Term 4 Week 6: End of year & starting a new year

This blog post will focus on some end of year advice and reflection ideas for teachers, as well as some readings to look at over the holidays around setting up for the beginning of a new year. I hope you all have had a rewarding year and that you have a restful holiday, ensuring that you make time for whoever/ whatever matters most in your life.

Ending the school year
There are many good strategies shared at these websites/ on these blog posts. I am sorry that some of these ideas are too late for you to implement this year but there are many that may be helpful.

• Ending the Year on a Positive Note by Mary Beth Hertz
• Finishing the School Year Strong by Larry Ferlazzo
• How to Stay Charged During the Final Weeks of School by Elena Aguilar
• Measuring a Teacher’s Effectiveness Goes Beyond Test Scores by Elena Aguilar
• Previous PD Bite on reflection and thinking about next year

Holiday Reading - refilling our reservoirs

• Term 4's Good Teacher Magazine
• To Teachers: How to Stay Hopeful and Inspired by Elena Aguilar
• Balancing Work and Life: The On-Going Challenge for Educators by Elena Aguilar
• Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts. Innovative teacher Vicki Davis leverages wikis, blogs, podcasts, virtual worlds, and other new media tools to connect students in rural Georgia to the world. http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/
• Teaching the iGeneration by Larry D. Rosen. Our children and youth are immersed in technologies that give them opportunities no previous generation has enjoyed. How will schools respond?

Starting the school year

Secondary students talk about what characteristics of a teacher have the most positive effect on their learning.

• Start the Year Off Right: Ideas for Creating a Happy Classroom by Ken Messersmith
• Setting a Positive Tone: Advice for a New School Year by Karen Rasmussen
• Ten Takeaway Tips for Teaching Critical Thinking: Suggestions from educators at KIPP King Collegiate High School on how to help develop and assess critical thinking skills in your students by Mariko Nobori
• Previous PD Bite on setting up for the beginning of the year

Term 4 Week 2: Literacy and meditating

Reading and Strategies for Literacy


In our classes we should try to use reading strategies every time that we ask our students to read. This article defines seven strategies of effective readers and gives ideas about how we can teach each strategy.
Teach the Seven Strategies of Highly Effective Readers By: Elaine K. McEwan (2007)
To improve students' reading comprehension, teachers should introduce the seven cognitive strategies of effective readers: activating, inferring, monitoring-clarifying, questioning, searching-selecting, summarizing, and visualizing-organizing. This article includes definitions of the seven strategies and a lesson-plan template for teaching each one.

Literacy may have stolen brain power from other functions by John Timmer
The human brain contains many regions that are specialized for processing specific decisions and sensory inputs. Many of these are shared with our fellow mammals (and, in some cases, all vertebrates), suggesting that they are evolutionarily ancient specializations. But innovations like writing have only been around for a few thousand years, a time span that's too short relative to human generations to allow for this sort of large evolutionary change. In the absence of specialized capabilities, how has it become possible for such large portions of the population to become literate?

Professional Reading

• How Meditating Helps with Multitasking
• Improve Your Knowledge Daily - Good leaders are constantly seeking knowledge and new ways to learn, writes Art Markman. "There are no shortcuts to having high-quality knowledge, but effort spent learning new things effectively repays itself handsomely in the long run," he writes.

Term 4 Week 1: e-learning, promoting respectful schools and revision strategies

What’s on

World Teachers’ Day is celebrated on 28 October in New Zealand and Australia and internationally on 5 October. I think we definitely need to celebrate ourselves so treat yourself to something nice on Friday!!

Professional Reading

September’s Educational Leadership Magazine “Promoting Respectful Schools” is now in the library and able to be issued. Some of the entries are also available online so I have provided links. It has the following feature articles and columns:

• Bullying—And the Power of Peers - Philip C. Rodkin. This research synthesis explores who bullies and why and what educators and children can do to prevent bullying.
• What Students Say About Bullying - Stan Davis and Charisse Nixon. Kids speak out about which interventions ease or escalate the situation.
• Stepping Back from Zero Tolerance - Judith Browne-Dianis. Harsh disciplinary practices can have severe consequences for students.
• What's So Hard About Win-Win? - Jane Bluestein. Strategies for creating an environment that respects both adults and students.
• Confronting Racial and Religious Tensions - Stephen Wessler. When violence threatens, how do administrators provide outlets for tolerant listening?
• Respect—Where Do We Start? - Marie-Nathalie Beaudoin. Creating a supportive school culture starts with fostering a positive culture for teachers and staff.
• Building Safer, Saner Schools - Laura Mirsky. How restorative practices promote respectful behavior.
• Putting a Face to Faith - Charles C. Haynes. Face to Faith dispels stereotypes and helps students better understand their own and others' religious values.
• Breaking Silences - Robert A. McGarry. A plea for stopping homophobic name-calling and hate language.
• Learning from New Americans - Bill Preble and Carlton Fitzgerald. Inviting students new to the country to speak about their experiences builds their confidence and helps fellow students enlarge their perspectives.
• Looking Out, Looking In - Debbie Pushor. Rethinking how we talk and listen to families yields significant returns.
• Discussions That Drive Democracy - Diana Hess. How to teach students to talk about controversial issues in civil and productive ways.
• Life Lessons from the Philosophers - Scott Seider and Sarah Novick. Attention to respect has played a pivotal role in this school's superior academic achievement record.
• Letters to My Younger Self - Emilie Shafto. A college senior reflects on her life as a struggling 2nd grader.
• Commentary / The Threat of Accountabalism - Phillip C. Schlechty. Focusing only on improving test scores is a misguided school reform.
• Research Says… / Bullying Is Common—And Subtle - Bryan Goodwin. Many students bully to gain social status.
• Art & Science of Teaching / The Perils and Promises of Discovery Learning - Robert J. Marzano. Discovery learning works best when teachers prepare students and offer assistance along the way.

