Shirley Clarke says tell students the truth if their work needs work.

Posted on September 25, 2014 by mwalker

 

active learning through formative assessment

I’m re-reading Shirley Clarke’s book first published in 2008 on active learning and formative assessment.

One of the points she makes in the book is the link between higher self-esteem and a growth mindset.

  • We need to show enthusiasm for challenging tasks and ensure failure is followed with celebration of what’s been learned.
  • With a growth mindset you tell students the truth – if they are underachieving this is not shameful but a sign about the need to work harder
  • Praise effort and achievement rather than ability or personal attribute
  • Avoid external rewards as they lead students to avoid challenge, create excuses for failures, give up and become upset when faced with difficulty
  • The brain is a learning muscle that need some practice

I’m still reading on but felt the need to write.

I want to say that this makes sense to me. We often and unconsciously tie self-esteem to winning and to results. We do this as educators and as parents – I still ask how did you go when my daughter or son walk in from a game – but I try to avoid did you win or lose as the first question.

A parent emailed me recently worried about their child self-esteem after some recent teacher feedback. While the issue is always more complex than what’s first said and relationships are always in play I did caution about linking their child’s self-esteem to their work but rather see it as a work in progress needing further effort. I then linked them in to an article on this mindset stuff and praise. I haven’t heard back yet.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Feedback, parenting, Teaching, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

School timetables are factors in lesson structures!

Posted on September 3, 2014 by mwalker

I have a wondering whether a school timetable influences the way instruction is planned in classrooms?

Now I know the answer is obviously yes from a practical perspective but the deeper question I’m pondering is do those timetable influenced instructional decisions enhance or detract from learning.?

Primary school timetables are structured on the frequency and duration of specialist teacher lessons (e.g. PE, Music, Art, Mandarin subjects). These structures also provide the industrial working conditions of teachers.

At our school we try to offer a weekly 50 minute lesson in each specialist subject area once a week. Thus the school timetable is divided into 50 minute blocks. Secondly we recognise that teachers need time to plan collaborative for effective instruction so a double block of specialist lessons is allocated each week for each team (100  minute planning session). The net effect is that the school day is divided into three 100 minute blocks.

So now the question is do lessons in maths, reading or writing need to occur in similar 50 minute blocks and what instructional strategic decisions do teachers make for this to be useful?

The clip above reflects a view that learning can and perhaps should occur in smaller (less than 50 minute) and perhaps more frequent blocks ( I think frequency is an increasingly interesting factor here particularly when I heard psychologists like Andrew Fuller talk about the need for up to 26 repetitions for the brain to automise learning).

I have previously written about student attention or focus within a 50 minute period when studying mathematics.

I don’t have the answers but the questions are worth considering.

I have more recently been encouraging my teachers to end some lessons early and students have “fun” with some 5 minute fluency tasks or pay an exit ticket price with an answer – give me a sentence with a verb in, or a complex sentence, or read a word from a flash card or spot a base word in … or tell me an equation with the answer 7 or …. I think you get the point.

So start lesson with fluency task to tune in – end with some short games that promotes fluency – thus increase frequency. This may change some of the instructional strategies we choose to use. Interested in some teacher feedback here.

Posted in Instruction, school, school structures, Teaching, Video Clips | 1 Comment

A twist on parent teacher interviews

Posted on August 28, 2014 by mwalker

This week we completed our 2nd round of parent teacher interviews. They were held in August, which is just over half way through the academic school year. So what’s different you might ask?

The students 1/2 year written reports were sent home in June – I hear some saying isn’t that a bit late to hold interviews 2 months after mid year reports?

Well we are trying to take a more formative view of the assessment and reporting cycle to parents.

That is to say we assess to teach!

We collect standardized data twice in a school year – the first being after a young person settles into school in late February/March and then again after the mid year reports in July/August. The data is then analyzed by teaching teams to inform the next 4 to 5 instructional months. Teachers plot student and class learning goals (some in consultation with students) and then hold parent teacher interviews to explain to parents their child’s goals and in some cases what they might do to support their children’s academic achievement.

Each 2 – 4 weeks we reassess student progress and their needs usually by looking at student work samples and then plan accordingly.

So the twist – hold interviews to partner the work not simply report on the work!

Each parent left our interviews with sheet stating the key learning goals for their child – the feedback has been really positive from both teachers and parents.

