BOSTES Teacher Accreditation - Maintenance Reports now online! Thanks @NewsAtBOSTES

I recall being one of the first teachers to go through their first maintenance cycle, with the then NSW Institute of Teachers. I was one of the first to achieve "Professional Competence" at the end of 2005, when the "New Scheme" first came in.

Whilst the report was initially untimely and a frustrating thought, it was a good mark in the sand to stop and reflect on my five years of teaching against each of the standards to ascertain when I had done to progress in each of the areas. This then made me realise that I was in fact meeting many of the "Professional Leadership" standards and as such decided to go through the process of becoming accredited at that level.

I have now been accredited at "Lead Teacher" for around 18 months. Whilst it was a lot of work to go through the process, I learnt a lot from it and indeed developed my teaching practice and leadership as part of this. I now stop and reflect on each of the descriptors annually to see what has escaped my vision and where additional work needs to be done.

AITSL is working on revising the Self Assessment Tool, which is one way to assist you in reflecting on this. I encourage you to set aside the time over the summer break to reflect on where you are at.

The Maintenance report will now be entered online.

For more information, visit: http://www.nswteachers.nsw.edu.au/about-us/news/maintenance-of-accreditation-reports-move-online/

What leadership lessons can we learn from the media stories about MLC?

There have been a number of articles written about MLC, Sydney in recent days. Let me sum up the main points and then some lessons that we can learn.

Sydney Morning Hearald

• December 10 - MLC: Private Sydney girls school in turmoil after 30 staff leave, students launch petition
• December 12 - MLC: Parents at principal's former school speak out

The following facts have been reported. I have not verified the truth of these claims as I do not have additional insight to the school or current Head Mistress. 

• The leadership of the school is authoritarian in manner 
• 30 teachers have left from 2015 to 2016
• Parents from the last school this person worked at have made negative comments 

Lessons to learn:

• Some turnover of staff in a school is a good thing! You get new staff with new ideas and experiences to share. It is also a good thing when staff leave for promotions positions at other schools. However, when such a large number of staff leave at one time, it does raise the question as to what the reason may be. This is an indication that there could be a negative environment among the workers. I would be very cautious about accepting a job at a school that has had a significant recent loss of staff. 
• Background reference checks are essential, and not just the ones that are given in the CV. A check if parent and student sentiment could be helpful, although would need to be used cautiously. 
• Parents with a grudge may go to the media. Even more common would be parents expressing their concern over social media. This ease of access to publicise a grievance leads to less people willing to pursue the role of School Principal. 
• Your past will catch up with you. It is easy to think in private schools that one you move from one school to another that you leave you successes and failures behind, but with the shrinking of the world through increased electronic communications, this is no longer the.
• No school is immune from turmoil. This well established and respected school has very quickly come under scrutiny and future is less certain. A lot of rebuilding will need to happen across the staff, parent and student bodies. I would even speculate that enrolments could be affected. 
• The Principal and leadership of a school can have a significant impact on a school so needs to be carefully done. This is a hard job with so many competing priorities and points of view. 

I don't know where this will end up for MLC, but it appears that the continuing contact of the current Head Mistress may be under question, not unlike the Head of Kings was after comments regarding his time at Knox Grammar at the Royal Commission. 

Leading schools is a tough gig!

How to Teach? 13 Tips for regaining control of your classroom!

Phil Beadle is a UK English teacher that has taught in some of the roughest schools. He brings some good tips for getting a classroom under control. These are some of the basics of teaching that it's always good to be reminded of now and then.

The 3 Step Lesson Plan...

The 3 Step Lesson Plan - Good Teaching!

In my first year of teaching, I was introduced to the "Three step lesson plan". I was most intrigued to find out what the three crucial things were to consider when planning my lessons. Unfortunately, I didn't get the answer I was hoping for, finding out that the 3-step lesson plan was working out what to do with your class in the three steps it takes you to get from the door as you enter the classroom to the teacher's desk.

