If you want a book to inspire you to become aware of the possibilities of your environment this is the book for you.Ideal for any adult wanting to expand their awareness but for teachers a most valuable classroom resource. Full of practical ideas to use with your class to help them retain ( or regain) their natural curiosity. Very creatively and visually presented. A fun book. Not written by a curriculum consultant which makes it even more valuable.
Check link for more info.
Business philosopher Stephen Covey, in his book 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People', writes that it is important to ' keep the end in mind'. It is too easy to get bogged down in the present just trying to get through and in the process lose sight of the 'end in mind'.If this happens you can easily end up losing your way. As the saying goes, 'it is hard to remember you came to drain the swamp when you're up to your backside in crocodiles!'
So what is the end in mind for a teacher beginning the school year?
This ought to be defined by the agreed vision,values ( agreed behaviours) and teaching beliefs of the school. And if this is important, and not just rhetoric, then success ought to measured by achieving this vision. Of course this is rarely the case - schools are all too often concerned with the 'crocodiles' of day to day hassles. Tradition, or past unquestioned habits, seem to rule the minds of most schools. Just look how they apportion their time - it would seem few have escaped from the Victorian emphasis on the 'three Rs'.
So what would be the end in mind to keep in mind?
A good place to start would be the vision pages of the revised New Zealand Curriculum 2007.
Nothing should get in the way of NZC Vision of ensuring all students become 'confident life long learners' - or life long questioners and inquirers.
This means really focusing all teaching interactions on developing the 'key competencies' of the curriculum; learning to think, work with others, persevere and use every means to communicate effectively. Some call these 'habits of mind' (Art Costa) and others 'learning power ' ( Guy Claxton). Once it was just called 'learning to learn'!
To achieve 'confidence' and 'learning power' requires teachers make certain that what is studied is seen as real and relevant by learners.
Good advice is for teachers to to do fewer things well and to continually diagnose what each individual can do and, where there are gaps in skills or understanding, teaching the missing information.Positive attitudes for, or 'feelings for', the particular learning experience are the key to successful learning.
One key phrase in the NZC ( on the vision page and in the thinking competency) is for each student to be a 'seeker, user and creator of their own knowledge'. The teachers role is to ensure all students have the skills and attitudes to achieve such personal knowledge creation. The challenge for the teacher is to ensure all students develop 'feeling for' whatever they are learning. Successful teachers really care about what their students think and feel particularly those who have lost confidence in the ability to complete any task. Valuing each learner's 'voice', questions, and ideas is vital.
Such a vision is student or learning centred one in contrast to students simply asked to do what teachers expect of them. This doesn't mean letting students do what they like ; the teacher role is a very creative one.
Teachers need to negotiate with students to ensure empowerment or a sense of ownership and to hold students to completing what they have agreed to do.
This requires firmness and teacher artistry to assess what it is each learner is capable of and then ensuring students gain the skills to continually improve their personal best. As educationalist Jerome Bruner says, 'teaching is the canny art of intellectual temptation'.
Thankfully students are easily trapped by their innate curiosity if what is put in front of them appeals. The challenge for teachers is to think up ways to tap into this sense of curiosity in all learning areas.
With such a vision in mind teachers can slowly , as students develop skill, pass greater responsibility to their students..
When it seems difficult to negotiate learning then it is honest to say 'we just have to do this so lets do it'. With maths it is possible to develop relevant studies but when practice is required then just call it that, practice. Remind students that to do anything well you need to have the skills in place and that sometimes skill practice is important , but only to be able to get back to the real learning. Literacy blocks ( and maths where possible) ought to focus on providing the research skills necessary to undertake in depth inquiry studies.
The vision of the revised curriculum's is a personalised approach to learning - helping each learner at their point of need. Students will see the point of practicing learning missing skill if it helps then achieve the 'end they have in mind'.The whole purpose of education is to develop in every learner a powerful learning identity, a strong sense of self, of being a valued and worthwhile person. This involves the teacher really listening to their students and validating them.
A good idea is to start the year with a discussion with your class of what makes a powerful learner. Work through the introductory pages of the NZC with them and develop an image of a great class - a true learning community of inquirers 'hunting' for meaning in their tasks. Such a community requires rights and obligations (agreed behaviours) for both the teacher and the class members to hold themselves to.
'Their' powerful learning attributes ( 'merged' with the NZC 'key competencies') can then be referred to, as required, to ensure students keep the 'end in mind' and do not get lost in pointless ( to them) activities.
Keeping the 'end in mind' is valuable advice for both teacher and learners.
Beginning the school year - 'keeping the end in mind'.
Time to stop all the standards nonsense - we are teachers not accountants.
This slide is directly from the Finland Ministry of Education.
This is from a USA teachers blog called: ( slightly abridged)
'Advice to student teachers :Hold fast to your dreams'.
I hope you remember what it�s like to be a kid because I think that�s just what we need to "make a difference."
It is all about human curiosity
Sometimes my three-year-old son, Max, complains about going to school. And I so passionately preach about how he needs to enjoy it while he can, while the scent of magic still lingers in the air. He creates without boundaries, he discovers without opinion, and he intrinsically cooperates. Most three-year-olds want to be in school. Damien Cooper, formative assessment guru, puts it like this: "Human beings come into this world innately wired to learn. We're curious. We are not innately wired to compete." But when kids advance through the grades something happens. Their natural curiosity about the world slowly shrinks and shrivels and is replaced with ( add your own words!)
