pedagogy

LEGO Digital Designer

Published by Nick

I have just come across this great LEGO creating software. This is free software that can be downloaded onto MAC or Windows machines. There is a PDF manual that can be saved from the website as well giving hints and tips about the tools available within the program.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM AND PDF MANUAL.

This software would be great for doing some design tech work with your students. There are no instructions on how to build particular items so students could design and create their own models or bring in instructions from LEGO models they have at home and use these to build models within this program. It does take a little while to get used to the program but in half an hour with the use of the manual I created the car below, not brilliant I know but it demonstrates that in minimal time students could begin creating. The other positive is that most students are familiar with LEGO and the way it works so this should increase their ability to learn and understand the program.

The program allows you to take screen shots from any angle and save them to your computer. A great tool for students to present their completed model.

If you are interested in the program download it and have a play at home or if you have kids let them have a go and see what they think. If you would like to use it with your class I see no reason why we can’t convince ‘the school’ to put this program into one of the suites or onto the new laptops. Creativity, planning, design, building, working with a partner, presenting a product the possibilities for use in the classroom are wide ranging. On top of this I think the students would really enjoy using the program. My suggestion is that this program would be useful from Year 3/4 and up.

If you are looking to develop and broaden your pedagogy this program also offers the opportunity to explore a variety of methods including:

Use prior knowledge, collaborative, teacher modeling, student led, open ended task, goal setting, self paced, scaffolding, teacher feedback, skill transference, risk taking, share learning, , creative thinking, critical thinking, reflection, individual, group, explicit teaching of collaboration, explicit teaching of higher order thinking, authentic problem, multimedia, self evaluation, peer evaluation, explicit teaching of peer assessment, explicit teaching of self assessment, communication through practical, communication through art, communication through writing.

Learning Design Part 6

Published by Nick

I would like to acknowledge that the information presented in this post and previous posts relating to Learning Design comes from the ‘Leaders Resource – Getting Started’ produced by Teaching and Learning Services DECD.

The fourth step in Learning Design is What evidence will enable us to assess the intended learning? Understanding if our students ‘have go it’ is crucial if we are going to accurately adjust our teaching and planning to suit the level of learning students are at. It is also vital if we are to accurately report to parents. To achieve this we need to assess students regularly.

Dylan Wiliams suggests that “When implemented well, formative assessment can double the speed of students’ learning“.

Just because we teach something does not mean students have learnt it!

Below is a great little script that demonstrates what happens when we don’t use effective formative assessment methods.

We ask, “Does everyone understand?”

We await the answer to come.

A lone voice says, “Yes”, and we accept that as

evidence that learning has occurred.

We move onto the next topic or concept, deluding

ourselves that all is right with the world.

Later, much later, we review the results of the latest quiz,

test, or essay, and shake our heads in wonder.

“I taught all this,” we say.  “Didn’t they get it?”

 

 

Important points regarding “What evidence will enable us to assess the intended learning?”

• Feedback should cause thinking and move the learning forward
• Do our assessment practices provide our students with multiple ways to demonstrate their understanding?
• What are the multiple ways learners can show their learning?
• Does the feedback cause thinking and learning dialogue?
• What opportunities are there for self and peer assessment?

 

 

 

Learning Design Part 5

Published by Nick

Click to enlarge image.

Step 3 in the Learning Design process is ‘What could the intended learning look like at this level?’ This statement relates directly to the Australian Curriculum content. Whether we have vertically grouped classes or not, we need to ensure that we look at the scope and sequence of our subject areas to see how the learning looks across the year levels. To download the scope and sequence charts for subjects click here. This link will take you to the Australian Curriculum website page that enables you to download the Scope and Sequence documents for all AC subject areas.

Below are some questions we can ask ourselves in relation to ‘What could the intended learning look like at this level?’

  • What examples have we seen of high quality learning at this level?
  • How will students know what is high quality learning?
  • What does ‘at this level’ mean?
  • What intended learning is not evident in the achievement standard?

We are yet to work through some of these questions fully as teachers. There have already been some discussions around ‘moderation’ and looking at samples of work but we are yet to see samples of ‘high quality’ learning as part of this process (although they are supposed to be coming). The discussion around applying grades has also generated discussion and the term ‘at this level’ has teachers asking “How do I know the A I’m giving at this level is the same as the A being given by another teacher in another school?

 

There are two key points to remember that relate to ‘What could the intended learning look like at this level?’

