100 best teacher videos
August 18, 2008 – 1:12 amI came across this mainly US oriented list of the best 100 youtube videos for teachers. There are some worth a look.
takingitglobal.org
August 12, 2008 – 2:39 amI have just joined Michael Furdyk’s learning community called takingitglobal. I heard Michael speak in Sydney last year about trying to connect the youth around the world so that we can truly understand whats happening and take action. When you join the community you get to set up a free blog: http://principalwalker.tigblog.org/. Its targeted for mainly high school students with lots of real issues and worth a look.
August Walkthrough
August 10, 2008 – 5:04 pm
Last week our walkthrough focused on students setting goals. Our walk focused mainly on the middle school students. This focus followed up the curriculum day with Kath Murdoch.
In the classes we visited we saw some evidence of both personal and group goals. One class we saw was practising working quietly during a writing session with the sign to remind students and in the few junior classes we visited the students were holding social skills cards made after a group brainstorm to remind the students and the teacher what their personal goal was:e.g. to remain focused and to join in the discussion.
The other photo on cross referencing was taken in a middle school classroom and it reminded me of the broader definition of literacy. The students were collecting data on invertabrates and had to learn this skill. I don’t remember when I learnt this skill as a student but I’m sure it wasn’t when I was 9 years old.
Northern Territory students visit Elsternwick
August 10, 2008 – 4:31 pm
On Friday this week 4 indigenous students from the Northern Territory visited Elsternwick as part of the Australian Football League’s program Kickstartto support students attending school and having a healthy lifestyle. The four students were from a school of 20 students in a remote community of about 100 about 6 hrs drive from Darwin. They were in Melbourne for a long weekend and boarding with two families connected with Auskick from Elsternwick Primary. They attended two AFL games, played at half time at Telstra Dome, came to school on Friday and visited the Melbourne Zoo.
Naturally they enjoyed playing football at recess and lunchtime with a 100 or so other senior students on our main oval. We wish them well.
Toronto Superintendent Kathy Cowan visits Elsternwick.
August 10, 2008 – 3:51 pm
On Wednesday 7/8/08 I was honoured to host Kathy Cowan a superintendent of a family of schools [SE6] in Toronto. I first met Kathy at Harvard University in 2006 and again in 2007 in Toronto when I visited a number of the family’s principals. Readers of my blog might remember an earlier post about Spencer, her son working at my school. Kathy spent the day day touring my school walking through classrooms, talking to the school’s leadership team, visiting a colleague’s school in Frankston and finishing the day attending Aladdin, a musical performed by the school’s senior students.
It was great to hear about some of the principals I had met at Harvard in 2007 and the challenges they faced.
It was particularly pleasing to hear some Ahh’s as she spent time in classrooms. One of those Ahh moments came when she commented on the comprehension work she saw in a prep classrooms [schema - e.g. applying ones prior knowledge about the world to text]. We both commented on the fact that prior to this comprehension work in both cities [Toronto and Melbourne] we had taught students effective decoding of text skills in preps to year 2 but then saw reading scores drop in statewide testing of reading in years 3 and 5. These statewide reading tests focused on comprehension skills. Hence our work changed in the junior years to include a balance between the explicit teaching of comprehension skills [e.g. 20%] and decoding skills [80%]. This balance changes for most students, in both cities as they move to senior classes.
Perhaps was of the day’s highlights was her talk to the school leadership team. Kathy talked about her family of schools including a high school [years 10-12] of 2000 students, 3 middle schools [years 7-9] of 450 - 700 students and 21 primary schools ranging from K-4 or K-6 with an average of 450 students although a few are smaller around 150 students.
Kathy spoke about her family’s commitment to all students achieving high levels of literacy and numeracy. This is a key responsibility of all educators. She spoke about this push being lead by Avis Glaze and that in her family one significant challenge was to reduce the 30% of students who do not pass the tests in literacy and numeracy and therefore fail to graduate from high school.
She saw the prime role of principals as instructional leaders working together to solve the problems. She used a Harvard quote: “no blame, no shame, no excuses” ! I really like this quote which got me to reflect on the public ways we take responsibility for collectively solving the literacy and numeracy problems.
