UNLEASH

ED

Blog

  • Books. Books. iBooks.

    Those that know me know I am not much of a reader. Obviously I have to keep that quite quiet in the classroom, because I want to encourage my class to read as much as possible. To do so, I usually use a lot of picture books as inspiration for reading. I like picture books because; well lets face it… they have pictures! And some of those picture are works of arts all on their own. Whilst at University, a group of friends and I had an assignment to write a children’s “EBook” for use in a classroom. We had so much fun with it, we actually wrote a few books.
    Now; this was back in the time before iPads, E-Readers and the like. We had to use Powerpoint to create them for use as an EBook.
    Having just purchased iPads for each classroom at our school, I went and found some picture books on iBooks. It gave me an idea.
    A good idea.
    So I dug around my old files from university, and eventually found our original powerpoint EBook. I took it, converted it into a suitable format using iBooks Author, and now it is currently awaiting approval from Apple NZ to be made available in our country. Seeing how easy it was, I decided that actually, I could probably use my love of art and painting, and couple it with my vocation, and make some picture books suitable for 10 year olds and up.

    02

    I even found out how to get ISBN numbers – and it’s not that hard!!!
    Keep an eye out on iBooks Store for an author out there with my name on it!

  • National Standards Again

    Today Nigel Latta launched on the offensive at the press release from Hekia “how-do-you-say-her-name-Potato” Parata and “the Media”.
    Here’s what was on his Facebook page (Wednesday 12 June, 10:14am)

    ‘National Standards’ aren’t.

    The latest national standards ‘results’ being reported in the media are utter nonsense. Pure and simple. Even if we ignore the large inconsistencies between the way that the ‘standards’ are measured (and we can’t because the inconsistencies make comparisons all but impossible), and the fact that it assumes all children of a given age are maturing at the same rate (which they don’t), and we ignore the impact of little things like child poverty (which some politicians like to do much to their shame), it’s still impossible to say anything at all about a change in the numbers when you only have two data points.

    They can’t say that a difference of 1.2-2% on the various measures between last year and this year is an ‘improvement’, because we simply don’t know.

    If you had assessed all of those very same children again the day after they were assessed for these numbers, in the exact same conditions with the exact same measures, then you would also get a different number. That’s because in the real world we have this little thing called statistical variation–things never work out exactly the same. To make any meaningful statements about ‘improvements’ you need meaningful measures (which national standards aren’t anyway) over several different data points (i.e. over several years).

    I wish the media would get that very simple, but very important point. Politicians will spin it as a gain, but it isn’t. It’s simply meaningless statistical ‘noise’.

    The government went with national standards because they thought voters would like it, not because it’s the best thing for making progress on education. If we really wanted to lift our ‘national standards’ then, perhaps as a beginning, we’d take more care of the large numbers of our kids living in poverty.

    When they produce their ‘rankings’ of schools I’m pretty sure it’s going to show a trend whereby higher decile schools meet/exceed the ‘standards’ much more than lower decile schools. I wonder why that might be? And who do we blame for that? Teachers?

    Don’t be sucked in by all this political positioning. My advice is to ignore the national standards tables because they don’t mean anything. There’s a reason teachers were so opposed to the way these ‘national standards’ are being used… fundamentally because it’s nonsense!

    This was all in relation to this article on Stuff. (which I have appended at the end of this post incase it goes missing!)

    As Mr Latta points out, there is little point in celebrating increases of 1%, 2% or even 3% increases and calling them improvements. Even if you disregard the fact that these judgements are made based on a whole variety of factors, and that even from class to class, let alone school to school there are variations and interpretations of the standard, a statistical difference of 1-3% is too small to consider any more than an anomaly. Heck… My intellectual ability changes as much as 1-3% on any given day.