Posted in Assessment, school, Teaching, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

What might Benjamin Franklin have to say to our young students?

Posted on August 19, 2014 by mwalker

franklin

 

At Monday’s school assembly I used Benjamin Franklin’s story to talk about the importance of effort and persistence as we strive for personal excellence.

“energy and persistence conquer all things”

Benjamin Franklin

I talked about his childhood days in Boston some 300 years ago where as one of 10 children his parents could only afford to send him to school for two years till the age of 10. He then worked for his father and at 12 years of age become an apprentice printer to his brother John. When he was 15 he founded the first independent newspaper “The New-England Courant”. 

What set Benjamin up for life successes was his voracious reading habit. He applied his energy and persistence to his reading. As can be seen from his, at times, rebellious yet successful life he played a key role in unifying the American colonies and today he is still referred to as “the first American”.

Today the same reading habit is required of us all if we are to taste life’s successes and we need to apply our energy and persistence to the task.

I have included this short clip on his life.

Posted in history, Leadership, Reading, school, Teaching, Video Clips | 1 Comment

“I am eleven” a tremendous resource to explore intercultural understandings.

Posted on August 19, 2014 by mwalker

I just had to share this resource which I have just ordered for my school. I and I should say we are really just starting to get immersed into the intercultural understanding space in schools. It’s an really interesting space to explore. We have just trialled e-pals with our sister school in China for two classes and hope to roll this out a bit more soon. The whole idea of connecting young people and then scaffolding some conversations is well to say the least an exciting space. Anyway enjoy the clip.

Posted in China, Sister School, Teaching, Video Clips | 7 Comments

What about measuring learning found through cultural travel experiences to counterbalance missed schooling and lower national test scores?

Posted on August 6, 2014 by mwalker

At the recent ACER conference in Adelaide Stephen Zubrick presented a paper on school attendance and the effects on academic performance. The Sunday Age in Melbourne picked up the story with a headline “No safe level of missing school, study finds”.

The authors methodology appears robust with over 415,000 students, 2.5 million absence records over a 5 year period and NAPL:AN test results in years 3,5,7,and 9 used to answer the question how does patterns of attendance and absence contribute to school and students outcomes over time?

So what did it find:

  • 92% attendance rates in primary school (compared to 99% in China) which means about 16 days absent. This increases in secondary to school to 24 days absence.
  • NAPLAN (our national literacy and numeracy test) scores decline with any absence from school (there is no ‘safe threshold’)
  • The effects of absence particularly unauthorised absence is greater in any disadvantaged group on NAPLAN results. A drop in unexplained absences may signal better students engagement with school and in the end may be more important than an overall drop in absences.
  • Absence patterns are set early in a young persons school life (Year 1) and are rarely altered until secondary school where they increase.
  • The effects of non-attendance accumulate over time – so days missed in years 3 are detectable in the years ahead

While none of this was earth shattering it was good to get some evidence that any absence has an effect and an accumulative effect of lowering academic performance as measured by NAPLAN scores. If you were to target any sort of absence unexplained or unauthorised absences are the first to tackle.

I have previously written on this topic about family travel during the school term and the need to seek approval or authorisation Our “living museum” is set to open soon where we will plot student travel on large wall sized maps and share stories around unique artefacts students bring back from their travel.

I have a wondering if we were to measure family connectedness (not necessarily linked to socio economic groupings) to academic achievement (I believe research has made a connect to advantage and academic achievement) would we see support for special sorts of student/family travel away from school.

It’s this special sorts of travel that I’m wanting to explore a lot more.

I’m making a distinction here between family holidays primarily lying on a Bali beach as opposed to touring through temples to learn more about Hindu religions, taking cooking classes learning the cultural stories behind why they use spices or certain food groups in India, looking at historical forts where moguls or certain dynasties presided for 100’s of years. It’s this second type of cultural experience where young ones get to learn about and share the stories of the places and people’s that I think starts to balance the learning missed through the schooling experience with life long cultural experiences. These cultural experiences once captured, reflected upon and shared have the potential to enrich the learning for many years to come. If we are going to drop a few scores on a national test through this absence then lets at least maximise the potential gains in years to come.