1.Letting our kids in on the secret of what high quality learning is (make it clear by showing examples and explaining what demonstrates high level learning) AND

2. Not all of the intended learning is evident in the Achievement Standards in the Australian Curriculum (so don’t just rely on these to set your tasks for students).

 

 

TfEL – What do my students think of my teaching?

Published by Nick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During Wednesday’s staff meeting myself, Justin, Dave, Rob and Tim used Survey Monkey to produce surveys for our students using all or part of the 48 questions (there is a set of questions for younger students)  found in the TfEL Review Tools Handbook. These 48 questions are evenly spread across Domain 2, 3 and 4. Once feedback is recieved staff can see areas for improvement as they relate to the TfEL Domains.

Setting up the survey was fairly time consuming, between 1 and 1.5 hours (which included a quick 5-10mins on how to use Survey Monkey) however now they are set up and can be reused with classes over and over again.

Dave is planning to use his survey with his secondary students before the end of the semester. Rob, Tim and myself will be looking at using them during term 3.

Justin surveyed his 7/8 class on Thursday. Feedback from Justin about using Survey Monkey was how easy it was to implement with the students. Students merely click on a link provided by Justin in a Word document and they have instant access to the survey, complete it and click submit. The data is back in Justin’s account instantly collated and ready for him to use.

Justin thought quite deeply about preparing his students for the survey and how he intends to use the results. Prior to giving the survey Justin produced a Power Point explaining to the students the purpose of the survey, setting the scene for its importance to Justin and ultimately the students. Justin intends to give his results to his line manager to look at then use this as a starting point for working with his line manager to improve aspects of his teaching through the rest of the year. A great process and well done to Justin who is well on his way with this.

If other staff have any questions regarding Survey Monkey and setting up a TfEL survey I am more than happy to organise a time to work with you in term 3. As we are all time poor the easy response to this is “I don’t have time”. If you genuinely would like feedback from your students maybe you could aim to work with me to set up the survey by the end of term 3 (10 weeks to set up a survey seems reasonable) and then look at implementing in term 4 as a basis for improving your teaching in 2013.

Learning Design Part 4

Published by Nick

The information below is taken from the Leaders Resource – Getting Started developed by the Teaching and Learning Services team DECD.

In the last post I talked briefly about finding out about student’s current knowledge of content (part 2 ‘What do they bring’). It is important however to remind ourselves that there is so much more that impacts on student learning than just students content knowledge. As teachers we must try to find out as much useful information out about our students as we can to assist us with teaching and designing new learning (making connections with students and not just teaching isolated ideas or concepts). Things that students bring to the classroom that impact on how they will learn include:

  • There personal view of themselves as a learner – is it from a fixed view of intelligence? i.e. I will not get any smarter, I will always be dumb or I enjoy learning new things, I know I can get smarter (see the two videos below).
  • What is going at home can impact on the learning that happens in the classroom.
  • Cultural experiences and perspectives.
  • Do they have the foundation they need to proceed? What is needed for them to proceed? i.e. appropriate research skills, debating skills, skills required for using technology software, time management skills, communication skills etc…..
  • Student’s perception of the teacher.
  • Learning styles and preferences.
  • Students bring different motivations? What challenges and motivates each student? Do they see challenges as opportunities to learn or do they shy away in fear of looking wrong?

Teachers have always understood that there are a wide range of things that impact on students learning. It is critical that we try to understand all knowledge/attitudes and misconceptions that students bring to the classroom. We should ask ourselves:

•What are the common patterns we have seen that learners bring?
• What are their existing understandings?
• What dispositions, experiences, questions do they have?
• What strategies capture and enable this?

Video 1: Carol Dweck talks about how some students are motivated by learning and not worried about how others perceive them. What are the things that these students bring to the classroom that give them this attitude towards learning?

Video 2: Dr Martin Westwall talks about Learner Self Theories (this video was taken from the TfEL DVD produced by DECD) . Does how a learner percieve themselves impact on their learning?

 

Video 1

Carol Dweck – Stamford University

Video 2 This video was taken from the Teaching for Effective Learning DVD produced by the Department of Education and Child Development.

What are important teacher qualities?

Published by Nick

Jordi, Kienan, Lori, Daniel and Nathan have each provided a top ten list of what they thought were important qualities for a teacher to have. I have collated their thoughts and grouped similiar qualities with the students explanations under each set of qualities. You will notice there are some repetitions, this represents the number of times this quality was mentioned.

Organised, Organised, Organised

Organisation is important because a teacher needs to be prepared for lessons and plan assignments and due dates in advance.