    Add to this the fact that the assessment that teachers have been using has been shifting and adjusting their benchmarks as results come in, meaning that comparisons from year to year are even more ridiculous, and can quite easily account for more than 1-3%. Some more skeptical scholars such as myself think that these adjustments are probably being made to make sure that National Standards look good, and to give the allusion that they are working and increasing the achievement levels. The fact that the Ministry has hinted that these changes will be on-going as they are “…regularly reviewed and ways of moderating results would continue to be refined.” suggests to me that the benchmarks will continue to be changed until results improve.

    Nigel Latta is right. These results are meaningless. They serve to popularise the government and their great education improving policies. They celebrate over these small increases in improvements and throw a party for National Standards. They claim it as their victory. They won’t say that teachers are the cause for these increases. No. Quite the opposite. They will say that the reason there isn’t more improvement is because of poor teaching. Teachers therefore need to work harder to raise the tail, while the government and ministry claim the prizes for meaningless “improvements”.

    The media has some responsibility in this. Rather than accepting these remarks from Hekia Parata, why not actually stop for just a moment, and then ask her whether they can really claim 1-3% as a success. And if she won’t answer, then don’t report her story. The media are playing dumb, and reporting once again thinking that the rest of the country are fickle. We’re not. We are able to think. We are able to actually work out that what’s spurting out of the government’s mouth is rather tainted. Yet you won’t stop treating us like we won’t be able to work this out. That we take everything at face value.
    It’s kinda pathetic.
    It’s a good thing teachers don’t treat their students like that.

    Related Reading

    Students’ achievement ‘increasing’ – Stuff Article

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8780900/Students-achievement-increasing

    The latest national standards data shows an increase in achievement particularly for Pacific children, according to figures released today.

    But they also revealed some “concerning trends”, including a decline in achievement at different year-levels, especially in maths.

    The latest overall national standards results in reading, writing and mathematics were released by Education Minister Hekia Parata this morning.

    The data revealed the percentage of primary and intermediate school children achieving above, at or below the standards in the 2012 year.

    It is the second time the results have been released publicly since the standards became mandatory in 2010.

    Last year Fairfax Media obtained and analysed nationwide national standards results and published them on Stuff’s School Report.

    The latest data showed:

    – Achievement against the national standard for reading was up by 1.2 per cent from 76.2 per cent in 2011 to 77.4 per cent in 2012.

    – Achievement against the national standard for mathematics increased by 1.4 per cent to 73.6 per cent in 2012.

    – Achievement against the national standard for writing increased by 2 per cent to 70 per cent in 2012.

    “What the data tells us is that there has been a small but incremental improvement in reading, writing and mathematics,” Parata said.

    Pasifika children showed the greatest increase, improving by 3 per cent in all three standards.

    “It’s great to see that around 70 per cent of children are at or above the national standards and the increase in Pasifika achievement,” Parata said.

    This was the first year national standards data had been broken down by year-level and there were some concerning trends including a decline in the achievement as the year-level increased, especially in mathematics, she said.

    The New Zealand Educational Institute said this year’s data was even more unreliable than last year because of changes to a key assessment tool for teachers.

    But the Ministry of Education said it was working to “continuously improve the range and quality of data”.

    Ministry student achievement deputy secretary Rowena Phair said: “As with any new large-scale data-gathering initiative, there will be a period of adjustment.”

    She said assessment tools would be regularly reviewed and ways of moderating results would continue to be refined.

  • L.I.Y. – Focusing Students

    “We want W.A.L.T that is less Disney”.
    A brilliant quote from Lester Flockton.

    In my classroom, I have developed a new way of presenting the “WALT”.
    W.A.L.T stands for “We Are Learning To” which is how the Learning Intention (or L.I.) should start for students.
    In my class I did away with W.A.L.T.
    It annoyed me and my students are more than capable of understanding “Learning Intention”. So I use L.I.

    Recently we have heard about the benefits of students knowing WHY they are learning what we are learning. I have thought about this and added to the L.I.

    L.I.Y – a little bit like D.I.Y, but not. It allows a teacher to combine the WHAT we are learning, and the WHY we are learning it. The “Y” stands for the word it sounds like… “why”.

