Term 2 Week 11 - some holiday listening & a reading on improving student behaviour

As I was driving home from Peter Pan (which was fantastic - good work Director Karen) last night, I caught this talk "Smart Talk: Education and Innovation" on National Radio. It is well worth a listen but is 50 minutes in length, so you may need to wait until the holidays. I thought the discussion on National Standards and the future of schools was especially enlightening (and raised some concerns about the purpose and benefit (or lack thereof) of National Standards).

Professor John Hattie, Head of Education at Auckland University, best-selling author Gordon Dryden and trailblazing principal Charmaine Pountney, recorded at the Auckland Museum in May 2010. Finlay Macdonald is in the chair. Audio from Documentary on 27 Jun 2010.

Some downloading tips: Click on the link above. Scroll down the page to number 5 (there are other interesting talks which you can also download and listen to later). Click on the link and then save to a folder. On my laptop when I came to open the audio file, I had to right click on the file and open with Windows Media.


Reading: Using responsibility to improve behaviour

Term 2 Week 10 - A Vision for the Teaching Profession

I forgot to add a link to my last post. Read Anne Tolley's press release about the Workforce Advisory Group's report on teacher education. At the bottom of the page is a link to the report and discussion document... Both make interesting reading.

Term 2 Week 10 - bits & pieces

Behaviour Management Tip - Intelligent Use of Praise

'Wallpapering' your classroom with praise and positive reinforcement is important. Being passionate about your teaching, motivated and energetic is certainly infectious but teachers who succeed with the hard to reach know that there is more to praise than simply saying lovely things.

In your next lesson make a mental note of how you are using praise and see if you can get a balance between the five definitions below.

• Wallpaper praise - praise that makes the classroom feel good, 'Great, lovely, marvellous, splendid..'
• Personal praise - praise that is aimed at the student's personality 'You are brilliant, you are intelligent, you are really doing well.'
• Directed praise - praise that reinforces good choices in behaviour 'Well done for following the rule, thank you for respecting the 'one voice' routine.'
• Reflective praise - praise that encourages positive self reflection 'You must feel good about the accuracy of this work'
• Contextual praise - praise that places the achievement in a wider context 'That work is NCEA LEVEL 1 standard and you are in year 9, can I use it for the display?'
• For students who have low self esteem and a negative view of their own potential it is reflective and contextual praise that attacks this most effectively. Take a few moments to include some reflective and contextual praise for your trickiest students when you are marking their work or giving personal feedback.
  
  © Paul Dix 2001-10 www.pivotaleducation.com/behaviour
  

Howick College embraces cell phone technology (video) Most schools ban cell phones, but one school in Auckland is doing quite the opposite. Howick College is using them in class. It is part of the shift towards technology that young people can relate to. Campbell Live went back to school to learn about it.

Some ideas for teaching suggested by Carol Young (Team Solutions Facilitator in Quality Teaching)

• Interested in the Football World Cup? Here is a link to how you can teach across the curriculum using the World Cup as a focus.
• The IGBP (International Geosphere, Biosphere project) are responsible for carrying out and evaluating research into Climate Change. They have come up with an index - a single number - to measure the changes on earth due to changes in climate. Their latest release could be useful for science, geography and maths teachers.
• Carrying on the science and maths slant, the Inquiry Strategies booklet makes interesting reading. It is non-academic and has useful ideas for all teachers about ways to make their teaching less directed and more student-centred.

Professional Reading:

• The Kids Are Alright! Why Digitization and E-books are Good for Literacy

Comic Relief:

Term 2 Week 4 - 10 Time Saving Tips for Teachers

This fantastic book for teachers by J Pope and K Gillon has a number of ideas and strategies to help us do less and do it better. We have a copy in the school library but if you would like to buy your own (it is well worth it!!) then click on the book cover and you will be taken to the order online site.

Here are their 10 Time Saving Tips:

These are the signs of a teacher who is stressed for time:

• messy desk
  
  


• can't find things
  


• misses meetings



• misses lessons



• late for meetings



• late for lessons



• unprepared for lessons



• unprepared for meetings



• tired/ unable to concentrate
  

If you are feeling time-stressed, consider the tips below.

