PD Bingo

Posted on September 7, 2019 by admin

Here is a great way to diversify the professional development offerings at your school. During Term 3, I held a ‘PD Bingo’, based on an idea by @nbgreene, found via @cultofpedagogy (also see bottom of post).
This Bingo poster contained a mix of 24 teaching ideas, strategies and PD choices. The aim was to inspire staff to try new things, and to get a sense of what they found easy or challenging to implement in their classes or in PD. I got the Bingo sheet printed on A2 size and hung it in the staff room for 3 weeks. Here is what it looked like:

Many staff members participated and it got some great conversations going. Below is an analysis of the results: Continue reading “PD Bingo”

Building an argument tower with thesis, antithesis, synthesis

Posted on July 25, 2019 by admin

Today we built an ‘argument tower’ in class. The idea was found by my colleague Sara, on this AP Word History blog, written by Jonathan Henderson. There are also a few Tweets about “argument towers”.

I used the ‘Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis‘ argument structure to help students construct an effective paragraph or essay. You can also use “Contention – Example – Evaluation” etc. Works for English, Philosophy, Geography or any area where students have to argue something.

What’s needed: Continue reading “Building an argument tower with thesis, antithesis, synthesis”

Teaching students how to learn effectively

Posted on July 20, 2019 by admin

Here is a great article by Pamela L. Bacon: “Effective Studying is a Science, Not an Art: Teaching Students Scientifically-Based Study Techniques” (2017). You can read the article and see my highlights and annotations here in Kami, If you like, you can add your own comments / highlights to it.

Bacon is very clear and honest about what did and didn’t work when she tried to convince her students to use these scientifically proven techniques to study better.

What didn’t work: Simply telling the students about these techniques.
What did work: Attaching an assessment task to the techniques > forcing students to use these specific methods in a task which was then graded, although the weighting of those tasks was quite low.

The three effective study techniques which have been supported by most research are: Continue reading “Teaching students how to learn effectively”

Revision Twister

Posted on July 16, 2019 by admin

This worked well with my small IB History class. The students created the questions and ran the game themselves. It’s a bit gimmicky, but they had fun and hopefully it was a bit of a break from the endless practice essays and note taking at the end of the year.

Questions can be found here

And PPT with circles (PPT smart art) here: Revision Twister PPT Continue reading “Revision Twister”

The Value of History

Posted on July 12, 2019 by admin

The History Council of Australia has recently adopted a wonderful new statement on the value of History.
This fantastic manifesto deserves to hang in each classroom in Australia, but unfortunately the layout of the original PDF was a bit plain. I have recreated the statement as posters in Canva so that you can print them off and have something colourful and visual to put up on your classroom walls. The originals are A3-sized, but they will also work well in A4.

Download all the A3 PDFs here. It is a large file.

The image files (Large PNGs) are below. Just right click and save as…. Continue reading “The Value of History”

Living the French Revolution, A symposium in honour of Peter McPhee, 9-10 July 2019

Posted on July 6, 2019 by admin

Why is the French Revolution still relevant today, 230 years after the fall of the Bastille? The Living Revolution symposium will explore this question. The symposium program can be found here: https://arts.unimelb.edu.au/e/living-the-french-revolution

(WORK IN PROGRESS. I am still getting all my resources together…..)

Continue reading “Living the French Revolution, A symposium in honour of Peter McPhee, 9-10 July 2019”

Feedback: all that effort, but what is the effect? (Research Paper)

Posted on June 30, 2019 by admin

I read some research about measuring the efficacy of Feedback. I enjoyed reading it because it made me think more deeply about my own “Assessment Literacy.” ^a. This reading was part of the #edureading group on Twitter. ^b Each month a new article is chosen and readers either record their responses on FlipGrid or they just participate in the Sunday night Twitter chat. I have missed a few articles but I am back on deck with this one.

The title of the article is: “Feedback: all that effort, but what is the effect?” ^c. You would have noticed the click-batey question, so, what is the answer? I’ll come back to that later. ^d

The main objectives of feedback is to: Continue reading “Feedback: all that effort, but what is the effect? (Research Paper)”

thanks to Alistair Sproal for that link (back)
Organised by Steven Kolber (back)
Written by Margaret Price*, Karen Handley, Jill Millar and Berry O’Donovan (back)
6pm on Sunday, I have things to do, and Twitter chat is on soon anyway (back)

Open Classroom Days

Posted on June 1, 2019 by admin

In order to make classroom visits a bit easier, I started the ‘open classroom days’ this year. Sometime in week 3 of each term, for two days, teachers are asked to either leave their door open or put a ‘welcome’ post-it note on their door. Colleagues are then allowed to pop in for a few minutes to observe the class. The rules for our latest iteration were:

We have been using Ron Ritchhart ‘Eight cultural forces that define our classrooms’ when we were involved in the ‘cultures of thinking’ program. These 8 categories are also very suitable as lenses for classroom observation. Continue reading “Open Classroom Days”

Learning environments

Posted on May 25, 2019 by admin

I have been researching what a positive and good learning environment looks like. There are two aspects that affect the learning environment in a classroom:

The environment created by the teacher
The physical environment

Environment created by the teacher

Let me start with a great notion by Dr Ginott, who eloquently expresses how important the role of the teacher is in setting the “climate in the classroom”:

Peter Goss and Julie Sonneman from the Grattan Institute have written a report called “Engaging students: creating classrooms that improve learning” They identify the following key aspects of a successful and engaging classroom:

High expectations
Strong teacher-student relationships
Clarity and structure in instruction
Active learning
Encouragement and constructive praise
Consistent corrections and consequences

Continue reading “Learning environments”

Presentation: Using social media for professional development

Posted on May 25, 2019 by admin

This week we were fortunate enough to have two student-free days to come together as a College to collaborate, develop our curriculum and learn from each other. We also had a small TeachMeet where I presented on using social media for professional development. The presentation can be found here.

I have been using Twitter and Facebook as a source of PD for so long that it’s easy to forget not everyone does that. While social media for PD may not be for everybody, Facebook groups provide a great low-threshold opportunity for self-directed professional development. Twitter may be harder to get into, but I believe the return on investment is absolutely worth it. After the presentation, a few of my colleagues told me that they had never thought of Social Media as a source of professional learning, so I’ll take that as a small win. I hope that I have been able to broaden people’s views of where to find sources for professional learning.

ThinkEdu Blog

Thinking, Learning, Teaching by @vanweringh

Author: admin