I was lucky enough to take part in Sonya Van Schaijik‘s initiative “TeachMeetNZ” on the weekend and presented a little 3 minuite presentation titled Youth and (relative) Inexperience in Education. My slides and notes are below if you are intereted in my experiences of being a new, young teacher in New Zealand. Youth and (relative) inexperience …
I was recently interviewed by Peter Nelson, Director of Education at TTS (Telco Technology Services) for their 2013 Roadshow – ‘The way forward. Enabling Modern Learning Environments’. In doing this, Peter gave me the opportunity to capture on video what I believe 21st century education is all about. It does had a technology bent but might be worth watching…
Interestingly, when I’ve spoken to the students in Year 6 lately, they’ve told me that they have lots of control in the classroom. I can’t say I agree, though they may well have plenty of control compared to previous years at school. So, to give both myself and the kids in my class a better idea of who had …
It is interesting to ask students what successful learners do – you always get students who say the secret to success is to concentrate hard or work hard. I agree this is important, but is there more to a really great learner than that? I wanted to pose this question to the students in my class to …
I recently visited all 3 Year 6 classes and spoke informally to randomly chosen students. I had decided to do this to get an idea of where the students were at with their learning and what our next steps as teachers were. This is what we came up with after reflecting as a team on the students’ responses: …
How many times have you attended a conference, PD session or seminar and ended up doing the most meaningful learning through informal discussions with fellow educators? How often have you wished you had more time to meet up with other educators to discuss issues face-to-face? How often have you wanted to connect more with like-minded educators beyond …
This year, the Year 6 syndicate started off the term with an intense focus on learning. We have focused on the following ideas: What successful learners do. What switches us on and off learning. What meaningful learning is. (Useful, get a sense of accomplishment out of it, enjoyable, interesting and …
I’ve been so very slack with my blogging so now that I’m back into it, I have an awful lot to share from the past few weeks. So I thought I’d write a series of posts about all the exciting things that have happened this year. Today: A Survey of Year 6. At the very …
“There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.” (Susan Cain) I’ve been wanting to read Susan Cain’s book Quiet for a little while so, when I saw her video on TED talks laziness prevailed and I decided to watch it. The talk really resonated with me as I would consider myself more …
I’ve been asked by a few people lately how I go about conferencing with students. Despite the fact that the word comes up with a wiggly red line when typed into Word, it’s a vital part of my classroom program. It’s much of the difference between well behaved, engaged, self-directed time wasting and ensuring productive …
I gave an “Ignite” talk a couple of weeks ago on how I have developed, and am continuing to develop, the pedagogy in my classroom. How My-learning came to be, if you like. If you are interested in this, please excuse the fact that I am obviously no public speaker! Ignite Talk Auckland I Emma …
We are currently doing a unit of inquiry into systems of government and organisation and decided to get the students putting their learning into practice this week. Could they organise themselves without the teacher present? At 9:00 yesterday the Year 6 teachers played a short video explaining we were now relaxing on a beach in Fiji (if … Continue reading »
Well, it’s almost been a year that I’ve had my blog and I’ve been reflecting about whether it’s been of any use. I think it’s had a number of benefits aside from getting my ideas out there, which was the initial purpose: Writing and articulating ideas helps to clarify my thoughts. It’s meant I’ve had … Continue reading »
The Year 6 students did an interesting experiment today, for our unit on government systems and human rights. We arbitrarily split the kids into ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’ then outlined the different rights (or lack there-of) each group were to have for the day. It was definitely unfair and lacking in equality, the idea being that … Continue reading »
Well, it’s that time of year again… report writing time. So there’s been a fair bit of testing going on and the students and I have been having good discussions based on this. We’ve talked about what all their assessments mean the whole way through the year so this is nothing new to them. What is new … Continue reading »
I’m sure you’ve seen this series of videos before on the rapidly changing world we reside in. I showed it to the class the other day after the principal prompted some thought on how education is/should be changing when discussing this with the class. So I asked: What does this mean for your education? For WHAT and … Continue reading »
We started talking more about being ‘in your element’ (see previous blog post on this) in my class recently, which as been really successful. Here’s what we’ve done so far. On the first day of term: First we clarified what being in your element actually meant – when passion meets talent. Then we wrote little … Continue reading »
We have had quite a few little chats about the learning dart board idea that came from one of the the students. It’s been interesting as the thoughts of the children have changed and developed over time and it has really shown how they have matured as learners throughout the year.. To begin with, we discussed … Continue reading »
