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/

@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.

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/

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

Why you need 2 people to effect change in a school

I read an interesting article in Educational Leadership published by ASCD entitled "why change has legs". When introducing a new pedagogical framework, or indeed any large scale programmatic change within a school, there are two distinct actions that need to be lead:

1. Political leader - someone who sets the vision, the expectation of involvement and make a visible commitment to the change.
2. Practical leader - someone who day to day will implement the change, see how it works in the particular context, arranges training for staff, small group discussions to reflect on its implementation

What was interesting, is that the writers argued that the same person cannot take on each of these roles. I reflect on this with changes that I have made in the past where I have in the main acted in the second of those roles. To adequately transfer to the first of those roles, you have to have someone on your staff that you can trust to implement in practical manner - how will this actually work.

Posted with Blogsy

Review of HSC Physics in NSW

The Sydney Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/national/-309gh.html) has revealed that this year the Board of Studies will review the HSC Physics course.

In 2001 the conjecture became more language based with more historically focused content. This favours girls in a more language based HSC. Re-introducing some of the mathematical scientific rigour into the course may begin to start to improve maths and science across the country, which has been identified as a significant need for the future.

Posted with Blogsy

What does PISA say about teachers salaries?

The Sydney Morning Herald has recently published an article: NSW teachers to get six-figure salary after Teachers Federation negotiates pay deal with government.

 

In light of this and the recent release of PISA results, I thought it would be intesting to see what PISA says about teachers wages.

 

For high performing countries (that don't have significant other financial constraints on performance). It shows a positive correlation between performance and teacher salaries. Australia's average teacher pay is 120% of per capita GDP, significantly less than the almost 200% per capita GDP in Hong Kong. (See Slide 72 for the graph)

[slideshare id=28800269&doc=pisa2012schleicher10minuspolls-131202042053-phpapp01&startSlide=72]

Does this provide justification for higher teacher salaries? Possibly. However, with higher pay there must be higher productivity. What comes first - the salary or the productivity?

 

Posted with Blogsy

Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom [Kindle Edition] FREE TODAY AND MONDAY

To get your free copy, just visit Amazon's kindle store. You can download to an ipad or view online.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Invent-Learn-Tinkering-Engineering-Classroom-ebook/dp/B00CQDRF84/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1385724727&sr=1-1

 

Posted with Blogsy

Challenge Based Learning - what is it?

I have recently been asked what Challenge Based Learning is, so here is a quick summary. If you would like more information or connect with other educators who are keen to implement CBL then visit https://www.challengebasedlearning.org/

Put simply, CBL is about taking a real world problem and working towards a solution to that problem. One example currently on he above website is the problem of falling interest in science and mathematics, when these disciplines are essential for our future. To get students stared, it suggests researching how science has been used in history, who is currently making science interesting with the ultimate aim of making recommendations.

Here is the main structure:

• The big idea and the Essential question


• Guiding questions, research, etc


• Solutions and implementation


• Evaluation, reflection and publication

For a great white paper on challenge based learning, see this article from Apple: http://ali.apple.com/cbl/global/files/CBL_Paper.pdf

 

Posted with Blogsy

Why are we letting people train to be teachers who will not get jobs?

The Sydney Morning Herald recently published this article: Teaching: 40,000 looking for permanent jobs, which explored the problem with so many teachers out of work. It gave one possible explanation as the move to casualisation of the workforce. This necessarily only involves a small proportion of the workforce. I think that an overlooked issue is that we are currently training teachers in our universities that we would not want teaching in our schools.

As Hattie points out, the biggest external influence on student performance is the teacher. How can we justify training someone who got 59 (ACU) as their ATAR to be a teacher? In fact almost all degrees require a low entry ATAR simply to fill places with people that we will not employ. Macquarie University had a cut-off 2012 of 75, Charles Sturt University: 70, University of New South Wales: 78, University of Technology, Sydney: 75 and the only respectable cut-off from Sydney University of 90.

If as a student, someone has failed to achieve outcomes and be in the top 10% of the state (ATAR over 90) then how can they use that experience to teach the next generation of students in the top 10% of the state?

For sure, I've taught students who have been smarter than I have and I hope that this will always be, but there has to be an adequate minimum for the teaching profession. I argue that 90.00 be that minimum.