Tip 1
Notice you ARE wasting time by recognising your favourite time wasting tactic - is it trying out new fonts in Word? Making endless cups of tea? Googling your name? Facebook? Youtube?

Tip 2
Break the inertia - Do small things to get yourself started e.g. put your marking into class order

Tip 3
One step at a time - e.g. starting the first part of planning a lesson might inspire you to do more later

Tip 4
Divide the task into manageable segments. e.g. aim to mark 7 assignments each day rather than trying to sit down with a pile of 31 assignments

Tip 5
Don't sabotage yourself - work when you are at peak energy and away from distractions.

Tip 6
Reward yourself when you complete what you have set out to do.

Tip 7
Leave gaps in the process - don't schedule your day too tightly. Give yourself slow time and time to ponder and reflect.

Tip 8
Control emails

Tip 9
Remember the power of "NO" and the danger of "MAYBE"

Tip 10
Don't overcrowd your weekend with school tasks

For a totally different take on work tips - this Ricky Gervais guide to work should provide a laugh (sorry if you have seen it already).

Term 2 Week 3 - How to maintain attention and imprint ideas in student memory

Attention and Memory

Did you know: For adults real attention span for one type of activity is about 15 minutes? For people younger than 15, real attention span for one type of activity is their age in minutes.
Students will attend to and therefore remember better, activities which:

• Involve them in topic-relevant talking
  
• Have plenty of variety and choice
  
• Are fun, colourful, exciting, startling, dramatic
  
• Provide pleasurable experiences or thoughts
  
• Are relevant to their present needs or future goals
  
• Provide real or sensory experiences
  
• Provide answers to their own questions
  
• Have time-spans which are short and have impact
  
• Fit into context from their own past experiences
  

What do brain-friendly teachers do to guarantee attention?

• They plan lessons so that there is a number of starts and finishes e.g. for a 1 hour lesson, 4 activities which take less than 15 minutes each.
• Remember, each segment needs a clear beginning and ending to help students install and retain strong memories of content and process
• Signal these segments in lesson overviews to imprint on the brain and to assist students in remaining task-focused!

Tips taken from Teaching to Learn by Christine Ward

Term 2 Week 2 - Teaching Tips and a video on Autism

Two Hot Management Tips: Triggering & Bite-Sized Instruction
Dr. Spencer Kagan & Laurie Kagan
Provide crisp instructions with these two management tips. Triggering will keep attention high and interruptions low. Bite-Sized Instruction breaks long instructions into manageable pieces so no one gets lost and everyone's on the same page. Two great tips, especially for teachers who use active teaching strategies.

Secondary Special Needs - Understanding Autism (video)
Twenty-year-old John Simpson, who himself is on the autistic spectrum, guides us through the theory and reality of life for many ASD pupils at secondary school. John is keen to help raise awareness to ensure future generations of pupils with ASD get more from a mainstream school environment. As well as sharing his own story, he speaks to Autism West Midlands' Sue Hatton about the condition, and Mike Collins from the National Autistic Society, who reveals the terms used to describe people on the spectrum. We hear from the parents of an autistic child about their day to day life, and we hear ideas from the experts about how teachers can further include ASD pupils.

I know that last week a few people had trouble viewing the video due to it buffering and not playing. Generally if you try to stream a video from the internet at busy times (e.g. lunchtime) it may be very slow.

2010 - Term 2 Week 1 - First Week Back Survival Tips

Homework and Marking

This video from Teachers TV offers some timesaving tips and tricks about homework and marking that every teacher can instantly adapt and use. There are primary and secondary school examples

EXTRA TIPS from the experts

• Use digital evidence – a picture says a thousand words
• Allowing children to set their own homework motivates them and is insightful for you
• Invest time in really good peer assessment. That way they can mark each others’ homework well and save you lots of time.


Dealing with students who answer back

This website - Behaviour Matters - has an article this week on how to work with students who are finding it difficult to readjust their behaviour after the holidays.

Good Teacher Magazine

Don't forget Good Teacher Magazine for this term. You can read it online here if you don't want to print it out. Articles include:

Creativity sidelined by standardisation? - Bruce Hammonds
Brain Science in the Classroom - Dr Martha S Burns
Are you a teacher or a teacher for learning? - Mark Skelton
Is our most cherished cultural icon up to national standards? - Laurie Loper