    I have been using this system in my class in all subjects and it has been really interesting to see students picking up on the new way of thinking and there has been a noticeable improvement in engagement.

    History

    For a long time I have been sceptical and cynical about the use of Learning Intentions in the classroom. My main reason being that we never had them growing up, and I turned out okay. We never worried about what we were learning or why we needed to learn it. We just did it because we respected the teacher and trusted that what they were doing in class was part of them providing a good education, so we just did what we were told.

    However, it is a reality and an expectation that teachers should be directing their students by explaining what the students should be learning.

    Much has been made of Success Criteria, or S.C. It’s the HOW students will know they succeeded or WHAT it is students are going to be doing.
    To be honest I am even less enthusiastic about S.C. The How is just what happens during the lesson. I always give my students targets during a lesson, or expectations for what they need to complete. They know what they have learned without having to over think about it.

    Sometimes it does feel like there is a lot of actual teaching time used up explaining what I’m going to be teaching, rather than actually teaching it. But I have seen some benefits, and even as a teacher, it is quite cool to see my learners come full circle and realise what they learned.

    I feel that now with L.I.Y., I have made it myself. I came up with it using my own thought process, and because I “own” it, and made it my own, I’m more likely to use it on a regular basis in my class.

  • Natural Standards


    Natural Standards

    I don’t need to say anything else.

  • Performance Pay for Education

    Here’s a visualistion of my blog post from yesterday.

    performance-pay-2012

  • Performance Pay Gets in the Way

    In Education in New Zealand over the last couple of months, we have heard the threats of performance pay, and bumping up class sizes, and developing better teachers. This has been well documented in the press, with recent articles on Stuff outlining the intentions of the current Government.

    www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/6930082/Bigger-class-sizes-announced – 16 May, 2012

    www.stuff.co.nz/6936035/Bad-report-card-for-bigger-classes – 17 May, 2012

    Please take your time to read both posts, and then my thoughts regarding the future of New Zealand’s education. There are also further links to similar articles at the bottom of this post.
    If you think that this doesn’t affect you, you may be right. But this will be affecting your child, your son, daughter, or your niece, nephew, or your friends children. You will know someone, some child that this will affect, and it would pay to be thinking of them when you consider these points.

    From these articles, there are three major changes that the Government is pushing. They are wanting Better Teachers, so there are going to be changes to educating teachers to be better. They are introducing larger class sizes, so that there are less teachers to pay. And finally they are wanting to introduce performance pay for teachers, as a “reward” for good teachers.

     

    Better Teachers

    Part of the intentions of the National led government, (who don’t even make up the majority of this country’s support!) to try and sell these policies, is to say that they want to make better teachers. No one is going to be able argue that having better teachers is not a good thing. Aside from that, it is incredibly insulting to the profession so suggest that teachers at the moment aren’t “better”.
    And how do we define “better teachers”?
    How do we assess whether one teacher is better than another?
    Well, the government would say “By results against the National Standards”, which we know is a load of crock, because National Standards are a set of unfounded and unjustified guidelines for failure not achievement. Add to that the fact that National Standards are based on an “Overall Teacher Judgement” , which surely enters into a conflict of interests, where results are used to determine if you are a better teacher than someone else.
    Enter National testing. This will be the next line of changes to the system, as Teachers will not be trusted to make the decision as to where the students are at, so we will have a National Standardised test that every kid in New Zealand will sit.
    The other thing the government would say regarding how you assess whether a teacher is better than another is this coin word called “Engagement”.
    My first, and only question will be – “How do you plan to measure engagement?”. The answer to that will be so flimsy and washy that even tree huggers would be ashamed.

    So how else will we get “better” teachers? By educating more teachers (of which there is already an excess of; or is it to replace all the good teachers who leave because of this)? They are also talking of making additional study requirements of existing teachers, on top of teaching a class, and raising the achievement of that class so that they can get paid? Is anyone else getting this!? It sucks. Yet its happening.

