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 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 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 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 1 Week 5 - differentiation

Upcoming Events
3 March World Book Day - http://www.worldbookday.com/
6 March National Children's Day - www.childrensday.org.nz

Professional Reading

PISA 2009: Our 21st century learners at age 15
This report published in December 2010 provides a picture of New Zealand’s 15-year-old performance in reading literacy (main focus), mathematical literacy and scientific literacy. It compares New Zealand’s results with other top- and high-performing countries. In July and August 2009 4,643 New Zealand 15 year-old students from 163 New Zealand schools took part in PISA 2009.

Positives:

• New Zealand 15-year-old students’ overall reading performance was substantially higher than the average for the 345 OECD countries.


• There were Asian, Māori, Pākehā/European and Pasifika students who performed at the highest level of reading literacy.


• New Zealand students’ overall mathematical literacy performance was significantly higher than the average for the OECD countries.


• New Zealand students’ overall scientific literacy performance was substantially higher than the average for the OECD countries.

What we need to work on in NZ:

• While Pākehā/European and Asian students were more likely to be at the higher end, Māori and Pasifika students were over-represented at the lower end.

More complex than skills: Rethinking the relationship between key competencies and curriculum content - Dr. Rosemary Hipkins, New Zealand Council for Educational Research
I have been thinking about how I can encourage my junior students to goal set and reflect on their use of the Key Competencies during learning in English. This conference paper gave me some ideas to get me started.
Abstract: Drawing on the New Zealand experience, this paper outlines two possible implementation pathways. The “skills” pathway could lead to modest improvements in teaching and learning. It is, however, unlikely to achieve longer-term goals such as strengthening citizenship, enhancing creativity and fostering lifelong learning. Such goals have future-focused and dispositional components. The “participatory” pathway could support these longer-term goals. Students are challenged to use knowledge, not just get it. However following this pathway requires a rethinking of how curriculum content is used, with implications for what is seen as evidence of learning. The presentation will draw on several common science topics and two of the key competencies as they were developed for the New Zealand Curriculum (Thinking; Using Language, Symbols and Texts). These will be used to illustrate possible changes in teaching and learning approaches. Implications for curriculum support processes will be raised.

Differentiation Strategies

This article ("Defining Differentiated Instruction") expands on Edutopia's definition of differentation. It covers:

• Starting with the student


• A classroom example


• A matter of fairness (using sentence starters, graphic organisers with some students)

Pre-assessment: A Differentation Power Tool

Pre-assessment is often the first step to differentiating in our classrooms. This document goes over some of the ways that you can pre-test students - academically and in terms of their interests.

General Resource

"Becoming a master asker" - this article explores the question what makes a good question? Very helpful tips for us teachers.

Term 3 Week 4 - supporting ESOL students, inquiry learning and how to engage students when copying notes

TEACHING STUDENTS TO COPY NOTES MORE EFFECTIVELY

There are many occasions when we need students to copy notes down from the whiteboard/ Powerpoint ... Often this takes forever, with students only copying one word at a time.

To overcome this problem, insist that they try to read 3 or 4 words at a time before they put their heads down. to write. Challenge them to step up and read one full sentence at a time.

Information will be better reinforced if students are copying phrases and sentences rather than one word at a time.

Asking the right questions - Teachers’ questions can build
students’ English language skills

Following on from Bev's presentation at staff meeting about how we can better support our International and NESB students - this article explains and gives examples and ideas about how we can better use questioning to support the learning of our students who come from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Inquiry Learning and Teaching as Inquiry

Here is a link to shortish blog post by Bruce Hammonds (a NZ independent educational adviser who helps schools transform themselves into learning communities and enjoys sharing the ideas of creative teachers) about the importance of Inquiry Learning and Teaching as Inquiry. Worth a read

PD bite Term 3 Week 3

Teaching Strategy - Any Questions
If you ask, "Does anyone have any questions?" and you get no questions- that means students probably don't know or understand enough to ask a question!!

So, ask questions that will tell you if there is understanding. Just remember though that just because one student gives the answer it does NOT mean anyone else knows the answer.

Ask more than one student to give the answer to the same question...
Tell me more.
Say it in a different way.
How would you say it?
Say it again.
Then ask the question in a different way and check for understanding.


Professional Readings

Are we over technology?
Jose Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, HAS DECIDED TO THROW ALL TECHNOLOGY OUT of the classroom (and he is not the only one) . His goal? To axe boring PowerPoints from the lives of students and reinvigorate their learning with engaging, human-to-human contact. http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-Naked-Effort-Strips/47398/

NCEA AND STUDENT MOTIVATION
Have you read the story on student motivation and NCEA in last week's Gazette?
http://www.edgazette.govt.nz/Articles/Article.aspx?ArticleId=7885