My students have an unfortunate hatred of 'big words'. For example, this morning, they expressed their loathing for such words as 'covalent' and 'polyatomic'. Of course, they also hate being explicitly taught vocabulary. Sometimes, dialogue in my class looks like this:
Students: You're using big words!
Me: Okay, let's learn some vocabulary
Students: Learning words is for babies!
Me: You said you didn't understand these words
Students: We should be learning Science!
Me: Okay, let's learn some Science
Students: We don't understand these big words!
Me: You said you wanted to learn Science
Of course, there is a lot more hand waving. Also stamping of feet and huffing. Possibly some shouting.
The thing is, I have tried teaching new vocabulary in a range of ways. I have tried making visual dictionaries that students add to each time we learn a new content word. I have literacy Do Now activities that involve definitions, example sentences, and cloze activities. I have tried keeping an online glossary on the class site (there was so much complaining about this one). I have tried posters. I have tried embedding vocabulary on purpose into learning. Students hate it, even though they know they need it.
Anyway, I am continuing with my literacy Do Nows, since five minutes of vocabulary seems a lot more palatable than a longer chunk. Here are some things I do, from very low level to quite high level:
Unscrambling letters to make words (visibility of words)
Matching related words and identifying what they have in common (topic-specific words)
Matching words to definitions
Matching halves of sentences that show vocabulary words in context
Cloze activities using vocabulary words
Differentiating between the Science meaning of a word and its common meaning
Creating a picture or diagram to illustrate a word
Anyway, now that I have reminded myself that I do actually do things that help literacy, I feel much better
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Creativity and the artist/crafter/mistaker
Ken Robinson asks, in the TED talk embedded at the end of this post, why don't we teach children dancing everyday, the same way we teach them mathematics? I am going to make posters from this, that's how much I love what I see embedded into this question.
You see, I agree with his basic argument, that creativity is a skill, or an orientation, or a collection of attributes, that we need to teach just as much as we need to teach literacy and numeracy. One of the things that makes it hard, though, is the fact that people think that creativity is a kind of a gift that some people have and others do not.
Wrong. You only have to watch young children playing in sandpits to realise that the capacity for imagination and creativity can be found in all of us. I mean, what is there to get excited about in sand? But when you have a truck and can create a city (or a farm or a spaceship) - then sand is fun.
I was thinking about the key things that keep me creative, and that I think helped me when I was growing up. I blame books, a lot, but also having plenty of quiet time away from other people. I might not have internalised all the lessons about cooperation, but I learned how to entertain myself. I got to try things out and make mistakes - and that's there in the title.
Now that I am a teacher, I've worked hard to find ways to encourage creativity. I model it, by bringing in projects that I have been working on or talking about something that I have tried recently. If I finish a sewing project that I am pleased with I will bring it in and show it off - and talk about what went wrong and how I fixed it. I talk about the whole body and start senior physics classes with a few minutes of yoga or stretching. I have a whole unit in junior science about playing round with diy and everyday materials. I encourage students to use interpretative dance to present ideas (ideal for waves).
But I find that I am fighting all the time to incorporate creativity and learning about creativity. I want to make it like metacognition, a thing I slip in all the time. Perhaps I should start thinking about it that way.
And, finally, the TED talk that sparked all this in the first place. Here's Ken Robinson, kicking it old school about creativity and schooling:
You see, I agree with his basic argument, that creativity is a skill, or an orientation, or a collection of attributes, that we need to teach just as much as we need to teach literacy and numeracy. One of the things that makes it hard, though, is the fact that people think that creativity is a kind of a gift that some people have and others do not.
Wrong. You only have to watch young children playing in sandpits to realise that the capacity for imagination and creativity can be found in all of us. I mean, what is there to get excited about in sand? But when you have a truck and can create a city (or a farm or a spaceship) - then sand is fun.
I was thinking about the key things that keep me creative, and that I think helped me when I was growing up. I blame books, a lot, but also having plenty of quiet time away from other people. I might not have internalised all the lessons about cooperation, but I learned how to entertain myself. I got to try things out and make mistakes - and that's there in the title.
