The Open Classroom

Visit Working together 2 make a difference

I have just been listening to Jenny Luca being interviewed on the Wicked Decent Learning podcast. It is a very inspiring listen. Among other things Jenny explained about the ning she has set up to “detail the efforts of educators and their students who are doing their bit to think outside of themselves and raise funds for worthy causes. We encourage you to join this space, create a new page for your school and start detailing what you and your students are aiming to do to help others less fortunate than yourselves. Chart your progress on your page and we’ll see what we can achieve by working together to make a difference.” I have joined and I am looking forward to sharing it with my school.

Source: Jo McLeay

I was lucky enough to go to a workshop on “Comprehension for All” yesterday led by Diane Snowball and Faye Bolton put on by Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (Victoria). The strategies that Diane and Faye showed us and that they recommend teachers to teach to the students are:

1. Predicting/prior knowledge use

2. Answering and forming questions

3. Thinking aloud about reading

4. Using text structures and features

5. Visualizing and creating visual representations

6. Summarising

We went through the methods of teaching these strategies and heard about the importance of using the language with students. I thought it was a worthwhile workshop to attend and allowed me the time to stop and reflect on what I am doing in the classroom when students plaintively say, “But I don’t GET it, Miss.”

There is a set of CDs available with film clips of classrooms where the teaching is being done in this way and I thought it would be helpful to view these so I ordered a copy of the Years 6 to 9 CD.

I would like to finish with a quote from Diane: “Research has shown that comprehension instruction can improve the reading comprehension of all readers, even beginning readers and struggling older readers. It will help your students to understand, remember and communicate with others about what they read. Most importantly, it will help your students want to read more!” And that’s what I would like for my students.

Image attribution: ‘CompCommDay2′
www.flickr.com/photos/59479445@N00/2627204991

Source: Jo McLeay

I was lucky enough to go to a workshop on “Comprehension for All” yesterday led by Diane Snowball and Faye Bolton put on by Australian Literacy Educators’ Association (Victoria). The strategies that Diane and Faye showed us and that they recommend teachers to teach to the students are:

1. Predicting/prior knowledge use

2. Answering and forming questions

3. Thinking aloud about reading

4. Using text structures and features

5. Visualizing and creating visual representations

6. Summarising

We went through the methods of teaching these strategies and heard about the importance of using the language with students. I thought it was a worthwhile workshop to attend and allowed me the time to stop and reflect on what I am doing in the classroom when students plaintively say, “But I don’t GET it, Miss.”

There is a set of CDs available with film clips of classrooms where the teaching is being done in this way and I thought it would be helpful to view these so I ordered a copy of the Years 6 to 9 CD.

I would like to finish with a quote from Diane: “Research has shown that comprehension instruction can improve the reading comprehension of all readers, even beginning readers and struggling older readers. It will help your students to understand, remember and communicate with others about what they read. Most importantly, it will help your students want to read more!” And that’s what I would like for my students.

Image attribution: ‘CompCommDay2′
www.flickr.com/photos/59479445@N00/2627204991

Source: Jo McLeay

I found this Ted Talks video via the Edtech Crew and Mr Robbo who was interviewed in the last podcast. (Mr Robbo is a 2nd year teacher who uses blogging in his teaching of PE). I was blown away and will be showing it to my students this week. Hope you like it.

Source: Jo McLeay

Love this slideshare by Rachel Boyd. The abstract for this session said: “Are you overwhelmed by the spectrum of choice in Web2 and ICT? This “taster” session will examine how to pick the cream from the crop of the field of Web2 and choose what will best support learning for your students. Great for beginners, we will also look at practical ideas for the management and implementation of ICT in your classroom.” Thanks to Amanda Marrinan for the heads up.

Source: Jo McLeay

I have just started the year 8s blogging and they are in the very early stages, still making mistakes, giving away too much personal information, using copyright images without permission and writing their posts without making sure their potentially global audience will understand their idiosyncratic spelling and slang references. Soon this will improve and then I will link to the blog and hopefully facilitate some global connections. But one student has really got it. I got a comment today on the class blog:
“To Mrs Mcleay,
Did you hear about the 2009 Student Blogging Challenge on this website. It looked interesting and I was wondering what it was? It looked like we could maybe try and look into it for a challenge.”

