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Nigel Coutts

Thinking in the Wild - Thinking routines beyond the classroom - The Learner's Way - 21 views

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    Despite this being a 'thinking' conference, despite us all being advocates for structured and scaffolded models of thinking, not one group had applied any thinking routines, utilised a collaborative planning protocol or talked about applying an inquiry model or design thinking cycle. It wasn't that we didn't know about them. It wasn't that we don't know how to use them. It wasn't that we don't value them. We had all the knowledge we could desire on the how to and the why of a broad set of thinking tools and anyone of these would have enhanced the process, but we did not use any of them. Why was this the case and what does this reveal about our teaching of these methods to our students?
Nigel Coutts

Towards a pedagogy for life-worthy learning - The Learner's Way - 14 views

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    In the contemporary classroom, there is much greater consideration of what the learner does in partnership with their teacher so that they develop the capacity to learn. Classroom routines and structures are designed to engage the learner in a rich process of dialogical learning. 
Roland O'Daniel

Teach Science and Math - 88 views

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    Simple article, but very nice examples of podcasting routines that would add value to classroom instruction.  Podcasting takes some time to develop but offer students opportunities to listen to materials multiple times, when they want/need to hear it again. 
Julie Whitehead

Technology Integration - Download free content from Edutopia on iTunes - 81 views

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    Integrating technology into classroom instruction means more than teaching basic computer skills and software programs in a separate computer class. Effective tech integration must happen across the curriculum in ways that research shows deepen and enhance the learning process. In particular, it must support four key components of learning: active engagement, participation in groups, frequent interaction and feedback, and connection to real-world experts. Effective technology integration is achieved when the use of technology is routine and transparent and when technology supports curricular goals.
anonymous

The Coach in the Operating Room - The New Yorker - 37 views

  • I compared my results against national data, and I began beating the averages.
    • anonymous
       
      this is one of the most important reasons for data and using the data to help guide instruction
  • the obvious struck me as interesting: even Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every élite tennis player in the world does. Professional athletes use coaches to make sure they are as good as they can be.
    • anonymous
       
      Why wouldn't we want a coach? Our supervisor or administrator often serves as an evaluator but might not have the time due to time constraints to serve as an effective and dedicated coach. Yet, a coach doesn't have to be an expert. Couldn't the coach just be a colleague with a different skill set?
  • They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.
    • anonymous
       
      PROFOUND!!!
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  • always evolving
    • anonymous
       
      Please tell me what profession isn't always evolving? It something isn't evolving, it is dying! So, why doesn't everyone on the face of the earth - regardless of his/her profession or station in life - need coaching periodically to help them continue to grow and evolve?
  • We have to keep developing our capabilities and avoid falling behind.
  • no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own.
  • outside ears, and eyes, are important
  • For decades, research has confirmed that the big factor in determining how much students learn is not class size or the extent of standardized testing but the quality of their teachers.
    • anonymous
       
      So, instead of having students take test after test after test, why don't we just have coaches who observe and sit and discuss and offer suggestions and divide the number of tests we give students in half and do away with half? Are we concerned about student knowledge? student performance? student ability? student growth or capacity for growth? What we really need to identify is what we value!
  • California researchers in the early nineteen-eighties conducted a five-year study of teacher-skill development in eighty schools, and noticed something interesting. Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only ten per cent of the time. Even when a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback was added, fewer than twenty per cent made the change. But when coaching was introduced—when a colleague watched them try the new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions—adoption rates passed ninety per cent. A spate of small randomized trials confirmed the effect. Coached teachers were more effective, and their students did better on tests.
    • anonymous
       
      Of course they are more effective! They have a trusted individual to guide them, mentor them, help sustain them. The coach can cheer and affirm what the teacher is already doing well and offer suggestions that are desired and sought in order to improve their 'game' and become more effective.
  • they did not necessarily have any special expertise in a content area, like math or science.
    • anonymous
       
      Knowledge of the content is one thing and expertise is yet another. Sometimes what makes us better teachers is simply strategies and techniques - not expertise in the content. Sometimes what makes us better teachers could simply be using a different tool or offering options for students to choose.
  • The coaches let the teachers choose the direction for coaching. They usually know better than anyone what their difficulties are.
    • anonymous
       
      The conversation with the coach and the coach listening and learning what the teacher would like to expand, improve, and grow is probably the most vital part! If the teacher doesn't have a clue, the coach could start anywhere and that might not be what the teacher adopts and owns. So, the teacher must have ownership and direction.
  • teaches coaches to observe a few specifics: whether the teacher has an effective plan for instruction; how many students are engaged in the material; whether they interact respectfully; whether they engage in high-level conversations; whether they understand how they are progressing, or failing to progress.
    • anonymous
       