Now that I am a teacher, I've worked hard to find ways to encourage creativity. I model it, by bringing in projects that I have been working on or talking about something that I have tried recently. If I finish a sewing project that I am pleased with I will bring it in and show it off - and talk about what went wrong and how I fixed it. I talk about the whole body and start senior physics classes with a few minutes of yoga or stretching. I have a whole unit in junior science about playing round with diy and everyday materials. I encourage students to use interpretative dance to present ideas (ideal for waves).
But I find that I am fighting all the time to incorporate creativity and learning about creativity. I want to make it like metacognition, a thing I slip in all the time. Perhaps I should start thinking about it that way.
And, finally, the TED talk that sparked all this in the first place. Here's Ken Robinson, kicking it old school about creativity and schooling:
Monday, May 16, 2011
Fashion or refashion?
I am usually all about the upcycling, refashioning, and general diy goodness. My current example is a project I am going to try in the spring - growing plants in a converted pallet, as in this post from Life on the Balcony. Doesn't it look awesome?
Just so that there is some educational link (aside from my daughter growing strawberries and cherry tomatoes), the Horticulture teacher is going to try with one class while the Horticulture block is being upgraded and therefore unavailable for her usual beds. This is a clear example of how my google reader provides useful and practical ideas that I actually use.
But the real topic of this post is to talk about fashion, and was prompted by a conversation with my Y13 class. I was introducing the idea that I had made a presentation (embedded below) and that I expected them to watch the presentation themselves and then bring their questions to class for clarification and extension, tutorial style. So far, so good, right?
But I said that there were fashions in education, in the sense that teachers follow trends in education, just like other trends. Someone has a genius idea and then people trial it and riff off it and it spreads. My students snorted, and when I asked them why, they said that all their experience of teaching was that it was pretty much all the same, and the differences came down to the style of the teacher, not the fashion or trend of the moment. These students have been at this school for over six years now, so I was pretty intrigued by this. Do they really have teachers who are still stuck in the educational equivalent of Paris Hilton as a fashion icon? (apparently, 2003 was also the year of cargo pants, monograms and Chinese embroidery)
I don't claim to be at the leading edge of educational trends and ideas, but I know my teaching tools and techniques change over time. One of the things I am playing with now is the idea of presenting lecture material online, to give students more time for talking and tutorials in class. I'm starting out with some presentations on present.me and then perhaps some video of me doing worked mathematical examples on the board. The Horticulture teacher is planning to do videos of practical skills, and the Chemistry and Biology teachers are investigating what's going to be best for their presentations.
It's interesting stuff. Is it fashionable? Probably, but it's interesting and educational. I'm enjoying the experimentation. Anyway, here is the presentation - NCEA level 3, all about Simple Harmonic Motion:
Or you can go and watch it, on present.me
Just so that there is some educational link (aside from my daughter growing strawberries and cherry tomatoes), the Horticulture teacher is going to try with one class while the Horticulture block is being upgraded and therefore unavailable for her usual beds. This is a clear example of how my google reader provides useful and practical ideas that I actually use.
But the real topic of this post is to talk about fashion, and was prompted by a conversation with my Y13 class. I was introducing the idea that I had made a presentation (embedded below) and that I expected them to watch the presentation themselves and then bring their questions to class for clarification and extension, tutorial style. So far, so good, right?
But I said that there were fashions in education, in the sense that teachers follow trends in education, just like other trends. Someone has a genius idea and then people trial it and riff off it and it spreads. My students snorted, and when I asked them why, they said that all their experience of teaching was that it was pretty much all the same, and the differences came down to the style of the teacher, not the fashion or trend of the moment. These students have been at this school for over six years now, so I was pretty intrigued by this. Do they really have teachers who are still stuck in the educational equivalent of Paris Hilton as a fashion icon? (apparently, 2003 was also the year of cargo pants, monograms and Chinese embroidery)
I don't claim to be at the leading edge of educational trends and ideas, but I know my teaching tools and techniques change over time. One of the things I am playing with now is the idea of presenting lecture material online, to give students more time for talking and tutorials in class. I'm starting out with some presentations on present.me and then perhaps some video of me doing worked mathematical examples on the board. The Horticulture teacher is planning to do videos of practical skills, and the Chemistry and Biology teachers are investigating what's going to be best for their presentations.
