most students want their classmates to know. “Some notes are heartbreaking like the first #iwishmyteacherknew tweet which read, ‘I wish my teacher knew I don’t have pencils at home to do my homework.’ I care deeply about each and every one of my students and I don’t want any of them to have to suffer the consequences of living in poverty, which is my main motivation for teaching.” Blown away by her class’ honesty, Schwartz shared some of the notes on Twitter using the hashtag #IWishMyTeacherKnew, encouraging fellow teachers to employ the same lesson with their own students. The tweets and photos of notes from other schools came pouring in from around the world. “I think it caught on so fast because teachers are highly collaborative and freely share and explore resources,” Schwartz says. “In the end, all teachers want to support their students, and #iwishmyteacherknew is a simple and powerful way to do that. “Building community in my classroom is a major goal of this lesson. After one student shared that she had no one to play with at recess, the rest of the class chimed in and said, ‘we got your back.’ The next day during recess, I noticed she was playing with a group of girls. Not only can I support my students, but my students can support each other.” Schwartz says she also hopes her lesson can help her connect students and their families with the proper resources they need to live comfortably. —————– The lesson here is about trust and community, and building strong relationships between students and between the students and the teacher. There is so much potential for interpersonal learning in this simple movement, powerful relationships can be built on the back of this. Of course, there are going to need to be ground rules about how students react, with some silliness, but if you have a strong relationship with your class already, this could help to solidify it even further. I encourage you to not just read this article, or the original source article that I have copied into this article, do not just look at the #iwishmyteacherknew search results on twitter. Share it with your friends, your colleagues. share it with your students and ask them if they would like to do the lesson together. It may change the dynamic of your class, and it may take a dysfunctional class and help to sync it together. Those unruly students, the ones who are rebelling against life because they feel that no-one is in their corner? This could potentially turn them around when they see how you and their peers react and become supportive after there is a more general awareness. I would love to hear from anyone who plans on doing this, and how you implemented it. As always, thank you for reading. The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called ‘truth’. -Attributed to Dan Rather One of the reasons I decided to teach was the excitement of the moment when the dots are joined for students’ between their prior knowledge and a new understanding. Knowing that you can make such a big impact on student’s life is hugely rewarding in itself, but also rather daunting. I was going through Kid President’s playlist on Youtube, and found a video that captures this feeling. A year one teacher, Mrs Flexer, had been teaching in the same school for forty-one years, and was retiring. Some colleagues wanted to send her off in style, and through Kid President, arranged for a variety of her former students to come back, including one man from her very first class. Many of them speak on camera, and tell how she affected their lives, and you hear one of them state that they put their success down to her. It is an incredibly touching moment, and it puts things into perspective, to know that in five, ten, twenty, forty years time, that there will be people who will still remember your name and the impact on your life. What do you want your students this year, to say about their time with you in ten years? “A good column is one that sells paper. It doesn’t matter how beautifully it is written and how much you admire the author… if it doesn’t sell any papers, it’s not a good column. It’s a terrible yardstick to use, but in the newspaper business, that’s the whole thing.” -Attributed to Herb Caen Many newspapers apparently provide copies, daily and for free, of their output to schools. I know this only because I walked into a classroom towards the end of term one this year, where I was due to provide some relief time for the regular teacher, and the teacher was trying to work out what to do with the newspapers. There stack of newspaper that she had received stood around half a meter high, and she pointed to a build-up of the stacks in the corner of the room. They had been receiving them all term, for free, every day during the week. It got me thinking, how can the newspapers be utilised, genuinely, in today’s classroom, when many of us seek our news online, where we can quickly flick through the headlines to find the ones that capture our interest? Here are a few of the ideas that the teacher gave to me, and some others that I have thought of. I sincerely doubt that any of these are original ideas, so please do not think that I am claiming as such, and so here are my top ten (cue David Letterman music). Not all of these ideas will be appropriate to all stage groups within education. Most of them can be utilised within the primary sector, but some would be secondary.
Those are the top ten things that I think newspapers can be used for in today’s classrooms and is certainly not an exhaustive list (another one that just came to mind is to teach how to understand the weather report, and the difference between weather and climate). Many of these uses can also be leveraged to create links with the community. Want to talk about ethical writing and reporting – contact the local newspaper and see if they have someone who can come and visit and talk about the journalism code of ethics. If you have another use for the humble newspaper in your classroom, let me know via the comments section. Until next time, happy teaching. “There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.” ― Linda Grayson This evening I caught up for dinner and drinks with some friends from my undergraduate degree, to celebrate the end of one term and to chat about the upcoming term. It was a genuinely fun night, and it was great to see some friends and hear how everyone has been and what has been going on, both inside and outside of the classroom. It was a reminder that we need to take time to celebrate the small things from time to time, and to take time to reach out to friends, so that we do not reach that point of thinking “oh, it has been too long since we chatted, it would be too hard to try and catch up now.”
