I found an article
Dangerous Discussions: Voice and Power in My Classroom
It made me think about how we manage discussions in my classroom. I have difficulty getting students to engage. Part of which I put down to their unfamiliarity with the content but I still have to develop my discussion management skills to enable the shy and quiet to have their say, and to not have the loud/confident students dominate.
My classes have a different mix of ethnicity to the one in the article. Some have minority groups, as defined by society, are in the majority in their class. That would give a different air to the discussion. Also the difference in subject matter will have an effect. Science is a difficult subject for many, and they do not often feel as informed as they might in a discussion on social issues that that live, as in the article.
I am inspired to try some of the suggestions in this article with my classes.
Showing posts with label reflection.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reflection.. Show all posts
Thursday, 9 August 2018
Friday, 25 August 2017
Appraisal - Thinking issues
For this terms observation for my appraisal MTH observed a year 9 lesson where we were looking at thinking skills and applying knowledge they had learnt to real world applications. In this particular instance "real world" was a rather broad concept. The framework for this was from the Issues Presentations that I had seen at the ChemEd Conference and presented to the department.
This particular lesson was within the unit of work dealing with waves and energy and the class had just completed learning about sound and sound waves. The presentation dealt with the movement of waves in a vacuum, particularly in space, using the explosion of the Death Star from Star Wars as the initial image.
The class in question was a lower ability class with many students having literacy at Level 2 or Low Level 3 on the curriculum. Many of them do not display critical thinking skills and show little to no desire to learn them.
The students were engaged by the gif of the Death Star exploding with the Millenium Falcon flying away from the blast zone. Some could very clearly tell the class what had led up to that point and what came after, and could debate the plot points. When challenged some problems or falsities in the presentation of the explosion were identified which led us into the text reading.
Five students participated in reading out loud to the class, a selection of text from MovieTropes.com detailing how movie explosions in space defy laws of physics. Due to their previous learning on sound waves and wave behaviour some of this made sense to the students. I was still having to lead the discussion, positing questions for them to respond to, but most students were engaged, especially the low achieving boys.
The final step was to watch a video on the physics of sound explosions which explained with diagrams, pictures and animation in more detail.
There was very little writing in this lesson which helps get engagement from those students who struggle with literacy. I am trying to develop analytical and critical thinking skills in my students and to get them to see how what they are learning in class can help them to be better at interacting with the world and less likely to be taken advantage of.
This particular lesson was within the unit of work dealing with waves and energy and the class had just completed learning about sound and sound waves. The presentation dealt with the movement of waves in a vacuum, particularly in space, using the explosion of the Death Star from Star Wars as the initial image.
The class in question was a lower ability class with many students having literacy at Level 2 or Low Level 3 on the curriculum. Many of them do not display critical thinking skills and show little to no desire to learn them.
The students were engaged by the gif of the Death Star exploding with the Millenium Falcon flying away from the blast zone. Some could very clearly tell the class what had led up to that point and what came after, and could debate the plot points. When challenged some problems or falsities in the presentation of the explosion were identified which led us into the text reading.
Five students participated in reading out loud to the class, a selection of text from MovieTropes.com detailing how movie explosions in space defy laws of physics. Due to their previous learning on sound waves and wave behaviour some of this made sense to the students. I was still having to lead the discussion, positing questions for them to respond to, but most students were engaged, especially the low achieving boys.
The final step was to watch a video on the physics of sound explosions which explained with diagrams, pictures and animation in more detail.
There was very little writing in this lesson which helps get engagement from those students who struggle with literacy. I am trying to develop analytical and critical thinking skills in my students and to get them to see how what they are learning in class can help them to be better at interacting with the world and less likely to be taken advantage of.
Friday, 23 June 2017
Creating Assessment- Year 9 Astronomy
This morning I was putting together the assessment for the Year 9 Astronomy unit. The unit needed to be redone in order to ensure that we were effectively assessing at curriculum levels.
The new test has been compiled from the Assessment Resource Bank's resources of properly aligned assessment tasks. I started with a standard from Level 3, many from Level 4, some from Level 5, then I adapted a NCEA Level 1 task for the Level 6 component. This will really make it straightforward to assess the level of thinking that our students are doing.