I especially liked this column entry by Carol Ann Tomlinson - One to Grow On / Respecting Students which focuses on how powerful it is for teachers to respect their students (as opposed to wanting to be respected oneself). Tomlinson writes that teachers who respect students:

• Understand the power of beliefs in shaping their practice. They rid themselves of any covert persuasion they may have that kids who are like them in race, economic status, language, beliefs, or motivation are somehow better or smarter than those who are unlike them.
• Believe their work can make previously unimpressive students shine—and can raise the ceilings of possibility for impressive students.
• Teach students how to grow academically and personally.
• Enlist students' partnership in creating a classroom that dignifies each person within it.

e-learning: Professional Reading & strategies

• How to model technology use in the classroom - Veteran teacher Heather Wolpert-Gawron offers 20 tips for using and modeling the use of technology in the classroom. Teachers should involve students in setting up new technology, use digital tools -- such as document cameras, videoconferencing and interactive whiteboards -- throughout the school day and use tech-inspired vocabulary, even when talking about offline activities, she writes.
• Google for Educators: The Best Features for Busy Teachers - An article which explores user-friendly google tools which will keep you and your class inspired, inventive, and organized. I can see that giving students time to explore these tools within your subject context could keep juniors on-task and interested in learning as the term and year comes to an end.

Revision Strategies:
As senior and junior exams are coming up here is another handy revision strategy: Boggle - This strategy helps students to review material and develop their own individualised study guides.

Revision Bites - I put together some revision bites for junior form teachers to go over with their form classes a few years ago. If you have time you may want to go over some of the ideas with your classes - they are relevant for seniors as well.

Term 3 Week 10: Differentiation, blunders, brains and alots

Professional Reading - Differentiation

Five Hallmarks of Good Homework by Cathy Vatterott
Homework shouldn't be about rote learning. The best kind deepens student understanding and builds essential skills.

6 wild ideas for ideal schools
Education columnist Jay Mathews shares six examples from his readers of schools that work. Among them is an example submitted by ASCD's Katie Test of a public high school that focuses on students' academic and emotional needs. Students at Quest Early College High School in Houston have wellness plans, speak regularly with educators, begin taking college-level courses in their first year and complete community-service projects. Mathews notes that the six schools highlighted by readers focus on close teacher-student contact, collaboration and projects.

Early Achievers Losing Ground
A US study shows that many top students are losing ground as they transition from elementary to middle school and middle to high school. Researchers with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute said the findings raise questions about whether federal education policies aimed at helping low-performing students are harming those who are high achievers. "We've been making good progress for kids at the bottom and for poor and minority kids -- that's important," said Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president. "It just can't be the only thing that we do."


Other Reading

Twenty of My Biggest Teaching Blunders by Todd Finley
We teachers make 0.7 instructional decisions per minute, according to research summaries by Hilda Borko and Richard Shavelson. We make them in contexts that shift from hour to hour in overstuffed portables with finicky projectors, after grading, without enough time to collaborate, without enough information and with too much. We look confident when we’re not, look enthusiastic during second period when demoralized by first. We speed up for the majority when a few need us to slow down. We make decisions about what’s important on festive days and during dark ones, such as 9/11, when raw grief and disorientation filled America’s classrooms like hurricanes of ash...

This is your brain on YouTube
Neuroscientists found a way to peek inside people's brains with MRI scanners and create images of what they see. Researchers showed subjects a succession of YouTube clips, and were able to create watchable, recognizable versions of the clips based only on data gleaned from the scans. "We are opening a window into the movies in our minds," said study leader Jack Gallant

The Alot is Better Than You at Everything

This is a funny, interesting blog post by a true stickler for the English language. Fellow sticklers will enjoy

"Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring." --Hilaire Belloc, French-born British writer and historian

Term 3 Week 9: Thinking as well as Thunking

Professional Reading
Competent Learners @ 20
The Competent Children Competent Learners study has tracked around 500 children in the Wellington region from just before they started school, to age 20. It has looked at the impact of early childhood education and then later educational experiences and time use out of school on children’s development. It has monitored the development of skills such as reading and writing, and also attitudes such as perseverance and curiosity. When they returned to the participants at age 20, the researchers looked at how the young people had got on with NCEA. They looked at the impact of earlier school performance, engagement in school and their experiences of learning.
Some key findings included:

• More than half those with low performance at age 8 went on to gain NCEA Level 2 or Level 3. That means that children’s support from teachers and parents, the learning opportunities they had in and out of school and their interactions with teachers, parents and peers, enabled them to make real progress.
• Those who gained NCEA Level 2 did not necessarily have higher levels of mathematics, reading, writing or logical problem solving at age 14 than those whose highest qualification was NCEA Level 1, or who did not gain any qualification. But they did have higher levels of perseverance, communication, social skills, curiosity and self-management.
• The period from age 10 to age 14 appears to be a time when it is particularly important for teachers and parents to watch for signs that children are turning away from school and learning. This applies as much to high performers at school as low performers. It was clear how deeply memories of school at this time can colour later attitudes to learning.

