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.