     

    Class Size

    This is a planned red herring for these changes. They’ve set this one out as a mouse, so that everyone dances and screams, whilst across the room they sneak through the lion which is performance pay. The major change isn’t the raising of the class size, but that schools will be funded based on the class size. See, changing the class size requirements in Year 2 to 10 classes from 23-29 pupils to 27.5 pupils isn’t going to make much of a difference. I started this year with 28, and am now down to 27 (essentially 27.5!). In years gone by I’ve had 29, and even a term of having 31. It’s not like they’re making class sizes 35, 40, 45…. Yet.

    Yet what a difference it makes when I have a class of 22 -24. The room is quieter, which means there are less distractions, and more learning productivity. The students are more relaxed and more focussed, and so tend to be more “engaged” – if that can be observed. The teacher is more relaxed and has a better headspace, and is less likely to be having to deal with the niggles that occur in larger class sizes. We get through groups quicker (or can cover more learning in extended group times) allowing me to touch base with students one on one and see how they are going. The students get a long better, its easier to keep an eye on them. Everything is better. There is not a single downside to having less students in the class – if you are focussed on the benefits for the students.
    However, if you are not focussed on the benefits for the students, and are instead focussed on the red number at the end of the leger, then of course, larger class sizes to take in every child in New Zealand,  means less teachers over all, which means less salaries to pay, and salaries take up 80% of the budget.

    But larger class sizes mean less one on one time with the teacher than they already get, there’s more noise, which increases distractions, and lowers learning. There are more niggles in the class, which raises the teacher’s stress levels as they try and contend with keeping on top of things. Students realise this, and also notice that they can get away with little things while the teacher is busy dealing with other problems. Less quality time is spent on teaching, and more on crowd control.

    Two principals commented in the latest article on Stuff today. One said that he started teaching “…he had a class of 40 and that was not conducive to modern teaching methods. ‘It was `Sit down and do this’. There was very little discussion and very little of what makes teaching effective.’”

    The other makes an incredibly good point, one that I hope everyone else can come to realise, in that larger class sizes means that “The very group that the Government say they want to work with most – Maori, Pacific Islanders, special needs students – we know that when there are large classes, it is harder for them to achieve.” – Bad-report-card-for-bigger-classes – Stuff, 17 May 2012.

    But politicians will argue that a “good” teacher will be able to teach any number sized class. Some university proffessors who also haven’t had any teaching experience in the last 20 years, will also try and tell you that “research suggests” that quality teaching is more important than class size.
    So let us get the “best” teacher in the country, and put them in front of 35-40 students. Not for a day. For the year. According to these politicians (who have never taught a class, or if they did, they left and became politicians – says more about them than they think!), this teacher should have no problems raising achievement against National Standards, while continuing to teach other subject areas, complete reports, analyse data and provide differentiated learning for the class, whilst maintaining control of the behaviour in the classroom.

     

    Performance Pay

    Today (17 May, 2012) it was announced that performance pay would be decided on, not just by an appraisal system, but also based on achievement results of National Standards.
    I find it relatively humouring, but I am very much annoyed that this has been somewhat hidden by the whole uproar over class sizes, as it is quite clearly a much bigger issue.

    Before I begin into my rant, I want to make it clear that I understand the need for a performance pay type model. There are some “bad” teachers out there, and there does need to be a system for working them out, and removing them from the system. The good teachers do deserve to be rewarded for their efforts, and often are in the areas of being given units for the additional work that they do.
    So I do agree that poor teachers need to be whittled out, and the good teachers do need rewards.

    However, performance pay based on results is not the way. Especially when those “results” are going to be based on National Standards, which still have not been fully developed or implemented properly or fairly, and have so far been able to tell us nothing about achievement, but instead, have given us a very good picture of failure.