The Test
The Marking Rubric
The new test has been compiled from the Assessment Resource Bank's resources of properly aligned assessment tasks. I started with a standard from Level 3, many from Level 4, some from Level 5, then I adapted a NCEA Level 1 task for the Level 6 component. This will really make it straightforward to assess the level of thinking that our students are doing.
The Test
The Marking Rubric
Thursday, 22 June 2017
Wanting the best for my students
I have been taking a special interest in "I" in my Whanau class. He is a very capable student, and very good-natured and willing to give back. He can, with thought and planning, be successful in both the Maori and Pakeha worlds, and I am trying to help him navigate that.
Today we had a chat in Whanau about what he wants, in the short term and the long term, and we are starting to talk about his options. He would like to go into Carpentry. I have been talking to people that I know in the business and that may not be advisable as the industry in Whangarei appears to be controlled by a cartel keeping wages and movement between firms down. We are looking at Engineering courses, that allow him to fulfill family commitments, while earning, learning, and being a stepping to a full engineering degree.
We also talked about how we need students to go out and be successes in both worlds, then to come back and show others that it can be done. I later heard that he went to his friend in the next class and told him about our conversation, and he was all chuffed that I had called him one of the students we want as a role model.
Today we had a chat in Whanau about what he wants, in the short term and the long term, and we are starting to talk about his options. He would like to go into Carpentry. I have been talking to people that I know in the business and that may not be advisable as the industry in Whangarei appears to be controlled by a cartel keeping wages and movement between firms down. We are looking at Engineering courses, that allow him to fulfill family commitments, while earning, learning, and being a stepping to a full engineering degree.
We also talked about how we need students to go out and be successes in both worlds, then to come back and show others that it can be done. I later heard that he went to his friend in the next class and told him about our conversation, and he was all chuffed that I had called him one of the students we want as a role model.
Friday, 17 March 2017
Student Wellbeing and
The Year 10's did a test last period. Through a concerted push I managed to get the test scripts marked and returned the next lesson and took the time to go through each question explaining how to approach that question and what the answer was.
Afterwards each student was asked to write on the paper their immediate thoughts on the test and the unit it assessed, focussing on how they had worked and how they approached the test. This was then extended with guided reflection set for them on Google Classroom.
Think about the topic so far and write a reflection. Include in your reflection
- How well you worked in the unit ( Did you try your best every lesson or were you goofing off, DId you persevere when it was hard, or give up?)
- How seriously you took the test? Did you persevere and try to figure stuff out
- How well did you do compared to how well you felt about the test when you did it.
- What your goal for the next unit is. Your goal should be challenging but achieveable
- What are you going to do to achieve this goal.
The majority of the class took the task seriously and there were some very good responses. At the end of the unit we will refer back to this to see how they got along and I intend to repeat it each unit to guide them through self-review and improvement cycles. Hopefully it will help them to learn skills in planning and reflection which are vital to self-management.
As a consequence of this I had an interesting conversation with a student who had received distressing news on the day of the test. On confiding to me what the upset was, I reassured her and she seemed fine. I am concerned for her longer term though, so I have let the counsellor who the student is, asking her to keep an eye out.
Afterwards each student was asked to write on the paper their immediate thoughts on the test and the unit it assessed, focussing on how they had worked and how they approached the test. This was then extended with guided reflection set for them on Google Classroom.
Think about the topic so far and write a reflection. Include in your reflection
- How well you worked in the unit ( Did you try your best every lesson or were you goofing off, DId you persevere when it was hard, or give up?)
- How seriously you took the test? Did you persevere and try to figure stuff out
- How well did you do compared to how well you felt about the test when you did it.
- What your goal for the next unit is. Your goal should be challenging but achieveable
- What are you going to do to achieve this goal.
The majority of the class took the task seriously and there were some very good responses. At the end of the unit we will refer back to this to see how they got along and I intend to repeat it each unit to guide them through self-review and improvement cycles. Hopefully it will help them to learn skills in planning and reflection which are vital to self-management.
As a consequence of this I had an interesting conversation with a student who had received distressing news on the day of the test. On confiding to me what the upset was, I reassured her and she seemed fine. I am concerned for her longer term though, so I have let the counsellor who the student is, asking her to keep an eye out.
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