PBL

I have now completed my first year of teaching PBL and thought I would share some of my thoughts. As mentioned earlier the latest PD session helped heaps with the planning of PBL projects. I have enjoyed teaching the projects this year as they are varied and interesting for the children. The children have been engaged more than I have experienced in previous type topic work.

The one thing I was worried about with this approach to learning was how the children would cope with more independence in the way they learn. I have found it not too bad as we kind of scaffold it a bit at the start of the year for the children. We did have to teach them some self managing skills at the start, however this improved  as the year went on. So overall I have been pleased with the children's improvement in self regulation and independence.  The children have done a lot of work in teams which has had its ups and downs. However the children have wised up to who they choose to work with and have learnt new skills on how to work collaboratively with children who they may not normally work with.  

I know at the start of next year we plan to get the children to do more work on working in teams at which should set them up good for the year.

Maths- PD- Wendy Dent

After reading the Boaler book it was great to get the opportunity to attend the Wendy Dent Workshop.  I had been questioning how this looks in the classroom and how they manage the programme. She shared some results indicating that the children's national standard results improved by using this approach to maths, for at least the older children.
I agree that maths talk is important and it really does improve the depth of the children's understanding. While observing at the school it was clear that there had been some guidelines set with children in how to work with their math buddy. There were posters and reflective questions that were used to guide the math sessions.
The children were in pairs mainly on our observations which I thought did allow the children to confidently share their math thinking and not get lost in a group. I liked when children shared their work and they had set it so that one speaks and the other child writes. Hopefully by doing it this way will ensure that each child has the opportunty to both be heard.
From attending this workshop I plan to work on giving the children more opportunities to experience working with someone of a different ability on a word problem. I need to work hard on setting up systems with children sharing and asking questions some of the posters and reflective questions will help.
I found that this school on whole teach by this problem solving way. However some classes appeared to have worked on some aspects of maths and had teaching moments. You would need to do this I think as the children would be limited to the strategies they could use if they didn't know them.

Maths is the hidden secret to understanding the world

Maths


Intitally I thought this video is not going to help me in my teaching, but actually I was wrong. It fitted in with the book I recently read on Maths. It talks about showing things in different ways and he gives an example of 4/3 and how this can be represented in many different ways. I thought this was interesting as it made me think about the importance of the children showing problems and mathematical situations in different ways. With the help of working in different abiltiy groups this could help as the children will bring their different ideas. An important part that needs to be remembered is that by representing a math problem in different ways can really help to show the understanding they have.

This guy showed a huge passion for maths and he talks about using imagination and changing your perspective which leads to showing empathy.

Conclusion- Understanding something really deeply has to do with changing your perspective. When you are studying maths changing your perspective can help you be open to new ideas

Self Regulated learners in writing

Article


This was an interesting study on self regulation and writing. It is quite an interesting piece as it talks about how they used writing to help some children become self regulated learners. They broke up the persuasive writing process to teach them to be more self regulated. There was a lot of modelling and setting up criteria and goals to help the children understand where they are going when writing a persuasive piece. They talked and were quite clear what they needed to do to write a good persuasive piece. This along with looking at how they can work collaboratively to improve a piece of writing helped the children to become more self regulated as they were taking responsibility for their learning. Another important aspect is that the children set goals that are achievable and precise so that they are clear with where they are going. I thought it was interesting that one of the students who the teacher thought would struggle with being self regulated actually wasn't as they set themselves realistic and achievable goals.
The fact that it mentions that a student carried this idea of setting achievable goals over to their own personal life is great as ultimately we want the children to transfer the skills they learn in the class into the real world. This will definitely help them to become, as one of my previous blogs mentions, 21st century learners.
The feedback the children got was also an important part of the process too, as it needed to be focused on the goals set. Which in my own personal life I prefer feedback based on what I am working on not on other aspects.
The teacher said that it is important for the children to be driving their own learning. Ultimately that is what I would like the children to do to help to become a self regulated learner. I feel sometimes this would be easier to do with older children. However over the last few years I have started to give the children I teach more control over their work. I will continue to work on this as my aim is to get the children to be self regulated especially in the collaborative environment.