      This could provide specific categories to offer teachers a choice in what direction they want to go toward improving - especially important for those who want broad improvement or are clueless at where to start.
  • must engage in “deliberate practice”—sustained, mindful efforts to develop the full range of abilities that success requires. You have to work at what you’re not good at.
  • most people do not know where to start or how to proceed. Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence.
    • anonymous
       
      Progression
  • The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short.
    • anonymous
       
      The coach also makes you aware of where you are excelling!
  • So coaches use a variety of approaches—showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject’s performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.
  • “What worked?”
    • anonymous
       
      Great way to open any coaching conversation!
  • “How could you help her?”
  • “What else did you notice?”
    • anonymous
       
      These questions are quite similar to what we ask little children when they are learning something new. How did that go? What else could you do? What could you do differently? What more is needed? What would help?
  • something to try.
    • anonymous
       
      Suggestions of something to try! Any colleague can offer this - so why don't we ask colleagues for ideas of something to try more often?
  • three colleagues on a lunch break
  • Good coaches, he said, speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.
    • anonymous
       
      I probably need this printed out and stuck to the monitor of my computer or tattooed on my hand!
  • “listened more than they talked,” Knight said. “They were one hundred per cent present in the conversation.”
    • anonymous
       
      patient, engaged listening
  • coaching has definitely changed how satisfying teaching is
  • trying to get residents to think—to think like surgeons—and his questions exposed how much we had to learn.
    • anonymous
       
      Encouraging people to think - it is important to teach and encourage thinking rather than teaching them WHAT to think!
  • a whole list of observations like this.
  • one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.
  • watch other colleagues operate in order to gather ideas about what I could do.
    • anonymous
       
      This is one of the greatest strategies to promote growth - ever!
  • routine, high-quality video recordings of operations could enable us to figure out why some patients fare better than others.
    • anonymous
       
      I always hate seeing a video of me teaching but I did learn so much about myself, my teaching, and my students that I could not learn in any other way!
  • I know that I’m learning again.
  • It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.
    • anonymous
       
      But it still works and is effective at nudging even those who are fabulous to be even better!
  • modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things
  • coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.
  • We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion.
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    Valuable points about coaching - makes me want my own coach!
Robin Holleman

Response: Ways to Cultivate 'Whole-Class Engagement' - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazz... - 106 views

  • consistently use basic motivation strategies.
  • we need to ensure that we are implementing a series of factors that elevate our students' focus and level of concern.
  • Your odds of keeping your students on task go up when you mix things up and keep the energy feeling fresh.
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  • Work to establish a classroom culture in which it is understood that, with every task they perform, students know there is a strong possibility that they will have to share out their results in front of their peers.
  • Small changes of routine increase the motivation to attend to the task at hand.  
  • The A-Z Sentence Summary:
  • Total Participation Techniques frame the context so that all students are responding to higher-order prompts in low-risk settings.
  • The Chalkboard Splash:
  • he "Pause, Star, Rank":
  • we need to be conscious of the amount of work we give the students.
    • Robin Holleman
       
      Two contrasting direction sets illustrate very well the more engaging tactic.
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    Have used several of these strategies at the college level and they really do work.
Steve Ransom

The fantasies driving school reform: A primer for education graduates - The Answer Shee... - 5 views

  • Richard Rothstein
  • In truth, this conventional view relies upon imaginary facts.
  • Let me repeat: black elementary school students today have better math skills than white students did only twenty years ago.
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  • As a result, we’ve wasted 15 years avoiding incremental improvement, and instead trying to upend a reasonably successful school system.
  • But the reason it hasn’t narrowed is that your profession has done too good a job — you’ve improved white children’s performance as well, so the score gap persists, but at a higher level for all.
  • Policymakers, pundits, and politicians ignore these gains; they conclude that you, educators, have been incompetent because the test score gap hasn’t much narrowed.
  • If you believe public education deserves greater support, as I do, you will have to boast about your accomplishments, because voters are more likely to aid a successful institution than a collapsing one.
  • In short, underemployment of parents is not only an economic crisis — it is an educational crisis. You cannot ignore it and be good educators.
  • equally important educational goals — citizenship, character, appreciation of the arts and music, physical fitness and health, and knowledge of history, the sciences, and literature.
  • If you have high expectations, your students can succeed regardless of parents’ economic circumstances. That is nonsense.
  • health insurance; children are less likely to get routine and preventive care that middle class children take for granted
  • If they can’t see because they don’t get glasses to correct vision difficulties, high expectations can’t teach them to read.
  • Because education has become so politicized, with policy made by those with preconceptions of failure and little understanding of the educational process, you are entering a field that has become obsessed with evaluating only results that are easy to measure, rather than those that are most important. But as Albert Einstein once said, not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts.
  • To be good educators, you must step up your activity not only in the classroom, but as citizens. You must speak up in the public arena, challenging those policymakers who will accuse you only of making excuses when you speak the truth that children who are hungry, mobile, and stressed, cannot learn as easily as those who are comfortable.
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    An important read for anyone who truly wants to understand what's really important in education and the false reform strategies of our current (and past) administration.
D. S. Koelling

