All you need is a pulse

I believe that one of the most important aspects of student learning (and therefore success) in any classroom is the relationship between the students and the teacher. This is therefore one of my highest priorities every year - and I also believe that it is one of my biggest strengths as a teacher. A combination of knowing where students need to go with their learning, and allowing them the freedom to explore their own passions is important. I also believe that some of the best learning occurs when teachers are students and the students are teachers (the empathy facet of understanding). For this to successfully occur it is important to develop a culture of respect, trust and collaboration amongst the students and teachers.

Once in an interview I was asked to identify three things that need to occur for successful learning to take place. There are many, many factors that influence learning but I finally settled on the new three Rs. The '3Rs' was a popular acronym when I was in Primary School - Reading, Writing & Arithmetic (see what they did there?). While these are all important literacies to develop, and their associated skills give students access to conceptual understandings, in isolation they don't necessarily always guarantee successful learning. So for that short meeting I coined the 'New 3Rs' - Respect, Risk-Taking and Reflection. Respect goes both ways. More successful learning will occur if the teacher respects the perspectives, backgrounds, learning styles and competencies of his or her students, and students should return that respect to their teacher. If students don't feel as though they are in an environment where they are free to take risks and try new things then the learning will suffer. This is a key element of inquiry teaching practice and it also applies to teachers as employees as well. Finally, we learn by trying or doing something and then reflecting on the experience before trying again. When we learn there is constant evaluation happening and in a variety of forms. So these were the three things that I highlighted at the time.

This brings me to the point of this post. John Hattie once stated: 'All you need to enhance achievement is a pulse. Everything works.' Hattie's seminal work on the influences on student learning analysed thousands of pieces of work in order to find out what it is that really makes a difference to learning in the classroom. His point was that there is an abundance of research about what makes a difference in classrooms - and everything makes some impact. Therefore, anyone can make a convincing argument, with data in order to support their claim. An example of this might be someone who wants to mandate one hour of homework per night in grade three. They could point to the fact that doing this much homework will improve student learning (and it will). Unfortunately for some, homework can also reinforce that they cannot learn independently, can undermine motivation and can internalise incorrect routines and strategies. So which side do we take? According to Hattie, homework has an impact of 0.29 on student achievement (the figure in Elementary school is 0.15). To put that in context, 0.40 is the benchmark for a years learning. Any initiative that produces a result above that is considered to be worth doing while those that fall below that mark need further consideration. Hattie's work enables us to see which are the things that we definitely should be doing, and which ones we should think twice about. This not only has implications for teachers and their students, but also for teacher training and development.

For a description of the top 10 influences on student achievement - check out this glossary.

So almost anything we do as teachers can have a positive impact on student learning and achievement. What is important for teachers is to understand the impact that we're having on our students and choose the practices that encourage the most growth.

Photo Credit: AMagill via Compfight cc

Top 100 tools for learning

Following  on from my previous post, I was looking through some of my old drafts and noticed that I'd already began writing a post about using Twitter almost a whole year ago. That post highlighted the results of a survey about the best on-line learning tools. In 2012 Twitter came out on top of the list. I was curious to find out if it was still considered number one.

 

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2013 from Jane Hart

I had also kept an old article from a newspaper in Australia that highlighted some of the ways that teachers are using Twitter  in their classrooms. It talks about the social media revolution and the role that it plays in today's classrooms. It states that social media use is now the number one activity on the web. I'd be interested to hear how other teachers are using Twitter in their classrooms.

Twitter as a PD tool

A little over 2 years ago I created my own Twitter account. I was encouraged to do this by a friend of mine. She told me that she found Twitter to be the best way to stay abreast of latest trends, information and ideas. Since then I have created a PLN that stretches across the globe and have learned a great deal as a result.

People use web 2.0 tools in many different ways. I know teachers and schools that use Facebook to help in their learning. Pinterest, Slideshare, Livebinder, Prezi, Glogster - the list goes on and on. Personally, I use Facebook for my personal life and Twitter for my professional life (although sometimes the two combine).