TED Talk-How to make a library that makes kids want to read

Literacy-Libraries

I watched this Ted Talk about some people that were interested in changing libraries in public schools in New York. To get rid of the idea that libraries are musty old boring places. So this guy was bought in to re image so came up with three options 1- a shh free zone Option 2-OWL- rename it Open Wonder Learn or other thing that fits- Option 3-based on read (red) Red Zone-Are you Red?- But needed to rethink these as not many kids didn't even really know much about a library.  He came with this logo L!brary.
However this was not the end of it as then the architect came back and said there is a problem and said there is a gap between the shelves and the ceiling can you fix it? So they came up with the idea to put in pictures of the children above the shelves as mural reading and enjoying themselves. Then other schools wanted more and so they added other art and ideas from the children. They got artists in to come up with ideas and put up materials in this area etc.
This talk made me think about how can we make Libraries more engaging. I have visited schools in Melbourne where they made the library the hub of their learning as it was in the middle of the school usually in behind the office. I liked this as it was often a hive of activity, however you have to consider more than the location of it. Libraries have to look different than they have in the past and the libraries have to offer more than they have in the past. I recently enjoyed the experience of having some people from the Christchurch Library sharing their knowledge on Matariki. This was great and the children were very engaged in the experience and they also were interested in going to the library to learn more about Matariki because of their visit. A library today has to have the resources that help a child to learn and have a variety of different resources. I think this talk has make me think libraries also need to be attractive in order to get them to walk in the door and enjoy. I like the display of some art work in the spaces, as couldn't a library be also a place to appreciate the Arts as these days they often have to be multi purpose buildings.

Personalities

I am currently working collaboratively in a modern learning environment and have been able to observe what it is like to work so closely. It made me think what makes a successful collaborative environment. At first I think you need to look at the people involved in this as no matter what training you have had for this kind of environment, it is the people that play a big role in this.  So what personalities do you need to have in this type of environment to work well.

I found this article which I liked when they talked about how it is not the introvert v's the extrovert situation that we need to be thinking about.  Personal and emotional intelligence is very important in ensuring a group of people can work collaboratively. Being able to read the situations and emotions of the people you work with can help with working together.
One thing Mayer's research has shown is that people who are able to better understand and react to people's personalities tend to be happier in the workplace. "We find that on the job people with higher personal intelligence are happier and more likely to appear agreeable and helpful to more people," says Mayer.
You can't really change people's personalities and hopefully Principals and Board of Trustees  consider this when employing and think about who might work best with this person. It is not always the case for many reasons. This article made sense to me as how you interact with your colleagues is very important and if you except their personalities the easier it is to get along. I think respect is also a big thing that needs to be considered when working with others in this collaborative modern learning environment.

We need to work well together otherwise the affects of this will be on the children's learning and the general hum of the environment.  It doesn't matter how nice your environment is the teaching will not be great unless the teachers work well together as a collaborative team.

Collaboration v's Co-operation

Co-operation v's Collaboration

As my first post I wanted to talk a bit about collaboration versus co-operation. I found the following  article interesting as it helped to clarify the difference between the two. I think that many people are not clear on this and the benefits of collaboration. I was lucky enough to visit some schools over in Melbourne and most of these were new schools built in the modern learning environment type style. This however did not change how some of the teachers taught they tended to still teach the same way and just shared the space especially because most of them had a common area in the middle. This was not working collaborating but was working by co-operating with each other and sharing the space. Co-operating is easy to do and I have done this for many years with planning and sharing space etc. I thought this was okay until I read more on collaboration and the schools started being built in the new way with large open spaces. In education collaborating is important and will help us to gain more knowledge in many areas, broaden our horizons and I think be thinking more on a higher level. By working in a collaboration way it helps get the best out of everyone that is working in this environment, which is a good thing.  Cartoon video I like this video as it sets it out clearly how collaboration can work. I believe we are on this earth to learn from others and to build on what we know and share ideas. This helps us to come up with new ideas which is definitely what we want to achieve. We know that in the 21st century we need to move forward with our thinking so doing it by collaboration has surely got to mean that we can move forward in education.  I will continue to develop my thinking in this area with the help of gaining more knowledge and experiences both in the class and from outside of the classroom. As I have where to now questions I will answer hopefully in the future.
Questions I have that plan to discuss more on here. 

What is the best environment for collaboration to happen?
What kind of personality works best in this environment? 
How do we past on this collaboration to the children?