That’s the premise of my construction of a school “living museum” a place to share, reflect upon and learn about the cultural experiences of others – to hear the stories. We may then in time be able to support families as they plot cultural experiences on what makes a difference (not that I mind lying on a beach to rest). In this way we can support family connectedness, balance time away for schooling with other learning and hopefully enrich our communities lives through shared stories.

Posted in Family, politics, school, Travel | 1 Comment

What do you remember of the first 100 days of your school experience?

Posted on July 30, 2014 by mwalker

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This week I was invited to visit the foundation years classrooms where they celebrated the first 100 days of their schooling experience. Each child had to bring a collection of 100 things to share with the other students. They shared the last hour with their year 4 buddies.

I saw lots of different collections – everyone counting the different collections and the young ones were terrific in their 100 days party hats. A great idea from the foundation years teachers and one far different from my recollections of my first 100 days.

I think I was still in shock in my first 100 days at school as the nuns sat us down on hard seats for long periods reading the same “reader”. Oh by the way you had to read the words in the  “reader” correctly otherwise it was off the dunces corner or so we thought anyway. I’d be interested in your recollections?

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Spending too much time after lunch in early intervention conversations?

Posted on July 27, 2014 by mwalker

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Recently we had Marg Armstrong do a refresher at our staff meeting on the need to continually build relationships in classrooms and across the staff. We sat in a circle at our staff meeting and Marg regrouped us according to how far we were born away from the school. It was interesting exercise – we then had to find a connections between people in groups of 6.

We then sat around in a circle talking about ways we could more regularly do work in circles in our classrooms (and some of the barriers) e.g. call the attendance roll. Circles are part of the primary prevention work we need to do to build effective classroom learning communities. Young people, and indeed everyone, learns better in safe and trusting communities where you won’t be put down or teased for taking a risk and trying to put forward an answer or point of view.

Marg suggested if you are spending some or lots of time in the early intervention section of the triangle (e.g. resolving problems from the school yard) its telling you your nor doing enough of the primary prevention work – sounds simple but how quickly this drops off as the busy academic schedule rolls on !

Sound familiar hope this has been helpful.

Posted in curriculum, school, Teaching | 3 Comments

Alberta and Victoria: separated by two great oceans but close in educational thinking.

Posted on July 16, 2014 by mwalker

I have just finished rereading a 2012 research paper on transforming education in Alberta Canada. I found it a great read. I didn’t know for example that Alberta has been Canada’s highest performing province for over a decade.

Andy Hargreaves wrote in the foreword the paper seeks a “more sophisticated and more demanding process of assessment for learning”. Readers of this blog will know of my interest in this whole area of assessment for learning for I see teachers as inquirers or researchers collecting and analysing data, providing feedback to students, using evidence to alter instructional strategies and then measuring the effect of that innovation.

The paper did suggest that a tipping point is “expecting students to develop a broad range of competencies while continuing to measure their progress on a few core skills is a set up for failure”. While this is not new thinking the challenges for schools in measuring a broad range of student activities are many.

One such challenge for schools as the paper suggest is “Teach Less Learn More” where high performing systems like Finland ask their teachers to teach 600 hours per year as opposed to places like Victoria where we require our teachers to teach upwards of 900 hrs per year and Alberta even more – 1,000 hrs. If we do not provide the time, culture, process and systems for teachers to inquire into their practice then how can we hope to improve student learning – certainly the use of assessments for learning requires that time.

We at EPS are continuing to restructured time within the working week to both maximise our use of time across the week which also includes reducing our teaching loads to 850 hrs per week.

The paper sets out 12 dimensions for transforming education in Alberta – many of these I found similar to those in Victoria. A few for interest sake:

  • Curriculum Development: reducing the number of specific outcomes and promoting inquiry based learning that require discipline knowledge, the ability to synthesise information, critical thinking and the ability to design.
  • Professional Development and Autonomy: where professional learning must be based on research, implemented through a practice base model and designed to take pedagogical risks if we are to promote a greater sense of teacher self efficacy to help student learning.
  • School Leadership: with a significant number of school leaders due to retire in the next 5 years and the need for the school to become the locus of control for system improvement  new models of leadership and supportive programs are required.

I’ll conclude my notes on this informative paper saying that any sustainable innovation needs a relentless discipline, perseverance and complete indefatigability. Could not have said it better Andy!

