Learning styles don’t exist

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Hattie professional learning day – Newcastle 2011

Hattie workshop

The following videos are a recording of one of John Hattie’s presentations where he covers some of the key themes from his book. His somewhat confrontational style certainly aims to get you thinking.

Well worth a watch when you get a chance.

Constructive alignment in the PDHPE classroom

I have enjoyed reading about constructive alignment recently and from what I gather is used extensively in higher education. It also underpins a lot of what happens in schools but I have never heard it referred to before in a school setting.

Put simply constructive alignment involves 3 key steps which must ‘align’.
1. What you want your students to learn (outcomes or objectives / goals etc)
2. What activities students need to complete to achieve the learning goals? (learning activities)
3. How you know when they get there and can do what you want? (assessment)

“The teacher makes a deliberate alignment between the planned learning activities and the learning outcomes. This is a conscious effort to provide the learner with a clearly specified goal, a well designed learning activity or activities that are appropriate for the task, and well designed assessment criteria for giving feedback to the learner”. wikipedia

A simple concept but very powerful for learning if you can align your assessment, learning activities and learning outcomes. A common thing I see for assessment tasks is where students are given a task to be completed out of class time that vaguely relates to what is covered in class. In a range of cases when looking at the unit of work it is clear that there is no alignment between the intended learning outcomes, teaching activities and the assessment activities and this is something I look forward to using as a framework for evaluating units of work.

Working from workbooks makes it easy to take an approach where learning goals are overlooked and activities are simply completed in order without thinking through exactly what it is I want students to learn. I think this approach is  dangerous if we want to ensure our students are learning what we intend. If we are not clear on what we want students to learn it makes it easy to overlook checking for understanding and is difficult to know whether they have learned what we intended or not.

So this year I hope to do a few things to improve my lessons using constructive alignment.

1. This year my goal is to start every unit/lesson with some intended learning outcomes or goals for the lesson that I want students to be aware of and take time talking through this. This will allow us to work out where they are currently at a little better and give them some say in the progress of the lesson and potentially the activities of the unit/lesson. I always try to link previous lessons with what we will be looking at in the current lesson but I think from my reading that clearly stating learning goals and talking through these with students will provide greater opportunity to explore where students are currently at and use this to ensure we are not simply repeating things they already know and build on their current understandings. I am hoping it will also allow me to give the students the opportunity to provide input into how they would like to meet the goals for the unit/lesson and if they have suggestions other than the ones I put forward.

Giving over a little control in some ways but if my reading and research proves correct should also lead to improved learning outcomes. It feels a little messy already for me but I am going to give this a shot.

2. Use ‘constructive alignment’ as a framework for evaluating lessons and units of work and assessment activities in particular whether they be assessment of, for or as learning tasks.

Lesson Reflection Questions

Did I clearly state and discuss intended learning outcomes with students?

How well did my intended learning outcomes, learning activities & assessment align in that lesson.

 

image:

http://www.chrisclancy.com/large-view/Rhode%20Island-Sepia/86122—6317/Photography.html

2011 = action

I read about an idea today where you choose one word as a focus for the year ahead instead of making up ‘resolutions’ (thanks to @pipcleaves on twitter for the find). I like the idea and my word came to me within about 3 seconds – ‘action’.

It sits perfectly with me and I feel is the ideal word for what I need to do in the year ahead. To reflect on my past I think I know a lot more and have far more ideas than I implement and often over analyse and hold back at the expense of trying something and reflecting.

So 2011 will be about doing more with what I know. Putting ideas into action with my classes. I certainly feel I need to bridge the gap between what know and what I do and a focus on ‘action’ in 2011 will hopefully help bring these closer together.

Next few posts will outline some of these ideas.

Health as a 21st Century skill

An interesting video that I will use in my classes. I will use it as a discussion starter for our nutrition/physical activity based units of work. Lots of great discussions that can come out of this one!

BOS Key terms Jeopardy Template

I have enjoyed using the jeopardy templates in class as revision style games and think they are also a nice little revision tool the students can use later. They are easy to create and easy to share and modify with other teachers. I like that you don’t need an account and can get straight into setting up your template. You can also copy other templates and modify them as you like which I really like.

I will get the students to make up a few templates as revision for their yearly exams and get them to share them with their peers as my next little trial with this site.

Not too many downsides to this simple but effective site. Worth a look in my opinion.

BOS Key terms Jeopardy Template

Which answer do you want sir?

Had an interesting question asked in class today which strikes at the heart of one of the challenges of teaching PDHPE. In posing a range of discussion questions to students around their thoughts on sexual harrassment and sexual assault (eg: a person who wears tight or ‘sexy’ clothing is asking for it) I had one of my more ‘open’ students ask -
‘Which answer do you want sir – the one you want to hear or the one we really think?”.

I was actually extremely grateful that she asked the question as I think our students are very good at giving us the answers we want to hear even when they may think differently – ‘playing school’ I guess. Her asking this question enabled me to say that I wanted to hear what they really think and this seemed to encourage a real discussion instead of going through ‘school’ answers.

One of the challenges I acknowledge is engaging students in ‘real’ discussion where they can open up and really tackle the tricky issues. This also takes some ground rules and skills in managing to ensure students do not say things that will offend others or stigmatise them out of the class, but can make class much more engaging and authentic and hopefully allow some real learning to occur that can be taken out of the classroom.

image – http://www.siouxcityschools.org/pages/uploaded_images/hands%20up.gif

cold call questioning = win

I was looking at a school website in the U.S recently and came across a simple questioning technique that I gave a go and found to be extremely effective. The technique is essentially used as a revision tool and checking for student understanding.They call it ‘cold calling’ and it basically involves not asking for ‘hands up’ but randomly calling on students for answers during class (nothing new here). The idea is to ask all students questions and spread the questions evenly around the class.

The bit I like is that if a student cannot answer the question then you ask another student and continue this process until a student answers correctly. Once they answer correctly you then go back to the previous students and ask them to repeat or re-clarify the answer for the rest of the group. I have found a couple of things happen when I start using this technique.

1. All students need to pay attention and ensure they listen to the answers and understand as I will often ask the same question to other students to check their understanding also. If they do not know the answer then they have an opportunity to learn from other students to clarify their understanding. By focusing questioning around core concepts and essential knowledge it can be an effective way to help all students develop a strong fundamental knowledge.

2. Not knowing is O.K and it gives the students an opportunity to learn from their classmates. All students are required to think and be ready to answer so I have found an increase in there attention during learning activities also when they know that cold calling will be used to check their understanding.

3. Is a great assessment for learning tool to get a snapshot of the class’s understanding of an issue. When students show a lack of understanding in an area it can be a good indication that students have not developed the understanding required and can be an indicator to consider how well the learning was covered.

'I like to watch'

An open and honest reflection from a ‘newish’ teacher about the benefits of teachers watching others teach. Worth a read.

“Classroom management is something I completely understand in theory and I even know the dance steps, but I can’t seem to keep from tripping over my two left feet.

I know I have to set up good procedures from the beginning and stick to them, but I never seem to have the right ones.”

http://educationontheplate.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/i-like-to-watch/

ITSC 2010 day 2

day 2 ITSC 2010 Sydney