If a teacher is unorganised it makes it hard for a student to know where they should be with their class work and when assignments need to be completed.

All teachers should be organised and have a structured lesson plan otherwise their students are going to run a muck.

Being organised for the lessons so that they don’t have to go out of the class and leave the students alone.

This is important because the teacher needs to know what he/she is doing.

Helpful, Helpful, Helpful, Helpful

Needs to actually help the students when they need help.

They need to be always going around helping and giving hints on how we can improve.

If a student needs a lot of help you need to help them and use patience.

Don’t be neglectful and leave them to figure it out themselves.

I think that the best teacher is a helpful teacher.

When a teacher is prepared to help students it can allow them to achieve higher grades and be more successful throughout their schooling.

When a teacher is helpful it gives the student more respect for that teacher and more motivation to get the task completed.

 

Approachable, Getting along

It is extremely beneficial for students if they are comfortable with approaching their teacher and feel that they are able to talk to them about their school work
and gain feedback.

To make sure that the students listen to you by making sure that they don’t hate you.

Students don’t listen to someone that they don’t like, they listen to the teachers that they like and respect. Not someone that they don’t like and disrespect.

 

Respectful, Kind, Friendly, Encouraging

Respect is important for both teachers and students as it is important to feel respected by others around you.

No student likes a mean grumpy teacher that is the teacher students give the most grief to.

Always telling us what we are doing well and keeping us on task.

Always have a smile and ask you how you’re going.

 

Provides good feedback, Provides good feedback

Providing good feedback to students is a great quality as it help them to better their work and be more successful on assessment tasks.

Telling us how we are going and telling us which areas we can improve on.

 

Reflective

Reflecting on lessons and how topics have gone throughout a class can help a teacher make improvements either about the task set or the way that a
topic was approached to make it more beneficial or interesting for students.

 

Understanding, Understanding, Fair, Spend time with all students, Patient, Patient

When a teacher understands it relieves pressure from students if they are unable to get something completed on a specific date due to illness or other extra-curricular activities.

Teachers should be fair to all students they should never have a bias towards anyone.

When you have lots of students there are some that get left out. I think teachers should plan lessons so that all students get time to ask questions and get help with their work when they need it. Sometimes you need just that little bit more help than what the teacher gives and it’s important.

If a student is taking a long time to understand something don’t get frustrated with them. Take the time to make sure that they
are understanding and if they are taking a while sit there with them and explain it in a simple way so that they know what they are meant to be doing.

They need to understand how we learn best and what levels we are all at.

Teachers need to be patient and calm otherwise they will find themselves going off at students too frequently.

 

High expectations

It is good when a teacher has a high expectations of work that is submitted as it shows that they want you to do well and further our education.

If a teacher has high expectations of a student they are more likely to push the student to succeed the best of their potential.

 

Passionate, Passionate

If a teacher is not passionate about their work then they shouldn’t be there as they will not enjoy what they do and it will then make it difficult for students.

When a teacher is passionate in a subject it is a lot easier to relate and get an understanding of the concept where as if it was something that they didn’t care about or didn’t know much about it makes it a lot harder as a student to become engaged and interested in that specific topic.

 

Approachable, Likable

If the students don’t feel they can come and talk to you or don’t feel comfortable around you or are intimidated by you they aren’t going to enjoy your
lessons.

They need to be likeable so they get along with the students.

Needs to be easy going and not too strict.

 

Authorative, Confidence, Smart

Can’t be shy.

This is important becuase they need to be smart and trained in the field they are teaching.

When you’re speaking to a class you need to have confidence, if you do not the students won’t listen because they know that you don’t have confidence in speaking or yourself and they can sense it and will push.

Whilst teachers need to be approachable they also need to have a sense of authority, otherwise the students are going to walk all over them.

 

Humour, Humour, Humour

A teacher has to be able to joke around a bit.

Students like a teacher that can make a joke once in a while. It is good when you don’t have to be serious all the time and be working 24/7. When you laugh it helps you do work because for the time you are laughing it lets your brain have a rest from working.

Students always get along well with teachers that they can laugh with.

It is important to have a sense of humour and not be so serious all the time.

 

Flexible, Open to change

Teachers need to be flexible as all students are going to be different and teachers need to adapt accordingly.

If something is not working or technology has been updated you need to be able to change with it. If the way you have planned your lessons aren’t working with the students you need to revise it and change it so that you can spend time with all the students so that they can get their work done.