Celebrate the little things, and do not lose touch with your friends. Particularly the collegiate friends, those in the same industry. You will always need someone, external to your specific context with which to discuss ideas, issues and with whom to debrief and provide a mutual source of support. As we parted ways tonight, we agreed that we needed to ensure we catch up again at the end of the current term, and indeed, we decided when – the last Thursday of the term. It is a meeting I look forward to, to discover how everyone’s term has been, to share in their success stories and to hear about what they have learned. “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice I have finished the theoretical part of my planning for this term, and now I am up to the practical part, the recording. The way that I will be structuring my flipped classrooms will involve a lot of reading of books for the students. Essentially, the majority of the students will be engaged with the flipped lesson (a book study) whilst I focus on a small group of students. Over the course of a few weeks, I will have seen all of my students and can then move onto the next part.
As part of getting ready to record all of the flipped lesson videos, I spent a significant amount of time in the local library, wandering amongst the bookshelves, looking for suitable titles. It was then that it struck me, how out of date I am with junior literature. I was able to pick out an assortment of books that I think will be suitable for each of my classes, but it started a train of though. Who are the ‘go to’ authors for junior literature these days, and which books in particular are part of your core literature repertoire? I recall, growing up, that Morris Gleitzman, R.L. Stine, Mem Fox, Duncan Ball, Roald Dahl etc were considered essential reading. If I was to pull a book from your classroom (or personal) book shelf to teach with, for any class from kindergarten to year six, what book, or which author would you be recommending, and why? “Thank you for life, and all the little ups and downs that make it worth living.” -Attributed to Travis Barker It turns out that not only did we need to earn Class I Honours to be awarded the Faculty Medal, we also needed to have a GPA over the course of our undergraduate degree of 6.0 or higher. Congratulations to the other medalists, and a thank you to my wife for her continual support as I pursue this goal to be a great teacher. It turns out that not only did we need to earn Class I Honours to be awarded the Faculty Medal, we also needed to have a GPA over the course of our undergraduate degree of 6.0 or higher. Congratulations to the other medalists, and a thank you to my wife for her continual support as I pursue this goal to be a great teacher.
One of the most exciting and practical speakers, for me, from the FutureSchool expo in Sydney this year was the Flipped Learning Masterclass lead by Jon Bergmann that I was fortunate enough to attend. When I was offered the temporary teaching block that I have for the coming term, I decided that I was going to flip at least some of my classes. I’ve finally finished my programming, and it is now time for the rubber to hit the road, and for me to actually record the videos that I will use with my classes. I have just finished recording and editing my first video, and it is currently rendering in Camtasia 8. It was a long process, with a lot of time devoted to my attempts to figure out the best way with the space and tools I had to record the actual video, and then how to get the video off the iPad onto the computer and into Camtasia. That was more of an ordeal than it needed to be. This particular video is a book study in the leadup to ANZAC Day here in Australia. I was able to source the book And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda by Eric Bogle, and the song (also by Eric Bogle) of the same name. I recorded myself reading the book on an iPad, and then took a photo of each page and stitched it together. For a first effort, I think it is reasonable. I certainly want to fine tune things for further videos, and I will be looking into chromakey to enable me to be a bit more precise with the video work.