Posted in curriculum, Leadership, school, teacher efficacy, Teaching | 1 Comment

Mandarin the 4th most popular language in primary schools! (updated)

Posted on July 9, 2014 by mwalker

Mandarin-Chinese

I woke up yesterday to read from a local newspaper that Mandarin is now the fourth most-popular choice for primary school pupils in Victoria.

The article went on to say:

The news comes as schools prepare for the introduction of compulsory foreign language education, starting with prep next year. Traditional European languages fell from favour in the most recent figures. The Education Department findings — conducted last August — reveal 29,760 government primary school pupils learned Mandarin last year, up 77.7 per cent on 2011.

This is in stark contrast to the picture 2 years ago where the then EDUCATION Minister Peter Garrett was quoted blaming parents for the national decline in students studying Asian languages at school. Mr Garrett conceded take-up of Asian languages had dropped despite a $60 million program designed to lift their profile in schools. “The fact is we don’t have a driving culture at this point in time which from a parental point of view, we want our kids to be in these schools learning these Asian languages,” Mr Garrett said.

So what has happened in the last 2 years to change this picture? Firstly lets acknowledge there will always be a range of local and national factors involved in changes of this sort.

Locally I know 6 years ago we teaching Italian and it was only when the teacher with permanent status transferred to another school that we were able as a community to look at changing to Mandarin. Schools with limited budgets usually cannot afford to run two different language streams.

Nationally I feel communities increasingly recognise our ties to Asia and not just economic ties. My comment to Mr Garratt 2 years ago was my parent community recognised this 6 years ago and continue to support the Mandarin Program but they are not helped by short-term political agendas with still shorter term support budgets – voice the vision and say the course.

I note that the Australian Curriculum is still revising the Mandarin learning expectations and unlike other languages has pathways for three learner groups – second language learners, background language learners and first language learners. I think that’s sensible as Year 11/12 students were telling me that having to compete at VCE (end of schooling examination) with native speaking Chinese is one of the main reasons they drop out of the languages at this point.

The Australian Curriculum has set a target of 350 hrs of language study in the 7 years of primary schooling. At my school we have 50 minute weekly language lessons combined with some whole school special events and some cross curricular work to make this time.

All this sounds great – however we are larger school that offers similar lessons in music, visual arts and physical education with teachers in full-time positions. I would suggest this can be harder to do in smaller schools particularly with no additional funding.

Update:

I recently heard a podcast from ABC Radio National on Asia ready schools from a recent Access Asia conference in Sydney. The short 10 minute interviews of two principals was inspiring for their work on supporting young people developing Asian intercultural understandings. I think the things that I took away from this was the need for greater cooperation between schools to share e.g. student travel (it’s happening in Bendigo), need to see “neighbours as people all around the world” and that we need to broaden the notion that Asia = China – there’s so many more countries.

Posted in China, Chinese Language, curriculum, school | 1 Comment

Japanese Prime Minister apologies for WW2 atrocities in seeking a future of closer relationships.

Posted on July 9, 2014 by mwalker

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In an historic event the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe addressed the Australian Parliament I think to seek closer ties between the two countries. These ties of course include valuable trade deals and increased tourism. His father, Shintaro Abe, was a former foreign minister of Japan who visited Australia to seek trade deals many years ago.

In a very frank speech spoken in English Mr Abe both acknowledged and apologised for the many atrocities that were committed in WW2 particularly the death marches of Sandakan.

ww2sandakan

from the Australian War Memorial the following summary of those death marches:

“Australian prisoners were sent to Sandakan in 1942 to build an airstrip. At first they were treated reasonably well. Gradually, however, rations were reduced and bashings increased.

By late 1944, with Allied forces advancing toward Borneo, the Japanese decided to send about 2,000 Australian and British prisoners westward to Ranau, in Borneo’s rugged interior. Weak and sick prisoners staggered for about 260 kilometres along jungle tracks. Many died on the way, their bodies never recovered. Those unable to continue were killed; those too weak to march had been left behind in Sandakan, where all died or were killed. Only six – all Australians – out of about a thousand sent to Ranau survived the war.

The Sandakan “death march” remains the greatest single atrocity committed against Australians in war.”

These graphic images tell the story.

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I’m sorry if the images offended anyone but in remembering our history we hope not to continue to repeat its lessons.

Or to quote the classics “To know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child. ” – Cicero

“Lest we forget”

 

Posted in history | 1 Comment

World Congress Art Educators visit EPS!

