Teaching and Learning

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...