It's interesting stuff. Is it fashionable? Probably, but it's interesting and educational. I'm enjoying the experimentation. Anyway, here is the presentation - NCEA level 3, all about Simple Harmonic Motion:
Or you can go and watch it, on present.me
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Some thoughts on assessment, IEPs and success
So, the HoD meeting last night was fascinating. We talked - really talked about, like, actual ideas - and it was constructive and thoughtful. I left wondering if the entire school had exploded into pod people, but no. We had freaky mind melds and respectful disagreements and it was awesome.
One of the things we talked about was the need for students who have low ability to also experience success in some way. We talked about ways to measure and comment on where the students are improving, even if their improvement is not enough to achieve at the level needed in our assessments. I have been thinking about this, and the need to give good, constructive feedback and feedforward on what students are doing.
So, I have decided to make more use of the 'comment' option in our reporting programme. I think it will be helpful, not just for the students who receive the comment but for me too.
One of the things we talked about was the need for students who have low ability to also experience success in some way. We talked about ways to measure and comment on where the students are improving, even if their improvement is not enough to achieve at the level needed in our assessments. I have been thinking about this, and the need to give good, constructive feedback and feedforward on what students are doing.
So, I have decided to make more use of the 'comment' option in our reporting programme. I think it will be helpful, not just for the students who receive the comment but for me too.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
So excited that I might need more caffeine
So, I have posted a lot about the integrated scheme we've got going with the junior science classes. I had a crisis of faith late in the holidays about whether we were making the right choice in abandoning a traditional model to go for something so unusual.
However, in the last week, I have collected some anecdata that has really reassured me that we've made the right choice. I'm confident that our test results and more formal surveying will bear out this confidence.
Most importantly, we've had success with at least two students who have, in the past, been notoriously hard to engage in learning. They enjoy the idea that for each bite of learning - about scale diagrams or the particle nature of matter or whatever - they do an activity that celebrates and consolidates that learning, and they get to display the artefact from the learning. What they do in class is what we base our assessment on, and these students are responding really positively to that.
On a less important, but enjoyable note, I managed to create a lesson (around mixtures, compounds and elements, with the beginning of an introduction to separation techniques) that uses mashups. In particular, it uses DJ Earworm's United State of Pop 2009. There is a video, which I've embedded below, but - even better - there is a colour-coded lyric sheet which shows the different artists who have been integrated into the mashup. So my students can watch the video and try to identify all the artists and songs, then use the colour coded sheet to see how they did. Then, we're going to show, on Audacity, how we can do things like that ourselves, making mixtures of audio clips. It's going to rock.
Of course, not nearly as much as this does:
However, in the last week, I have collected some anecdata that has really reassured me that we've made the right choice. I'm confident that our test results and more formal surveying will bear out this confidence.
Most importantly, we've had success with at least two students who have, in the past, been notoriously hard to engage in learning. They enjoy the idea that for each bite of learning - about scale diagrams or the particle nature of matter or whatever - they do an activity that celebrates and consolidates that learning, and they get to display the artefact from the learning. What they do in class is what we base our assessment on, and these students are responding really positively to that.
On a less important, but enjoyable note, I managed to create a lesson (around mixtures, compounds and elements, with the beginning of an introduction to separation techniques) that uses mashups. In particular, it uses DJ Earworm's United State of Pop 2009. There is a video, which I've embedded below, but - even better - there is a colour-coded lyric sheet which shows the different artists who have been integrated into the mashup. So my students can watch the video and try to identify all the artists and songs, then use the colour coded sheet to see how they did. Then, we're going to show, on Audacity, how we can do things like that ourselves, making mixtures of audio clips. It's going to rock.
Of course, not nearly as much as this does:
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Every teacher is a literacy teacher
Apparently, science teachers are the only teachers that take this seriously. Of course, that was the opinion of one person, but I think I can say that my department, at least, takes literacy seriously.
I think, in our case, it's self-defence. We have an awful lot of specialist vocabulary and are so dependent on analogies and models that we need to be really proactive in teaching students how to read and interpret texts, how to read and interpret images, and how to construct their own meanings from texts and images.
That's one of the reasons I love visualisations like wordles, love visual dictionaries, and adore talking books online. But today, we did a classic collage with scissors and glue, with my Y11 class making analogies for cell structures. Another time, I would probably do this using online tools. Today, though, it was nice to get our fingers a bit dirty. And my students came up with some lovely analogies - like centipede legs for pili and baleen (as in whales) for the cell membrane.
