Lesson Preparation: It Gets Easier

Tonight on #Teacherwellbeingchat we were talking about planning.

When I think about my early years of teaching, there was so much planning. Every single lesson I taught for the first year was being taught for the first time, and every teaching situation was being encountered for the first time. I had no repertoire and  no experience to fall back on. It was hard. I had to not only learn the content, but figure out how to teach it. A I was new, I didn’t trust my choices and I spent a lot of time second guessing myself, trying to figure the best way to teach a concept. I would spend most evenings staying up late, planning my lessons and creating resources for the next day. It took as long to plan the lessons as to teach them, if not longer.

If you’re in your early years of teaching, you’re possibly experiencing a similar sort of stress. You feel like you’re a constant slave to the job and you can’t slow down, because if you do, your students will suffer, or your class will be out of  control, or you just might not be asked back to teach again next year.

Well it gets easier – much, much easier.

As you build your experience a few things happen:

• You learn to trust your judgment. When you stop second guessing yourself, planning becomes a lot quicker and easier.
• You stop being such a perfectionist. After experiencing more than a few lessons that don’t go the way you planned, you start to realise that its not a disaster, and you start to work out how to plan lessons that might not be perfect, but are good enough to get the job done.
• You build a repertoire. Every time you teach a successful lesson, you store it away – both the content and the strategies, so next time you teach that subject, you have it up your sleeve ready to go.
• You know your content – you do eventually become familiar with all your content. So there’s less time spent on researching and understanding it.

There are also some fabulous resources out there to help you like this:

Do you have any tips to help with the planning process? Share them in the comments below.

Is it Time to Review the Common Grade Scale?

It’s mid year report writing time for teachers across NSW, and Australia.

The Australian Government requires teachers to provide written reports to parents twice a year. We must include comments for each key learning area or subject, and we are required to grade all our students against state and national standards on an A-E scale for effort and achievement.

One of the things I value about the report writing cycle is that it forces me to stop and reflect on each student as an individual. In order to report, I need consider where each student is against state and national standards, not just against my class standard. I need to consider not only what they’ve learned but how they learn, and set goals for each students future learning. While this is something I aim to do all the time, teaching is a busy job. I like that the reporting cycle forces me to take the time out to do that.

However, even though I’ve been using it for years, I find the A-E scale problematic.

The Common Grade Scale for Primary and Junior Secondary Students

A	The student has an extensive knowledge and understanding of the content and can readily apply this knowledge. In addition, the student has achieved a very high level of competence in the processes and skills and can apply these skills to new situations.
B	The student has a thorough knowledge and understanding of the content and a high level of competence in the processes and skills. In addition, the student is able to apply this knowledge and these skills to most situations.
C	The student has a sound knowledge and understanding of the main areas of content and has achieved an adequate level of competence in the processes and skills.
D	The student has a basic knowledge and understanding of the content and has achieved a limited level of competence in the processes and skills.
E	The student has an elementary knowledge and understanding in few areas of the content and has achieved very limited competence in some of the processes and skills.

In the 70s, when I was in Primary school, a C grade was considered poor. In the Australian Common Grade Scale, C is considered sound and therefore should reflect the achievement of most students. This means we are constantly having to reeducate parents and students about the gradings. Year after year we reassure parents that a C is not a fail, and in fact means that their child is progressing well towards the expected grade outcomes.

The Common Grade Scale does not reflect the way teachers usually  provide feedback. Throughout the year, we focus on where each student is at, their strengths and areas for development. We set goals for further learning and differentiate our instruction. We are so used to looking at students as individuals on a continuum of learning. It feels wrong, and awfully final to pigeonhole them as A, B, C, D and E students.

One of the intentions of the Common Grade Scale was to allow parents to know how their children were achieving compared to national standards. A C should be the same standard, regardless of whether the student is at school in Sydney’s North or in a remote community in Western NSW. However, as much as we try, it is very difficult to get it right. It is  so easy to be influenced by the cohort you teach, and by the school you work in. If the cohort has a lot of high achieving students, students who are average, may appear to be achieving poorly. Similarly, if a cohort is weaker, then some C grade students might appear to achieving at a higher level than they actually are.

Image courtesy of http://meandmylaptop.weebly.com

 

This year  I’ve  been considering how Bloom’s taxonomy fits in with all of this. When you look at the language that describes the different levels of the Common Grade Scale, it seems that sound achievement would only involve students working at the bottom 2 levels of Bloom’s taxonomy – knowledge and understanding. The grade descriptors only start talking about applied knowledge when it comes to the higher grades. This leads me to  question how well  the Common Grade Scale can really be used to describe student achievement. Bloom’s taxonomy is a fairly common planning tool for teachers.  I find it odd that the Common Grade Scale would consider all those higher order thinking skills to be above what is expected for sound achievement.