A Perfect Storm in Undergraduate Education, Part I - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher E... - 40 views

  • at least 45 percent of undergraduates demonstrated "no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills in the first two years of college, and 36 percent showed no progress in four years."
  • What good does it do to increase the number of students in college if the ones who are already there are not learning much? Would it not make more sense to improve the quality of education before we increase the quantity of students?
  • students in math, science, humanities, and social sciences—rather than those in more directly career-oriented fields—tend to show the most growth in the areas measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment, the primary tool used in their study. Also, students learn more from professors with high expectations who interact with them outside of the classroom. If you do more reading, writing, and thinking, you tend to get better at those things, particularly if you have a lot of support from your teachers.
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  • Increasingly, undergraduates are not prepared adequately in any academic area but often arrive with strong convictions about their abilities.
  • It has become difficult to give students honest feedback.
  • As the college-age population declines, many tuition-driven institutions struggle to find enough paying customers to balance their budgets. That makes it necessary to recruit even more unprepared students, who then must be retained, shifting the burden for academic success away from the student and on to the teacher.
  • Although a lot of emphasis is placed on research on the tenure track, most faculty members are not on that track and are retained on the basis of what students think of them.
  • Students gravitate to lenient professors and to courses that are reputedly easy, particularly in general education.
  • It is impossible to maintain high expectations for long unless everyone holds the line in all comparable courses—and we face strong incentives not to do that.
  • Formerly, full-time, tenured faculty members with terminal degrees and long-term ties to the institution did most of the teaching. Such faculty members not only were free to grade honestly and teach with conviction but also had a deep understanding of the curriculum, their colleagues, and the institutional mission. Now undergraduate teaching relies primarily on graduate students and transient, part-time instructors on short-term contracts who teach at multiple institutions and whose performance is judged almost entirely by student-satisfaction surveys.
  • Contingent faculty members, who are paid so little, routinely teach course loads that are impossible to sustain without cutting a lot of corners.
  • Many colleges are now so packed with transient teachers, and multitasking faculty-administrators, that it is impossible to maintain some kind of logical development in the sequencing of courses.
  • Students may be enjoying high self-esteem, but college teachers seem to be suffering from a lack of self-confidence.
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    So many issues here to deal with. Good read.
Sharin Tebo

Educational Leadership:How Teachers Learn:Fostering Reflection - 27 views

  • Expert teachers adjust their thinking to accommodate the level of reflection a situation calls for.
  • Another way to help teachers become better at reflection is to create study groups that introduce teachers to these four modes of thinking and explore which aspects of teaching call for each mode. Discussions and role-plays can help teachers see which routine decisions can be made through technological or situational thinking and which may require the deliberate or dialectical modes. I
  • Finally, to foster higher levels of reflection, encourage teachers to ask themselves questions about their classroom practice. Prompts like the following promote frequent reflection: What worked in this lesson? How do I know? What would I do the same or differently if I could reteach this lesson? Why? What root cause might be prompting or perpetuating this student behavior? What do I believe about how students learn? How does this belief influence my instruction? What data do I need to make an informed decision about this problem? Is this the most efficient way to accomplish this task?
solisg58

Encourage Students to Use AAC by Supporting Communication Partners: Help embed AAC use ... - 2 views

  • speech-language pathologists hope to accomplish with augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)
  • In her inclusive kindergarten classroom, she tried an AAC app with a basic grid display on a mobile tablet and made measurable progress with it. However, Lily’s team felt the AAC app lacked depth, so they switched her to a more advanced version
  • this research-supported approach provides the foundation for several training programs
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