I was so happy that one of my students had found this site and made a comment encouraging our class to get involved. It is a great idea and I am looking forward to getting us started. This is some information about the challenge: “The challenge begins in March 2009 and continues to May 2009. Weekly challenges are posted here on this class blog. Students can complete as many as they wish to try. Please fill in the google form below if you wish to register either your own class blog or if students wish to register their own individual blog.”

Source: Jo McLeay

In this post I am going to do what I often ask my students to do - step back and reflect on some amount of learning they have been involved in. As you may remember (have to review - it was a while ago) I started a new school after having a term of Long Service Leave (I guess it might be called a sabbatical in some places). It turned out to be a lot easier than I supposed getting back into teaching after such a long break. Only once did I feel a sense of relentlessness at the pace of life at school. But that was soon over. I am remembering peoples names better than I expected as well. Coming from a school where we had four periods a day of 75 minutes each, I found the new school’s seven periods of 43 minutes each to be strange. But it has a certain rhythm to it, and of course, you see the students more frequently. Maybe that’s why remembering names is easier. I am teaching Geography now, which I haven’t taught for over ten years and I am enjoying the discipline. I love this video which I found through Jess McCulloch on the same topic that we are exploring in Year 8 Geography the diversity of Asia and the challenging of stereotypes. I am loving the energy and life of the Year 8 Homegroup I have (who I teach for English and Religious Education as well). We are getting into blogging and literature circles, and I am sure I will be reflecting on those activities when we are a bit more into them.

Some of you may know that I have been challenged with my family life with the serious accident of my 17 year old son Kieran. He was just about to start Year 12, and was newly appointed vice captain of the Under 18s Victorian state gridiron team. These things have had to be put on hold while he has recovered from a subdural haematoma and three broken vertebrae. Luckily, it looks like there is no permanent damage, but he will be doing his year 12 over two years as he can only go to school part time starting from tomorrow. He fully realises how lucky he is, but there are some things that he will not be able to resumes for several months (such as driving - he was an exemplary learner driver, and contact sports).

Another thing that I have enjoyed more than I ever thought I would has been the twitter 365 photo challenge and the 2009 365 flickr photo project. Here are some tips if you are participating as well. I am blogging about these here. It is such a great record of the daily ups and down of life, and a challenge to look deeper at my life and see a story in it. After the somewhat rocky beginning to my 2009, I am looking forward to the rest of it, and starting to fee more confident in my new role at my new school. One of the best things was that I was called up by the Head of school and given the additional title of coordinator of ICT pedagogy. It was a great boost indeed to my feeling of belonging at the school.

Source: Jo McLeay

Today, all teachers at my new school had a PD (Professional Development) day on an approach we will be using as a whole school, Circle Time. Wellbeing Australia defines circle time as “a democratic and creative approach used to consider a wide range of issues affecting the whole school community. The strength of circles is that they address values, attitudes and skills within a structured, safe and supportive framework.”

The PD was facilitated by Sue Roffey and it was great not to be talked at and endure death by powerpoint on such a hot day. Sue encouraged us to get involved and the workshop was experiential. It had two purposes that I could see: increasing our knowledge about circle time and our confidence in using this pedagogy, and to build up the staff as a team, given that the staff numbers this year have more than doubled to 26 teachers. A bit of research turned up the following info about Sue: “Dr Sue Roffey is an educational psychologist and academic at the University of Western Sydney. She’s spent many years teaching children with learning difficulties, and now believes that children’s emotional literacy, that is, their understanding of themselves and how they relate to others, is a crucial but sometimes neglected part of their education.”

Sue herself describes circle time thus: “Circle Time is a structured framework for social and emotional learning and promoting a positive class ethos. This means it has powerful potential to reduce bullying, increase resilience, explore values and improve communication skills. It deals with serious and important issues such as understanding feelings and reducing prejudice in a way which is highly motivating for students.” There are always three rules for a circle time meeting: everyone must listen to the person who is speaking to the group, no put downs, and everyone has the right to “pass” if they do not wish to or cannot respond to a question. It is mostly about inclusion and about respect. Sue has a number of publications that I will be following up.

At first glance it seems as though it is especially suitable for primary schools, but after seeing how well it worked for us as a group of adults, I will have no hesitation in using this technique in secondary classes. I have a year 8 homegroup this year and I am so looking forward to getting to know them. I will spend a bit of time tomorrow decorating my homegroup room ready to welcome the students on Monday.