I give the following reasons as to why you must plan your lessons:

• Outcomes - without a lesson plan, a lesson is without a clear objective (that should be communicated to students) and we don't know what the outcome of our teaching is to be. We focus too much on the singular dot points of the syllabus.
• To increase engagement - without a plan, a lesson may meet the dot points of the syllabus, but will more than likely not engage the students to a high degree in their learning. It takes time and effort to make content applicable and understandable to students.
• We forget learning styles - we have a wide range of preferences in our class with regard to learning styles (visual, auditory, verbal, kinesthetic, logical, social and solitary). Whilst we cannot cater for all of these learning styles all the time and it is good for students to be exposed to other styles of teaching, we should also seek to have some activities throughout the semester that will cater towards each student's preferences.
• Differentiation - if we don't stop and consider each of the students in our class, we will most likely teach to the middle and the average student rather than catering learning opportunities to the individual.
• Assessment - Without a clear plan, we may forget to check whether students have actually achieved the outcome of the lesson.

Ultimately, without a lesson plan, we may be robbing our students of a vital productive learning opportunity. We must seek to have good teaching in every lesson with every class.

I will write a further post that details a "checklist" of items to consider in the lesson planning process.

Checklist of Learning - what do I need to consider in my teaching?

I have written previously explaining why I think a lesson plan is essential for every teacher for every lesson. If you are convinced already, then the checklist of questions below may be helpful in developing your lesson plan:

1. What is the main objective of the lesson?
2. What are the activities that students will be engaged in?
   (a) Do the activities cater to different learning styles?
   (b) Do the activities allow for differentiation - students to approach it at varying levels and in varying ways?
3. What will be the assessment of student achievement? How will the teacher and student know if they have met the main objective?
4. Is there any follow-up activity (homework) that students will need to do? Is this differentiated based on students achievement levels?
5. What resources do you need to take to the lesson?
6. Who is working harder? (See a future post to further explain this)

To assist with creating a lesson plan in a manageable way, I will write a further post explaining my successes (and failures) at lesson planning.

Who is working harder? The ultimate lesson plan to allow for great teaching!

There are many lesson plan templates available on the internet (eg http://lessonplans4teachers.com/), but you really need something that will suit you own individuality. "Daily Planner" books are very popular and I have tried them several times and failed. I struggled and couldn't seem to remember to write in these books each and every lesson. The greatest difficulty that I had was that they are arranged by day - this seems logical, but it is in fact not logical at all. Being organised per day promotes last minute superficial lesson planning. 

Formula sheet in the HSC for 2 Unit, Extension 1 and Extension 2 Exams

Finally, BOSTES has made the logical step in moving away from rote learning and towards teaching for understanding!

In the real world, if I get stuck with a Maths problem, not only can I look up a formula to assist me, I can actually use Wolfram Alpha to calculate most problems in High School Mathematics (once I have understood the question, made any necessary assumptions and refined the problem sufficiently.

See here for all the details on the BOSTES site.

Happy World Teachers Day & Mental Health Week - a correlation? Take care of yourself!

It is very interesting to receive best wishes for World Teachers Day from AITSL yesterday on 5 October and then to be reminded today that it is Mental Health Week in the lead up to Saturday.

Our Students
With the increase in prevalence of anxiety, depression and similar mental health issues in our youth, we really need to look at what we can do to help in schools. Even though I believe that the problem lies elsewhere and may be a result of some family situations that include both parents working, stressed or anxious parents and wrapping kids in cotton-wool.

One are that I think we really can take notice is homework. In already stretched home environments where children are over-scheduled and experience their parents late at night stressed after getting home late from work, what right do we have as teachers to give students challenging work that they must complete at home. Rather, I would promote the flipped model of lower order tasks being completed at home when necessary. It is not always necessary.

As a Mathematics teacher, I may be a little biased, but the main homework that I believe students should be doing throughout the middle school is a little bit of Maths homework each night (10 minutes) and some reading for pleasure. I will write further my experiences of setting maths homework and I apologise to those students that I taught in the first few years of my career!

Our own mental health
As teachers, we need need to make sure that we take care of ourselves both physically and mentally. Thank goodness we have holidays to recharge and refresh ourselves. We can now at the start of term energetically and enthusiastically engage with our students, encourage them and challenge them at whatever stage they are at.