I think, in our case, it's self-defence. We have an awful lot of specialist vocabulary and are so dependent on analogies and models that we need to be really proactive in teaching students how to read and interpret texts, how to read and interpret images, and how to construct their own meanings from texts and images.
That's one of the reasons I love visualisations like wordles, love visual dictionaries, and adore talking books online. But today, we did a classic collage with scissors and glue, with my Y11 class making analogies for cell structures. Another time, I would probably do this using online tools. Today, though, it was nice to get our fingers a bit dirty. And my students came up with some lovely analogies - like centipede legs for pili and baleen (as in whales) for the cell membrane.
Monday, July 13, 2009
In absentia, relief
I'm not a big subscriber to the theory that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Instead, I find relief in being able to escape for a while. None of that explains what I am doing at school on a beautiful Monday in the holidays.
One of the things that I am doing is working on the units for next term: biology (genetics and then microbes) for the Y11s, Waves for the Y12s and Electricity for the Y13s. Now, sometime in week two, I will be going to Australia for a few days, but I don't know exactly when. So I'm factoring that into my relief - no practicals (you can't give practical work for a reliever to supervise) but still interesting and engaging learning. So far, I'm leaning towards either a video - pretty straightforward to do and I get to talk and draw on the board as I go - or some sort of powerpoint with audio followed by a class chat (time in Australia permitting).
Right. I will let that tick over in the back of my mind while I wait for the coffee to hit and take another look at the learning outcomes for these units.
One of the things that I am doing is working on the units for next term: biology (genetics and then microbes) for the Y11s, Waves for the Y12s and Electricity for the Y13s. Now, sometime in week two, I will be going to Australia for a few days, but I don't know exactly when. So I'm factoring that into my relief - no practicals (you can't give practical work for a reliever to supervise) but still interesting and engaging learning. So far, I'm leaning towards either a video - pretty straightforward to do and I get to talk and draw on the board as I go - or some sort of powerpoint with audio followed by a class chat (time in Australia permitting).
Right. I will let that tick over in the back of my mind while I wait for the coffee to hit and take another look at the learning outcomes for these units.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Playing round with content creation
I have no voice today, so I am at home messing round with animoto and Stupeflix to see which one is going to work best for introducing students to the idea that they can create their own little learning videos.
I made one in each provider, both on the same topic - Air Pollution. We're studying that, briefly, as part of our unit on fuels in Y10 science.
Here is the animoto one:
I like this because:
They have music available to use as soundtracks
Their mixing is pretty funky and I love the visual aesthetic
They make embedding and sharing really, really easy
I don't like it because:
It's limited to 30 seconds only
Images have to be saved to your computer, you can't input urls
If you put in too much stuff, they cut it instead of giving you the option to cut it
Their flash uploader is incompatible with my school laptop settings and the simple uploader is hard to find
Here is the stupeflix one - youll have to follow the link, because, as I say below, embedding is not it's strong point:
Air pollution video
I like this because:
You can download a copy to your computer
You can make the videos as long as you like
The visual is pretty clean and there is plenty of room for text
You can control how long each image set appears for
I don't like it because:
You have to use music from your hard drive for sound tracks - royalty issues, anyone?
Their flash uploader is incompatible with my school laptop and there is NO simple uploader to be found (I'll be telling them about this one directly)
There is no easy option to embed and only a few sharing options are available (I will also be giving them feedback about this)
So, as you can see, it's not easy to choose. I'll have to provide the students with a step-by-step guide anyway, and I'm not sure which would be most painful to write. I think I shall discuss this with my minions and we'll decide which one is going to give us the fewest headaches while providing the coolest learning experience for the students.
I made one in each provider, both on the same topic - Air Pollution. We're studying that, briefly, as part of our unit on fuels in Y10 science.
Here is the animoto one:
I like this because:
They have music available to use as soundtracks
Their mixing is pretty funky and I love the visual aesthetic
They make embedding and sharing really, really easy
I don't like it because:
It's limited to 30 seconds only
Images have to be saved to your computer, you can't input urls
If you put in too much stuff, they cut it instead of giving you the option to cut it
Their flash uploader is incompatible with my school laptop settings and the simple uploader is hard to find
Here is the stupeflix one - youll have to follow the link, because, as I say below, embedding is not it's strong point:
Air pollution video
I like this because:
You can download a copy to your computer
You can make the videos as long as you like
The visual is pretty clean and there is plenty of room for text
You can control how long each image set appears for
I don't like it because:
You have to use music from your hard drive for sound tracks - royalty issues, anyone?
