You're my favourite class, too

A few weeks ago I discussed the curriculum innovations being implemented in Finland and their experiences with cross-curricular learning in the context of wider educational trends. It highlighted the importance of providing students opportunities to apply their learning to real-world contexts. This post develops that discussion by exploring how I can utilise my interdisciplinary connections in my classroom. I have many opportunities to form and develop interdisciplinary connections, illustrated in the mind map below: Interdisciplinary professional connections Interdisciplinary connections benefit me as a teacher. I am exposed to differing approaches to teaching and learning. Rather than hiding away with other English teachers, discussions with teachers across disciplines gives me opportunities to consider differing perspectives. Building these relationships establishes a stronger base from which to develop cross-curricular units of work and can address the perennial studen...

Having been critical of  teachers befriending students on Facebook , it might seem a little rich for me to now be espousing the values of social media as a tool. However, as a teacher connecting with other teachers, social media provides me with resources to develop my teaching practice. Although my use of Twitter is at best sporadic, when I do venture there I find a wealth of material for the areas I teach. I email these to myself and try to use them into my lessons where possible, making it a fairly productive use of social media. There are also opportunities to participate in Twitter discussions on areas of interest, such as edchatnz or engchatnz , and while I find these hard to follow (I probably need more practice) searching the hashtag is another way to get ideas. Pinterest's visual bulletin format provides snapshots into a range of different teaching resources, which I pin and frankly often forget ever seeing. Not nearly so useful... From a classroom perspective,...

John Donne's famous line 'no man is an island' has become a bit of cliche but that is because it is also a universal truth. Likewise, no teacher can function in isolation; to pervert Donne's metaphor, we operate within an interconnected metropolis. One of the things which continually impresses me about teachers is how we work together to improve practice by sharing of resources, ideas and feedback. My teaching practice would not have evolved as it has without this ongoing support. Not only does this support occur within the physical confines of a school, but is often also online, through communities such as Mindlab or subject associations. Wenger-tayner define a community of practice as: " Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly." Similarly Hoadley says a COP is"a community that shares practices", as well as "a process of k...

One of my current roles within my school is as Principal's Nominee. The responsibilities of this role feel enormous at times, and feel amplified when teachers ask my advice and guidance on assessment issues. Suddenly, I'm seen as the voice of authority on these issues. As I find my way through this role I have been identifying small changes that I would like to see made in some of our processes (it's not that we're doing things wrong, but I can see ways we can do things better). One of my challenges will be in  managing change in a way that's flexible and achievable for staff. The Agile Manifesto , introduced at the Mindlab session a couple of weeks back, is easily adaptable to a school situation and with many possible variations. Here's one set: Individuals and interactions  over assessment Effective teaching  over data management  Student centred  over teacher directed Responding to students  over following a scheme It's about reflective manag...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFdzz26g-EE This interesting and short video by DML research hub explores connected learning. Teachers in the video identify that there is no defined future, which leads to a need for students to be flexible, adaptive and creative. We need to ignite learning through sites of engagement, interest, and passion. The video identifies issues with fundamental questions that focus on outcomes -  what we want them to learn - and how the goals, content and everything else is defined by that. They argue that the core question should be what is the experience we want students to have, thereby focusing on engagement, and the needs of students.  Education is now 'whole village'. It is not just school that educates students. Learning is everywhere. Imagine concentric circles: connecting with interests, parents, communities, online. How do we bring people together to create greater 'connectedness'? I think that this is a key question: how ...

Do you think of yourself as someone who can programme a computer? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jRREn6ifEQ In this TED Talk, Linda Liukas discusses the poetry of programming.  A couple of years ago I had a go at the Python coding challenge through Grok, alongside several students in the school.  I didn't see poetry in the programming. I saw lots and lots of numbers and symbols that I had to arrange in a very precise way in order to make things work and on top of that I had to use mathematical formulas to solve problems and that really threw me. Thinking about it now, of course, I can see the parallels. There is a synchonicity and precision required to write both programmes and poetry and there As frustrating as the process was, though, it was exciting when those algorithms worked and I could make the computer do something that I had instructed. It's been the same when I've experimented with Scratch - but probably more exciting because of it's visual na...

Of late I have been reflecting more on my learning and applying it to my practices via this blog. I set it up a couple of years ago but had been sporadic in adding entries to it. My motivation for having a blog was to try to encourage me to reflect of on my teaching practice more regularly. I guess in theory it was good but although it gave me an avenue to think about my teaching it didn't really encourage more writing. I also felt a bit uncomfortable putting my ideas out there to the big wide world, which is kind of the purpose of a blog! With the Mindlab course, though, I'm going out of my comfort zone in all kinds of ways, and sharing my ideas and thoughts publicly is one of them. I have been making regular updates after each session, focusing on the aspect of the class that I found interesting and can apply to myself, my students or my school. I have found this a useful avenue to make me think about and clarify the ideas from the course rather than forgetting about them a...