Short term consequences and considerations:

• Smaller numbers in teaching degrees, which may decrease the number of teachers currently seeking full time employment (40,000)


• There is already a shortage of Mathematics and Science teachers. Rather than flooding schools with teachers who cannot teach calculus-mathematics, we need to address this with high school students as a viable and worthy career path. Certainly salaries can be looked at. If you can pay less because there are so many teachers of a particular subject, but have to pay more for other subjects then it may have to revolutionise the remuneration of teachers. Maybe there are in fact too many visual arts teachers (picking up on the SMH article). If the salary was to go down, the supply would also fall.


• Raising the standard of the profession and it's view within society.

Let's look to a brighter future for our children and our students who have teacher that not only care about them, but can help them succeed to the highest of heights.

 

There is also a need to review those that are currently in the profession that possibly should not be. With the mandatory accreditation with the NSW Institute of Teachers in 2015, I believe that many teachers nearing retirement will bring their retirement forward. This move also has the potential to improve teaching standards, but it will be up to individual schools to hold teachers to the Proficient Teacher standards and will need incredible support to help or dismiss teachers that do not meet those basic standards.

Posted with Blogsy

Relationships is what teaching is all about! Give students a reason to learn.

This inspirational talk brings the back to the core fundamentals of teaching - getting students from point A to point B by having relationship with them, believing in them and operating positively with them.

[ted id=1728]

Digital Technologies in the Classroom - Have we got it wrong?

The Sydney Morning Herald today has published an article noting the end of the Digital Education Revolution - money that has supplied laptops to students in Australia and the consequential NSW Department of Education and Communities policy change to encourage schools to support BYOD (bring your own device).

 

The DEC has noted equitable access to technology as a major concern and jokingly suggests cake stalls as a viable solution to gain funds for students who cannot afford to bring their own device. Non-Government schools have the advantage of being able to register as a charitable organisation, to encourage people to give tax deductible donations, but government schools cannot do this. Unfortunately, no real alternative has been suggested at this point to help those students who are from a lower socio-economic background.

 

The SMH also suggests that teachers need training, so that they can be "confident users across a range of platforms". I think that this misses the point of BYOD. Teachers do not need to train students in the use of technology, but rather need to recognise that most apps are platform independent and it doesn't actually matter which platform students are using. If students are using google docs, they can be on any platform. If students are creating a video, they can use a variety of platforms (with a camera).

As a teaching profession, we need to become platform independent and lead our students in learning regardless of their device.

 

The original writer for SMH was Dan Haesler who blogs at http://www.danhaesler.com/

 

Posted with Blogsy

Do we encourage students to work or to learn?

What do we want our students to be learning?

Dispositions (residuals of learning)

• Curious


• Skeptical


• Open minded


• Imaginative


• Strategic


• Meta cognitive


• Reflective


• Reflective


• Truth seekers


• Inquisitive


• Responsible


• Independent


• Listeners


• Adventurous


• Inventive


• Original


• Creative


• Flexible


• Questioning


• Risk takers


• Mindful


• Considerate


• Full of wonder

 

Do we promote a culture of work in our classes: "does this count towards my grade?"

 

Should we promote learning - what do our students learn about learning? If students don't see the point of learning, they should feel empowered to ask for the point of it.

 

Do we tell students what we want them to learn, or just the work we want them to do?

 

Do students have to complete the exercise of work if they have already learnt what we wanted them to learn?

 

Reflections from The AIS Conference. Speaker: Ron Ritchhart (Senior Research Associate, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate a school of Education)

Posted with Blogsy

Things to think about before flipping... Not flipping? --- Some thoughts on homework

Freetech4teachers has recently cautioned about introducing the flipping model. http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2012/04/three-questions-to-consider-before-we.html

 

Rather than introducing a full-flip model, we just need to rethink homework. What do we want students to be doing at home? What would your best student be doing at home? Here are some thoughts

• Consolidation - quality, not quantity
• Assignments/Assessments
• Preparation

The third of these - preparation is where flipping comes in. We want our students to be preparing for lessons in advance by reading ahead (or watching videos). Surely if our students have a basic knowledge of the content that can be filled out in class, they will benefit.

 

What are your thoughts? Do your students read ahead?

 

One other thought on homework is that my best students actually spend time correcting their work and finding the parts of content where they do not completely understand.