Their flash uploader is incompatible with my school laptop and there is NO simple uploader to be found (I'll be telling them about this one directly)
There is no easy option to embed and only a few sharing options are available (I will also be giving them feedback about this)
So, as you can see, it's not easy to choose. I'll have to provide the students with a step-by-step guide anyway, and I'm not sure which would be most painful to write. I think I shall discuss this with my minions and we'll decide which one is going to give us the fewest headaches while providing the coolest learning experience for the students.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Presentation success
So, presentation all done and sorted and I think it went well. Personally, I like presentations where the presenter gets to the point quickly and doesn't drone on and on reading out their slides, so my whole presentation was done in about 25 minutes. Now I'm hoping that my colleagues will take the opportunity I offered and come and see me during my regular "talk geeky about computers" time and we can come up with some constructive solutions.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Today's amazing feat of awesome!
Well, I haven't done it yet, but I shall.
Part of today is devoted to planning the Y11 Physics outline. We spend all of this term on Physics and I love it. Love it, I tell you! It's so much fun, at Y11, or should be fun. Y11 is where we learn the basic stuff, the stuff that rules our lives in the real world. Things like how forces act together to give a resultant force. How a body can have several forces acting on it but not be moving (that one blows the kids minds, even though it's something they have known since they were, oh, five, just from experience). How you can predict motion from the things that you know about a system. So. Much. Fun.
I have a whole pile of resources for this topic, and I am determined to use them to good effect. My students are going to inquire and think and learn if it kills them. One of the things that we are going to do is fair tests, and I will make the students do some of this online. I haven't quite decided how, yet, but I'm thinking that they might investigate experiments that other students have done and posted - like on that community on wikipedia that I can't remember the name of right now - and analyse them against a set of criteria for what NCEA defines as a fair test. Interesting? Well, I think it is.
Also on the table is the rewrite of the junior science curriculum. Fully integrated! With cross-curricula links! Nature of Science as a focus! Other stuff! It's going to be so much fun.
Part of today is devoted to planning the Y11 Physics outline. We spend all of this term on Physics and I love it. Love it, I tell you! It's so much fun, at Y11, or should be fun. Y11 is where we learn the basic stuff, the stuff that rules our lives in the real world. Things like how forces act together to give a resultant force. How a body can have several forces acting on it but not be moving (that one blows the kids minds, even though it's something they have known since they were, oh, five, just from experience). How you can predict motion from the things that you know about a system. So. Much. Fun.
I have a whole pile of resources for this topic, and I am determined to use them to good effect. My students are going to inquire and think and learn if it kills them. One of the things that we are going to do is fair tests, and I will make the students do some of this online. I haven't quite decided how, yet, but I'm thinking that they might investigate experiments that other students have done and posted - like on that community on wikipedia that I can't remember the name of right now - and analyse them against a set of criteria for what NCEA defines as a fair test. Interesting? Well, I think it is.
Also on the table is the rewrite of the junior science curriculum. Fully integrated! With cross-curricula links! Nature of Science as a focus! Other stuff! It's going to be so much fun.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Teacher-only days
I love the collegiality of hanging out with other teachers and talking about teaching and learning and pedagogy. Today I have had an opportunity to talk about my favourite, favourite things - metacognition, praxis and critical thinking. Huzzah!
We're working from the NZ Curriculum, and it is made of awesome.
I really think today is going to be incredibly productive, so far as improving whole-school approaches to the Key Competencies and Inquiry-based Learning goes. Next up, ICT tools for the above, and then we break into our departments to work up a unit of learning.
I'm looking forward to it so much.
We're working from the NZ Curriculum, and it is made of awesome.
I really think today is going to be incredibly productive, so far as improving whole-school approaches to the Key Competencies and Inquiry-based Learning goes. Next up, ICT tools for the above, and then we break into our departments to work up a unit of learning.
I'm looking forward to it so much.
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