For those who have not seen my 365 challenge photos, I thought I’d put two of them here: My colleague, office mate and fellow English teacher, Mel, and a glimpse of my desk in our brand new building. The value of today for me as a new staff member was that it helped me and the many other new teachers get to know more about each other and about the values of the school. I will report back on the experience of using this pedagogy as time goes on. It is anticipated that we will be doing it once a week for about twenty minutes with the students in our homegroups, so I should something to report soon.

Source: Jo McLeay

I have been so fortunate to have a four month break from teaching by taking one term of long service leave that led into the long summer holidays. Looking back I know I really needed the break. I learnt so much during my time off, through my PLN, but the main thing has been the time to indulge in activities that add balance to my life. Being able to go to the gym more often, starting to go bushwalking and since January 1, the participation in the 365 photo project have been so important. My participation in the project was inspired by Bud Hunt and Dean Shareski, who talked about “seeing mindfully” and “I know I shoot way better photos, look for great lighting, interesting angles and simply appreciate the world around me”. I see that happening to me too. I have started a blog, 365 Countdown, to record this.

I spent heaps of time cleaning up after years of ignoring the state of my house and not realizing how important it is to my mental wellbeing to have a clean and tidy house. I have loved getting to know about Flylady as a way of approaching managing my house and seeing how important it is not to let work get in the way of this. I know that in setting goals and ideals we often try to be really idealistic, and my children look at the clean house and the menu for the week posted on the fridge and knowingly say to each other “it won’t last”, but I feel I’m in a much better place than I have been in the past, whatever happens.

Last night I was fortunate enough to listen to a few sessions of Educon 21 and heard a discussion moderated by Chris Lehmann on “Building Systems And Structures Around What You Believe”. The description of the session is: “The myth of the single teacher, bucking the odds to be that one great teacher in a school may make for a great Hollywood movie, but it rarely — if ever — leads to lasting, effective change. We must examine the manner in which our schools and classrooms are set up so that the greatest number of students, teachers and even principals can thrive and learn and feel valued. This session is focused on looking at institutional change, so that attendees can explore what they value and then examine the systems in their districts, schools and classrooms that must change to reflect those values.” Chris asked: What are the values you would want to be embedded in your classroom and/or school? The collated responses are here.

It made me realize that as part of a new school (only two years old) I will have a chance to have some influence on what the values might be for the school. One of the gifts I take away from my previous school is the knowledge of the Learner profile of the International Baccalaureate Organisation. This learner profile “provides a long-term vision of education. It is a set of ideals that can inspire, motivate and focus the work of schools and teachers, uniting them in a common purpose.” The Learner Profile states that IB learners strive to be:

• Inquirers
• Knowledgeable
• Thinkers
• Communicators
• Principled
• Open-minded
• Caring
• Risk-takers
• Balanced
• Reflective

I think this is a great description of the values that I would like to see embedded in my classroom and hopefully the school. I must say that I am looking forward immensely to starting at my new school and to continuing my learning journey with my PLN on twitter, plurk and flickr to name a few. I am looking forward to a return visit to NECC in Washington DC in June. I am so grateful for so many opportunities, and look forward to a great 2009.

Image credit: ‘Tree toss1′ www.flickr.com/photos/33852245@N00/82543369

Source: Jo McLeay

It sounds like something from a cheesy Hollywood movie or TV show, but an East Texas teacher is missing out on a prestigious award because he refuses to miss 2 days of school to attend a mandatory “conference”.

Via the Lufkin Daily News comes this story about high school Math instructor Bill Newell. Mr. Newell was, in effect, selected as one of the 10 best teachers in the state of Texas by the University of Texas.

The award came with a catch:

Newell learned that, in order to receive the award, he had to attend the conference.

“They didn’t say anything about that in their application,” he said. “I thought it was a no-win situation. If I didn’t go, I wouldn’t get the award. If I did go, I didn’t think it would be fair to my students. My students depend on me to be here every day. They always say to me, ‘What will we do if you’re not here?’ I get that all the time, because they’re so used to seeing me all the time.”

Not wanting to miss his classes, Newell explained the situation to award administrators to no avail.

Mr. Newell will also have to forfeit a $2250 cash award for his refusal to miss 2 days of work.

It sounds like some people at the University of Texas has their priorities a little messed up, doesn’t it?

Source: Mike in Texas