Teaching and Learning

I wrote this blogpost last year but never actually posted it. At the start of this year we started doing flow inquiries with students. Flow inquiries are an inquiry into whatever they want to learn about. Many of the students at this point replied to our idea with "I dunno what I want to learn about." or "I dont really want to learn anything." or "I just won't do a flow inquiry and will just do what you tell me to do." Slowly over the year, these reluctant students watched others in the classroom become engaged in their flow inquiries and started to experiment with their own ideas. Now two of the most disengaged students that we had at the start of the year are making the most creative things in the classroom. They are having a resurgence of passion into their learning. A resurgence of creativity that has really come into it's own, and students are starting to take control of their own learning again. The traditional school system that they...

Engagement is a key word in todays pedagogical discussion around education. Engagement, or the lack of, is one of the key reasons that so many schools in New Zealand are now transitioning into "modern learning". It is not the spaces that define whether students are engaged in their learning or not, but the teaching. Malone and Tranter (2003) discuss authenticity of learning and it's role of engaging students inside the classroom. Learning must be connected to the physical world, and through the eye of authentic contexts. Students must have meaning in their learning - their learning must be geared towards an authentic purpose. In a classroom (and Mike Scaddon would say above year 4(ish) where students are starting to read to learn rather than learning to read) concepts should be a focus. The Glossary of Education Reform suggests that "...a well-planned curriculum built around authentic-learning experiences can cover all the academic subjects and concepts that stu...

This was written by a friend of mine - a science graduate. It is a very interesting blogpost about current school pedagogies and thoughts for the future. "Teenagers are coming out of high school with an extreme lack of scientific literacy." This was said by my flatmate, an experienced teacher, and experienced in modern learning pedagogy. I asked her why, and her response was "because teachers do not know how to teach it." I find this incredibly interesting as a student who fared very well in the traditional schooling system I grew up in. I want to explore this sentiment, and my own reflections on how it fits into today's scientific arena. In school, and to the most extent university, science is taught as a recipe, where each instruction in the recipe has a logical flow from the instruction before it. Each question has its own "right answer"; in NCEA physics, you can miss out on an Excellence grade if you do not put the right term in your answer. Te...

https://www.blendspace.com/ This is a very interesting little program. It's basically a course creator and manager for the classroom, which lets your students self direct their learning through a number of guided steps. There is a lot of scope for you as a teacher to design pretty cool learning programmes using readily available information on the internet and lets you curate it for your learners. Advantages:  - One advantage I see is organisation. Creating a lesson is really easy, and because it google searches for you it is simple to find things that relate to your chosen topic. - It is also very simple to use. Students can wade through content you have provided systematically. - It is a great way to scaffold learners. Learners can start really simply and gradually progress through your learning program to immerse themselves deeper in the content. Disadvantages: - If we are trying to promote digital citizenship and independence in our learners, I don't think it...

I spent time in a new entrant class recently. I gave them a photo of a head, and a blank piece of paper and told them to finish the picture. I told them to be creative, I wanted to see the most wacky, out there picture I'd ever seen. I wrote down some of their stories... This is a sheep in the city in Africa, and this thing is oxygen that is going into his body.  A bear got bitten by a lizard and now he is half bear, half lizard. Everyone thinks he's a monster but he's actually friendly. The bird ate a bug and grew some horns and squids legs.  This is a horse, and when it stands on grass it's body changes colour into a rainbow.  The bird eats a flower, then he found out it was poisonous. It came out his bum and went on a bee. The bee put it into a flower and it went up into the sky and the whole world became poisonous.  These young learners are so creative, and so full of ingenuity. What if we could somehow keep hold of this creativ...

Today I went into a classroom as a reliever and ran my own programme. It was with year 7 & 8 students and I set them up to do a one day project. I said to them that today was going to be a little different than their normal school day. They could pick one topic to research, and they could do it all day. Step 1: We completed a brainstorm on our topic answering three questions: What do you already know about your topic?  What would you like to know about your topic?  How is you, finding out this information going to help you, or someone else?  The students came up with some great topics, some decided to focus on helping elephants, some helping endangered turtles, some decided to improve their drawing skills, and others made a vortex air cannon. They were really keen to get stuck straight into finding out more about their topics as soon as they had brainstormed but I made them move on to step 2.  Step 2: Make a plan. We used this sheet, which is one tha...

Testing is a big part of a teachers job - it's how we keep track of student learning, it's how we report to parents on progress, it's how we report on national standards. My question is, how much testing is too much? And why do we test? The way I see it, there are two forms of testing: Testing for learning, and learning for testing.  Learning for testing  is where tests are completed in order to see what stage students are at so that we can report on it. This is where the ultimate goal for the student is to learn so they can get a better score on the test next time. This is where tests are running the students' school life and the idea of a successful student, is how well they do on tests. Testing for learning is where specific tests are completed in order to give the teacher a better view on what stage the student is at, and where the student needs to go next. I have seen teachers use PAT, STAR and Running records (to name a few) in this way. Cla...

There was once a boy named Ken. He was a coal miner. He started a new job, working in a coal mine in a very rural place, which was known for producing very low quality coal. The mine had just opened, and was doing things very differently. They had a very different way of digging which by all appearances produced much higher quality coal. Ken worked there for four years, getting to understand this new method of digging. He developed and learned new digging practices and refined them. Eventually the day came where Ken decided he needed to move to a bigger city. He needed to go somewhere that he could meet some more people, and have more to his life than just coal digging. He had heard of this coal mine in a big city on the other side of the world who was doing similar things to what the rural mine had been doing. It too was developing similar ways of mining coal and he thought he could go and contribute to what was being done there, maybe teach some things, maybe learn some new way...