I’d love to hear some feedback on the video from anyone who has been flipping for a while, or has experience with chromakey work as to any tips they may have. I stumbled upon this on Twitter and am not sure who linked it, but it caught my eye. Wikipedia is an amazing tool for everything from answering trivia questions, to researching university papers to wasting time to closing arguments to trolling. But it looks rather tired and the interface has not changed in appearance since, I am led to believe, it was launched. Enter Wikiwand, who describe themselves, and their mission like this: Like you, we’re huge Wikipedia fans! In fact, who isn’t? Wikipedia is the greatest curator of human knowledge, allowing people all around the world to freely access over 30 million articles. The new interface looks very slick and modern. The cumbersome page menu, which traditionally can take up a substantial amount of space on a regular Wikipedia has been shifted to a static sidebar, allowing you to access it to jump around within a page. To give you an example, take a look at the two images below. The first image below, is from the traditional Wikipedia page on Australia. I utilise the Dyslexie font because I find it easier on the eyes, but even so, you can see that the structure and look of the page is rather staid and boring. Compare that to the below shot, of the same page on the Wikiwand site: You can see the difference. The Wikiwand version is cleaner in appearance, in organisation and ease of access yet acknowledges its roots in Wikipedia, with each page containing the words From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia underneath the page title. There are some additional features that make it feel modernised. Many images on any given page, when you hover over them feature a call out, of two arrows pointing towards opposing corners of the image. Clicking on that call out opens up a gallery of all images on that page allowing you to view them in greater detail. The Google Chrome extension, Clearly works on WIkiwand, however I’ve not been able to ascertain whether the extension tl;dr works or not as the extension itself seems to have stopped working recently. It is available as an app on both apple and Android devices (though Android is currently early invite only), and it looks excellent on the app as well. The only criticism I would level at it at the moment, and it is not a big issue as I believe that with time it will happen, is that it has not yet been applied to the Simple Wikipedia site. If the developers are able to do that, that would be a huge benefit to teachers and students everywhere, I believe. With the end of term one fast approaching, and the two week mid-semester break about to kick-off, this seems a a good point to wish everyone a safe and happy Easter break, whether you are travelling or staying at home.
I will not be posting over the Easter weekend, and my articles throughout the holidays will be limited as I focus on recharging, ready for term two and what is an exciting challenge as a librarian-teacher. As you may be aware from this article, I have picked up a temporary block for next term as a teacher-librarian, without a library, delivering a digital skills program. As I have been working through the process of planning and programming for the term across each stage from Early Stage One up to Stage Three, it has occurred to me that I do not know that I will be able to achieve everything that I want to achieve with each stage group.
Much of what I want students to do, and what I have been asked to do with them requires computer access, and while there are two classes trialing a BYOD program, the rest of the school has no more than two or perhaps three computers in the class, plus an internet connected interactive whiteboard, or Promethean panel. There is a bank of school laptops which can be booked for use, but of course it would be highly unfair of me to book them for the whole term, and so I need to consider how I am going to go about having students, particularly in stages two and three, complete the problem based learning research task. This, I believe, is where the flipped class will come into play. The specific skills and concepts that students need to learn, I can record videos to teach, and utilise in-flipping, where the video is watched together in the classroom as a whole class group, or the ‘traditional’ out-flipping where the students watch the video at home and bring their learning to the classroom. I may need to apply this to the research process itself though. Have students do all, or at the least the majority of their research at home, and do the synthesis and analysis, and prepare the presentation at school, in their lessons with me. The other alternative, which will require a conversation with a variety of stakeholders, is to arrange for BYOD for my lessons. That is, allow students with access to devices to bring them in for use in my lessons. This frees up the school’s resources for those students that do no have access to portable devices, allowing them equal opportunity to complete the learning. I am still undecided as to which approach I will take, however the point at which I will need to implement that aspect of my program is later in the term, and so I can have that conversation over the holidays via e-mail with the school stakeholders, and then begin the dialogue with the parents early next term. I would love to hear from any of you who have had to juggle the issues of access to resources in this manner, and how you negotiated the challenges in order to get the best outcome for your students. It may sound like some sort of advanced Breakfast Club, but it is actually a new online professional learning network, aimed at pre-service teachers, and those teachers wishing to keep stay involved in academic discussions. I first saw hashtag some time ago, and was curious about the concept, so I followed the hyperlink to Charlotte Pezarro’s blog, where I read this” In this section, I hope to present interesting journal articles for discussion by pre-service, newly-qualified and established primary teachers. I will be limited to articles that are accessible without subscription; but there are plenty that are worth reading and pondering. Along with the reference, title and abstract, I will post some questions to scaffold the discussion. These questions will help us to reflect on the article, but by no means are you restricted to responding to these questions; feel free to ask your own or discuss any other thoughts you had while reading the article. The first article put up for discussion was a recent one written by Gert Biesta and published in the European Journal of Education earlier this year. The title, What is Education For? On Good Education, Teacher Judgement, and Educational Professionalism was one I was intrigued by, and the questions that were prepared for it were sure to generate some robust discussion.
Unfortunately, I ended up not being home to take part in the discussion and have had read the Storify of the discussion (available for reading here), and I wish I had been involved. I’ll be keeping my eyes out for the next one. I recommend that you have a look and get involved. It will be professional development of a slightly different nature. |
Categories
All
|