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,...

Teachers want students engaged in their learning and who apply that learning in a real-world context. Isn't that the point - being able to use what is learned in class? Too often, though, what is taught in our classrooms remains firmly within the domain of that subject area and students fail to understand how it applies to their worlds. Last year three departments in my secondary school endeavoured to create a cross-curricular unit for Year 9 classes. The theory was fantastic - we would teach different aspects of the topic and students would present us with an assessment which we would mark individually using our respective curriculum criteria. In practice, it was pretty much an example of what not to do in cross-curricular teaching. Our lessons were out of sync, some teachers didn't follow the scheme, and some didn't do any presentations.  However, the experience did show me how it could be done and I saw that there could be benefits to doing it. We need to show st...

Agency is one of those terms often bandied about in school and I admit that it is one that I struggle to define. Reflecting on the term, though, it seems to me that student agency is something that I encourage - albeit intermittently, perhaps - in my classroom. For me, agency is about student taking ownership of their learning. By developing their capacity to do things, giving them choices and control over their learning. There are different ways that I try to do this with my students, and I can certainly see even more ways to be effective in empowering it. I want my students to be more self-directed in their learning. In the past, when I've given students the opportunity to work collaboratively to construct knowledge of a text, for example, I have had concerns about the amount of work some students did, as well as the quality of their work output. I think that this concern has become an obstacle for me, too, because it makes me reluctant to transfer further control for their ...

As teachers, we dream of students engaged in their learning, exploring their passions in a myriad of ways. The reality is more often students doing work that is dictated by assessment needs. As part of our Mindlab session this evening, we were asked in small groups to discuss assessment practices. As three high school teachers, there are aspects of our assessment practice that we would like to change. One of the primary reasons is that we think that changes in assessment would benefit our students by increasing agency of their learning. Among the issues with assessment that we identified are: standard /assessment is driving the teaching and learning rather than teaching and learning driving assessment. NCEA and National Standards pressures 'exam' based assessment tasks assessments predominantly individually assessed where work could be submitted as group - how to manage this? over-testing within school reliance on written assessments Overall, we would prefer an i...

I've seen growth mindset discussed at various times in forums such as Twitter. The concept interested me so I had done a wee bit of research on what it was, although that was admittedly as far as I went. The traditional view of intelligence was that it is innate and there is nothing you can do about it, no matter how hard you work. I see this attitude reflected at various times in my classroom by students who think that they, for example, find creative writing difficult and so put little effort into producing finished work, or they struggle with aspects of grammar but don't try to figure out the rules and apply them to their work. I have been guilty of a similar attitude towards Maths, and have caught myself making comments along the lines of I suck at it, therefore someone else solve the problem for me. With the Maths thing, though, I've become more conscious of what I say because I have a daughter who I want to encourage into STEM and I realise that how I role mod...

For the past two and a half years my school has set aside time every Wednesday morning for Professional Learning Groups. These groups provide teachers with time to work on their inquiry cycle and have professional discussions with others about their classroom practice. I appreciate having the opportunity to develop my pedagogy in this way. As a teacher - as a human being -  the assumptions that I bring to my practice are influenced by a range of different things. The way I teach can be influenced by factors including my world view and the way I was taught (and didn't like being taught). But these influences aren't always going to be conducive to best practice. One of the things that I really like about the inquiry process is that after identifying an issue to address, there is an expectation that I will identify my own learning needs and that my next steps will be evidence based. Utilising the vast array of research that has been done on education is to me a logical thing to...

Over the past few years I have been steadily increasing the use of technology in my classroom, made easier with the school introducing BYOD in the junior school. As such I have been familiar with the SAMR model: Image source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/The_SAMR_Model.jpg I won't discuss the mechanics of the model because there are plenty of people on the internet more qualified than me who have done so (check out Kathy Shrock  here  and the Technology is Learning site  here , as starting points). In many ways I like this model because it provides a stepping stone approach to using technology which is useful for teachers just on the first step of changing their teaching practices. It shows that introducing digital activities doesn't have to involve major shifts in practice but can be incremental. It also shows, though, that ultimately students should not be using a computer to complete the same activities that they would be doing w...