There are high pressure points throughout the year and I know that as Term 4 rolls on, we will again be at that point where it will be report-writing season. We need to carefully plan for this and take care of ourselves.

If you struggle at any point in your teaching career, I strongly encourage you to seek help from a professional. We can only help our students if we are functioning on all cylinders.

Remember above all the significant difference that you are making in the lives of the next generation!

AITSL 2014 World Teacher's Day video

Video tips for new maths teachers @misterwootube

Eddie Woo (Head Teacher Maths at a public school in NSW) has put together this site to help beginning teachers. There are great lesson videos that can be used by students http://misterwootube.com/ but also a YouTube channel with great PD snippets specifically for teachers of Mathematics: http://www.youtube.com/misterwootube2.

He is an excellent communicator and very easy to understand.

How to find the area under a curve and why you would want to

In many situations we may want to find the area under a curve. For example on a velocity-time graph, the area under the curve represents the distance travelled.

Source: BBC

As the concept is developed, the following GeoGebra Worksheets (by gdix) will be beneficial:

1. Area under a curve by rectangles under and then rectangles above: https://tube.geogebra.org/m/254255

2. Area under a curve using Trapeziums (Trapezoidal Rule): https://tube.geogebra.org/m/254381

3. Area under a curve using Simpson's Rule: https://tube.geogebra.org/m/254405

Reflecting on Teacher Education - have we got it right?

Today, I have the privilege of taking a tutorial in the Mathematics Methodology subject at Macquarie University. Whilst there are not the 50 students studying Mathematics when I went through but rather there are around a dozen students.

In preparing for the first session, it is interesting the time spent in teacher education on content and preparation of lessons is somewhat different from what I have actually engaged in as a teacher in the classroom. Some might expect that I would argue for a complete overhaul for the course, but I think there is a place for both.

Unless you first go through the university method, you can't progress to the school model where corners will be cut, not every lesson will be the best lesson ever and there are competing pressures from students, parents, the school, etc.

Given a typical school day for a teacher, there may be 5 teaching periods of 50-55 minutes. The time required by a teacher to prepare for each of these (let's estimate at 15 minutes), plus time for marking, writing test papers, etc. is simply not manageable. This has only allocated 15 minutes to preparing the lesson, rather than the 1-2 hours that uni students would spend creating the 'ideal lesson'.

Students should walk out of uni with a number of excellent pre-prepared lessons. When approaching teaching, I strongly recommend that teacher's plan 'units of work'. I used my holiday time to prepare each of the units for each of my classes, which meant that I could spend just a few minutes the day before refreshing myself and adding any bells and whistles that I could.

For the unit of Integration (2 unit), I would develop the ideas from areas of rectangles, trapezoidal rule, Simpson's rule, integration and then integration rules.

To answer the question, the current mode of teacher education does have a place, but it can't be the only thing that develops a teacher and gives them the skills required to plan lessons to have students in their classes who are taught exceptionally within a caring professional relationship.

Don't use a laptop in class to take notes

It seems very appealing to use a laptop in class to take notes. The problem is that we type too quickly! It is possible for many students to the almost a complete transcript of what is being said. When doing this, the brain is being used to transcribe information rather than understand it, assimilate  it or challenge it.

It is of no value for students to have a complete transcription of the lesson without having engaged with any of it. Rather, we want our students to challenge the ideas they are presented with to construct their own understanding.

So, beware the laptop being used to take notes.

Domestic violence should be added to the curriculum in Public Schools

The Sydney Morning Herald published the following article: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/confronting-campaigns-cast-light-on-hidden-victims-of-household-violence-20150418-1mmls2.html telling the story of a 14 year old girl who "wants the NSW government to know that if domestic violence had been better addressed in school, she would have recognised that what was happening inside her own home was not normal"

It is clear that there is much responsibility on schools to engage with students, yet the Curriculum is already crowded, so how does this happen? It is not feasible to add to the burdened curriculum more "good" things. There is already overlap in other areas (not this instance) of parenting responsibilities and expectations on schools for example sex education.