    Basing performance pay on results is ridiculous. And here’s why:

    Some students are behind the eightball when it comes to learning. A list of factors would be longer than my arm, but a few would include such things as;

    • mental disabilities or challenges
    • being hungry due to lack of breakfast/food at home and school
    • stresses at home (mum and dad split/fighting/depressed/drugs/alcohol
    • abuse (verbal, physical, emotional)
    • unhealthy living environments that cause regular illness and misses out on school
    • lack of support at home, where value placed on education is minimal, and so student is often truant

    Many of these things are out of the school’s control, and are out of the child’s control, and sometimes even out of the parents control. No one can be blamed for any of this happening – not even the government. It’s called life.

    But what will end up happening?

    I have had students in the past who were well below the National Standard. There is no hiding it. The parents were made aware of this, and there were no real surprises at all. Every teacher that had been before me, and myself, had worked hard to raise the level of achievement, and had done so, but at a very low pace. And nothing would have changed that. The student, at the end of the year, had made a year’s progress, but was still well behind the eightball when it came to National Standards.

    I have a privileged view of this whole issue. I have worked in classrooms for the last 3 years. I know what it is like. What is scary is that the people who are making these decisions, not only don’t have any experience of what it is like, and are merely concerned with making the red figure at the end of the leger smaller, but they don’t want to listen to those who actually have some idea about it.
    But I get that. Why would you listen to teachers? Of course teachers are going to complain about being paid based on performance. Of course teachers are going to complain about having larger class sizes.
    But what about listening to what has happened in the past? Look at the education system in the UK. A mess. Why? Because of the National Standards that they introduced into their country, which has completely destroyed the hope in teachers and students over there.
    Look at the education system in the US. A mess. Why? Basically because of Charter schools and performance pay (from what I’ve read – I could be wrong…)
    But why are we taking our world leading education system, with it’s curriculum that was world beating, and developed for a decade to be flexible and adjustable to suit EVERY classroom in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and completely changing it to be based on National Standards in Reading, Writing and Maths (3R’s… which I thought had been dispelled with the inkwell and cane in classrooms of old). Not only that, but then we go and base our whole education system on models that have been complete failures in other countries.

    How stupid do we have to be to follow a bunch of sheep off a cliff?

    What really scares me even more, is the notion that there might be a chance for parents and students to have input into the performance pay of a teacher. “[Ms Parata] revealed that parents and even students would soon get the chance to review teacher performance…”

    Evidently my 9 and 10 year olds are the best kind of people to decide if I’m a good teacher or not, and whether I get paid. Who knew? Next there’ll be a National Standard in “Reviewing your teacher”.

     

    Finally

    I wonder how politicians would react to the tables being turned.
    Maybe, we set a baseline salary for MP candidates.
    And let’s introduce performance pay to that.
    So a salary of $144,000 a year (which is the pay check one receives (2012) if he or she is just a member of parliament, with no other responsibilities…) will be available, but the percentage of that salary is decided upon how many votes you received. So if you get 100% of the vote in your electorate, then you should be entitled to 100% of the pay. But, if you got 59% of your constituents vote, then your salary would be $84,960 a year (which is nothing to shrug your shoulders at). The left over $59,040 could then be put into a fund that will supply services such as Health, Education, Police, with the funding that they deserve, or at least help contribute towards it.

    I bet they probably wouldn’t like that.
    I bet they’d probably complain about it.
    I bet they’d probably complain a little like what the teachers are complaining like now.
    I bet they’d decide against it.

     

    So thank you to all of you out there who voted this government in. Thank you to all the teachers who blindly voted National because they fit in the pay bracket for tax cuts. The only thing we can do now is sit back and watch the future of this country plummet into the depressing depths of “Well Below” and “Below”, as the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer (in every aspect, wealth and education).

