‘Educator? U gotta check this out‘ is a blog post summary on interesting articles from people who are actively pushing the traditional boundaries in teaching, learning and leadership. If they are, why isn’t everyone?
Please read on: spread their word and perhaps everyone will.
This blog post is a superb article by Sam Mitchell which reflects upon so called ‘lazy learners’. Via a collection of different strategies (pay attention to them – they’re great for everyday classroom practice) Sam is now clearly putting the onus on her students to become self motivated and self empowered to lead their own learning. Her ‘Ongoing Learning Journey’ is clearly going to be a fruitful and promising one. Glad she’s passed the ‘wooden spoon’ onto her students!
I spotted this on my birthday (yep – 14th October stick it in your diaries). It’s a visual representation of one of Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talks on creativity in schools. The video is brilliant for emphasising several of it’s main themes: one being how education as we know it today being linked to the requirements of the Industrialised age. Real thought provoking stuff.
I love this approach to teaching Maths to 9 & 10 year olds by Niki Davies. She writes about the roles that students undertake when learning about Maths in class via the emphasis that is placed upon discussion, collaboration, resilience and responsibility. I was really impressed by the supportive nature of the project and the benefits that are brought to low ability students. This approach can clearly be adapted to other subjects. Check it out!!
Check out this Storybird book (see below) written by the brilliant Jane Hewitt. The focus is on Personal Learning and Thinking Skills but its intended audience is for students with Special Educational Needs at her school in Barnsley, UK. Not only does this example show off the beautiful artwork available for Storybird books, it also demonstrates the importance of providing opportunities to for students to understand, and indeed learn about, the qualities of leadership, team work, independence etc at school. What a great way to communicate them! (Storybird is free – see previous posts)
Personal Learning & Thinking Skills The PLT's by janeh271 on Storybird
Some interest points from David Warwick about developing a learning culture at your school. The emphasis, believe it or not, is clearly on establishing learning conversations throughout the community of a school. This includes encouraging teachers to specifically sign post what they themselves are learning about and how they are doing it. It raises the point that despite schools being learning organisations – such conversations (at best) are often limited to the classroom. This link gives suggestions for the other places in which they can take place.
Scott Jantzen – an educator from Winkler, Canada, provides a great analogy for priorities in schools via ‘When leading a school we need to focus on the big rocks.’ He writes about what those big rocks are and provides an opportunity to reflect on what really matters in schools. Point 3 begins: “90% of the students in any school are awesome kids who do exactly what we expect of them, every single day. They come to school on time, respect their teachers, do their work (or the vast majority of it) and enjoy their time in school with their teachers and friends.” – this reminds me of the essence of my blog post found here. Nice work Scott!