Organisations run awareness campaigns such as the White Ribbon day (http://www.whiteribbon.org.au/schools) which is focused particularly on violence against women. It is up to individual schools and usually prefects or student representation councils to find these organisations, make contact with them and make arrangements.

Whilst this allows individual schools to choose these campaigns that would be more applicable to their demographics the does not provide adequeate coverage. Even schools pastoral care programs are insufficiently equipped to deal with all these awareness campaigns.

We need a coordinated approach in the state between private and public schools to expose students to these various organisations. Why couldn't we focus as a state on several of these each year to give extra publicity?

Some other campaigns and charities include:

• Pink ribbon day for breast cancer
• Beyond Blue for depression 
• Cervical cancer 
• Prostate Cancer 
• National child protection week 

I hope to publish a more complete list in the future.

If you are suffering from domestic violence - contact the helpline:
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, you can ring the Domestic Violence Line for help on 1800 656 463

@Crayola has produced great creative lesson plans for all years and subjects

I love the idea shown (click the picture for instructions), which gets students to create their own dodecahedron. This is one example of integrating visual arts with mathematics and science. There are many others.

There are many more available on the Crayola Lesson Plans website: http://www.crayola.com.au/for-educators/lesson-plans.aspx

Is it surprising that boys think school is a waste of time?

The Academic Curriculum in largely focused on girls and what girls are more likely to be better at. Why is writing the main form of showing what you know, when it is more important to engage students, excite students and see them develop as a person?

Teenage boys are more likely to underachieve at school than their female counterparts, but more likely to go on to study science and maths, an OECD report says.

Read the full article "boys less attentive than girls" here: http://au.educationhq.com/news/12588/boys-less-attentive-than-girls-in-school/

@SMH: Ten Top Tips to Foster your preschool child's love for Maths

The Sydney Morning Herald has published an article on the importance of Mathematics for Preschool aged children. The key here I believe is that we need to be sending our youngsters to a proper preschool with a preschool program and a trained teacher rather than hoping that the long day care, which has become all to prevalent 'won't do any harm'.

Really, what do we want for our children - not any harm - or do we want them to flourish? I know what I want for my children, 3 (3 day preschool) and 5 (Year 1).

Rather than "Mathematics", engaging in Numeracy is actually explained in the article as what we need to be encouraging for our youngsters. Getting that number sense.

Here are the ten tips from SMH:

• Observe numbers and shapes in everyday situations: on street signs, in the park, at the supermarket. How many cars can you see? Are there more or fewer than before?
• Count steps as you're going up stairs.
• Play outside with water or sand. Use scales and/or measuring containers of different sizes.
• Play with blocks and use the opportunity to point out the sizes and shapes, the number or any patterns. Problem-solving can also be introduced through blocks by identifying the best ways to stop towers from toppling. 
• Bath time offers the opportunity to observe volume and metrics using cups filled with water.
• Sorting the laundry is a chance to ask your toddler to help you sort socks into pairs, or count the number of T-shirts. Which pile of clothes is the tallest? Which is the shortest?
• When making lunch discuss with your child as you cut a sandwich into halves, quarters or thirds. How many pieces do you have now?
• Do a puzzle and point out sizes, shapes and colours. Where are the corners? How many are there?
• Use a tape measure to find a child's height. How does their height compare with other members of the family? Who is the tallest and who is the shortest in the family?
• Bake together. What ingredients need to be measured; what is the order of ingredients? How many cupcakes are there? Should we make fewer large ones or more small ones?

It is important with all of these wonderful suggestions, that we don't get to the point of seeing our children as 'a project' and we need to subtly make numeracy a part of their lives without 'doing an algebra lesson' as the article points out.


For the full article on SMH: Click Here

@TheEducatorAU shares a disastrous view of Music Education in Australia (3min video)

How does your school compare with the view portrayed below? I think many independent schools pride themselves on their music programs, but are we working towards creating Mozarts and Beethovens rather than focusing students on listening.

Comprehension through listening and creating a sense of abstract is a pervasive idea that should cross over all subject areas.

What Hattie has to say about successful teachers

Professor John Hattie is well known for having done significant meta-analysis research. It is not what we may expect of successful schools. Watch the video below for a quick 15 minute summary.