    Is it that dire? Or can we actually get out there, and support the teachers?
    Your child has a teacher, who works hard, works weekends, takes work home, and sacrifices their time, their money. If you don’t have a child, you will know someone who does, and that child also has a hard working teacher trying to make a living. And for those living under a rock and think that teachers work from 9 until 3, and get heaps of holidays and shouldn’t be complaining, you need to get a reality check. I am assuming you have a 9-5 office job. Teachers work 8-5pm most days of the week, just like you. We often have to take work home on the weekends (although I try to avoid this as much as possible, because like you, I am trying to have a life as well!), and as for holidays, they are not. We work in the first week finishing off things from the last term. And in the second week we plan and prepare for the next term. The school holidays are just work without kids, which is exactly what you and the majority of the rest of the workforce does day in day out.

    What now?

    I want to encourage you to be active, if not for your child, then for me, a teacher. Write to your local MP, expressing your concern over these changes. Write to John Key (the current Prime minister) and express your concern and lack of support for these changes. The worst thing you can do is sit there and do nothing. Actually I lie. The worst thing you can do is sit there and blame teachers, and complain about how we are complaining about our future.

    And what can teachers do? Well, we can bring the country to a stop by all walking out on our classes, together, as one. Parents all over the country will be forced to take the day off work. Production will go down. And no doubt, there will be complete and utter blame put on Teachers instead of the real cause of the strike, which is the Government’s decisions. But the reality is that I don’t want my teaching ability to be judged by the results of 9 and 10 year olds against an unproven and unjustified National Standards which have nothing to do with achievement, and everything to do with failure.

     

    Related Reading

    Teacher Performance Pay under fire – 17 May 2012

    Concern over teacher performance pay – 17 May 2012

    Principals criticise move to bigger classes – 17 May 2012

    Education Changes: video – 16 May 2012

    Teacher performance pay gets tick – 3 May 2012

     

    Please Note: I am a registered teacher in New Zealand. I have been teaching for 3 years in New Zealand classrooms. The views I have expressed here are my own, and not necessarily the views of the school I currently work for, nor the Board of Trustees of that school.

  • Where are the kids learning?

    I was told not so long ago, that kids only spend 13% of their time at school. It was in relation to say that kids actually don’t do a lot of their learning at school. Kids will learn through all sorts of means, from what they hear, what they see, what they experience.

    Even as a teacher, I thought, that can’t be right. That can’t be right at all. Only 13%!!?

    Here’s the Maths:

    40 weeks at school. 5 days a week. 6 hours a day.
    6 x 5 = 30 hours per week.
    30 x 40 = 1200 hours at school per year.

    365 days per year. 24 hour days. 8760 hours per year total.

    (1200 ÷ 8760) x 100 = 13.7% of total time spent at school each year.

    So my question to you is “Where are the kids learning?”. Is it at school? Because only 13 percent of their time, the things they see, the things they hear, and the things they experience, is at school. So what happens in the rest of it? Is it in front of the TV? Playstation? After School Care? Internet? Where is your child learning? 87% of your child’s time is outside of school time. What are you doing to help your child learn the right things during that time? Teachers are paid to teach. That is their job. And I can say whole heartedly, that teachers work hard to ensure that every hour that the children are in their care, that they are providing learning experiences and tasks for those children. And they certainly have to maintain a strict criteria to ensure that they are teaching things suitable for the children to learn (unlike some TV channels!). But no matter how hard they work to teach effectively, and teach the right things, they still only have 13% of the child’s time.

    There are some parents doing wonderful things to provide a well rounded education for this generation of young people. They are following up homework, they are reading to their children, they are providing experiences that kids can learn life skills from, they are getting them involved in weekend sports.

    But others choose to point the finger at schools, and fail to see the three fingers pointing back at them.

  • Guidelines for Classroom Blogs

    14045819341_6651d70343_b_b3xkvmIt can be a tricky task selecting what to include in your classroom blog, and what to leave out. The following are some guidelines that will hopefully keep you safe, whilst allowing your content to remain interesting and keep students and parents informed.

