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...

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...

Some of you may remember my previous blog post about the web of inquiry that I wrote almost a year ago now. http://jonoteachesandlearns.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/a-fresh-look-into-web-of-inquiry.html   This is a follow up to that post.   We have been using the structure of the web of inquiry in our classroom for the last 8 months and it has been working incredibly well. Learners have become settled and into the routine of the process and it seems to flow quite naturally for them. We have found though that something was missing, something quite crucial to engagement, and crucial to the learners having purpose in what they are doing. This is the story of how we implement the web of inquiry into our classroom, and a proposed 5th step added in.  Experiment: As this is the first step, learners are exposed to different aspects of a topic. We found this imperative, especially for our students as they have a limited view on aspects of their world. Say for example our t...

The state of poverty in New Zealand today is horrendous. So many children are going without food, without adequate shelter, without clothing, without shoes, without education. The biggest problem that New Zealand faces today, is the widening gap between classes which are roaring back into society.  The upper and middle classes of this country have no idea of the amount of poverty that exists in New Zealand. That people survive with four children on a single income of less than $20,000 a year doesn’t feature in their ideas of life.  I work in one of the poorest areas of New Zealand and I see children constantly come to school who have no lunch, no breakfast, no shoes, no jacket. Who have been up late the night before, because their parents have had a sunday night drinking or smoking session. That have had to baby-sit their little brothers or sisters all weekend because their parents have been away. That have moved house in the middle of the night because they could...