PG's Ponderings

Alan McLean (2003) , identified three internal drivers that motivate all learners and that a greater understanding of these drivers by schools and teachers can help to increase levels of self-motivation. Affiliation: feelings of belonging and connectedness with others. Agency: the degree of self-belief or self-confidence. It is the belief that one has the capacity and ability to learn and achieve. Autonomy: the capacity to be self-determining and to exercise control The implications for teachers and schools Mclean identifies strategies that will help schools to develop a climate where both teachers and students can become more self-motivated. He calls them the 'external drivers' of motivation. They are: Engagement - taking a genuine interest in individuals: valuing, respecting and affirming them as people and having high expectations of what they might achieve. Structure - providing people with a secure environment in which they know where they stand and are clear what is expe...

We have a number of feedback tools. These questions are also useful: What did you like best about this year’s course? What did you like least about this year’s course? What would you suggest that I change? What surprised you most about the work covered? What don't you understand or need help in? Make a list of some of the new things that you learned or found out during the course. Why do you remember those particular points? What do you want to remember about the course work? When do you think you will use what you learned during the course? How did my teaching help you to understand the course? What would have made the learning environment in our class better for you during the year? Katie Lepi's 7 Effective Templates for Teacher Feedback (Edudemic.com, 17 May 2014) is also a very useful resource.

This particular technique involves a four-question set that gets students actively responding to the material they are studying. They analyse, reflect, relate, and question via these four prompts: Identify one important concept, research finding, theory, or idea ... that you learned while completing this activity. Why do you believe that this concept, research finding, theory, or idea ... is important? Apply what you have learned from this understanding to the context of the question? What question(s) has the activity raised for you? What are you still wondering about? [You might need to prohibit the answer "nothing".] Key steps to follow: Which details seem significant? Why? What is the significance of this detail? What does it mean? What might it mean? How do the details fit together? What do they have in common? What does this pattern of details mean? What else might this pattern suggest? What other explanation could be given? What details do not seem to fit? What other pa...

In preparing for the examination, it may be useful to get the students to develop their own questions, based on what they know. Begin the revision with Students Developing Questions: Have your class think of questions that could be asked about the exam topics. Create a Taxonomy of Questions: When students begin to label the different kinds of questions, they learn to select different kinds of questions to perform different kinds of thinking. No matter what the level of schooling, some kind of label can work effectively. Ask Students to Create Questions as Homework (this would work with the Flipped Classroom): Put your classroom questioning typology to work with their examination preparation. If students read a question, let them form extension questions for the next day's discussion. Try these six key steps: Teachers Design a Question Focus. The Question Focus is a prompt that can be presented in the form of a statement or a visual or aural aid to focus and attract student atten...

Tactics for encouraging a deeper level of listening that also include student accountability: Strategy #1: Say it Once Repeating ourselves in the classroom will produce lazy listening in our students. If kids are accustomed to hearing instructions twice, three times, and even four times, listening the first time around becomes unnecessary. Make this term a one time format, or for those few who forgot to listen, you can advise them to, "ask three, then ask me." Strategy #2: Turn and Talk One way to inspire active listening in your students is to give them a listening task. It might look like this, "I'm going to describe the process of _________. I will pause along the way and ask you to turn to a partner and explain to them what you heard." You can ask students to take turns talking each time you pause, and meanwhile, walk around observing their conversations (also allowing you to check for understanding). Strategy #3: Student Hand Signals Asking students to pay...

Good assessment and feedback practice should: Help clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, standards). To what extent do students in your course have opportunities to engage actively with goals, criteria and standards, before, during and after an assessment task? Encourage ‘time and effort’ on challenging learning tasks. To what extent do your assessment tasks encourage regular study in and out of class and deep rather than surface learning? Deliver high quality feedback information that helps learners self-correct. What kind of teacher feedback do you provide—in what ways does it help students self-assess and self-correct? Provide opportunities to act on feedback (to close any gap between current and desired performance). To what extent is feedback attended to and acted upon by students in your course, and if so, in what ways? Ensure that summative assessment has a positive impact on learning. To what extent are your summative and formative assessments aligned to and suppor...