    1. Keep it about the learning
    Focus the content and theme of your classroom blog on the learning that is happening. Discuss the tasks and learning intentions you focussed on as the teacher. Report about the different group lessons and the learning that took place.

    2. What happens in the classroom, stays in the classroom
    This is the “fine line” that is uncrossable if you want to keep yourself safe. It may seem slightly ironic, because to have a classroom blog, you’re automatically NOT keeping it “in the classroom”. But what is meant by this is that the personal experiences that are shared, the individual behavior  problems that occurred, assessment results and the like are to stay in the classroom, under all circumstances. If you focuss on the learning that is happening, as per point 1, then this shouldn’t be an issue. You certainly don’t want to be sharing the argument two students had and the consequences they faced, or writing about the latest test results, all written out online.

    3. No names
    When sharing students work (maybe a piece of writing – see point 5), only use initials to identify students. Then your class will still know whose writing it is and it can be shared with friends and family, without students names being all over the Internet. This is also linked to the No Faces (point 4) rule, where you should never link a photo with a students name. Individual privacy is paramount.

    4. No faces
    Any photo that includes faces, especially those of children, needs permission from that person (or their parent/guardian in the case of children) before it is placed on the Internet. This can be a bit of a hassle, but well worth it if you can manage to get everyone’s permission. You could, rather than get permission from every parent (and have to keep record of those who have and haven’t given permission), just blur everyone in the photo’s face, or where possible, exclude faces from the photos when you take it. My tip is to take photos from behind a student, so that you can only see the back of their head, is a great way of protecting identity while showing your class has people in it!
    To blur faces, you can use picnik.com or other free photo editors using a blur brush tool. Once again, individual privacy is paramount.

    5. Celebrate Success
    Whether on the sports field, or a particularly successful learning experience, celebrate the success. If someone has written an awesome story, get them to write it up and add it to the blog.

    6. Update Regularly
    The last thing anyone wants to see is the latest content being 2 years old, about some lesson that happened with a class group that is no longer even at the school. Your updates should be at least once every two weeks, if not more. Make it a target to write a post each week. This will enable you to make it a habit, and hopefully, will become part of the classroom routine.

    7. Keep it Fresh
    If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. Think of new ways to use the blog in your classroom. Set a treasure hunt around the internet, include lots of media, include work expectations, tell a photo story told by the kids. Don’t just make it about the things that happen in the class, but make it a place where things happen.

    8. Avoid Copyright Issues
    Don’t use images from the internet. I know it’s easy to do, especially with Google Images, but try and keep any media on your website self-created. It also provides more of an insight into your classroom and school environment if all the media on the classroom blog is from – well… the classroom.

    9. Keep Yourself Safe
    Avoid posting things about yourself as the teacher. Keep your personal life to yourself. You have to remember to remain the consummate professional, both in the classroom, and online. If you wouldn’t share it with your kids, then you shouldn’t be sharing it online either. Setting up your own teacher blog may be a better forum to share things about yourself.

    10. Spread the Word
    If there’s no visitors, there’s no point. Get people to the blog. Set tasks for the students on it. Include a hidden code that students, if they find it, they get an award. Get students to show their parents their work that you’ve put on there. Get parents to share it with grandparents, and eventually, you’ll have a community culture in your class, purely and simple from your blog.
    Remember, your blog is for students and families, but it is also available to the whole world over the Internet. Keep this in mind when you make any post! Individual privacy is paramount. Keep yourself safe, and most of all – get posting!

  • Teaching: The Noise Level

    A while back I made a class resource that was as much fun making as it is using. Many people use the Traffic Light model for noise level indication, with Red being “Silent”, Orange being “Quietly Working” and Green being “Talking”.

    I decided it needed something extra, and so, using inspiration from Charles Dickens and Dr. Seuss, I created a few poems.

    Why I’ve made an entry to my blog about it? Well, because every time I change it, I read the poems, and every time, without fail, it works. Especially Quietly Working.  This is because it helps the students to understand the expectations, in a quirky and fun way.

