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 … Continue reading »
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 … Continue reading »
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 … Continue reading »
Well, it’s been a lovely summer holiday so far here in New Zealand but the sun isn’t shining all that much today, so it’s a good day to get back into the swing of things. As I’m sure all teachers do, I have been relishing the long break we are lucky enough to get whilst … 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 »
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 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 »
When I want the kids to reflect on their learning really quickly I often say “show me thumbs” (i.e. thumbs up means feeling good, through to thumbs down meaning not feeling confident about something at all). It works well, since it is simple and effective and really easily understood by me. In a glance I can see … Continue reading »
The one week trial of ignoring the bells in our class has concluded, with mixed success. On the first day, the freedom went to their heads and I was really surprised with the lack of maturity and focus on their learning. The lesson was learned by most in time for the second day, but a new problem … Continue reading »
I posed this question to my class today to get the children to reflect on how far they had come this term. Below are their responces (click to enlarge). Continue reading »