Thinking Strategies
Provide Models, Examples and Nonexamples

Similar to expert craftsmen teaching their trades to apprentices, teachers can model thinking and problem-solving skills to their students.
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Modeling can take several forms in your classroom:

• Thinking aloud regarding your cognitive processing of text (e.g., sharing with students how you make connections between what you know and something that you've read in the text or how you figured out what the author was inferring)
• Demonstrating or showing your students explicitly how you would complete an assignment (e.g., writing a summary of an article, taking notes, constructing a graphic organizer, or giving a speech)
• Showing first-rate complete examples of a work product (e.g., a summary paragraph or graphic organizer) as well as substandard nonexamples that help students differentiate between a good one and an unacceptable one
• Acting out, role-playing or developing simulations. See the instructional aid: A Simulation for Mitosis (or Meiosis) on the adlit website.
• Explaining, telling, and giving directions are essential teaching moves, but unless they are accompanied by various types of modeling, the likelihood of struggling readers achieving success is small. Never assume that because students have spent year in school, they have been explicitly taught or have somehow figured out on their own how to do what you want them to do.

Ideas from adlit.org

General Strategies
Teach like a Champion Technique Eight: Post It - Be sure your students know your objective for the day by posting it on the board

What Does a Great Lesson Look Like on the Outside? - Here's What Your Students and Evaluators Should See in Your Classroom.

Term 3 Week 8: Thunks

Everyone is flat out with marking and other school activities so this week's PD bite is short and fun. It is about "thunks".

"A Thunk is a beguilingly simple-looking question about everyday things that stops you in your tracks and helps you start to look at the world in a whole new light." http://www.thunks.co.uk/

Want examples?

• Is there more future or past?
• Is black a colour?
• If I switch the lights off does the wall change colour?
• If you are caught in a thunderstorm will you get wetter if you run to shelter or if you walk?

They are a great way to get students thinking, which is one of the key competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum, and could be used as "Do Nows" or plenaries. Once you've modelled a few thunks, the students will be able to write their own to share with the class.

 

The independent thinking website has lots of ideas about thunks, as well as other cool stuff. They even have their own Youtube channel.

 

It's all about supporting and motivating students to think independently.

Term 3 Week 6: Literacy and revision.

What's on this week and next

• 1st - 30th September - Save our Sight Month
• Thursday 8th September - International Literacy Day -this year's focus is literacy for peace.
• 11th -18th September - Conservation Week - "We Love You New Zealand"
• 11th -18th September - NZ Frog Week

Literacy Resources:
This Canadian website (Literacy Gains) has a section which provides subject-specific literacy examples and resources. For example in the Language/English section there is a unit which teaches students about metacognition and how it is useful before, during and after reading. There are resources for:

• The Arts
• Business Studies
• Career Studies and Cooperative Education
• Classical and International Languages
• Computer Studies
• French
• Geography
• Health and Physical Education
• History
• Language / English
• Library
• Mathematics
• Religious and Family Life Education
• Science and Technology / Science
• Technological Education

General Strategies
Teach Like a Champion - Technique Seven: The Four M's. Teaching objectives need to be Manageable, Measureable, Made first and Most important.

As senior exams are coming up here is another handy revision strategy: Text rendering- This strategy enables students to collaboratively construct meaning, clarify, and expand their thinking about a text or document.

Term 3 Week 5: e-learning and a great revision strategy

What's on this week and next

• 1st -30th September -  Save our Sight Month 
• 8th September - International Literacy Day

Professional Reading - e-Learning 
Use a Web Site to Help Manage Your Classroom - the ideas in this article are easily adapted to the Ultranet.

Video: Teachers and Principals talk about using google docs

e-Learning Strategies

• Classroom Guide: Top Ten Tips for Teaching with New Media
• It's not exactly a strategy but Youtube have introduced Youtube EDU. For a brief summary of what it offers read the edutecher review.

General Strategies
Teach like a champion - Technique 6: Begin with the end. We all know we are required to plan in order to teach.  Successful teachers plan in a way that puts the end result first.

Revision Strategy: Summarisation Pyramid - This strategy helps students look at different kinds of essential elements of the material to be summarized.

Term 3 Week 4: Differentiation

What's on this week and next

20-27 August - Keep NZ beautiful Week

26 August  - Daffodil Day - in support of the Cancer Society

29 August - International Day against Nuclear Tests

Professional Reading/ Listening
Disfluent Fonts - from This Way Up on Saturday 9 July 2011. Connor Diemand-Yauman is the lead author of a study showing that making something harder to read helps you remember more information.







Differentiation Strategy
101 Techniques to help you gauge whether or not your students have mastered the material you have taught.

General Strategy
Teach Like a Champion — Technique Number Five: No Apologies. Teachers with high expectations don't apologize for what they teach. No more "Sorry I have to teach you Shakespeare."

Term 3 Week 3: Thinking

What's on:

Friday 19th August - World Humanitarian Day - This year’s campaign "People Helping People" is about inspiring the spirit of aid work in everyone.
The actionaid website explains what "World Humanitarian Day" celebrates

Professional Reading:

This opinion piece by a teacher in Los Angeles suggests that governments must be prepared to put enough funding into ensuring a positive future for young people for teachers to be able to do their job effectively.
Extraordinary isn't enough: Yes, we need to get rid of bad teachers. But we can't demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.