One of the key things of successful teachers is that they are collaborative and want feedback.

How does your school rate? 7 Areas that all schools should prioritise!

In speaking with a colleague recently, he indicated that there were seven aspects of schooling that are seen by the public as imperatives for school. I have slightly modified them.

1. High expectations of students
2. Clearly showing students the what and how
3. Giving effective feedback to students
4. Using data to identify problem areas and improve
5. Classroom management and discipline
6. Student wellbeing
7. Collaborating with colleagues

How are you going in your school context with these?

For a full list things that we need to be mindful of as teachers, see the classroom practice descriptions from AITSL or the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

You're not being judged - open your classroom door to colleagues!

In my first year of teaching, I remember my very first lesson. I had my keys to the classroom, walked in and had the students stand behind their chairs, shut the door and the following thought went through my mind:

No-one knows what I'm about to try and teach these kids, am I really accountable and who gave me permission to do this?

It is a curious thing that is such a people focused profession, we close our doors to our colleagues. How was I to improve in my practice without knowing how I was doing?

My first step into collaboration with colleagues, was actually sharing what I had done in the hope that others would share back with me. To be fair, a number of teachers did share things with me but they were often sheets photocopied from old textbooks.

As things progressed, I began to work more collaboratively with one colleague in particular and we were constantly in each other's classrooms, encouraging each other to try new things, to improve. This would not have happened if I had not been willing to put my pride aside and open my door.

Teachers need quality feedback to improve. Golfers record themselves to watch their swing to see how to improve it, they also have a coach to watch and critique their swing - in order to be better at what they do. This all happens without judgment - you never hear "you're a bad golfer" so we need to be recording our lessons (with a swivl) and having colleagues, professionals and experts help us to improve.

Watch below for Bill Gates and his urge for feedback for teachers.

SMH Article: Motivating Students with a few simple strategies

Two of the most effective strategies to continually monitor students' learning are "traffic lights" and "fist to five", Shardlow says.

With "traffic lights", students are given red, amber and green disks of paper and teachers get feedback on how students are tracking in their learning by asking them to hold up the appropriate colour to indicate their level of understanding: green for "OK – I could explain this to someone else", amber for "I'm not sure – I get most of it but not all yet" and red for "help – I am lost".

"Fist to five" is similar to traffic lights, but students hold up a number of fingers to indicate their level of understanding.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/motivating-students-the-focus-at-methodist-ladies-college-20150303-13r2tt.html#ixzz3TmR1rBIT

The Australian Curriculum is changing in 2016

Since the review of the Australian Curriculum, there has been some concern among teachers regarding yet another syllabus to program for in the near future and whether there would be an increased focus on Australia's Anglo-Christian heritage (yes, this does appear to be a political football).

There are some changes in Australia that Christopher Pyne has announced which involves a streamlining of HSIE subjects in primary schools. Specifics for NSW have not yete been released, but even though it has been signed off by all states, experience would indicate that this will take some time before it hits the classroom in NSW.

For a few more details, see the article: http://au.educationhq.com/news/12587/streamlined-curriculum-ready-in-2016/

The Power of a Good Book - Encouraging students to Read for Pleasure

It doesn’t matter what age you are, there’s nothing quite like losing yourself in a good book. But, did you know that reading for enjoyment is also associated with higher academic achievement?

A recent large scale study concluded reading for pleasure has ‘a powerful influence on children’s learning’, particularly in developing vocabulary, but also on spelling and maths skills. ‘Reading for pleasure made a substantial difference [on intellectual progress] – the difference made was around four times greater than the difference made by having a parent with a degree’ (Sullivan, 2014).

Link to Article

@MicheleBruniges on questions to ask to pursue Quality Pedagogy #FutureSchools

Michele Bruniges encourages us to ask the following questions to develop quality pedagogy:

1. What do you want students to learn?
2. Why does that learning matter
3. What are you going to get the students to do or to produce
4. How well do you expect them to do it (near enough is almost always good enough)

I think that collaborative conversations between colleagues is vital to improving teacher quality and professionalism. We need to carefully structure conversations to promote positive collaborative learning environments. The questions above provide one possibility to discuss this. Another that I have seen used recently is answering the following two questions when observing lessons:

1. What worked well (WWW)
2. Even better if (EBI)

Have a ccollaborative onversation with a colleague today!

