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.