Friday, July 20, 2007
Luke's First Post!!!
Hmmmmmm. Well I don't know what to write but it's my planning day for the term today so everything is Sweeeeet! I reckon I might focus on the theme of 'taking resonsibility for our own learning' and trying to develop reflective opportunities for the kids, so that along the way, they can evaluate what and how they have learnt and what they might do differently next time. Yeah, that sounds like it might go alright....................
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5 comments:
Hey Luke! I love your idea around reflective learning of students and would be happy to give you a hand in getting a blog going for the students in 6Red. Just let me know if you need me to be an extra pair of hands over the term! It's an exciting time when the kids post some really thought provoking ideas!
Good on you Luke! Don't forget you already have a blog for your class.
http://blogyear6red.blogspot.com/
From the responses we've have from students in other classes now, the kids really LOVE this medium, and they have impressed us all with their mature and prolific responses. Maybe your blog could be a starting point?
Hi I've got an idea to think about Luke- there is a new Web 2.0 tool/site called 'tumblr.com'
It is like blogging, but you can put video, quotes, links, conversations all together....maybe you could set up questions, 'mini topic questions' on individual tumblr pages & students could communicate their answers by finding examples of a video, quote, text, links etc that support a position/ answer.....worth a thought...I'll show you what I mean on Thursday
Fran
THE CONTEXT
I had the problem of a really unengaging end to Term 2. Try teaching ‘Government’, ‘The History Of The Catholic Church In Australia’ & ‘Fractions, Decimals & Percentages’ all at the same time! The kids and myself included were bored stiff.
Government was a very difficult topic to cover in a way that was interesting to the kids. Pretty much all of the class came in with very little prior knowledge and there was a lot of information to cover. The resources available were limited and research, chalk and talk, and discussion proved to be fruitless as the kids ended up retaining almost zilch which led to Janine and myself opting for an open book test as a lifeline to both the kids and ourselves! The subject of ‘famous’ priests from more than a century ago didn’t really capture the imagination of 11/12 year olds either (if anyone has a suggestion as to how to make this interesting or sell it to Year 6’s in any way, PLEEEAAAASE let me know). And I won’t go anywhere near fractions. It was even worse! Some trivia for you………one fifth of the average Year 6 Maths textbook is fractions!
One thing the kids enjoyed was role playing parliament but unfortunately they were unable to communicate the learnings they had gained from the experience to me or each other. It had been no more than a fun activity where they could pretend they were politicians and occasionally yell out ‘here here’ or ‘rubbish’.
I have found this to be the case on many occasions when I have tried less-structured, hands-on, or cooperative problem solving type activities both this year and the past. In my own reflection afterwards I often wonder – what did the kids actually learn? Maybe this was because I never really gave the chance for the kids to reflect on their learning either, before, during or after these types of experiences.
So to cut to the chase, my goal is to try and lift the level of engagement in my classroom. Well the kids prefer the hands-on, cooperative and less structured type activities so I guess utilising more of them would be the way to go. And they are usually keen on anything involving a bit of technology.
THINGS I'VE TRIED
* Hands-On Maths Activities
- Angle soccer
- Wet tennis ball angles
- REAL Maths: Statue of Liberty problem (length)
- REAL Maths: Which would you prefer? Your height in stacked 10c coins or your length in touching 50c pieces? (length)
- Target Maths Game: throwing sand bags at a target, measuring distance from and working out average accuracy over a number of trials
- Maths 300: Estimation Walks (length)
- Going on a 1km walk and having a competition of who can guess the closest to 1km
* Blogging
- see the class blog at 6red.blogspot.com
* Voice Thread
* Radio Project
- producing a radio news broadcast using stories selected from the newspapers (to be recorded on Voice Thread)
PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED
* Many of the kids (probably the majority) have limited reflective skills at the moment. They are able to identify what they like and dislike and can ‘have a go’ at explaining why when they are prodded to do so. Don’t naturally reflect on how they learn or even what they have learnt after an activity. Often the comments on our class blog are something like “This activity was fun because I got to go outside and work with my friends. I learnt lots from it”.
* Distraction during cooperative group work – especially amongst the boys.
THE ROAD AHEAD???
* Yesterday we jointly-constructed a comment on our blog as a whole class about what we had learnt from participating in Voice Of Youth. We called ourselves the 19-Brained Year 6 Monster or something like that. I tried to really emphasise that blogging is a reflective learning and communication tool. Hopefully this will help the kids improve their ability to blog reflectively and I think I will definitely try it again immediately before we blog as a whole class.
* I plan to go to the I-Pod Technology In-service next Saturday.
* I might make it to the in-service next Wednesday. I think the topic is ‘The New Technology Classroom’ or something like that.
* Any suggestions from colleagues are more than welcome…………………
Luke you have definetly been thinking about your class and learning! You have also reflected on engagement and how we can encourage deep thinking.(By the way we missed you this arvo!!) I think you have hit the nail on the end with regards how we engage kids in Year 6... hands on, working with their peers with a real-life focus.
With regards getting the kids more reflective.. your modelling is a great idea. I have a list of questions which encourage higher order thinking which may be helpful. Janine had a good idea called the 3 Whys. After the kids wrote a comment on a blog they had to answer the question 'Why?" They did this three times to encourage them to think more deeply.
With cooperative learning I am happy to discuss some of the key ideas & principles to ensure evryone takes responsibility for the groups learning. This may assist.
You are trying and experimenting with a whole heap of ideas
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