Six things that we need to give students experiences of in schools #FutureSchools

Charles Leadbeater at FutureSchools Conference explained six things that we need to give students experiences of in schools

• Knowing - how to search,test, reassemble and reapply knowledge
• Questioning - how to pose good questions and open them up, appreciate, challenge, debate and respond
• Communicating - how to present, show, persuade people with what you know and what you care about
• Collaborating - how to work with others to make the most of your combined ideas to solve problems and unlock possibilities
• Making - how to create tangible products with others and to bring them into the real world
• Persisting - how to stick to it, to overcome obstacles, recover from setbacks and learn the pleasure of achievement hard won

Why do we teach students 'how to play the HSC game, when there is so much more to education?

How can you use technology to actually enhance teaching and learning?

Technology should allow us to improve teaching and learning in the classroom and broaden it beyond the classroom. When we seek to do this, we need to have in mind the dispositions of learning - what do we want students to leave our classes with? A specific small set of facts or do we want to foster curiosity, creativity and critical thinking?

Technology can be a tool to engage, or it can be something else that has to be learnt and used. Students treat it as we treated a pen when we were at school (or the ink well in my parents schooling days)

If students in their own time can access highly relevant, engaging, content that they are passionate about at just a few taps of the screen, then how can they see the teacher as the keeper of knowledge of the 1800s?

Michael Fullan in the video below explains the six C's, which are deep learning goals:

• Critical Thinking
• Communication
• Creativity
• Collaboration
• Character Education
• Citizenship

Making learning irresistably engaging!

As students move through school, how do we increase engagement or at least maintain engagement rather than at present see a decline in engagement?

The Flipped Classroom
Fullan Speaks so the teacher's role in the classroom as being a change agent or activator.

I originally saw this video on AITSL's School Leadership eCollection

What our obsession with work is doing to our Children

Our obsession with work has unfortunately been pushed on to our children, in the following ways:

More often parents are not present physically when their children get home from school. I remember getting home from school and it was the best time to talk with my mum or dad around the kitchen bench - to debrief on important points from me day and to actually have relationship.

If parents are physically present, then they are often not emotionally present having their Samsung Galaxy s5, Apple iPhone 6 or Blackberry in their hand checking their work email. The current generation of children are missing out on important aspects of relationship with their parents and particularly their fathers.

Even worse we try to replicate our own unhealthy work habits in our children by expecting children to do a full day of school (often starting around 7:30am) and then get home at 4:00pm (if they have no after school commitment) and then complete hours of homework. Even if we are determined to increase our own work hours, we should not attempt to increase our children's work hours.

If you compare the amount of homework expected of students today with the time spent on homework 20 years ago, then it has dramatically increased and in this, students are losing their childhood.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Why are we obsessed with work? How to increase productivity the clever way!

It was not too many years ago that many workers in many occupations ended their work day at 5:00pm and did not take work home with them. Technology has greatly improved our work life, or at least that is the myth that we are fed by the big companies of Apple, Microsoft and Google. To be truthful it has affected our work life by making us always 'at work' but it has severely damaged our personal family lives.

The impact on our work lives has reduced productivity! How many times have you had a gruelling problem that you have only been able to solve when you have stopped thinking about it? I know that I have come up with some of my best work ideas in the shower when I haven't been thinking about anything or focusing on anything - a time of Input Zero. When are your times of input zero - they are critical for our mental health, productivity at work and leading a balanced life.

Maybe the Christian idea of the Sabbath actually has some legs and would actually do us well to take a whole day off work each week.

Posted with Blogsy

Change to blog

Please be aware that I have recently moved my blog from wordpress to blogger and also changed the web address for the blog to http://www.harnwell.org/. The RSS feed has been updated and should now reflect the changes without any change required on your behalf. If you subscribe by email, you will need to resubscribe at me new blog address.

Thank you for your loyal following over the last four years.