Tag Archives: teaching and learning

The power of Acrostic Poems

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Letters

An acrostic poem is a composition where the first letter on each line spells out a related word or phrase. You are probably familiar with acrostic poems in relation to names using adjectives to describe the person. My kids sometimes compose them for me on special occasions such as Mothers’ Day,

aMazing

lOving

Tenacious

Happy

Extraordinary

Radiant

MOTHER

Acrostic poems can also be used as a learning tool. For example, let’s take the word LEARNING. Place each letter on a separate line;

L

E

A

R

N

I

N

G

Then, each letter becomes the first letter of your word or phrase to do with learning. Hence,

Literacy

Engaging

Academic

Reading

New experiences

Improvement

Numeracy

Grasp

An acrostic poem can also take other forms. Some allow the first letter to come anywhere along the word (as in MOTHER above) or line, for example, 

This school has improved the LITERACY skills of its students by exposing them to a wide range of age appropriate books.

While acceptable, I much rather the challenge of leaving the letter as the first of each word or phrase.

I enjoy challenging my students to compose more detailed acrostics although this task is easily differentiated to suit the learning needs of individual students, with a little added challenge.

I find they are a great way to introduce letters and words.

A is for APPLE… (remember all words must relate)

Apple juice

Peel

Pink ladies

Lunch

Eat

Challenge them to write or say whole sentences;

Apple juice tastes better when the

Peel is removed before juicing.

Pink ladies are my favourite fruit to eat for

Lunch, although I also like to

Eat granny smiths, but only in my grandma’s apple pie!

It can be quite a challenging task for older students, easily incorporated into the learning or used as a revision tool.

For example, last week’s topic in my Foundations class was Social Theories. Here’s one I prepared earlier (hehe)

Acrostic Poem – Social Theory

Why not have a go yourself or challenge your students. Acrostics poems do not have to rhyme, but hey, that’s an added challenge if they’re up for it. The words and phrases can stand alone or create a running commentary. Be creative! I would love for you to share some of the compositions or ideas you come up with.

Thanks for reading 🙂 

 

Aspire Day – my first face to face in 2 years

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Back to school

This week I nervously fronted up for my first face to face experience in over two years. It was a session with approximately 100 Year 11 students who were taking part in what the school called Aspire Day. My task was to inspire them into thinking about where they want to be and what steps they might take to get there. Students have been in lockdown for the best part of two years, dealing with issues at home, with their own sense of wellbeing while also trying to keep up their education via online learning. That meant no practical classes as such, no experiments, except perhaps watching you tube videos, no physical education classes, no team sports and definitely very little time spent in person with their mates or other family members aside from those they live with.

So too did teachers.

Since returning to onsite learning this year, many schools have continued and even bolstered activities to do with wellbeing for both students and teachers. Aspire day at this particular school was one such way to bring students and their homeroom teachers together to celebrate, reflect and plan for the future. 

2022

While I was nervous for the first few minutes, once I got into it, well, it’s like riding a bike as they say. I so enjoyed being with the students, moving around the auditorium (at a distance of course). It almost felt a little unreal. So many faces looking at you directly, at least for the most part. At times some of them would close their eyes, flop down into their chair, become distracted around their mates, but hey, so would I after so long in front of a screen. It didn’t bother me as I had most of them in my sights, lots of nodding and smiling and recognition amongst the 100 strong crowd. Some even giggled at my jokes every now and then and raised their hands to respond to questions I asked. And, just because their eyes were resting, didn’t necessarily mean they were not listening. I’m an optimist after all. Plus, I asked them how they were feeling and they did say they were tired. All good.

 

Year 11 responses

I also asked them where they see themselves in five years’ time. This is a tough question for many of us, let alone a bunch of very tired 16-17 year olds. Still, it was interesting to read their responses. Among one or two, ‘no idea’ responses we did see some very positive forward thinking: ‘successful’ (whatever that means), ‘builder’, ‘owning my own business’, ‘university’, ‘business marketing’, ‘having a full time job’, ‘rich’ to list a few. My favourite was ‘in New York’! Along with these, there were also a few concerning responses. Not surprising but worth following up by their teachers. I won’t share these here.

That said, I was reassured that after what we have all been through, and will continue to experience, our students are a shining light. They have dreams and hopes. We never gave up on them and all that hard work trying to keep them on track has and will continue to pay off. After all that’s why we teach, yes?

