Collaborative Online Planning

Collaborative Online planning

28th July, 2016

Alex shares some of his recent experiences in online shared planning

At my current placement each year level works together to collaboratively plan what they are going to teach for the term, from that they decide what to do each week. This is the usual method of schools in regards to planning and has a number of benefits; cohesion across the year level classrooms, discussion of ideas, and support for beginning teachers. However, many schools are also adopting the use of online methods to share their planning with each other. My placement school currently uses Google Drive, Google Docs and Dropbox to allow its teachers to share resources and collaborate on their planning. It works wonderfully; here are a few reasons why.

Everyone can contribute during planning. Gone are the days of one teacher hunched over a computer acting as the scribe, typing into a closed document while several other people squabble about ideas. With Google Docs everyone can be writing in the same document at the same time. It seems like a small thing but it balances out the power of group dynamics and allows people to quickly brainstorm ideas.

Resources are always shared. One of the main problems with sharing resources is finding the time to actually give them to other people; you need to scan them, send them and sometimes teachers feel they just don’t have time to do that. With Dropbox, you store your resources in one communal online location, which means that people can share resources quickly and ultimately it lightens the burden for everyone.

There’s cohesion as everyone can see what’s coming. My placement creates term planners which are available to be viewed and edited in Google Drive. This has been fantastic for me, and the other teachers, as we can all see what is coming up in the next few weeks and anyone can add in more information as we progress. It means that everyone is clear about what is happening and people have the freedom to plan ahead.

Although many schools have already taken to using some form of online planning tool, it is clear that not all of the teaching community has made the transition. I would recommend getting familiarised with the available online sharing platforms, as they provide numerous benefits when planning and will be of great help when you start teaching!

- Alex

Surprise! The Power of the Unexpected

Surprise! The power of the unexpected

27th April, 2016

Matt explores the potential for engagement and personal growth that lie in the unforeseen

During our university education, we pre-service teachers are often told about the importance of planning; planning units, planning lessons, planning the layout of our classrooms and so forth. Planning and preparation are the joint backbone of successful teaching, we are told, and I am not going to say that this is inaccurate. In fact, some of the best teachers I have seen at work are those whose planning is deep and whose preparation is complete. However, there is a foundation for successful teaching that is generally given lip-service but not explored; that of flexibility in the face of the unexpected.

Think back for a moment to times in your teaching experience where you have been honestly taken by surprise. How many of these are negative, and how many are positive? When I do so, it seems that there as many moments of positive surprise as negative. For every time I have realised that I’m missing important materials for my lesson, there has been a time where a student has stepped up to tackle content in way you wouldn’t have expected. Surprise can actually be a powerful font of personal growth and introspection, for you and your students. It is one of the more powerful emotions that we can feel in teaching, and it can be used to your advantage when applied to students.

Allow me to illustrate with two brief anecdotes:

The first concerns a student I had for a short placement who didn’t talk much. Let’s call her Sarah (not her real name of course). I spent a number of weeks in this Year 3/4 classroom, but beyond asking and answering occasional questions Sarah did not participate very much in class, at least vocally. At the time, Sarah and her classmates were studying poetry, which can be extremely dry for students. Although I was only there for a short time, I suggested to the teacher of that class that we could try to have a ‘Poetry Slam’, where each student memorises and performs a short piece of poetry as part of an in-class competition. In the days leading up to the end of my university-scheduled time there, we talked about how to read poetry; using expression, rhythm and projection and such. We provided a few set poems that they could choose from also, ranging from limericks about smelly flies to a passage from ‘The Man from Snowy River’. Although my placement ended, I promised to come back the following week to adjudicate the competition, and so I did. Imagine my surprise when Sarah, as shy as she normally was, busted out the passage from ‘The Man from Snowy River’, difficult enough for professionals, with just the right rhythm, lots of expression and in a loud voice. Not to mention that she was the only student in her class who even attempted that passage. It was a wonderful moment, and she was very deserving of her prize.

The second concerns a lesson exploring nets and faces, edges and vertices for 3-D objects. Instead of looking at pictures of the shapes or basic models and counting each, this lesson involved the students constructing their own 3-D objects from the nets and recording the faces, edges and vertices in their workbooks. This may not be an extremely innovative lesson, but the response to the somewhat unorthodox lesson was amazing. The children wanted to make one of every shape, and even requested to stay in at lunchtime to make more.