 

Persistence

You need to have persistence because if there is a troubled student or someone that takes longer in understanding you can’t get frustrated or angry because the student will know. You need to work and just take the time to help people out.

 

Communication, Communication

Speaking to us about our work and not just giving us a sheet and telling to complete it.

Needs to be able to communicate and explain things.

Socrative – Find out what your students know

Published by Nick

This tool is excellent and I  will be using it in the next week or two with my stage 1 PE students. This Web tool/app allows for exactly the same type of feedback that the Activote devices provide with the IWB’s. Socrative allows you to preprepare quizzes or make up questions on the spot to find out instantly where your students are with a particular topic and use as another way of formatively assessing your students. Questions can be asked in the following formats – true/false, multiple choice and short answer questions.

To use this tool you need a wireless network, laptop or other device such as a smart phone, iPad, iPod that can connect to the wireless system you are using. For the year 11 and 12 students who always have access to laptops or certainly more so than other year levels this tool would be excellent. The teacher requires a device and so does each student participating (although I think multiple students can access one device if you don’t mind students taking it in turns). Another plus for this tool is that it does not require students to set up an account and therefore have to remember a username and password. Students connect with the teacher through a number that represents that teachers classroom (teacher provides the number to the students). Although Socrative requires students to have a device of some description it is a much easier process than the Activote devices provided by Promethean IWB’s.

Socrative also has apps for the iPhone and iPad (teacher app and student app both free). I could see this web tool working brilliantly in any class from year 1/2 up with iPads due to their ease of use.

I realise not everyone has access to laptops on a regular basis but you could use Socrative to run a quick test of your students knowledge in a computing suite or borrow 6-8 laptops and have them set up in your classroom permanently for a day so that you could get different students to do short assessment tasks for you during the day.

Check out the video below to see how Socrative works.

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

TfEL/Australian Curriculum Meeting Week 5

Published by Nick

Wednesday Admin meeting 3:20-3:45pm in Kim’s room.

Wednesday TfEL/AC meeting directly after @ 3:45 – 4:45pm

 

TfEL/AC Meeting

Just a reminder from week 2 term 2 post:

Please note the following changes to our structure in terms of who is working with who and on what.

This term sees the following:

  • R-6 staff working on AC maths
  • Tanya, Allan and Ed working on 7-10 AC maths
  • All other secondary staff working on the TfEL process. Same staff as term 1 with the addition of Justin and Nick.

TfEL Staff

Same staff as term 1 with the addition of Justin and Nick. It would be good for this group to meet in the staffroom. I have copies of the resources lists from the TfEL DVD which will be useful for those staff who have made some decisions about the one or two elements they would like to improve. It would also be good to meet as a group to see where staff are at and any issues that may be occurring.

R-6 Staff

Meet in Paul’s room.

After quick discussion with Paul, Angela and Jackie this group might look at the following:

  • Angela and Valmai share some of the information they received from Lisa Jane O Connor.
  • Maths proficiencies (unpack these and have some discussion).

8-10 maths – Tanya, Allan and Ed

Will need to make a decision about where you want to work.

I have some suggestions/resources for you to use as you see fit. As a group you may wish to discuss your own concerns and issues around the 8-10 maths curriculum. The resources that you may want to use are:

1. The year level and content descriptions and achievement standards – What does our program look like now? How is the Australian Curriculum different to current programs? Do I understand the Achievement Standards and what they are for? Look at the work samples on the AC website?

2. The Achievement Standards  – R-10 in maths. Copies of the Achievement Standards only (no content). Do they make a logical progression?

3. The maths scope and sequence tables.

Ed has the copies of these resources.

Learning Design Part 1

Published by Nick

My intention is to present a series of posts on the topic/process of Learning Design. Hopefully these posts will give you an understanding of the process. The resource for these posts will be the Australian Curriculum Leaders Resource ‘Getting Started’ DVD (developed by DECD Learning Services). This resource provides information including Power Points and short video on 4 areas – 1. Australian Curriculum 2. TfEL 3. Learning Design and 4. Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s). The Australian Curriculum Leaders Resource can be accessed online by clicking here or see Nick for the DVD if you are interested in looking at these topics in more depth.

Rather than try and spend large chunks of time in meetings going through Learning Design I thought it might be useful to do small snippets from the DVD over a period of time to introduce Learning Design to teaching staff.

Learning Design is the term used for combining the ‘What’(Australian Curriculum) and the ‘How’ (TfEL) in a way that will assist teachers with their programing and assessing of student learning. Learning Design encompasses the following (click on the diagram below to enlarge it and view it clearly).