#Pypchat is something that I've become closely involved in this year. I've been following it for a while, but had never participated in a chat because I lived in Europe and the #pypchat was run on a timezone in Asia so I was always too late. I've since found out that there are other #pypchats sprouting up all over the world (Europe, Americas) so are opportunities wherever you live.

Twitter also provides me with countless links, feeds, trends and articles that have helped grow my understanding of a great deal of topics, as well as quick connections with educators around the world who are very generous with sharing their expertise.

Sometimes I feel like Twitter gives me too much information to keep up with - we do live in the New Media Age after all! Luckily there are options that help to filter information so that you can be more accurate in both your search for and contribution to certain topics. TweetDeck is one that I've used before (although there are may others) and it works well for me. Twitter also uses hashtags (#) to help categorise information - like #pypchat.

I believe that Twitter has a real place in the classroom and can help to contribute to authentic learning engagements. I try to incorporate it into my classroom wherever possible so that my students can also benefit from it. Last year one of my Gr. 3 students received a tweet from Zlatan Ibrahimovic during our UOI on role models - he was chuffed!

Twitter has transformed the way I access information and collaborate with others. Best of all, it offers me fantastic professional development on a daily basis (and its free!).


If you would like to learn more about #pypchat then you can find out about it here.

A question of mindsets

I'm currently reading Mindset, by Carol Dweck. It's a book that I've been meaning to read for quite some time now, having heard much about the ideas in workshops and from other colleagues. Our Middle and High School Head asked her faculty to read it as part of their professional reading this year and I was able to get my hands on a spare copy.

The general idea is fairly straightforward. There are two mindsets (the view or attitude that someone adopts) about oursleves: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Fixed mindset people believe that you are born with a specific amount of talent and ability for something and that no matter how hard you work you won't be able to really change this level. They believe that 'abilities are carved in stone' (pg. 6). Fixed mindset people constantly feel as though they have to prove themselves. This is because if they can't appear clever and smart then the only alternative is that they appear dumb, seeing as they can't do anything about their current ability levels. Therefore, they generally choose tasks that are just difficult enough for them.

Those who hold a growth mindset believe that you are born with a specific level of talent and ability for something but this can be altered by practising and honing your skills, knowledge and understanding of particular disciplines. They don't believe that your traits are 'simply a hand you're dealt with and have to live with' (pg. 7). Growth minded people believe that a person's qualities can  be cultivated through their efforts and that everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

When I first heard about these two mindsets, and as I began reading the book, I considered myself to be firmly in the 'growth' party. I definitely believe that I can improve myself by working harder and thrive on challenges to my thinking and abilities in the work that I do. This is also recognisable in the people that I choose to associate closely with. My wife is an amazing woman. But I'm not attracted to her purely for her gorgeous looks, fabulous singing voice and sense of humour. She is someone (probably more than anyone else) that sees my faults and helps me to work on them, challenges me to be a better person and encourages me to learn new things. She doesn't undermine my self-esteem but she does foster my self-development. I also thrive on learning opportunities. This weekend we have an EAL expert coming to our school to run a workshop on EAL learning styles and to give us some ideas and techniques about how to teach EAL students. Some of our teachers are upset that they have to give up their weekend. Sure, this is an inconvenience for all of us. But Dr. Rojas has a busy schedule and cannot come at any other time. Even though it is on the weekend, this is still a great opportunity to learn and improve our skills, knowledge and understanding of teaching EAL students - and our entire student body are EAL (save a handful of students). These are all attributes of someone who has a growth mindset. I will say though, that I don't always adopt this stance. If I'm confronted with difficulties in things that I'm not passionate about then I'm far less inclined the put the effort in to improve, especially if my starting point is fairly low. Anyone who has seen me dance would agree with this.

I'm only part-way through the book, however, and I'm starting to discover some interesting elements to the mindsets. Perhaps I'm not as growth oriented as I first thought. Apart from choosing particular tasks that allow them to prove themselves to their peers, fixed mindsetters also regularly ask themsleves evaluative questions such as: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser? They feel smart when something comes easily for them (and others struggle with it), when they finish something and its perfect, and when they don't make any mistakes (pg. 24). I can admit to asking myself these questions and I definitely feel the same way about some of the answers above that have come from people with a fixed mindset. Does this mean that I'm not a growth-minded person after all? Probably not. The fact that I'm even asking myself these questions indicates that I don't believe that someone is born one way.