    1310342584190_27910

    The Poems are as follows:

    Silent

    It was just before playtime,
    When all through the class
    Not a sound was there stirring,
    Not even a gasp.
    The children were working
    In their books with care
    In the hope that the Teacher
    Would soon be able to hear
    The whispers of silence
    That had magically appeared.

    Quietly Working

    After the hustle and bustle
    Was gone
    And the silence had spoken
    And grimaced and shone
    The children they worked and
    They slaved
    In hope that they might talk
    Just once that day
    The teacher said “Fine,
    You’ve worked hard and tough”
    And he let them whisper
    And a whisper was enough.

    Talking

    For ages they worked and
    Toiled away
    Waiting for the chance of
    Group work that day
    For the students knew that in
    Group work they could talk
    As long as it was on task and
    Not silly parrot squawk!
    In their groups they said
    It was so,
    It’s okay for us to talk now
    All systems are go!

  • Excellence

    “Why is it that we introduce painting and music to primary school students before they can read? The arts are a part of a universal human language, whether music, dance, drama or the physical fine arts.” (Education Horizons, p13)

    Screen Shot 2015-02-02 at 9.14.30 pm

    A recent article, To create or not to create; is this really the question? in Education Horizons (Daniels, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2008, pp13-14) outlined the seemingly lack of importance placed in the arts in our education system. Mirrored by the lack of funding from the Ministry (MoE) and the attitudes displayed in the schools and in the curriculum, its importance is wavering; its relevance getting lost in the political agendas of various sectors of the educational system.
    Often art (as in visual art) is ‘dumbed’ down as a subject. Its widely promoted as if anyone can take it at any time as a way to make up credits. Gone are the days where training to be an artist took years, even decades and the “fine art” has been lost with the dawn of modernism and mass production.
    The article in question raises several valid points and speaks volumes as an argument for the importance of art, especially visual art, to be better recognized in the balance of the New Zealand education system. However it overlooks various parts of artistic practice which do align with other areas of the curriculum.

    “Strive for excellence all you want. The talented students will always succeed. All I ask is that you offer the rest of us the opportunity to shine by boosting funding to the arts faculties in schools so that we can help students increase their sense of self-worth and self-esteem. We all need to lose ourselves in imagination and dreams sometimes. As wonderful as out technological world is, without human imagination and creativity, life is stilted, one dimensional and deprived of soul.” (Daniels, p14)

    What this is suggesting is exactly the point I raised before. It is promoting art as a subject for those of us who aren’t so-called “academic”. But why? Why place that stereotype on the arts and use it as an argument to validate its existence in the school environment? Why suggest that there are no “talented” students in the art department; that it’s purely made up of “the rest of us”? Whilst it is more than common that art students brains are more right sided and the “academics” in Mathematics or Science who are left sided, this does not mean that students who are more creative can’t achieve excellence in their given field. They can still strive for that excellence. Place a scientist in an art department, and that same level of excellence is unlikely to be reached, just as an art student could struggle to reach the same levels in science if the roles were to be reversed.
    The reason this type of reasoning falls apart is because art is subjective, the work produced often is a result of a process that is explored, rather than a right or wrong answer at the end of the day. The science buff is able to complete an artwork, and although it may not be highly skilled or technically accurate, the process leads to a result that is considered as art, and the level of excellence is only relevant to that student.
    In my opinion, and it is only that, is that there are students who achieve to a high degree of excellence in art. That does not mean they are mediocre students or that they aren’t talented. Students who take art are still able to succeed and produce excellent work, and can be “academics” in their own field. I think that the article itself seemed to be making an excuse for not reaching excellence, rather than outlining the fact that there is still excellence in every subject area, and art is no different.

    Daniels, R. (2008) To create or not to create; is this really the question? In Education Horizons; Journal of Excellence in Teaching, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2008.

    ‘Till next time…