Thinking and Problem Solving - Readings and Strategies
Understanding How the Brain Thinks - Former neurologist and teacher Judy Willis presents a 5-part series on how young brains develop neurologically; she also offers some research-based classroom strategies to teach critical thinking and other 21st century skills.
Understanding How the Brain Thinks (Part 1 of 5)
The Brain-Based Benefits of Writing for Math and Science Learning (Part 2 of 5)

I will post the rest of the readings as they become available. She seems to be doing one a month.


General Strategy:
Teach Like a Champion — Technique Number Four: Format Matters. High expectations also means only accepting students answers in complete sentence with good grammar.

Term 3 Week 2: literacy - reading fluency and using non-fiction to build background knowledge

What's on this week?
Tuesday 9th August - International Day of the World's Indigenous People
Friday 12th August - International Youth Day (UNESCO)
Saturday 13th August - Left Handers' Day


Professional Reading: Literacy
Do you have students who cannot read the texts in your subject fluently? This article has some strategies that you can use to help with this. Students (especially in Years 7 to 9) should be given the opportunity to read individually, in groups and to hear the teacher and other students read aloud.

Literacy Strategy
Use Easy Nonfiction to Build Background Knowledge
Help all students — struggling readers and gifted students — to let go of the idea that reading easy books is embarrassing. Where do you go when you're looking for information about an unfamiliar topic? To a 400-page textbook written by experts or to an easy-reading online encyclopedia that summarizes the key concepts? Background knowledge is essential to the comprehension of more difficult text, and reading easy nonfiction that explains the critical concepts is an ideal way to expose all students to the essential background knowledge they need to understand their textbooks.

• We have a number of non-fiction picture books in the library.
• We also have access (through EPIC) to the Encyclopaedia Britannica which has different levels of texts. The easier version of information is often a good starter to use with students so that they get the key ideas of a topic easily before going on to learn more complex ideas.

General Strategies
Teach Like a Champion — Technique Number Three: Stretch It. This technique pushes a teacher to take correct answers and ask students to add depth or nuance to their answers.
This technique includes: (for examples of these strategies go to the link above)

• Ask for how or why.
• Ask for a better word.
• Ask students to integrate a related skill.
• Ask students to apply the same skill in a new setting.

For Teach Like a Champion Techniques One and Two check out the last two PD Bite blog posts.

Term 2 Week 11 - blogging, web tools and "Teach Like a Champion"

Professional Readings

• What students want - information gleaned from student focus groups about what they want from school and their teachers and what they need to do themselves in order to succeed.

e-Learning Readings and Strategies

• Fostering Student Creativity and Responsibility With Blogging - When sixth graders enter middle school, they are masters of some aspects of digital technology and lost when it comes to others. Despite their familiarity with some digital technology, they often lack specific skills needed for interacting with particular digital tools and interfaces. Many of them also lack the perseverance necessary for troubleshooting tech issues. This blog post also has links to other readings and resources about using blogs in education.
• Summer PD: Web Tools Collectives Part 3 -- Collecting, Organizing and Making Sense of Information - Access to the Internet brings an almost unlimited amount of content to our fingertips. Effectively collecting, organizing, and making sense of this information is critical to learning. Ubiquitous access to information provides many opportunities and challenges for "formal" education systems. After all, what good is memorizing the atomic number for Iridium when you can just text Cha Cha? This blog post has lots of great ideas about how to teach and support students as they conduct research online.
• Edutecher newsletter for July 2011 - This "Mega-Newsletter" shares some great new tools and resources, but you can also learn more about all of the new apps they have just released and see some of what went on at the ISTE conference last week.

General Strategies

Teach Like a Champion — Technique Number Two: Right is right. This technique accepts no half answers, but asks for complete and correct answers to questions.

Term 2 Week 10 - how can I meet different learning needs in my classroom?

This Week and Upcoming Events
4 - 10 July - Maori Language Week - “Manaakitanga” as the theme for Māori Language Week 2011. According to the Chief Execuative of The Maori Language Commission, Glenis Philip-Barbara, "Manaakitanga is a very important tenet of Māori custom and identity - how we make people feel welcome when they are in our company, and how we give regard to and care for others when hosting visitors."

8 July - Red Socks Day - Red Socks Day will be held during Leadership Week on Friday 8th July – to encourage schools, organisations and individuals throughout New Zealand to celebrate leadership in action and to remember a great New Zealand leader, Sir Peter Blake.
11 July - World Population Day

Professional Readings

• Dealing with low level disruption in your classroom

Differentiation Readings and Strategies

• Still a long way to go on inclusion of pupils with autism, says report (UK)
• A short article - How can I meet differing learning needs in the classroom?
• Autism NZ website - The estimated population of people with Autism Spectrum Disorders in New Zealand is approxiamately 40 000. This website has information about Autism Spectrum Disorder including videos.
• Tools for Teachers of children with autism - According to recent studies the current prevalence for children on the autism spectrum stands at about 1 in 100 which equates to just under 134,000 children in the UK. This means that if you are not already teaching a child on the autism spectrum you are very likely to do so at some point in your career. As such it is important to have an awareness of autism spectrum disorders and how to implement strategies to enable children on the spectrum to access all aspects of school life and to reach their full potential. This toolkit is also saved on the T Drive (T:\Reflective Practice Group\2011)

General Strategies

Paula (PC) sent me the link to this blog by Jerry Webster, which summarises 49 Techniques from the book Teach Like a Champion: Instructional and Classroom Management Strategies for Academic Success. The strategies are divided into sections:

• Setting High Academic Expectations
• Planning that ensures academic achievement
• Structuring and delivering your lessons
• Engaging students in your lessons
• Creating a strong classroom culture
• Building and maintaining high behavioral expectations
• Building character and trust

Each week I will include a link on this blog to one of the strategies. Teach Like a Champion — Technique Number One: No opting out. Teachers with high expectations don't accept "I don't know," but expect students to be engaged and "give it a shot."