Critical and Creative thinking is now embedded in the new Australian Curriculum. Perhaps this is as good a time as any to review the way we report on student achievement.

 

 

Related articles

• The Case against Grading Students (jantwilson.wordpress.com)

 

Inspiring Reluctant Writers

Last year my school decided to target students from years 1-6 who were reluctant to write and see what we could do to increase their engagement and raise their performance. These weren’t students who had learning difficulties that prevented them writing, instead they were students who were able to write but just wouldn’t, or would take so long to start that they barely have completed a sentence before it was time to move on to something new.

After spending time working with these students, observing and talking with them to try to determine the cause of their reluctance, and also having reflected on our own practice as writers, we implemented a number of  strategies across the school to successfully engage them. 

As I reflect on it now, I realise they fit into 4 key strategies

1. Flexible Learning Spaces
2. Authentic opportunities to write using Web 2.0 tools
3. Explicit teaching of strategies to help students to plan their writing and overcome writers’ block
4. Scaffolding of writing in away that allowed students to write like a writer

In this post I’ll concentrate on the importance of flexible learning spaces.

While some students thrive seated at tables close to their peers, others find it distracting or off-putting when they write. We found that the close proximity to other students prevented some students from entering their ‘writers’ zone’, that particular state of mind where the ideas just flow, because they found the presence of others distracting. A few students even became self-conscious writing in that public space where their work could be viewed by others before they’d figured it out and felt that it was ‘ready’.

Introducing some flexibility into the classroom was a simple adjustment, which seemed to work for my students. I’m fortunate to have a large classroom, with plenty of little nooks and spaces away from the main student seating area. Whenever we had time to write I simply asked my students how they preferred to work that day. If they preferred to be in their own space away from the others then they could move into one. If they were preferred to stay at a desk in the main seating area, that was fine too. The majority of students did choose to stay in the main area, but each time they were given a choice, around 5 of my students expressed a preference for working alone, including one student who had particular difficulty starting or sustaining written work.

 

This particular student had a diagnosis of ADHD and found it hard to concentrate on any activity for longer than about 5 minutes. Somehow, when working away from the other students, he was able to focus for longer. He was even able to complete written tasks, something that had been quite rare before. I suspect that he found the presence of others overstimulating and needed to have a space of his own at times when he had to concentrate. 

 

It was not just the proximity to other children that seemed to cause difficulties for some of my students. The traditional teacher practice of wandering around, looking over shoulders, providing feedback and encouragement throughout the writing session seemed to be a hinderance to some. This again, can break the flow of concentration for some students, and hinder the creativity of others. I blogged about my own feelings when people watch me write last year. I hate it.  With this in mind, I asked my students how they felt, and again, while some didn’t mind it, I had one very talented writer who admitted that she found the regular check ups off-putting, and preferred to show me her writing when she had gotten it to a point where she felt it was ready for feedback. That discussion was helpful. I still  moved around the room, supporting students when it was needed, but before I’d intrude on their work, I’d check that they were ready for me to have a look. 

 

These simple adjustments I made, may not seem revolutionary, but for me they were transformative. I had to change my mindset, from being the teacher who controls and monitors to a teacher who trusts and supports her students.

 

By allowing my students to choose where they would work, and the amount and type of support they required from me, I was putting them in control. In a gentle way it forced my students to reflect on how they learned and to take responsibility for their learning. Instead of passively following directions, they had to become more self-directed, choosing the type of environment and support that would allow them to do their very best. They rose to the challenge every time.

 

 

 

Related articles

• Are We Hindering Our Students’ Ability to Write Well?
• Is Literacy Education Killing Story Telling

 

Making Maths Authentic

Budget (Photo credit: Tax Credits)

This year, my grade colleagues and I have been trying to find ways to make learning more authentic for our Year 2 students.

To help us do this, we purchased the imaths program which takes an investigative approach to teaching mathematics. The years program is broken into a series of investigations which require mathematical skills in order to succeed.

The first investigation we tried was ‘ShowTime’. Luckily there is a sample copy of it on their website for you to look at.. For this investigation the students had to plan a trip to a show or fair, like the Sydney Royal Easter Show. They were given a budget of $60 to share with a friend and had to examine the show guide to plan what they would buy, do and see.

My students found the experience of working within a budget challenging. When they realised that they would not be able to afford everything they wanted to do, some felt quite upset at the thought of having to cut some of the items on their wish list. However, by the end of the unit, they had all managed to come up with a workable budget.

They found the task of having to come up with an itinerary even more challenging. First they had to read analogue and digital time on the hour, half-hour and quarter-to/past. Then they had to decide when to visit each event, buy showbags or food and go on rides. While some of my students were able to plan quite logically, allowing time to visit different events, stop for lunch and snacks, and buy the showbags they wanted to purchase, others simply listed events and didn’t build in time for the shopping, rides and their all important lunch break.