Posted on July 8, 2014 by mwalker

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This week our school hosted an international group of art educators here for the 34th World Congress of the International Society for Education through Art. This group of educators camera from countries like Japan, China, America, Brazil, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Singapore.

This group photo was taken behind an amazing mural of a chinese story about the things young people do in the morning in China. The mural was constructed principally by Linda our Art teacher and Bec our former Mandarin teacher as they worked with our years 3-6 students.

There were several themes to our tour one being that you can learn through the medium of art in this case about young people in another country so that we can develop intercultural understandings.

My thanks to Linda who gave up some of her holidays to prepare and host the delegation of international guests.

Posted in Art, Teaching | 1 Comment

Reinventing Writing is that possible?

Posted on July 6, 2014 by mwalker

Recently I stumbled upon the work of Vicki Davis a classroom teacher (middle or secondary I think) in the States who is working on using technology to reinvent writing. The clip above is long (20 minutes) but I think she makes some points that are applicable to higher elementary or primary aged students particularly if they have access to a 1:1 program. She makes some points are also applicable to lower year levels as well – you be the judge.

  • revision: truly worked pieces are revised some 15 plus times but not with the teacher as the only feedback loop (collaborative writing communities give and receive feedback from others – using technology like google docs or notes)
  • audience – those students who only write for the teacher have missed the point about knowledge and understanding – its shared – have differing audiences is a critical point here – here again technology (wiki / blog / ebook etc..).

We are exploring writing here at EPS and I’m wanting to broaden the debate beyond teachers in classrooms. What are your thoughts?

 

Posted in Feedback, Instruction, Teaching, writing | 1 Comment

A crash course in Chinese History.

Posted on July 4, 2014 by mwalker

As crash courses go and allowing for a few mistakes like the great wall was started by the Qin dynasty and the Ming dynasty, like the others, just expanded and fixed the Wall or that Chinese recorded history is 5000 not 2000 years old this short clip is worth viewing for teachers.

 

Posted in China, Instruction, Teaching, Uncategorized, Video Clips | 1 Comment

“education is not a horse race”

Posted on July 3, 2014 by mwalker

horsemen001

Over the holidays I came across an easy to read article by Elliot Einser on Benjamin Bloom. Essentially the article made a some key points about Bloom’s work:

  • education as a process was an effort to realize human potential, indeed, (it was) an exercise in optimism. (its why I believe teachers need to show optimism)
  • What Bloom wanted to reveal (through his taxonomy) was what students were thinking about when teachers were teaching, because he recognized that it was what students were experiencing that ultimately mattered. (that s why I now ask students about whats going on during a walk-through)
  • Goal attainment rather than student comparison was what was important. (I think he would have approved of what we know as WALTS). The variable that needed to be addressed, as Bloom saw it, was time. It made no pedagogical sense to expect all students to take the same amount of time to achieve the same objectives. (this is a question I pose to teachers after teaching for two weeks on a topic and looking at who can now prove understanding – what happens to those that need more time?)
  • Basically, his message to the educational world is to focus on target attainment and to abandon a horse-race model of schooling that has as its major aim the identification of those who are swiftest. Speed is not the issue, achievement or mastery is, and it is that model that should be employed in trying to develop educational programmes for the young. Mastery learning was an expression of what Bloom believed to be an optimistic approach to the realization of educational goals.
  • The traditional expectations of a bell-shaped distribution of human performance was, more often than not, a reflection of social privilege and social class. Children who enjoyed the benefits of habits, attitudes, linguistic skills and cognitive abilities available to the more privileged members of society were likely to do well at school on tasks for which those attitudes and skills were relevant. (This is one of the reasons I want to stress vocabulary development in our literacy instruction as those with through richer experiences have greater vocabulary) To confer additional privileges on those who already had a head start was to create an array of inequities that would eventually exact extraordinary social costs. And since environment plays such an important role in providing opportunity to those already privileged, it seemed reasonable to believe that by providing the kind of support that the privileged already enjoyed to those who did not have it, a positive difference in their performance would be made.

As an optimist you could see why I loved the article which is freely available from UNESCO.

I also found a useful image for teachers to think about when asking young students to do something in class.

bloom-verbs

Posted in Assessment, curriculum, differentiation, Instruction, Instructional Rounds, Teaching | 1 Comment