Teaching+and+learning

Wednesday 3 October 2007

Today was the last L&T class. Jan was away because her mother is ill but she is back now and will be at the dinner on Saturday night. We spent some time today planning the dinner. I am looking forward to it very much - even the chillies!

We finished going through the 'Toolbox' strategies. The main ones we looked at today were the Ranking Ladder (another graphic organiser), SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), and the Y chart. I gave you a one-page summary of SCAMPER and of a simpler version of SCAMPER which is called BAR.

The Ranking Ladder involves prioritising and justifying, so it involves Evaluating thinking. You filled in a ranking ladder about the most important things you learnt during this short course. The topic for the SWOT analysis was 'Introducing a constructivist child-centred curriculum in Bhutan'.

I have emailed my PowerPoints to Jan and she will upload them onto the wiki. I hope you are able to access the wiki from Bhutan and that we will be able to keep in touch that way.

Good luck on your return to Bhutan. We hope your experiences here were worthwhile and valuable. We enjoyed knowing you.

Linley

Monday 24 September and Wednesday 26 September

I (Linley) didn't write up the wiki straightaway and so I've forgotten what we did on each day but I know what we did overall so I'll just summarise that.

I think we started with the quiz I devised to see what you remember and understand about constructivist learning. I didn't mark it but everyone seemed to do very well.

We spent quite a lot of time looking at open and closed activities, and how to make closed activities more open. Open (or open-ended) activities allow more students to be involved because they are more exploratory and do not rely on prior knowledge in the same way that closed activities do. It is essential that cooperative learning activities are open-ended, because if they are closed, one or two students can just tell everyone else the answer.

One of the main ways we explored, for making activities more open, was starting with the answer and designing the question. For example we started with a graph, rather than plotting points to make the graph, which is a closed activity. This skill is also important but students also need to understand what a graph is. Starting with a graph and asking students to suggest what it could represent is an open activity because many answers are possible. In the process, the teacher can assess whether or not the students have any understanding of graphs.

Other ideas we looked at were adapting questions (e.g. from 'what?' to 'what if?'), designing questions based on student input (e.g. the connection map), using a matrix and selecting different cells (where the cells contain questions to answer when writing a story or essay), and the divergent thinking strategy called SCAMPER. The last strategy we looked at is called synectics and involves making a forced comparison between two unlikely things, such as a banana and a bicycle wheel. As an exercise, we thought about Why assessment is like [an item of clothing]. There were some very clever responses! After 'open and closed' I continued with my presentation of active learning strategies. Strategies provide a scaffold to structure learning. They also mean the approach to learning is not random; it is strategic. The structured strategy we looked at next was the Six Thinking Hats. This is a strategy developed by Edward de Bono. It separates thinking into six different types, and each type is represented by a different coloured hat. Most of you were able to think of places where you could use this strategy in your teaching. It can work very well in cooperative learning groups.

Next came the Fishbone – a graphic organiser which is a good strategy to summarise cause and effect situations. We brainstormed on the whiteboard all the possible causes of a car accident (the causes are the same in Bhutan as in Australia!). After we categorised the different causes under different headings such as 'driver error' and 'mechanical failure', I showed you how to write all the points on a Fishbone diagram. The Fishbone lists on one page the main headings, as well as the different points which are relevant to each heading. It therefore is a good summary of something (e.g. 'the causes of the First World War) but it also provides an excellent scaffold for essay writing.

Another graphic organiser we looked at was the concept map. I showed you how a mind map is different from a concept map – it is really only a fancy attribute web, with pictures and colour rather than just words. A concept map, however, shows relationships between concepts and not just between a concept and the main topic. It can be used as an assessment tool. It is very important to include arrowheads and labels so the teacher can read the map.

Most of you understood how to use a time line to summarise events in history or developments over time (e.g. in literature or art) but we also looked at using the same diagram to solve maths problems of the following type: Penjor is taller than Rinzin. Karma is not as tall as Rinzin. Penjor is not as tall as Dorji. Who is the second tallest boy? Forgive me if I got your heights wrong in this problem!!

The last strategy we looked at, very briefly, was the Flow Chart. Monday is a holiday and next Wednesday, our last session, I will go through a few last strategies. We will also plan next Saturday night's farewell dinner!