Carol's message is at the beginning of the book is that 'everyone has the ability to change their mindset'. My current stage of understanding is that I appear to be on some sort of mindset continuum. I would predict that I'm more towards the growth end of the spectrum, and I don't feel like there's a clear cut position of being totally in one or the other (for me at least). I do feel smart when I can do things that others have difficulty with. But I also believe that this is a result of the hard work that I've put in over many years - it hasn't just happened. I also don't feel that because I can do something well that it doesn't mean that I can't still improve at it.

So this all points to me having more of a growth mindset than a fixed one. I am curious to find out more about the intricacies of each mindset and I wonder if, as my understanding of each continues to develop, my idea of where I place on the mindset continuum will change?


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Scaffolding Action

At the beginning of our school year here at BHA, our Elementary Principal spoke to us about the development of a service culture within our school. This is one of our school wide goals for the 2013/14 year so she wanted to give us the opportunity to work on some ideas before the students arrived. Seeing as we're in the PYP part of the IB, we figured that service would best be developed through the Action component of our units of inquiry.

Taking action can be a tricky element at times. Aside from the personal risks and challenges that someone must take in order to organise and implement meaningful action, there are also preconceptions from teachers to deal with. I bought one of these preconceptions with me. It's something that I'd never considered too much but now that I've had the opportunity to think through things in a more focused way, my understanding has moved to a new (hopefully better) place. I was of the opinion that teacher generated action was not worthy of a PYP classroom. The reason for this is that it simply wasn't meaningful to students if it didn't come from their own inquiry.

One of the readings that we were given helped me to move my understanding forward. It was a combination of sections from a book called Educating for Global Citizenship by Boyd Roberts. One part described a perspective of student participation that was defined by Hart's ladder of participation. You can see in the diagram below that there are eight levels. The first three are defined as non-participation and the top five indicate different levels of student participation. What this tool has helped me to realise is that, while we want our students to think, act and reflect independently, they need modelling to see what this looks like - just like anything else. It means that it's ok for adults to suggest and even initiate action in our classrooms and schools.

Seeing as we're inquiring into systems for our current UOI, my teaching partner in Gr. 5 and I decided that we would take advantage of a couple of authentic challenges that had recently arisen in our school community and see if the students could develop some systems that would help to solve them. We used Hart's ladder to identify where we landed in terms of student participation - to make sure that what we were planning was still considered as being participatory. We think we're at level six - Adult initiated, shared decisions with youth.

The two challenges that we posed to the students were (1) Find a way to organise, collect and store recyclable materials for use in our Maker Space (which is currently under construction) and (2) Develop a system that could help us organise how the students in Residence use the Branksome Hall Bikes (they were being left all over the campus and not being returned).

We then gave the students a lot of autonomy in the process. They could choose which cause they wanted to work for and collated their ideas with the other members in their group.  We thought is was important for the girls to recognise that once an idea was put on the table then it belonged to the group and could be improved on -  the girls were very good with this and, as a result there were some fantastic suggestions.  For the bikes group, some ideas included fixing GPS monitors to each bike and having them send information back to a central location (e.g. the security office) so that they always knew where each bike was; developing Branksome Hall Asia currency  that each student could use to pay a deposit on each bike they borrow; and creating a bike borrowing list that everyone had to sign up on before they could borrow. The Maker Space group wanted to create a commerical to be shown at Assembly so everyone could see what they wanted; they contacted journalism club to get them to write an article about our challenge for the school newsletter; and they are in the process of designing a Branksome Hall Asia recycling bag that will be given out free of charge to everyone at school to encourage them to bring in materials from home.

Although these ideas were initiated by the classroom teachers, it is clear that the decisions are being made by the students. They still have ownership over the action that they are taking and it is meaningful for them. Our hope as classroom teachers is now that the students have seen what this looks like then they will be able to initiate action of their own accord. They may still need more examples - and that is fine - the important thing is that they are involved as an active part of the process.