One strategy Kathy has working in the family is within a 6 week block teachers in teams, in some ways act like those in the medical industry and make a literacy and numeracy diagnosis of each student. Having made the diagnosis they then set a target and commitment to some intentional teaching for those students. Then after 6 weeks have a culminating activity made by the team with an assessment rubric. Students work demonstrations on the task are then collected and swapped with different teachers for assessment [moderated markings]. This is having a significant impact on those students in schools whose teachers undertake this practice.
Kathy talked about making private practice in classrooms - collective practice through peer teaching, co teaching and mentoring. She talked about her work being premised on the belief “that all children can learn given enough time and support”. This is so like the work we are engaged in at Elsternwick.
Last winter in Toronto they had about 6ft of snow and she used the image of snow ploughs in a street when she talked about bringing all students learning outcomes up. The ploughs are like teachers following each other along so that no snow or in this case no child is left behind. The teachers look at achievement data and using this as a starting point saying what do I have to do today to improve this child.
Kathy and I have agreed to swap further ideas, research and connections so that our practice as leaders is also not private but informed by other leaders “in the field”.
Shift Happens updated video
August 5, 2008 – 1:24 amI have posted the updated version of Shift Happens as its still worth showing teachers and parents to set the context for change in education. It goes for about 7 minutes but hang in there - the discussion afterwards is worth it.
Get Smart - Open the Classroom Doors!
August 3, 2008 – 7:22 pmOne of the central themes of the Big Day Out this year was to “get smart and open the classrooms doors” so that instruction, which can often seen as private teacher business, can be seen and improved. Each year Darrell Fraser, the deputy secretary of the Department [DEECD] gathers together all the principals across Victoria so the vision for school improvement can be explored. It’s quite a symbolic and cultural move as 1500 of us including various heads of departments gather to hear and discuss the central themes of school improvement.
Over the past 3 years we have been fortunate to have Richard Elmore from Harvard as a critical friend as we continue to build the capacity of teachers and principals. Richard again presented on his theme of “if you cannot see it in the classroom it isn’t there” as did Geoff Masters, the current executive officer of ACER.
Richard Elmore make the case for networks adopting a knowledge framework. As the work advances in complexity we need to adopt a shared language [language is culture and culture is language]. He said that networks are where we should bring our problems of practice to: learning to use agreed protocols, staying in a descriptive rather judgemental voice and seeking the acquisition of new knowledge to solve the problems.
Geoff made a strong case for using assessment to identify the starting for instruction. He said a challenge for leadership was to ensure teachers used the data on student achievement from the previous year rather than having children start from a clean slate as does often happen [Manshak 2003: states it seems we dump knowledge each year as we move from teacher to teacher].
The final session for the day was to seek feedback from principals upon the 5e model of instruction we are busy developing for all teachers across the state. Readers of my blog will know from previous posts that I am on the principal working party for the development of the instructional model which has been very challenging. Principal feedback was encouraging. I did wonder how teachers might feel moving between novice and expert as they learn to deepen their instructional practice [Hattie].
New Learning Spaces
July 30, 2008 – 12:37 pm
This is another post on learning spaces we have constructed. These images are of a new building that houses years 5 and 6 students.
- The first image is of a large central spaces that facilitates learning in different size groups. There are digital whiteboards located at either end of the room with small banks of computers for individual students. Within this space we have defined some dedicated small group teaching spaces.
- The second image is the central area of the buildingwhich features a series of dicussion pits shaped different so that they are identified by students. There is a large bank of computers to the side for individual students. The whole building has wireless access points for students to use laptops in discussion pits or outside learning areas, still to be completed.
- The third image is again the central area of the building which has a dedicated science learning area complete with heating and freezing facilities, movable display benches, more discussion pits and internal student lockers.
- The fourth image is a discussion pit near a digital whiteboard for teachers or students to use.
Teachers and students are busy creating the learning conditions to maximise these new facilities, which we expect to continue to evolve over time. The central principles remain the same that deeper learning occurs in collaborative engaged communities around rich challenging tasks and resources. Students that continually reflect on their learning based on specific feedback from teachers are better able to take responsibility for their own learning and finally grouping students at their point of need for specific instruction requires teachers to continually track learning and adjust their teaching and feedback.