I bring attention to these anecdotes for what they taught me about the advantages of surprise. In the first situation, the surprise was mine, the teacher’s, and not only was it personally gratifying but it also showed me the potential performer that Sarah was, showing me strengths and motivation that I had not yet seen from her. If I were the full-time teacher of that class, it would show me a way to engage her in the future and promote her confidence. This was an unexpected moment rife with future potential.

The second was surprise for the students. Entering that maths lesson, none of those children expected to do something so hands-on, and the pleasant surprise was enough to engage them and likely promote their understanding of both nets and the properties of 3-D shapes.

I can’t provide a step-by-step guide to leaving room for surprise in your current or future classroom, but here are two things you can do.

1. Try not to just restrict yourself to the curriculum. Giving yourself a chance to teach something entirely different, even for just 30 minutes, can give you a chance for surprise on both sides of the teacher-student relationship.
2. Try teaching content in ways that are fresh to you and to the children. Sometimes this may not work well, but when it does both you and your students may find yourselves to be more engaged and motivated within the lesson.

I know this was a long post, but if you are still here I thank you for reading. Remember, surprise is not always a bad thing; in fact, it can be extremely interesting for you and your students.

- Matt

Aaron's Placement Reflection

Placement Reflection or, how I intend on making the next one even better!

9th March, 2016

Aaron reflects on his placement and makes some suggestions on how to approach the next one

I started out writing this blog post as a reflection on the teaching placement I undertook in Term 4 of 2015, and then, like usual with these things, I deleted half of it…However this time it wasn’t for lack of confidence with what I had written, more that I noticed I wasn’t actually reflecting, I was planning different things for how to approach my next placement.

I’m not too sure what my peers’ experiences on placement were like as yet, however I have to say this most recent one has been my most enjoyable and rewarding round to date. Not only was it a more relaxed environment, that I felt very comfortable in, it was just a great working community that actually made the PSTs feel comfortable and I really felt like I was a part of the teaching team at the school. I was paired up with another PST during my time, as we were both in Prep classrooms, and it was great working together on lesson plans, team teaching and bouncing ideas off one another while out at the school. Which leads me into my planning for the next round, so here’s a list that I’m going to try and keep for myself this year, and one that I hope to stick to while I’m out in my final placement school.

1. Don’t be scared of sharing your opinions on, and ideas for lessons – I found with a teacher that was very welcoming to my thoughts I had a lot more confidence about what I planned when it came from an amalgamation of my ideas, the teachers plans and the school curriculum. This confidence was clear in more successful delivery of lessons than I have ever experienced before.
2. Plan using your strengths – with my background in Out of School Hours Care, this most recent round I tried to ensure I used as much of the skills learned in this field in the classroom as possible, and it really paid off. Behaviour Management strategies, Activities, Outdoor games and planning tools all came in to play here and helped me confidently conduct my lessons and time with full control in the class.
3. Ask as many questions as you can, no matter how stupid they may seem – in the past I have been quite reserved in talks with the teaching team, and perhaps was afraid to look like I didn’t know what I was doing. This isn’t the way to go, remember we are still there to learn, so ask questions, try and make sense of the answers and ask again if you need clarity, this will make for a better understanding of everything when you’re faced with 28 children waiting for your instruction!
4. Find a way that works for you and the Classroom Teacher, and use that method – at University we are inundated with different paperwork we need to use and templates that we are encouraged to work off, and I’m not suggesting to abandon these or the systems we are taught, but use your own judgment. I found far more success working with my AT on shared documents in the format she was comfortable working with, that the school used and working within the guidelines and teaching styles that have been established in the school, and the classroom, than those we are instructed to base our teaching off, at University.
5. HAVE FUN, DON’T WORRY ABOUT WORK AND OTHER STUFF, ENJOY THE EXPERIENCE, C’MON, YOU NEARLY HAVE TO GO BE A REAL ADULT! – Self explanatory, just relax, it’s 8 weeks in a year, learn something, have fun, then go back to the daily grind and bummer that is having to work for a living.

Now I don’t know if these points will be useful to everyone, but from my experience in the last round, these are some things that I’m going to try hard to remember and stick to my plan to try and make my last placement the best one yet. I’m not sure where my future career path will take me, and whether I’ll even end up as a classroom teacher in a Primary School setting. But while I’m paying for an education and a hugely important part of that is spending time in schools on placement, I intend on having my final round be as successful and enjoyable as possible – and hopefully I teach the children a thing or two in the process.

- Aaron

The Very First Day...

The Very First Day...