Week beginning 3rd Sep., 2007

=L&T Class=

Today we looked at the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Some people were a bit sleepy but woke up when we started doing some items from an IQ test! We soon realised that many learners might not score highly on an IQ test even if they really were intelligent. Some of the questions had several possible answers but there is no scope on an IQ test to explain and justify your reasoning so many answers would be marked wrong.
 * [[image:http://www.wikispaces.com/user/pic/lcornis2-lg.jpg width="48" height="48" caption="lcornis2" link="http://www.wikispaces.com/user/view/lcornis2"]] || Monday 17 September 2007

I gave everyone copies of some different checklists for working out a student's multiple intelligences profile. Some are filled out by the student, one by the teacher, and one by the parent. With this information a teacher can see a student's relative strengths and weaknesses. This information can be useful for problem solving - when a student does not understand a particular explanation, a teacher can use the MI profile to work out a different type of explanation (e.g. using movement) which might help the student to understand.

We also looked briefly at how Bloom's Taxonomy can be combined with the Multiple Intelligences to make a grid or matrix. Bloom's taxonomy is a useful framework for planning to incorporate depth in a topic, and MI is a useful framework for planning to incorporate breadth in a topic. There are 48 different lessons possible to plan when using this grid. We also discussed how Bloom's Taxonomy has been revised, so that now the thinking skills (the cognitive processes) are described by verbs instead of nouns: Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analysing, Evaluating and Creating. The order of the two most complex thinking skills has been transposed. Knowledge now exists as a separate dimension with four different parts to it: declarative or factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge and metacognitive knowledge.

We finished by learning three new strategies: the 3:2:1, the Value Line, and the Doughnut. 3:2:1 is a metacognitive strategy which encourages students to think about their learning. It involves writing down 3 things learnt in the lesson, 2 questions raised, and 1 concern. The strategy encourages students to go back over their notes, so it acts as a type of revision as well as a reflection. The strategy can be adapted for different ages of learner. Very young students might just write or speak about 1 thing learnt, whereas adult learners might write more about their questions and concerns. A teacher can use the information to plan the subsequent lessons.

The Value Line is useful for topics where an opinion is relevant. One possibility would be when learning about the introduction of democracy in Bhutan. Students strongly in favour of a particular idea write ++ on a piece of paper or label and students strongly against the idea write - -. Students who are in favour but also have some concerns write +, students who are against the idea but not strongly so write -. Students who cannot make up their minds write ~ (tilde). Then the students line up, with ++ at one end of the line and - - at the other end.

After this there are two possibilities. The first possibility is for the person at the - - end of the line to step forward, turn 90 degrees, and walk forward until he or she is opposite the person at the ++ end of the line. The other students follow, so that the line ends up split into two lines, with a ++ person opposite a - - person. At the other end of the line, a ~ person will be opposite another ~ person. All students then tell the person opposite why they have their opinion. The teacher can ask each pair of students to make one report, or ask one student to report the other student's idea. Usually the teacher would only ask a few students to report to the whole class. Sometimes a teacher will ask if anyone has changed their mind, even just a little bit, as a result of hearing the other student's opinion.

The second possibility, which can be better, is to split the line in half, which will probably happen where the ~ students are standing. The person who was in the middle is now at the end of the second line. This person now walks forward to stand opposite the ++ person, and the other students follow. You end up with 2 lines again, but this time a ~ student is opposite a ++ student. The same procedure is followed for discussion and reporting.

With topics that do not require an opinion or value orientation, a different version of the strategy can be used. Instead of a line, students are arranged in two circles - an inner circle and an outer circle, with the same number of students in each circle. The strategy is called a Doughnut because of the two circles. When the teacher says to start, the inner circle starts walking around in a clockwise direction and the outer circle starts walking around in an anti-clockwise direction. When the teacher says to stop, each student in the inner circle lines up opposite a student in the outer circle. Each student then explains what they understand of the topic to their partner (e.g. 'What is democracy?'). The student can then ask the students to report, as in the Value Line. They can report their partner's idea, or they can report what they jointly agreed about the idea.

So now you have three more active-learning strategies for your tool box!

Jan will take you on Wednesday, and you will learn about Assessment. Next Monday I will teach you some more ideas and strategies.

See you then.

Linley

[|10th September]

[|In today's class we finished Thinking about Learning. We spent some time exploring the importance of the emotions in learning, and how the emotional part of our brains controls our learning.The strategy we learnt today was one of Edward de Bono's CoRT thinking skills. It is called a PMI - PLUS, MINUS, INTERESTING. We constructed a PMI on the topic of The Productive Learning Environment. I hope you wrote down all our points because they made a good summary.One of the creative suggestions for ways to use a PMI is as an assessment tool, either for teacher assessment or peer assessment. The PMI is useful because it provides a structure (a scaffold).Jan will take the class on Wednesday. I gave her some information about ordering the Frangenheim book which some of you want to buy. Next week I will look at Multiple Intelligences, and perhaps another one of de Bono's strategies.You have your handout of the main points I discussed. Please let me know if you need me to clarify anything further.Linley] =Wednesday 5 September 2007= || Today we switched our focus from 'Thinking about Teaching' to 'Thinking about Learning'. Using the sentence stem 'I learn best when ...' we decided that some things about learning preferences are individual and some things apply to everyone. I started to tell you about some of these general points about effective learning and I will continue to do this next Monday.
 * [|iq][[image:http://www.wikispaces.com/user/pic/lcornis2-lg.jpg width="48" height="48" caption="lcornis2" link="http://www.wikispaces.com/user/view/lcornis2"]] || **[|lcornis2] writes:**