Last night was the second Mindlab session, exploring the links between 21st century skills and the key competencies of the New Zealand curriculum. One interesting idea that was raised was that organisations ‘biological’, I guess in that there are levels of organisation and that they are living, evolving systems. This also means that organisations have the ability to ‘learn’. A t raditional school structure is hierarchical - within my own school we have the principal and two deputies, as well as three teachers who act as Senior Leader Support, followed by layers of deans, HODs, 2ICs... If we take the biological metaphor further, organisations, including schools, must be self-evolving or else they will stagnate. As the culture of an organisation changes, the nature of leadership within the organisation will also change. In schools, this includes how we might define knowledge and the role of teachers in bringing about changes. For my school and others to continue to evolve there ...

Tuesday night was my first session of the Post Graduate Certificate in Applied Teaching (Digital and Collaborative Learning) through Unitec - otherwise knowns as The Mindlab . The focus of the first session was on what is knowledge and the purpose of education.The course notes state: [Students'] familiar means of information aggregation and distribution are not in sync with the education system and students are looking for flexible, more affordable and more relevant ways to gain the knowledge needed to apply ‘as needed’ skills for life-long learning. At heart this challenges the whole notion of what schools do, hence the question we were focusing on: what is education? In a formal sense, education is the systematic transfer of knowledge and information, but informally we are 'educated' in various ways everyday - through what we read and listen to, who we talk to. What we do as educators is inherently governed by what has been done before, because change can be a slow ...

I so absolutely love teaching English. I love that I can (try to) inspire students to appreciate literature and film - the words, characters, feelings, meanings. I love that I can use that literature to show them something new about the world... how we treat each other, how we learn from each other, how we can change the world. That I can show them the impact of change, of being true to who we are, of standing up for what we believe in, of our rights as human beings. Of what it means to be human. All through the texts that I choose. I love I can give my students an avenue for expressing their creativity and ideas. That they can find something that they are passionate about and tell the world about it in their own words. That I can nurture the 'writer within'. And because visual language is a part of our curriculum, the artist within. I love it. I might forget that from time to time because I get tired, have four classes of marking submitted at once, or have to write 1...

I'm having the most entertaining time with my Year 12 class at the moment. Well, more accurately, I'm having an entertaining time watching my Year 12 class. In theory, students have finished reading John Green's Paper Towns (theory because they had very little class time assigned to it reading it and were expected to complete it at home). Instead of guiding them through the novel, as I would usually, I have set the class up with a reading journal and task, and am pretty much sitting back and letting them discover the deeper aspects of the novel on their own. Their end product is to be a study guide which must be made accessible for all other students in the class. I have left it up to them how they do it. We have groups are using Tumblr, Google sites and docs and a wiki. Their reading journal focuses them on the development of character, themes, symbols and relationships in each chapter, on the big questions about identity and interconnectedness, and how the main two...

I'm not really a blogger - I tend to use this for reflections and then only sporadically. I guess the reason why I do choose to do my reflections online, rather than in a private document, is that there does feel that there is a degree of accountability. What I say has to be literate, to have a real purpose, and to stand up to scrutiny. Just as I am drawn to blogging, I've found that my students also like the idea of their work being published for a potential international audience. I've trialled a little bit of blogging with different classes and for different reasons. The most obvious reason to use blogs links to achievement and engagement. There are lots of websites touting the benefits of student blogging, backed by research (see here , here and here ). These benefits include that students like it, helps with reading and writing skills, gives students a voice - not only in writing their blogs but giving feedback to others, and provides them with a genuine audience ...

As our school becomes more focused on catering to the individual needs of our students - such as 'Ready to Work' options for non-academic students (in line with Vocational Pathways ) and an endorsement programme for our high achievers - this is approach is also filtering into my classroom I'm noticing this in particular with my Year 12 and 13 classes. In my Year 12 class, for example, I have two international students whose English excludes them from success in a number of the standards the course offers. The solution is to provide some Level 1 unit standards for one student and ESOL support for the other. I have a student who is in the class but struggles, and in discussion with him, I have offered him an alternative course which is a mix of the achievement standards the rest of the class are doing, and some unit standards. This will enable him to have some success in English this year, so I'm chuffed, and he's chuffed. Then there is the rest of the class. I'...