As teachers we recognize that each person prefers different learning styles and techniques. Learning styles group common ways that people learn. Everyone has a mix of learning styles. Some people may find that they have a dominant style of learning, with far less use of the other styles. Others may find that they use different styles in different circumstances. There is no right mix. Nor are learning styles fixed. Students can develop ability in less dominant styles, as well as further develop styles that they already use well. Traditional schooling tends to use mainly linguistic and logical teaching methods. It also uses a relatively limited range of learning and teaching techniques, although this paradigm is changing as we move forward. Many schools still rely on classroom and book/document/website sourced teaching, much repetition, and pressured exams for reinforcement and review. A result is that we often label those who use these learning styles and techniques as "bright....

Choice Theory simply says that a purpose underlies all behavior. We are doing the best we can to meet our basic human needs given the knowledge, the skills, and the resources in our repertoire of behaviors. If we could think of a better way of achieving this purpose at any given time, we would choose it. When students learn and start using the ideas of Choice Theory in their lives, everyone benefits. Students learn these ideas easily and readily because they can relate to them. Choice Theory is all about their lives. Some of the benefits of teaching this theory to students include the following: Students gain an understanding of themselves. A student's understanding of his personal needs profiles may help him gain a better understanding of his unique identity, in turn helping him make important life decisions such as what occupation best suits him. Students gain an understanding of others. This appreciation can help students learn tolerance of and compassion for others in our incre...

10 points about what research tells us about self-managing learning Learning is much more than acquiring new knowledge and concepts. It involves thinking, but learners need knowledge and experiences to think with. Learners need to be actively engaged in ways that allow them to process, interpret, and adapt an experience. Learners have to want to learn. They have to see a purpose to learning and how it will allow them to contribute to something beyond themselves. Learners have to feel in charge of their own learning and to get a sense of flow and progress, with the right amount of challenge and feedback along the way. Learners need to develop in-depth knowledge in some areas to help them keep learning. Learners need to be encouraged to search, not for the right answer (focusing on surface features) but for the right approach to solving a problem (deep structures). Learning involves interaction – trying out and testing ideas with others. Learning usually needs structure. For example, ad...

Taking action in ways that address identified issues. This competency is about being actively involved in communities. Communities include family, whānau, and school and those based, for example, on a common interest or culture. They may be drawn together for purposes such as learning, work, celebration, or recreation. They may be local, national, or global. This competency includes a capacity to contribute appropriately as a group member, to make connections with others, and to create opportunities for others in the group. Students who participate and contribute in communities have a sense of belonging and the confidence to participate within new contexts. They understand the importance of balancing rights, roles, and responsibilities and of contributing to the quality and sustainability of social, cultural, physical, and economic environments. The future of this competency is to reflect on the sorts of learning students might need to access if they are to be and become "confiden...

Teaching and learning this week– Relating to others Empathy; Non-judgemental recognition of how others are situated. Relationships—The Fourth R As educators, we need to see the importance of adding a fourth R—Relationships—to the 3 Rs of Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic . Our students need to learn more about how to create and sustain healthy relationships. Because they are bombarded daily with many unhealthy behaviour models from the media, society, and even their families and peers, students often cannot figure out this huge gray area of what is good for them and what is bad. We need to give students tools for reflecting on their options and making sound choices. See: Peggy Calhoun : December 2000/January 2001 | Volume 4 | Number 4 The Changing Context of Education Clarifying relationships in the classroom: How to extend "the relating to others" competency into the learning environment At the heart of learning is the idea that students who truly understand and are i...

Level One From the base knowledge level of the taxonomy you can see that you start with the usual 'who' 'what' 'where' and other questions. Those are useful fill-in-the-blank questions that help identification and recall of information. Level Two You're asked to re-tell and dive in a bit deeper into the topic you're researching or discussing. This helps aid in comprehension and organization / selection of facts and ideas. Level Three How do you actually apply the skills you're learning? How can your newfound critical thinking skills be used to interpret new data from outside sources? Level Four Like a good scientist (this is close to the Scientific Method after all), we must analyze the results that are now coming forth. We should pause and figure out how critical thinking skills are being incorporated into our everyday lives. Just ask the questions in level four and you're off to a great start! Level Five Time to remix and synthesize some new i...