Term 2 Week 9 - Maori Youth Council report and the art of questioning

Professional Reading

In Their Own Words! presents the findings of the Māori Youth Council, prepared in response to the call from the Minister of Māori Affairs “to hear directly from young people what they think about how the Government’s policies and programmes work for them”.

The report contains a review of current policy initiatives including:

·         Kura Kaupapa Māori;

·         He Kākano;

·         Ka Hikitia; and

·         Te Kotahitanga.

There are four common themes present in the recommendations. They are:

·         greater use of whānau- and community-based initiatives;

·         improved access to information;

·         more targeted resources; and

·         greater use of Te Reo Māori to engage youth.

The full report has been saved on the T Drive (T:\Reflective Practice Group\2011) and a copy will be bound and put into the Teacher Resource section of the school library.

Thinking Strategy

Asking Questions - Asking questions is fundamental to helping students acquire knowledge. Ulrike Thomas looks at four key issues to consider when thinking about questioning.

Term 2 Week 8 - Literacy

Upcoming Events

Wednesday 29th  June - Free teacher preview to AQUA, Ak Museum at 4:30-7 pm.
True to the spirit of Cirque du Soleil's thrilling creations, AQUA is a multisensory adventure for the whole family. AQUA uses massive 360° projections, interactive digital screens, music and visual effects to draw visitors into the experience and tell the story of water. Carry your own water drop and interact with the digital screens - with a wave of a hand, you can create a stormy sea! Experience the magic of AQUA.

Free teacher preview to AQUA at Ak Museum at 4:30-7 pm on Wed Jun 29, Jul 7 or 13. Email ksargent@aucklandmusuem.com  to book your place for a preview.

Professional Readings
What characterises good teaching and good teachers? Here are two articles which explore this concept:

• A characterisation of teaching from Graeme Aitken (University of Auckland)
• New York Times article “Building a better teacher”. This article takes an in-depth look at the question, What makes a good teacher?

Literacy Resource/ Strategy:

There is a great website called “Teaching That Makes Sense” which is the brainchild of educator Steve Peha. He provides amazing resources for reading, writing and thinking for teachers to use across the curriculum. I have used some of the ideas myself and this booklet entitled - Learning Across the Curriculum: Reading, Writing and Thinking Skill Strategies for student success – gives teachers many easy to use strategies to improve reading, writing and thinking in their curriculum area. A copy of the contents page is below.

Term 2 Week 6 - e-Learning

Upcoming Events

• 13th - 19th June - National gifted awareness week. Don't forget to visit the TKI Gifted & Talented community for ideas on how to support our gifted and talented students.
• Wednesday 15th June - National Support Staff Day
• Friday 17th June - World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought
• World Refugee Day is on 20th June with events around the country.

Professional Reading

• A relatively old (2004) but nevertheless interesting paper from Rosemary Hipkins (NZCER) about the possibility of changing the way the curriculum is delivered in secondary schools.
• Teaching Secrets: Asking the Right Questions - by Elizabeth Stein. How the right questions can help students learn. Special-education teacher Elizabeth Stein offers suggestions for asking questions to determine whether students understand material or are merely recycling facts. Stein, who co-teaches an inclusion class, suggests educators first create an atmosphere conducive to meaningful learning. Then, she writes, teachers should ask open-ended, diagnostic and other questions that encourage students to analyze and evaluate what they have learned.  

e-Learning Strategy
Do you know anything about "flip-thinking" or the "flipped classroom"? I didn't until today. Read all about it here or get involved in a webinar about the concept. This "flipped classroom" concept is one that we would need to adapt in NZ because we don't tend to encourage lecture style teaching anyway. Similar things are being done here at SMC - the Science Faculty were recording demonstrations for students to watch at home on the Science wikis that they've set up and Tim has been creating help videos for all sorts of e-products that we need to know how to use. Has anyone else been doing anything similar? Last year I videoed myself planning and writing an essay on my laptop for my Y13 class but was too embarrassed to upload it anywhere - anyone else hate the sound of their own voice...??

Term 2 Week 5 - differentiation

Upcoming Events

• Samoan Language Week runs from 1 – 7th June and the Human Rights Commission has details in both Samoan and English, scroll down the page for the English text.
• Matariki is on the 4th June
• World Environment Day and Arbor Day are on 5th June
• World Oceans Day is on 8th June
  

Professional Reading
The Flexible Teacher - Leila Christenbury: Good teaching comes not from following a recipe, but from consistently putting student needs first.

The Overpressured Student - Richard Weissbourd: What school can do to curb destructive forms of academic pressure.


Differentiation Strategies
Objectives That Students Understand - Robert J. Marzano: Even seemingly straightforward classroom strategies like providing students with instructional objectives can be executed more or less effectively.

Giving students choices is a great way to differentiate for student needs and interests. This wiki has choice board templates that you can use or adapt to create resources for the topics that you teach.