This year our school implemented a programme to support students in reaching Merit or Excellence endorsements in NCEA. Teachers mentor small groups, providing them with support in the form of meetings, shared documents, study calendars and conversation.  This past week I surveyed students and parents. I wanted to find out from students how proactive they were being in reaching their goals, including their study habits, planning, contact with mentors and conversations with other teachers. A couple of things stood out - a number of students are not aware of how they are tracking towards an endorsement, meaning that they are not keeping track of their credits; and a number have yet to set up a study plan, just two weeks out from important school exams. This reinforces what I had suspected based on my experiences with my own group, where I have struggled to get students to meetings or even to respond to emails: our students are still struggling to manage themselves at critical...

Last week I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit three Auckland schools as part of the Big River Learning and Change Network. This was my first chance to see what a modern teaching environment looks and feels like; my school was built in the 1920s and subsequent expansions strongly reflect the time periods they are built in, so the flowing open plans were quite a contrast. I like to challenge myself with my teaching. I take ideas from Twitter, Pinterest and (perhaps) more serious sources and try to use these in my classes as I can. However, the timetable and curriculum approach that Hobsonville Point Secondary School  utilises is far beyond what I envisaged for my classroom. This is undoubtedly because any changes I make to my classroom practice is realistically confined to this space, whereas HPSS has been built through new teaching theories and practices and there is a whole school philosophy. The challenge that I (and my school) face is taking the 21st ideas used by ...

I've been inspired by the 30 Goals Challenge , which encourages teachers to accomplish small goals in the process of becoming even better teachers. The challenge has been going since 2010, and the goals I'm pursuing are dated from 2012 - hopefully there will be a new set for 2013! The first challenge is to set a Me Manifesto  which outlines what you believe about learning and the ideals you want to have in the classroom. As part of my research into Me Manifestos I came across examples using Muzy ( Their Future blog) , Pixton ( janet's abruzzo edublog ) and Glogster ( Aspiring to Higher Tech ). I've never used any of these programs before so set myself the additional challenge of creating my manifesto using each of these formats. Me Manifesto My four main focuses as a teacher are: 1. The students are the most important in the classroom. My job is to help them to learn. Their families are an integral part of the learning triangle (school, family, student) and t...

Last year I experimented with using Google Docs for student tracking and goal setting. Each student in the class had their own 'progress chart' set up as a shared document between them and myself. It had term by term goal setting, reflections and feedback, and I entered essay, test and exam results so that they could keep track of their progress in the subject. It had great advantages. I didn't have to keep track of 28 pieces of paper for one. Students could access the material at home (ostensibly so they could also show their parents, who had been told about the chart through email), or whenever they happened to be in the computer lab. They could quickly see how their results stacked up (and it was amazing how often they forgot what they had gotten for an essay), and tally credits. On the not so good side, it took a bit of work to keep up to date and so wasn't actually up to date a lot of the time. Students didn't always constructively reflect on their efforts ...

The last couple of weeks of term means finding ways of surviving. Not only am I tired, but my students are both tired and wondering why they have to work when school is nearly finished. They've had their exams and they know that there is no other assessment to do. Westerns I've developed two new units to keep the kids engaged. My Year 10s are working through a Western study. this genre study explores how Western conventions are used in a range of texts. Ideally (ie, if I had time), this would include a novel extract, short story and comic strip, but as we are so very close to the end, I'm focusing on film. After learning about what to expect in a Western, we watched extracts from two classic Western films ( Stagecoach  and High Noon ). Students used the knowledge they gained from this to assess how Rango is a Western (not too hard once they got passed the hero being a chameleon). Finally,we've just started the Coen brother's adaptation of True Grit . A couple...

I love my Year 10 class. They are full of charisma, opinions, personality and energy. But they hated poetry. I love poetry. I love how writers cleverly manipulate language to create the most expressive phrases and show me the world from entirely new perspectives. We have great (southern) New Zealand poets, and I thought I was introducing them to the students in interesting ways. They didn't think so. Brian Turner's 'Pebbles' seems to me both a commentary on the changing environment, as well insight into a different sense of belonging and perspective: 'We belong in water / untroubled by envy for anything / born to live in the loneliness of air'. I got the students to think about their own knowledge of rivers, and to choose their own interpretation of rivers.We followed this up with a brief comparison with another Turner river poem, 'Audible'. They were able to complete sentences, but as for independent thinking, well... For 'Deep River Talk' by ...