A teaching thought each week
Friday 6 January 2023
I work for a community of schools. Each Monday I send each school a short 'teaching article' for them to share with their staff. They are intended to provoke reflection and hopefully give busy teachers quick summaries of great research. In this blog I offer you the teaching articles for this term. Please feel free to use them.
What do our students expect of us?
As your students return for a new school term do you know what’s important to them, what their expectations are? For inspiration watch Big Picture Learning’s ’10 Expectations’ video.
Click HERE for the video URL.
Variability Matters
There is no average brain. “Variability is the dominant feature of the nervous system. Like fingerprints, no two brains are alike”. (UDL and the Learning Brain, CAST, 2018)
In the following short video, Shelley Moore uses a great analogy of bowling to describe why planning for diversity and learner variability is good for everyone. In this analogy the ball is the lesson, the pins are the students.
What implications does this have for our teaching?
Click HERE for the video URL.
I came across an article recently which proposed three simple questions to drive our instruction every minute of every day in every school. For every lesson we teach our students, they should be able to answer the following:
- What are the most important ideas here and why?
- How can I communicate these ideas to others?
- How can I solve this problem?
Such clarity would go a long way to making learning purposeful and applicable to real world issues. I would like to add two more questions:
- How is this learning meaningful (to the students I am teaching, to the world)?
- What am I doing to make this learning memorable?
What legacy are we giving our children?
Baseball player Jackie Robinson said: "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives." Mark Twain said: "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."
It is easy to get side-tracked into slavish adherence to a high stakes assessment culture and forget that at the heart of what we, as educators, do is to nurture young people with deep values who will go out into the world and make a positive impact on it in the service of others. This video says it all by posing the question: what is your legacy going to be?
What are you passionate about? What inspires you? What lights your soul on fire? If you set out to bring about positive change, what contribution would you make to the world?
Click HERE for URL.
Use the following prompts as discussion starters with the teaching faculty. They are based on a blog from WhatEdSaid which can be found HERE.
1. What is your ‘image of the child’?
Do you believe all children are inherently intelligent, curious and creative? Do you recognise their passions and capabilities? Do you trust them to learn for themselves and others?
2. What do you believe about learning?
How does learning take place? As a school and individually do you have an agreed and informed belief system about what learning is and how it takes place in a students' mind? Do you know individually and as a school which teaching practices are most effective in bringing about learning? How have you arrived at this understanding? Have you carefully examined the extent to which your practice aligns with your beliefs?
3. Who do you believe should hold the power?
Who decides what is learnt - the teachers or the students? Who decides how students learn - the teacher or the students? Who makes most of the decisions about learning - the teacher or the student? Do you believe the learners can really lead the learning? Is initiative valued over compliance?
4. Do you see every learner as an individual?
How well are individual students' known - their learning styles, their barriers to learning specific things, their interests and passions? Are you tempted to refer to the class as ‘they‘ or do you always consider each individual’s personal story?
5. Do your learners believe in themselves?
To what extent is a growth mindset fostered in your school and your individual classroom? How is this evidenced? Do you group your learners on perceived ability or do they have opportunities to learn with and from others with varying strengths, challenges and interests? To what extent are learners motivated by learning itself, rather than extrinsic rewards that encourage winners and losers in the game of school?
6. Who do you believe should do the heavy lifting?
Do you explain everything in detail, sometimes several times in different ways? Or do the learners have a go at experimenting and tackling problems first and you step in at point of need? Are you able to release control so that the heavy lifting is done by the learners?
7. Who owns the curriculum?
Who decides what is learnt? Is this the privilege of the teacher or can students choose what they learn and how they learn it? If this is the role of the teacher how do you ensure that students become the inquirers?
8. How important is measurement of achievement?
To what extent do you teach to the test? Do you believe everything has to be formally assessed and what can’t be measured is less valuable? To what extent do you ensure that the process of learning is perceived as more significant than the outcome?
9. What is the language of your classroom?
How do you talk about 'the work' of learning? Do you speak about tasks which have to be completed (and assessed) or do you all speak the language of learning? Is how we learn as much a part of the conversation as what we learn? Are students aware of who they are as learners? Are learning dispositions noticed and named? Do you and your students believe that reflection and metacognition are integral parts of learning?
10. Is there a safe space for risk-taking and failure?
Does the learning culture encourage students to take risks and make mistakes? Do learners seek and grapple with challenging problems and unanswerable questions? Do you (and they) believe that failure is an opportunity to learn and grow?
"Educators need to think of themselves as designers of learning...We are convinced that we need to move rapidly to the place where all learners feel connected and all learners are able to self-regulate their own learning." (Judy Halbert & Linda Kaser, Spirals of Inquiry)
In his article, 75 Questions students can ask themselves before, during, and after teaching (Teachthought, October 16, 2019) Terry Heick provides some useful reflective questions for students to ask during their learning. I have selected a few of them below:
Before Teaching & Learning
- At first glance, what’s the ‘big idea’ of what’s being learned?
- If I only learn one thing from this lesson, what should it be?
- How does what’s being learned fit into what I already know?
- What other ‘things’ (content areas, real-world thinking and jobs, etc.) is this connected to?
- Why is learning this important?
- How do others use this ‘in the real world’ and how might that change how I approach the lesson or activity?
During Teaching & Learning?
- What makes sense? What’s interesting?
- SNCC: What’s simple? What’s new? What’s confusing? What’s complex?
- What specific questions do I have?
- What have I learned previously that can help me learn this and what do I think can or should be ‘taught’ next?
After Teaching & Learning
- What was most interesting?
- What seems most important about what was learned?
- What do I still ‘need help’ with? Who can I talk to about the lesson to review key ideas or clarify misunderstandings?
- What should I do with what I learned and know?
- Where does what we’re learning seem to be ‘heading’?
Our reports should encourage and inspire.
Try to use these words with children (and colleagues) that will inspire them to be their best self!
YouTube is free education. But 98% don't know the best professors on its virtual campus. Here are 8 channels to accelerate learning:
Crash Course: https://lnkd.in/dkvNdG_K
CrashCourse has fit into 10-12 minute videos with multiple lessons on economics, physics, philosophy, astronomy, politics, psychology, literature, and biology.
Khan Academy: https://lnkd.in/dEiZqiGe
Created by experts, Khan Academy's library of trusted, standards-aligned practice and lessons covers math K-12 through early college, grammar, science, history, AP®, SAT®, and more. It's all free for learners and teachers.
TED: https://youtube.com/c/TED
TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less).
MIT OpenCourseWare: https://lnkd.in/dgzhyHVJ
It is a highly-ranked Boston university not only in the United States but in the world.
Bozeman Science: https://lnkd.in/dwYD25BE
Paul Andersen can help you to get deeper into science.
freeCodeCamp: https://lnkd.in/dbgDuqHZ
•Learn how to code for free.
•Web development and programming tutorials
•Full courses teaching HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, and more
Charisma On Command: https://lnkd.in/dFk2uCRy
This channel will give you lessons on:
•How to be more confident
•How to make people laugh
•How to be more likable
Better Than Yesterday: https://lnkd.in/dNsdYn8n
Animated lessons from the best personal development books.