Term 2 Week 4 - an engaged classroom

Upcoming Events
21-29 May - Youth Week
31 May - Smoke-free Day


With us all having exam marking and other pressures on our time, this week's post is a link to a discussion on edutopia: An Engaged Classroom . . . Dos and Don'ts. Hopefully the ideas shared by the teachers involved in the discussion might be things we can try or go back to doing when we return to our full teaching loads next week.

Term 2 Week 3: A little bit on understanding, thinking & creativity

Upcoming Events:
22 May - International Day for Biological Diversity - Theme for 2011: Forest Biodiversity

Professional Reading:
Do You Check for Understanding Often Enough with Students?
The learning environment needs to be one in which students feel respected and safe to take risks; kids need to feel that their learning has a purpose and that the curriculum is relevant to their lives; and students need feedback on their progress -- they need to know what they're trying to accomplish, where they are in relation to the goal, and what they need to do in order to get there.
This blog post is also interesting - What is understanding?

Good teachers may not fit the mold
Research suggests that good teachers possess a few simple, quantifiable attributes.

Thinking/ Creative Strategy:

Using nonlinguistic representation
Is a picture really worth a thousand words? According to brain researcher John Medina (Brain Rules, 2008), when we receive information orally, we only remember about 10 percent of the content three days later. However, when that information is paired with a picture, we're likely to remember 65 percent of the content.

In Classroom Instruction that Works, McREL applied this research and found that when used correctly, nonlinguistic representations (e.g., graphic organizers, mindmaps, mental pictures, and manipulatives) can have a powerful, positive effect on student learning. So the next time you introduce a new concept in your classroom, remember to pair it with a "picture" to improve retention. This is where tools such as Hyerle Thinking Maps, picture dictations etc. come in to play.

Thinking on the Spot (from the Auckland SCT wiki)- use this powerpoint to encourage students to think quickly. Adapt it to suit your curriculum area and it could be used as a quick, fun plenary, especially for afternoon classes.

Term 2 Week 2 - Literacy Strategies

Upcoming Events:
14 May - World Fair Trade Day
14 May - World Migratory Bird Day
15 May - International Day of Families
22 May - International Day for Biological Diversity

Professional Reading:
Reading to Learn - these articles from Educational Leadership have a reading focus. Some you can access online. If an article that you are interested in reading has "Buy article" under it, I can print the article for you (you just need to let me know).

Study: Why students might struggle with basic lessons
Material that is initially easy for students to understand might be difficult for them to remember -- a phenomena that researchers call the "stability bias." New research shows that classroom lessons that are more difficult for students to comprehend at the onset and require more in-depth study will actually be easier in some cases for them to recall at a later date.

The role of HoDs in promoting student achievement

Literacy Strategies:
Question the Author - a comprehension strategy that requires students to pose queries while reading the text in order to challenge their understanding and solidify their knowledge (Beck et al., 1997). Primarily used with nonfiction text, QtA lets students critique the author's writing and in doing so engage with the text to create a deeper meaning.

Picture Dictation - general description of how to use this strategy
(info from TKI)
The teacher describes a picture, or sequence of pictures, to students who draw what they hear. The aim is for close listening, the drawing should be quick and simple.

Normally the exercise takes about 20-30 minutes, depending on the length of the dictation.

Prepare a text that is appropriate to the level of the learners, is written in simple visual terms and has a series of steps.
1. Tell the students the number of visuals they will be drawing, or the shape of the picture if there is only one.
2. Read each step aloud to the class twice, allowing time for the drawing.
3. Where there is a series of visuals, the students work in pairs to retell the sequence.
4. The students check their visual against the original.

Social Sciences example

I've used this strategy when students are working on understanding a complex concepts - such as the tragic hero in Shakespeare. I read out short descriptions of the different aspects of the tragic hero which the students draw. When we have finished they have to go back and write a caption relating to each picture showing that they understand what makes up a tragic hero.

General resources:

I thought it was timely (due to the Pasifika/ Maori mentoring session that is on tonight) to send out information about the Pasifika Education Community on TKI. There are videos and other resources to support teachers to better meet the needs of our Pasifika students, including developing a better understanding of the different Pasifika cultures.

• This video “Strengthening Relationships” is an introduction to how we can better meet the needs of our Pasifika students through the relationships that we have with them.
  



• This video collection considers the diversity of our Pasifika students' groups and their communities.

Splat the Teacher

Term 2 has definitely started with a hiss and a roar so this week's PD Bite is quick and practical.

Splat the teacher is a simple 1 page powerpoint file for 2 teams answering 10 questions each on any topic. As each question is answered the 'splats' get closer to the teacher until the answer to question 10 obliterates him/her. Save the file from the wiki page (http://smc-sct.wikispaces.com/Starters+and+Plenaries) and then you can substitute the picture of the teacher for whatever you like. For example, in English classes the game could be Splat Shakespeare. I haven't used this resource yet but it seems like a good plenary activity with 10 questions based on what has been covered in the lesson/ unit.
The powerpoint was provided by Carol Young (Facilitator in Quality Teaching - Team Solutions).

Term 1 Week 11 - e-learning & lots of readings

Upcoming Events:

14 Apr - Pink Shirt Day (bullying)

18 April - Earth day

2-8 May Global Action Week 2011: Yes She Can! Global Action Week (GAW) will take place from 2-8 May 2011, under the theme of "Women and Girls' Education". With the slogan, "It's a Right, Make it Right: Education for Girls and Women Now!" and sub-slogan "Yes She Can", the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), as main organizer, has announced that GAW 2011's main activity will revolve around "story telling", also referred to as "The Big Story". The main activity aims to link the local group and school work with the national and global events. With only 5 years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve all Education for All goals, the GCE reminds the international community once again, their task of being the 'voice for the voiceless' by increasing the frequency of their demands from governments to live up to their commitments in education. The international community is encouraged to involve policy makers and politicians to address problems that hinder girls' access to school and to provide women, regardless of age, the basic skills training needed.