We had a lot of good discussion today and some of you learnt some new terms, especially Zone of Proximal (Potential) Development or ZPD, and schema. New strategies learnt today were the Venn diagram (a graphic organiser useful for comparing and contrasting, or finding similarities and differences), and the Round Robin (a cooperative learning strategy which has everyone in the class involved). The topic for the Round Robin was 'ways to activate a student's schema' (so they are thinking about the topic of the lesson amongst the 7 things in their working memory). No-one included a KWL chart, Think-Pair-Share, attribute web, Venn diagram or Round Robin in their list! I was teaching, but were you learning?!

Enjoy Coffs Harbour. I hope it isn't too cold.

LinleyPosted Sep 4, 2007 7:45 pm - [delete] ||

We got into 'real' teaching today. I hope you liked the format of direct instruction by PowerPoint combined with activities to model the use of strategies. To remind you, we spent some time thinking about Teaching. Before completing an Attribute Web on 'What is Teaching?', we looked at the Attribute Web as an example of a simple graphic organiser. 'Graphic' = visual and 'organiser' implies some higher order thinking is required to organise information in some way. The attribute web is really just a visual brainstorm, and uses the simplest thinking in Bloom's Taxonomy (recall, knowing).
 * 3rd september [|lcornis2] writes:**

We practised first by doing an attribute web on Karma. Thank you, Karma! Before that, however, I showed you a quick and entertaining way to teach children what an attribute is. L.N. was too clever by working out which attribute I used to select my 'in' group and my 'out' group (shirt without a collar).

Once we had completed the attribute web on Karma, we categorised his attributes into Physical characteristics, Relationships, Interests (hobbies), and Sporting interests. Then we rearranged the attribute web into a Spider diagram (sometimes called a Radial diagram). This diagram requires thinking that is more complex than simple recall. The spider diagram involved simple analysis (putting the attributes into categories). I think this particular example involved Understanding thinking in Bloom's Taxonomy but you could argue that it involved Analysis.

After we completed the Attribute Web on 'What is Teaching?' we transferred your ideas into a KWL Chart (Know, Want to know, Learnt). We will refer to this chart throughout your course at UNE. When you think you can fill in something in the Learnt column, please remind me, or just fill it in yourself.

Your last activity was to complete a Think-Pair-Share on a quotation from Oscar Wilde. The language was a bit difficult because it seemed paradoxical, but you worked out the meaning. Thus we ended up concluding that talk about teaching is really talk about learning - good teaching involves setting up situations where students can learn.

We concluded with a quick look at how education has changed in recent years. Then Jan did some work with you on the Conditions for Learning. But I'll let her summarise that herself.

On Wednesday we'll take up where I left off and look at Learning. I called today's session Thinking about Teaching. On Wednesday it will be Thinking about Learning. Tshering, I hope you are better by then.

See you Wednesday

Linley


 * Monday 3rd September: Teaching & Learning session

Jan** met us at the close of the day and introduced the concept of the **Conditions of Learning.** We discussed our own learning (learning to singing to play basketball, to swim, to use a new digital camera etc). We considered what elements of that learning process supported our successful **engagement** and therefore enabled us to learn**.** We first discussed the fact that each of us had a strong desire to learn the skills. We used the terms - **Immersion, Demonstration, Expectation, Approximation, Practise/Use, Feedback and Responsibility -** to describe the conditions under which we learn best. These are called conditions that bring about **engagement.** Jan used the analogy of a plant that needs sun, water, rich soil - the conditions which help it grow to its potential - the same can be said for the conditions necessary for students to learn.

Resources: 1.[| Cambourne's Article on Condition of Learning], 2. Cambourne's Model of the Learning Conditions 3. Workshop ppt to get teachers to examine their commonsense understandings of what is involved in successful learning.

Reflections: We should write reflections on each day under the heading (i) What new jargon/languaga have I learned and what new understandings do I have? (ii) What is puzzling and what do I want to know and understand. These reflections can be entered on the blog ||