Teaching and Learning

So I've been trying something new out with writing recently, and it's made a few waves in my mind. I decided that actually what I was doing with my teaching was giving the children a learning outcome that I thought they should focus on, but they had no idea of what their next steps were, or why they were doing it, or how it would help them. Then I had an epiphany. I collected in the kids' goal books which had their writing goals in it anyway, and made sure they were showing the correct progress of each kid. Then I gave them back to them and explained it to them. I gave them a whole lot of story starters, and got them to write me a story - but they had to choose one learning outcome to focus on. After they wrote their stories they had to rate how well they achieved that goal. 1 - I did not achieve my goal. 2 - I tried to achieve my goal but didn't really. 3 - I occasionally achieved my goal. 4 - I mostly achieved my goal. 5 - I always achieved my goal. The ...

So I had an interesting idea the other day while in a staff meeting, Karyn pointed out that we need to give out kids learning choice in the classroom. I thought about the inquiry process I had set up and although I was giving the kids a wide range of learning area activities, I wasn't giving them as much choice as I could have. As I wondered about how I could fix this I thought about kids choosing which learning area they'd like to work in, and it got me remembering how I used to have choice in my childhood. My thoughts wandered to those pick-a-path books that I used to have when I was a kid - "Do you want to enter the fair ground? If yes, go to page 12, if no go to page 49" - and I thought... Could I use that in my teaching? If you had a big independent project, separated up into tasks, and for each task you gave the kids a range of curriculum areas to choose from - could you initiate choice that way? If you want to do an arts task, go to page 23. If you want t...

On Friday I went to a Maths Symposium with Morgan at Mangapapa School. Got some awesome stuff out of it, the first Keynote was mainly about problem solving. Among other things, word problems engage kids in maths without boring them to death with old fashioned 'number problems' all the time! Some websites to check out for help with making maths fun are: http://nrich.maths.org http://www.tetoitupu.org For a whole lot of problem solving activities for all ages check out http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/problem-solving For elaborations on what kids need to do at each level of the curriculum check out http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/nzc-and-standards I wonder how I can use E-ako in the classroom? Will it work on the iPads?   http://e-ako.nzmaths.co.nz