For more information, download:

• Global Action Week Planning Pack


• Global Action Week Resource Pack

Professional Reading:

This week I have tried to come up with a few readings/ viewings that may interest you over the holidays. Some are to do with this week’s theme – e-learning – others are of general interest.

Articles from Educational Leadership Magazine: Teaching Screenagers (February 2011):

• Teaching the iGeneration - Larry D. Rosen - How to use students' immersion in technology to enrich their learning.


• Publishers, Participants All - Will Richardson - Building an online presence is a literacy for our times.


• Too Dumb for Complex Texts? - Mark Bauerlein - How online reading discourages students from grappling with difficult content.


• How I Became a Convert to Online Learning - Nick Kremer - The benefits of online learning, from a former skeptic.


• Research Says… / One-to-One Laptop Programs Are No Silver Bullet - Bryan Goodwin - One-to-one initiatives engender enthusiasm but have mixed results.


• The Art & Science of Teaching / Making the Most of Instructional Rounds - Robert J. Marzano - Observing fellow teachers' instruction increases energy for change.


• Digitally Speaking / Good Teaching Trumps Good Tools - William M. Ferriter - The key is choosing tools that align with the skills you're trying to teach.


• Principal Connection / Taming the To-Do List - Joanne Rooney - Are there solutions for pervasive busyness?

I have a subscription to Educational Leadership magazine so if any of the following articles sound like something you would like to read, let me know and I will make a copy for you.

• Using Websites Wisely - Julie Coiro and Jay Fogleman - A look at instructional websites you will want to use with your students.


• Adventures with Cell Phones - Liz Kolb - Why it's time to stop banning cell phones and start integrating them into learning.


• What Screenagers Say About … - Pete Davidson, Alison Enzinna, Casey Gannon, Samoris Hall, Corinne Hayward, Ogechi Irondi, Ashley Magnifico, Terence Perry and Michael Virag - … multitasking, PowerPoint, the downside of technology, and more.


• High-Tech Cruelty - Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin - What can prevent bullying inside and outside of school?


• Let's Hear It For … - Matt Federoff, Troy Hicks, Anthony Mangiacapre, Erin Reilly, Ryan Imbriale, Eric Sheninger, Dan Meyer and Eric Langhorst - … all the devices technology leaders wish they had had when they were students.


• A Technology Plan That Works - Amy Overbay, Melinda Mollette and Ellen S. Vasu - Technology plans must be about people, not technology.


• Making the Most of Your Class Website - Lemoyne S. Dunn - How to extend learning with your own class website.


• The Need for Computer Science - Jane Margolis, Joanna Goode and David Bernier - High school computer science classes can propel students into promising careers.


• How PowerPoint Is Killing Education - Marc Isseks - Can we dodge those bullets—and use PowerPoint more effectively?

Articles from Educational Leadership Magazine: What students need to learn (March 2011):

• The Humanities: Why Such a Hard Sell? - David J. Ferrero - The economic aims of education should not obscure the personal and civic purposes of schooling.


• A Diploma Worth Having - Grant Wiggins - Why we should abolish lock-step requirements and establish a forward-looking, client-centered curriculum.


• Knowing Your Learning Target - Connie M. Moss, Susan M. Brookhart and Beverly A. Long - No matter what we want students to learn, not much will happen until they know what to aim for.


• Research Says… / High-Stakes Testing Narrows the Curriculum - Jane L. David - The content of tests becomes the learning goal for students.


• Art and Science of Teaching / Relating to Students: It's What You Do That Counts - Robert J. Marzano - Teachers' actions—not their feelings—influence students' perception that their teachers care.


• Digitally Speaking / Becoming Digitally Resilient - William M. Ferriter - Tools that disappear, blocked websites, failing services—getting used to unpredictability is part of the job.


• Among Colleagues / How Can We Promote Teacher Collaboration? - Question by Andre Potvin. Responses in print and online by Amy Lockhart, Patsy Pouiller, Kimberly Kappler Hewitt, Doreen Knuth, and Misty M. LaCour


• Teaching Science Literacy - Maria Grant and Diane Lapp - How to foster a complex understanding of compelling everyday science.


• Staying Civil - Wayne Journell - Political tolerance can be taught—but only if supported through practice.


• More Than Meets the Eye - Bonnie B. Rushlow - A good visual arts program is the hub of a top-notch school.

Articles that I can copy for you if you let me know:

• What Students Really Need to Learn - Lynne Munson - Concentrating on content is common practice in most high-achieving countries.


• Building on the Common Core - David T. Conley - The Common Core State Standards offer an opportunity to shift away from shallow test prep to a focus on complex cognitive skills.


• Ethics: From Thought to Action - Robert J. Sternberg - Ethical action is a 21st century skill deserving of a place in schools.


• What At-Risk Readers Need - Richard L. Allington - We know that high-quality instruction is the key: Why aren't we opening the door?


• Worthy Texts: Who Decides? - Barry Gilmore - Standards have a blind spot if they deemphasize students' role in choosing what they want to read.