 

2nd February, 2016

Nick discusses the very first days of school for both students and teachers

The very first day of school can be an exciting yet daunting prospect for both students and teachers. Among university colleagues I often find myself in discussions about how to go about setting up your learning space for the very first day of the new school year. What displays should I put up? What expectations should I set with my students? How do I go about planning for an entire year? How do I get to know all my students? My role as an integration aide in a primary school has provided me the unique opportunity to observe teachers preparing for the school year as well as the initial days of school. I will discuss some of the interesting ideas that I have witnessed that I think would be brilliant to put into future practice.

 

• Setting up the learning space – An arduous task, however a fun one as well. Many teachers put their own unique impression on the room and when you walk in you get a different vibe in every learning space. I have observed the importance of creating a space that reflects you as a person.

• Setting expectations – Personally this was something I was interested to observe. The important idea is that the expectations need to be created in conjunction with the students, not the teacher dictating what they want the students to do. This process also involved what expectations the students have of the teachers to ensure equality between student and teacher; expectations are then displayed within the learning space for all students to see and refer back to. It was interesting to note that during the initial days of school, teachers would often refer to the expectations during classroom discussion to ensure students were being immersed in them.

• Planning for the year – A challenging concept as there is often many extra curricular activities occurring within the school community. As a result the year is planned out by topics and then when the time approaches the topics are expanded to meet the requirements of the students at the time.

• Getting to know students – The answer to this question is quite simple; talk to them and play games in which they discuss aspects about themselves. A further way of doing this is through ‘choosing time’ where students can choose and activity they would like to undertake. Teachers can then observe who they play with, what activity they choose and how they interact with others to get to know the personalities of the students.

 

This is a broad overview of some of the types of things you will encounter in your first few weeks of teaching. It is also important to think about how your learning space will cater to the diverse needs of the students and ensure inclusion of each and every student in your rom. The biggest thing to remember is there is ALWAYS someone in the school you can ask for ideas or help and you are never on your own.

 - Nick
 

Circular planning

Circular Planning to Inform Lesson Planning

12th November, 2015

Aaron looks at the term 'Circular Planning' and how may it provide some assistance to pre-service teachers  

For anyone who has worked in the child services field, the term ‘Circular Planning’ won’t be new to you, it may be annoying at this point, but it certainly won’t be new. For those of you not familiar or irritated with the term, it basically functions as a tool to plan activities, games and experiences for children that are founded in their personal experiences, interests and ideas. The idea is that through careful observation, interaction and conversation we develop an understanding of how we can jump off and extend upon a child’s interests and ideas to create the opportunity for children to flourish in the activities we plan for them.

Since my first placement in a school, planning lessons has always been the most daunting task for me. It’s something that I’m never 100% certain I’m doing right, and something that due to the strict nature of the paperwork we are required to plan with, is something that I’m never quite comfortable with how I’m being asked to plan out. However, this has changed in the last year or so since I realised, “Wait a minute; I effectively plan lessons for children on a daily basis at work!” Now these lessons may not relate directly to the Australian Curriculum, but none the less they require planning, and thoughtful consideration about how they will develop a child’s learning – and that really is the goal with lesson planning in the classroom.

In a recent unit at University, we spoke at length about ensuring students had the opportunity to relate their personal experiences to the lessons we plan for them, and how this was important for them to place value or interest in what we as teachers are teaching. Hearing this really helped me confirm my idea of using this Circular Planning technique in relation to my lesson plans for placements, and made me realise that I wasn’t just pinching ideas from work! Since this discussion as well, I have found myself really looking forward to the observation dates for my upcoming placement as this will really be my chance to soak up the interests and ideas the students in the classroom have, and use these observations to inform the planning that I have to do for the class.

I think this is something that really needs to be discussed more, and perhaps brought to the light a bit for PSTs, as we are regularly expected to plan lessons for students we don’t know, nor have any experience gauging their interests and how these interests will affect our lessons. I look forward to the opportunity to take notes on things I see in the classroom, and interactions the students in the classroom have to develop my lessons, and implementing this newfound realisation. Again I might just be harping on here, but I can’t stress enough how my experiences in Childcare inform my Education practices, but this one was too obvious not to bring up. I think the real thing this has made me realise though is that I’m excited about a skill I have developed through experience in the workplace informing my education and helping me in my further career aspirations, even though the two areas may not seem intrinsically linked. Further suggestions for anyone reading, look into the recesses of your mind, what experiences have helped you with your teaching in the past? Implement things that may not seem to link, it might help you in the long run!

- Aaron