Even though my students enjoyed the investigation, and could see how the maths we were learning in class related to the real world, it still didn’t seem authentic enough, so we asked the Year 3 teachers to help us. They agreed (thankfully because it was a BIG ask) to have their students put together a fun-fair for us.

They studied the types of events that occur at the Sydney Royal Easter Show and, working in teams, the students developed their own events for us to visit. These included ‘rides’ on the school yard climbing equipment, show bags, lucky dips, games and performances. They presented us with a program itemising each event, activity or product, along with a price for each. The Year 2 students were each given a budget of $20 and set about planning what they would do, see and buy. To challenge them further, they had to ensure they had enough money left to  buy a ticket for a musical performance at the end of the show.

While our Year Two students practised adding money and seeing how much they could buy with $20, our Year Three students practiced simple monetary transactions and calculating change.

It was an excellent, authentic learning experience for both grades that wouldn’t have been possible without a culture of teamwork and collaboration. I feel very grateful to work with a group of colleagues who are so willing to work together and try new things.

Making a Difference

Sometimes the demands of school life can become so great that it becomes easy to lose sight of the reason we are there.

We aren’t at work to please our colleagues, our boss, the parent community. We’re not there to be popular, approved of or well-liked. We’re not even there to be the most perfect teachers, with the most innovative, rigorous programs and the most immaculate classrooms. It’s not a competition.

The core business of schools and of teachers is our students.

It’s the final week of term in Sydney. With that comes many distractions. I’m battling tiredness, the cold I regularly get at the change of season, and have quite a few deadlines that I need to meet.

As I go to work each day this week, I plan to ask myself this question:

How can I make a positive difference to my students today?

When I keep that question in mind, it helps me get past all the distractions and I remember why I’m there

 

A Blog Worth Reading

I’ve been back at school for 7 weeks now, and as always, I feel like I’ve been buried under an avalanche of work. It’s been hard to find time for anything else other than what is absolutely necessary and important.

As much as I love and value this  blog, its one of the things I drop at times like this.

However, I have continued to read blogs. One of my favourites is Education Rethink.

John T Spencer writes very humble, insightful and thought provoking posts. I usually feel refreshed and inspired after reading them, and without exception, they cause me to reflect on my own practice.

So why not check it out now and let me know what you think.

Are there any blogs that inspire or interest you? Share your recommendations in the comment section.

Advice to New Teachers: Clothing Matters

When parents meet you for the first time, they want to have a sense that their children are in safe hands. Your colleagues want to know that you are someone who can be relied upon to do a good job and your students want to have a teacher they can respect. I truly wish we lived in a world where people didn’t judge others by their appearance, but the sad reality is we don’t, so it pays to be mindful of the impression you leave upon others. Yes, clothing matters.

This doesn’t mean you have to hide your own personality and style, but depending on what yours is, you may need to tone things down or dress things up a little for the work environment.

While many private schools will have a clearly defined dress code, NSW government school teachers are simply asked to dress professionally – interpretations of which vary greatly from school to school and teacher to teacher. Most NSW government schools teachers wear neat, casual attire.

Here are some general guidelines, which should keep you out of trouble. What you wear is a personal choice, so feel free to follow or ignore.

• Men – a collared shirt or polo is a good safe option.
  

  Business and Smart Casual are typical in NSW public schools. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Australian summers are hot, and many schools are not air-conditioned, so in my opinion shorts are acceptable so long as they are neat and tailored. Avoid wearing these on the first day, however.
• Be a role model – this means wearing your hat on playground duty (most NSW schools have a no hat no play rule as part of their sun-safe policy) and avoid shoe string straps – follow the  same sun-safe guidelines expected of your students.
• Thongs  (the footwear, NOT the underwear) are never acceptable. For non-Australian readers, thongs are also known as flip-flops or jandals.
• Ladies – avoid necklines that will expose your bra when you are leaning over to help students with their work.
• Primary teachers – avoid hemlines that won’t allow you to sit on low classroom chairs, or sit on the floor with a group of students
• If you like wearing high heels, choose wedges for days when you will be doing playground duty on the oval.
• Wear clothing that can be washed easily – especially if you work with small children, paint or other messy substances.
• Wear shoes you can stand up in for a long time.
• Choose clothing appropriate for the work you will be doing that day. If your day includes teaching dance, or sport, wear or pack something appropriate.
• Smart jeans in a dark denim are acceptable in most NSW public schools, but ripped, torn or frayed jeans are best avoided.

This was the fourth post in a series of advice for new teachers. For more, see my New Teachers page.