• Let Strategies Serve Literature - Diana Senechal - When literature is subordinated to strategies, students lose the meaning of the reading experience.


• Making STEM Real - Gary Hoachlander and Dave Yanofsky - Promising programs break down the isolation of science and math by connecting core academics with challenging professional and technical fields.


• In Defense of Mathematical Foundations - W. Stephen Wilson - To succeed at college-level math, facility with basic arithmetic algorithms is essential.


• Lessons That Connect - Young Imm Kang Song - Korean youngsters combine arts education, character education, environmental education, geography, and more.

Frank Baker: Media Literacy Webinar Media Literacy: 21st Century Skills All Students Need Recorded February 9, 2011 Most of our students are media-savvy, but most are not media literate. Students today tend to believe everything they see, read, and hear, especially if it originates on a screen. Media literacy, among other things, involves using media and popular culture to engage students in critical thinking and viewing, while at the same time meeting teaching standards.

About the Presenter: Frank Baker is an education consultant who shares his expertise on media literacy with educators around the world. His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Education Week. He is a contributing author to the ASCD book Curriculum 21: Essential Education for A Changing World (2010), and he served on the National Council of Teachers of English Commission on Media from 2005–08.

What the U.S. can learn from the world's most successful education reform efforts

(A report from McGraw-Hill Research Foundation.) The McGraw-Hill Research Foundation released a report comparing the Program of International Assessment (PISA) test results of 74 education systems around the world and found five things the U.S. could learn from high-performing countries. The top-scoring countries included Finland and Singapore in science, Korea and Finland in reading, and Singapore and Korea in mathematics. On average, American students placed 15th in reading, 19th in science, and 27th in mathematics. The report says the U.S. would do well to consider the following: adopting common academic standards (an effort currently underway), developing better tests for teachers to diagnose students day-to-day learning needs; and training school leaders more effectively. The top recommendation was, "Make a concerted effort to raise the status of the teaching profession." Andreas Schleicher, one of the report authors, says that top-scoring countries recruit only high-performing college graduates for teaching positions, support them with mentoring, and take steps to raise respect for the profession. "Teaching in the U.S. is unfortunately no longer a high-status occupation," Schleicher says. "Teaching education programs in the United States must become more selective and more rigorous."

How does a school system with poor performance become good? And how does one with good performance become excellent? From McKinsey and Company (USA).

Our latest education report is the follow-up to the 2007 publication "How the world's best performing school systems come out on top," in which we examined the common attributes of high-performing school systems.

We compiled what we believe is the most comprehensive analysis of global school system reform ever assembled. This report identifies the reform elements that are replicable for school systems everywhere as well as what it really takes to achieve significant, sustained, and widespread gains in student outcomes.

In this new report, "How the world's most improved school systems keep getting better," we analyzed 20 systems from around the world, all with improving but differing levels of performance, examining how each has achieved significant, sustained, and widespread gains in student outcomes, as measured by international and national assessments. Based on more than 200 interviews with system stakeholders and analysis of some 600 interventions carried out by these systems, this report identifies the reform elements that are replicable for school systems elsewhere as they move from poor to fair to good to great to excellent performance.

The systems we studied were Armenia, Aspire (a U.S. charter school system), Boston (Massachusetts), Chile, England, Ghana, Hong Kong, Jordan, Latvia, Lithuania, Long Beach (California), Madhya Pradesh (India), Minas Gerais (Brazil), Ontario (Canada), Poland, Saxony (Germany), Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, and Western Cape (South Africa).

Webinar: How the world's most improved school systems keep getting better Held Monday, November 29, 2010 This webinar summarises the research which led to the report.

e-learning strategies/ tools:

• Choose 1 out! – A new developing thinking tool. From the developer: It is an interactive PowerPoint activity similar to the famous Odd One Out, but much richer in its developing thinking potential, I believe. The idea is that the children can choose three images out of 16, so they have a choice and it is not the teacher who has chosen for three images for them! Also, before they choose their three images there are four possible pop-up questions that help them choose according to some criteria (e.g. Choose three images that make you feel safe!…) at the bottom right corner there is an ActiveX Control text box that allows the learners to write the image they think is the odd one out of the three they chose and to explain why they chose it! I believe this resource is quite useful to develop thinking in learners from any Key Stage and in any subject, but have a go yourself. You can download the Physics example I created and the template to make your own activities.


• Digi Advisors Offer Online Snacks - Online Snacks are a new initiative designed to provide teachers with the opportunity to develop e-learning skills aligned to their teaching and learning needs. All sessions are FREE and are facilitated by Digi Advisors - Rochelle Jensen and Suzie Vesper Each online snack takes approximately 40 minutes and are run using Elluminate, Adobe Connect or Skype. Snack dates and times are negotiated on request. Some snack ideas have been formulated but these can be personalised to meet your needs. Online Snacks are designed to complement existing professional learning programmes. Read more and register here: http://digistore.wikispaces.com/Online+Snacks or contact Rocky or Suzie for more details rjensen@waikato.ac.nz suzie.vesper@core-ed.ac.nz

General Resources

• Animals is a very handy template for creating word Sudoku activities - teacher just follows the instructions given to customise the resource for his/her own set of vocabulary. Sent by Carol Young - Facilitator in Quality Teaching


• http://secondary.tki.org.nz/ is the new Secondary Portal containing latest news items, secondary essentials, key resources, transitions and pathways, and a media gallery of videos with a secondary focus.