Resources for Pre-Service Teacher Supervision
categories: Professional Development
May 2013 archive
Insects
categories: Science
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/museum-collection-insects/?pid=7001&viewall=true
Reading Resources
categories: Uncategorized
http://www.letsread.com.au/Parents/Reading-tips-and-tools/Reading-tip-sheets
Blooms’ Taxonomy – Setting Assignments
categories: Improving Student Learning, Planning
http://m.flickr.com/#/photos/vblibrary/4576825411/sizes/in/photostream/
Maths Website to check out
categories: Maths
Reflection on an article – Ann Baker Workshop Preparation
categories: Maths, Numeracy Block
Learning to Think: An American Third Grader Discovers Mathematics in Holland
By Eve Torrence
This article emphasises the importance of allowing students to discover for themselves efficient computation methods and problem solving strategies.
Teaching points:
- provide realistic problems to solve that students can relate to
- provide opportunities for students to share their strategies ( so they can learn from each other and adopt strategies)- over time accumulate a collection of flexible problem solving strategies
- “guided reinvention” – a constructivist approach
- informal methods encourage personal approaches which make more sense to the student – rather than an algorithmic approach which may result in inflexibility
- memorisation of multiplication facts doesn’t encourage flexible thinking
- encourage students to use easier multiplication facts as landmarks from which to derive more difficult facts
- learning through understanding is an approach that students must be encouraged to use very early
- focus on developing mathematical fluency and flexibility and this can reignite their interest in and enjoyment of mathematics as a creative and pleasurable activity
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understanding is what matters the most…“because learning mathematics is all about learning to think.”
History – Graphic Organiser
categories: History
Whilst planning a unit of work on Australian History I have designed a graphic organiser which I hope will be useful to guide students’ thinking. The graphic organiser is designed to get students to synthesise information and develop the historical skills of:
– using timelines
– identifying significant events and people that have helped shape history
– understand changes and continuity, including those that have effected the environment
– empathy
– understanding of cause and effect
– ability to use and analyse a range of sources, both primary and secondary
– and understand history can be viewed from different perspectives.
Although this has been designed with year 5/6 students in mind, with the key questions relating to these specific units of work, I hope that others will be able to adapt it to suit their period of history.
I look forward to sharing examples of students’ work using the graphic organiser.
History Graphic Organiserv3
Depth of Understanding Versus Covering the Curriculum
categories: Improving Student Learning, Reflection
After attending parent teacher interviews tonight, I have been left a bit perplexed. The Australian Curriculum has provided our systems with a common road to travel along, and sign posts along the way to monitor whether we are on the right track. Is the goal to just get to the end of the road, or to actually understand the journey and be able to use the information and apply it to other situations?
I want my children to have depth of understanding, so that if they forget a rule or a step they can actually use a logical order to work out the problem. However, teachers believe that to get that level of understanding they would have to spend considerably more time, and would then be unable to get through the curriculum. So, what sort of learners do we end up with? Students who can remember to follow steps. Will they be able to recognise in which situations they can apply their ‘steps’ to solve a problem?
Surely there has to be more to mathematics than just learning a set procedure to follow.
Assessing Reading Comprehension – Fiction Texts
The attached rubric can be used as a guide to explicitly teach students to think deeper about their reading of fiction texts, moving from literal to inferential and evaluative levels of understanding. Through modelling and guiding students through the Here, Hidden and Head levels on the rubric with shared texts, students can begin to use the process in a more self directed style with independent texts.
It can be adapted for use with different year levels. For example my year 5 students are focusing on ‘characters’, ‘setting’ and ‘plot’, whereas the year 6 students have also been exploring ‘language’ and ‘themes/ messages’. As the year progresses we will look at other aspects.
The rubric can be used as an assessment of learning, and for learning. For example, after completing a recent reading assignment, students were provided with feedback and a copy of the rubric with their personal achievements highlighted. Students were then guided to set their goals for the term using the next step on the rubric as a guide. In this way students take more personal responsibility for their learning.
Graphic organisers, such as webs, Venn Diagrams, comparative charts etc, can be used to enable all students to successfully show depth of thinking.
Fiction Reading Comprehension Assessment – Lawlor 2013 v3