We are now busy working on substantially renovating very old buildings to provide similar facilities for younger students. Learning tours for parents are being organised in August this year. Other groups need to make appointments.
Kath Murdoch, an inspiration on how to learn within a social context.
July 28, 2008 – 2:59 pm
Readers of my blog will know that we have had Kath Murdoch working with our teachers at Elsternwick Primary over the past 4 years. Kath initially worked with the whole staff to develop some shared understandings about inquiry learning and then shifted to supporting teams. Her team work phase focused on effective planning and modelling key thinking strategies in classrooms. This team focus continues as well as the third phase of coaching individual teachers in instructional strategies and skills.
Last week Kath engaged us a whole staff in setting up and layering learning environments with not only rich tasks that challenged our thinking and understandings but also setting some norms and making explicit a few social competencies. She really challenged and inspired us to help individual students publicly set a learning and social goal for some sessions each week. She has recently published two books with lots of the strategies she used on the day: “Helping your students to work cooperatively” and “Personalised learning in the primary classroom” - both worth a read.
I was inspired by the multi layers of teaching she was able model during a session: provide a rich task, organise explicit social competencies that are chosen by students [in this case us] to work on, moving around the groups supporting them in their thinking - commenting where appropriate on the social competency chosen by the learner but also to write quotes made by learners during the session on the inclusive language they used. I did pose a question on how long it took to learn to layer lessons like that - her reply was that’s it’s all about the intentions - what are intentions of the lesson - if they are clear then the practice can follow.
Throughout the day there were little gems that stuck with me:
- modern small families that are complete with multiple TV and computers etc… are usually not structured in ways that demand our youth to negotiate with lots of siblings - school now takes that challenge.
- using a ball of wool that passes to students who are scattered around a room students can learn and visually reinforce the interconnectedness of learners.
- like a car needing to be serviced several times a year so do teachers in classrooms need to go back and workshop the social competencies we need to practice to build a cooperative learning community.
- use wait time not only after the initial question but after the response as well - for this allows learners to piggy back off each other in their thinking.
My thanks went to the two teachers who pubically shared their learning after being coached by Kath. Being open to receiving feedback that challenges aspects of our instructional practice is truly the act of a learner.
An inspiring day.
Kevin Donnelly’s article on direct instruction needs a response!
July 26, 2008 – 12:52 pmA few members of staff found the link to Kevin Donnelly’s article in the Australian recently which is, as they say offering a different opinion to the one I’m putting forward and suggested I read it.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24005037-25192,00.html
A few quick comments on his article, if I may
1. His comment about history saying the 70’s etc… innovations failed - whose history is he talking about - and to suggest that the poor need the discipline subjects [read traditional] more than the rich as they are culturally advantaged goes too far - yes the socio-economically poor need rich curriculum content like everyone does but rich curriculum content does not have to be delivered in traditional ways.
2. The curriculum gave way to learning to work in teams - seems to suggest that curriculum has a body of defined knowledge - does not react to new knowledge [how many planets do we have in our solar system?] and since when does the social aspect of learning or working not warranty attention.
3. Donnelly needs to learn that constructivism is a theory of learning not teaching and is not, as he would suggest, in direct contrast to teaching that make learning goals explicit, or specific feedback to students important. However his final point in this section on direct instruction is most likely the point of his article. Let’s all go back to the empty vessels theory of learning and pour information into student heads and have them restate this in tests and we prove that all is well with the world - forget inert knowledge is forgotten or any of the work of Perkins from Harvard.
Donnelly has been pushing a barrow for a long time - direct instruction - although I note that’s it been softened to direct at the start of lessons or for particular subjects and tries to justify this. Kevin no one is arguing with explicit instruction, challenge and feedback, content rich tasks, with learners inquiring and connecting understandings across disciplines for that’s what the progressive research suggests works.
Get up with it mate!
I shared my views on our leadership wiki and look forward to the continued dialogue.