I so enjoyed the session and am looking forward to many more opportunities to visit schools and work with both staff and students. 

Thanks for reading 🙂

What is teaching ready?

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Over the last few weeks I’ve been marking Teaching Performance Assessments (TPA) submitted by my 4th year pre-service teachers (PSTs). I have to say nothing in marking has given me more pleasure than reading and assessing PART 1 where they share their context, student group, lesson plans and mentor feedback, and write about their experiences on placement, and what this may mean for their future learning. In a few weeks this latest group of PSTs will complete their studies and hopefully most of them will be out there making a difference to children’s lives.

Every TPA I read was unique, every student had their own way to present and every subject & topic was different. I was enthralled with some of the strategies they used to engage the students from primary, secondary, international, and special schools. This cohort of PSTs are what the Chief Examiner calls ‘bipedagogical.’ They have experienced both face to face and online teaching (no need to explain why). They have experienced the same trials and tribulations as many of my colleagues, moving from one to the other sometimes within hours due to sudden lockdowns. It got me thinking…

The ‘bipedagogical’ teacher

What does it mean to be teaching ready?

Lots and lots and lots of hard work.

Today, it’s not just about the subject or unit you’re teaching. Expertise in these areas is, of course, important but before you get to share this, it is imperative to establish a safe and secure learning environment where you can build relationships with students and understand the contexts from which they come. I’ve shared some ideas about building relationships before here and here. My PSTs on the whole recognised how context affects learning. It means you need to prepare and cater for a diverse range of learners, your learners, in this classroom or in this learning space. It’s pretty daunting coming into an online space with a group of students you’ve never met before from a school you may or may not have visited in person and work with a mentor whom you’ve only recently met.

I often mention to my PSTs that they need to always be carrying a great big bag around (metaphorically of course – as we teachers know, we already have enough ‘stuff’ to cart around), which they can fill with strategies for teaching, learning and reflecting. Every time they see, hear, feel and think of an idea they can use in teaching and learning, they have a place right there into which they store it for that off chance they just might need it in the future. And they will. Even I bagged a few new ones for myself as I was reading through their TPAs. 

The strategy bag

Though these strategies might already be in that bag, somewhere, I might not have used them in a while, or it might be that my PSTs thought about it differently or presented it more creatively than I have thought to do. 

I wanted to share just two that I really liked. 

The first is around questioning for feedback. Think about how you ask your students if they had enough time to finish their task and the connotation that has on them as a learner. “Have YOU had enough time? This type of question might make them feel inadequate or slow if they haven’t completed the task. But what if we turned the question on its head? 

“Have I given you enough time?” What does this question say to our learners now?

The second strategy is an ICT tool called ‘Pear Deck’. Have you heard of it? I hadn’t but it sounded good, so I looked it up. The tech allows you to turn presentation slides like PPTs into interactive activities for your students or anyone else for that matter, so they can actively engage with the learning. Here are 20 ways to use it. My PST used it in his Year 10 English class to have students work as a group or individually at their own pace, responding to questions. Their responses come to your screen where you can give immediate feedback, and can also be shared anonymously on the slide projector for the whole class to discuss.

So, what is teaching ready? Well, for me there’s a list;

  • it’s building relationships,
  • being reflective
  • understanding context,
  • learning how students engage,
  • having expertise in your teaching areas,
  • planning explicitly for teaching and learning
  • understanding how to give and receive feedback for learning,
  • be willing to learn things yourself and …
  • loving it all!

Thanks for reading 🙂

 

It’s NOT homeschooling! Here’s why …

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Finally, I get to revisit my blog! My offshore Foundation students are sitting exams and my 4th-year PSTs are on professional placement. It’s been a l-o-n-g and exhausting 18 months and it doesn’t seem that we’ll be digging ourselves out anytime soon. Once again our students are showing their capabilities to deal with the ups and downs of online, offline, ‘any-line’ teaching and learning. The media continues to report the impact of ‘homeschooling’ on students and parents. To begin, IT’S NOT ‘home-schooling!’ Please stop reporting it as such. Homeschooling is not run by schools, but is the responsibility of parents or caregivers who may or may not be teachers. Students who are homeschooled are registered to be taught at home – hence the term. Currently students who usually attend school are learning ONLINE due to lockdown and other Covid-19 restrictions.

