change

Dylan Wiliam – The Classroom Experiment

Published by Nick

This is a two part series called The Classroom Experiment. Each video is an hour. I realise this is a large amount of time and that the end of term 2 is not the best time to watch them. However I highly recommend these videos. So if you do choose to watch them you can probably count them towards your time for week 10 term 4. You may wish to download the videos from You Tube and watch them in smaller chunks over a longer period of time. Perhaps through term 3?

One of the purposes of this blog is to share educational theory and research. I think that these two videos are a valuable and give the opportunity to view practical educational ideas (at least one of which is being implemented already at PBAS by Ed – coloured cups).

In this two-part series education expert Professor Dylan Wiliam sets up an experimental school classroom. For one term, he takes over a Year 8 class to test simple ideas that he believes could improve the quality of our children’s education. The concepts and ideas presented have implications from R-12.

Some of the concepts/issues in the experiment include:

  • No hands up – names on lollipop sticks.
  • Coloured cups.
  • Use of mini white boards (1 per student) – everyones in the spotlight/instant student response system (low tech version).
  • Removing grades from work. To help students focus on the comments on their work. High achieving students struggled with this. Whay do we need to give students grades?
  • Student feedback to teachers. Student observers.
  • Daily exercise – 10 minutes in the morning to prepare students for learning.
  • The second episode shows some good stuff about high achieving girls and making mistakes and their struggle with this.
  • Secret Student – improving student behaviour through peer pressure. The class earns points through positive behaviour. A Secret Student is picked each day (students don’t know who). The Secret Student for that day is the only one that can earn the points through behaving in a positive way.

The videos can also be found on the Pedagogy page under TfEL Domain 2.

Episode 1

Episode 2

TEDEducation

Published by Nick

Some of you may be familiar with TED Talks “Ideas Worth Spreading”. A great site that provides short talks on a huge range of topics. The quality of speakers and talks that can be found on TED Talk is excellent. So now TED have created TED Education. A site that brings together outstanding lessons by educators all over the world and employs professional animators to then animate those lessons to produce a quality videos (no longer than 10 minutes) for you to use free in your classroom. This in itself is good but there are a number of other functions the site offers. You can customise (flip) the videos provided on the site to suit your class and track your students success/use of the video(s). The videos are accompanied by lessons which are not designed to replace good teaching but are there to supplement a teachers lesson. These lessons contain quiz questions, open ended questions and resources to dig deeper into the topic. This site has only just got up and running, at the time I posted this the video below had only been on You Tube for 15 hours. This means there are currently not a huge number of videos available just yet (62 at the time of this post).  I wouldn’t be put off by this however as I would be guessing this will increase rapidly over the next 12 months.

From the brief look I have had of the site it certainly seems to be more suited to secondary students.

Below I have embeded a couple of videos from Ted Ed including the TED Ed Website Tour plus one from Adam Savage (Mythbusters) who walks through two spectacular examples of profound scientific discoveries that came from simple, creative methods.

 

Click here to visit TED Ed Lessons Worth Sharing – put this site in your favourites!

Click here to visit TED Talks Ideas Worth Sharing – put this site in your favourites!

Grades – do they define a child?

Published by Nick

Love the reactions (many and varied) in this video of students recieving their grades. Our system requires grades (for better or worse – depending on your view). From personal experience it is hard to shift a student from believing they are a ‘C’ student to believing they can be a ‘B’ student. Are there better ways to feedback to students how they have gone?

AC/TfEL Staff Meeting Wednesday Week 9

Published by Nick

Just a reminder about our Australian Curriculum and TfEL meeting coming up next Wednesday (week 9).

Again we will just go straight into these meetings and if time is required afterwards for a short admin meeting (10-15min) you will be notified.

TfEL

If staff looking at TfEL could meet in the staff room at 3:30pm. Staff in this group will be at one of two points – 1. Still undertaking the ‘Personal Reflection’ pg 10 and the ‘Self Review of Practice’ pg 11 OR 2. Based on your reflection you have decided on what one or two  Elements you would like to investigate and improve as part of your teaching. If you are at this point you will need the DVD. Download the resources for your Element(s) and start to investigate what these resources are about and what they have to offer. Remember there are PDF files (articles, questions etc) and MP4 files (video) which often link back to a PDF file. It is also important that you are documenting some of your progress (dot points?) as it should be forming a part of your performance management process.

Australian Curriculum

R-6 Maths -Meet in Kim’s room? I am assuming that primary staff are now looking at the Australian Curriculum: maths. I had a meeting with Trish Boschetti, one of three district Australian Curriculum officers in our area, and she is willing to attend some of our staff meetings where possible. She committed to come to this meeting in week 9 and also the first AC/TfEL meeting in week 2 term 2. I have suggested to Trish that she has a general discussion with you in next weeks meeting to find out where you are at and what your concerns are. Hopefully the next meeting in term 2 she can structure something useful for you based on your needs and bring along resources (she did mention she was keen on doing something around assessment and moderation).

My intention is to try and access Trish for the primary staff initially as they are on the tightest timeline having to plan, assess and report in semester 2 this year. My hope is that as we move into the end of term 2 and start of term 3 Trish will be available to work with secondary staff.

8-10 History (Justin, Rosalie and Nick) – Meet in library. My understanding from our last meeting was that we wanted to try and design a proforma that allowed for a more user friendly version of the Achievement Standards in history.

8-10 Science (Allan and Tanya) – Depending on where you are at maybe having a look at the portfolios of work for science at Years 8, 9 and 10. May be useful. Would be interesting to get your view point on the standard expected at a ‘satisfactory’ level at each year level.

I have not got around to staff to ask where they are at with the AC/TfEL over the last fortnight as it has been quite busy. I feel like I need to know where people are at so that when I am looking at resources or talking with district people like Trish I can access relevant and appropriate resources that link to where staff are at at that point in time. So if you get the opportunity to let me know where you or your group is at either face to face, email or even a comment to this post that would be great.

How do you handle change?

Published by Nick

Education is going through some significant changes at the moment. A new curriculum and a more intense focus on pedagogy and teacher performance. The Federal Government (rightly or wrongly) wants to reward high performing teachers, they want to rate teachers on a yearly basis using the newly formed Professional Standards for Teachers that focus on our pedagogy. As well as these “system” based changes there are those changes that are occurring because they are part of our and our students daily lives. Web 2.0, iPhones, iPads, Android Tablets, educational apps, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Cloud technology, online gaming ……. it can be all a bit overwhelming.

So considering all of the rapid changes occurring in education at the moment how do you see the next 5 years in education? How will you handle all the change?

I like the following quote about change, I think it sums up nicely that fear we have when we are between the comfortable and the new.

It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear… It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to. ~ Marilyn Ferguson

Here is an interesting blog post by Canadian teacher Joe Bower on change. The lizard brain, ninjas and pedagogy