Online learning

 

Online learning is education that takes place over the internet. While at home, parents should be supervising students as they would at anytime when their children are at home. It’s just tougher right now because, well, they are ALWAYS home, and so are you. Your children might just be thinking the same. The online learning that happens during Covid lockdowns is planned, guided and delivered by teachers on various platforms which may include Zoom, or Microsoft Teams. This learning may be synchronous or asynchronous depending on decisions made by individual schools catering to a vast expanse of student capabilities, access and engagement. School leaders, teachers and learning support staff everywhere have been working above and beyond expectations to ensure our students are learning. We love and care deeply for our students and experience similar emotions about being online. We likewise have families and children at school, bad internet, loved ones who work from home, elderly parents or relatives to look after, meals to prepare, places we cannot go. We too are human. We do not make the rules, but like you must follow government directives to ensure our safety and that of others.

I don’t doubt that parents assist their children with learning tasks, but in online learning, teachers set the agenda. That said, I’d like to offer a suggestion for both parents and educators to help with the daily grind of lockdown learning.

  1. Parents, establish a routine where your children ‘get ready’ for online learning in a similar vein as they do to go to school physically, except forget the uniform, but no pjs, that’s just asking for trouble. Get dressed, have breakfast, brush teeth, yadayadayada, roll call, recess – all screens off, lunch – all screens off, after school go for a walk, play, run, skip, jump, anything but screen for 30 mins. I know teens will need to urgently check their social media, like that’s not what they have been doing ALL day (cue eye roll) but just try it, no screens for 30 mins!
  2. During online learning, I find that sometimes changing spaces helps – this may or may not be possible depending on whether you are using a portable device. Moving to different spaces is the same as reading nooks, desk work, floor or other learning stations in primary classrooms. For secondary aged students, well is the freedom to move around and find a space that suits the subject, like changing classrooms – even standing and writing notes on paper or whiteboards or windows might help. I say this because they mostly have their cameras off anyhow so they might as well be moving around! Hopefully as the weather improves, outside might also be an option for a learning space.
  3. Educators – see points 1 & 2!

Thanks for reading 🙂

 

 

Online tutorials: What I learned

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After many hours of planning with colleagues and setting up my platform to facilitate online learning, yesterday was D-day. I had two, 2 hour tutorials back to back of the same unit. This arrangement seemed fine back in February but then COVID-19 happened. I sat in my chair here in our study at home for 4 hours knowing many of my colleagues in universities and in schools are doing even tougher. It is draining, yes, but strangely rewarding – especially when the chosen platform works. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, I am hearing today that some platforms are not coping, making it even more stressful for both teachers and students. That aside, the reality is here and it’s here to stay. I wonder how we might change as educators, as learners and as humans once it’s over? I do hope we bring with us what we have learned and evolve into even better humans. Time will tell.

In the meantime, I want to share with you all what I learned during my online sessions.

The many faces of me!

Firstly, I missed the physicality of a class, seeing my students walk into our learning space – being able to move around that space, see them react to the learning, laugh at my jokes (or not), see them working collaboratively – all at the same time. In the Adobe Connect platform I could move them into break out spaces but then I had to continuously pop in and out of the groups, and while it was great to spend a few minutes there I was also conscious that I couldn’t see or hear the other groups simultaneously. I realised I had FOMO (fear or missing out), so while I had the opportunity to focus on just two or three students and really listen, I found I couldn’t and I really regret that. Nothing beats a physical space full of learners.

I did, however, love seeing them on the webcams and hearing them speak up, even if it was a few of them at one time, but it was better than the chat window where I’m sure I missed many of the comments written. Next week I’m going to risk having them all turn on their webcams at once and see what happens. Just for a bit while we all say hi. I’m imagining the Brady Bunch opening credits but with 30 faces staring back at me (assuming they’ll all be online)!

Brady Bunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Brady_Bunch_characters

Next week I’m also going to have them send emojis in the chat so I don’t feel like I’m talking to myself! I learned I need a lot more interaction if I can’t see or hear them while I’m speaking.

Finally, while there will be glitches, it will get better. My youngest daughter, who is an early career teacher, (2nd year out) heard some of my sessions and thought I was lacking my sassy self. I should just be she said – maybe I will.

One last thing, as we are both running our classes from home, I learned that my daughter and I could feed off each other. apparently she enjoyed listening to my sessions and was going to steal a few of my ideas. My daughter should know that I was sooo proud to hear her interacting with her little Year 7 Drama class on line early this morning and that I’m going to steal some of her ideas!

Stay safe everyone. Stay home.

Thanks for reading 🙂