A Political and business approach to education
The edge of the knife is on a direct course to core curriculum subjects like reading and writing. Math and science is all the rage nowadays. I'm sure you've heard. It seems like President Obama's pressure to improve science and math skills are outweighing language arts. Some states like New Jersey are going to extreme measures to make sure that math and science are top priority. I hope you are shaking your head -- it doesn't seem logical to me either. I do believe Albert Einstein (I think he was a scientist or something) said: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Where Does This Lead Us?
Here's a quick look at the science plan: Obama will work with governors and educators to ensure that state assessments measure test inquiry and higher-order thinking skills including inference, logic, data analysis and interpretation, forming questions, and communication. Improvements to assessments will also include developing tests that call for students to design and conduct investigations, analyze and present data, and write up and defend results.
I'm sure you figured out why I bolded most of those areas of improvement. Yes, you�re catching on here. They are all constantly practiced and honed while reading and writing and imagining. Right?
Think about it.
Do you think the President really wants our youth to think critically, analyze, and interpret or does he want to graduate more engineers than China? The latter will only promote the �How do I get the most points with doing the least amount of work� attitude. Is that how we�re going to change the world? Is that going to keep kids in school? Will the true thinkers, the real reformers, value what school has to offer? Better yet, will anyone even have a chance to think? As for the magic I mentioned earlier.
The New World
This is where it gets hairy. This is what you probably didn't learn in college. I'm not your boss, your teacher, or your mom so this is going to be sugarless. I want to stir your brains a bit. I don't mean to come at you at time of blissful joy. You are about to teach. But this burden you just inherited needs to be on your plate. Your dream of teaching will now be realized in a different world. The President means well. He wants the kids of America to succeed (I really do believe this). But maybe his idea of success is different from theirs and maybe his plan is one-sided. I don�t know. This may seem like a cry for the creative soul, but then again looks are deceiving. What I'm really talking about is beyond creativity. What I'm talking about is divergent thinking. You see there's more than one way to play a note, paint a picture, and write a story. Max thinks (creatively) divergently in pre-school every day.Does it have to stop?
By the time a child is in third grade we've just about bashed divergent thinking out of their psyche. And now with music, art, reading, and creative writing waiting in the gallows, it will happen sooner. Yes, math and science makes the world go round, but art makes us human.
And if the President believes that divergent thinking will emerge in math and science without art . . . well, then I'm not sure about the future of our country. Author, Donald Murray, states that we look to art for a meaning. Not the meaning, but a meaning. Real learning needs time to simmer. I'm not talking about lowering our standards. We need solid standards and we do have them, but maybe too many? We need time to find meaning within the standards and use the one that works for us. But what we're really doing is cramming years of information into months, which only leads to one-answer-one-way-fill-in-the-bubble-educational-reform. It's mediocre at best. Testing pushes teachers into sprint-and-cover mode, which does exactly that: It sprints over the deeper understandings to cover what's on the test. Teacher and Author, Kelly Gallagher warns of the this poisonous mode in his article, "Why I Will Not Teach to the Test."
Reality Check
And here's the biggest kicker of them all. If all of the politicians, celebrities, and movie makers are so concerned about the United States being number one in the world of education, then why is the current reform movement speeding in the opposite direction of number one, Finland. Check the diagram above.
I don�t think I need to explain this slide, do I? Yes, you will face resistance and feel the shackles of the standardization of American Education. There will be bouts of compromise, tears, and loads of questions. But when you finally chew through the crunchy, bitter crust, you'll find the magical stuff in the middle. That's the good stuff. Your students will always be waiting for you in the middle. You'll also find your dream: The one you might have had in Kindergarten where you proudly shouted, "I want to be a teacher!"
There is hope. Well . . . it's you, really.
Re -integrating language teaching with reality
In an inquiry based classroom every aspect of language teaching could well relate to the current study - reading to develop understanding, writing thoughts , descriptions and theories, and lots of oral language, drama , poetry. This was once the case in many schools until literacy become so dominant and largely divorced from the rest of the curriculum.
The need to express ideas is an evolutionary ability which made posible a wide range of diverse and creative human cultures.
It is this need to comprehend and express meaning that should underpin all language experiences in classrooms. Over the past decades the language experience approach, once a feature of New Zealand classrooms, has been reduced to formulaic literacy approaches. International tests have shown that literacy levels have not improved and that there is a 'tail' of low achieving students who are losing this vital means of being successful in our schools. Successful students bring with the 'cultural capital' to take advantage of current technical and measurable approaches. This situation will be worsened with the imposition of Literacy Standards and targets.
The answer may be to return to a language experience approach based on the belief that language development can only be gained when students are placed in meaningful contexts that recognise the reality of the students lives or cultures.
I believe we are now failing the very children we set out to help and in the process we are ignoring the linguistic prior learning experiences of such children.
Learning must begin with a thought provoking curriculum - one that recognises the lived reality of all students. Students need to offered the chance to use powerful forms of talk and writing in meaningful contexts leading to meaningful reading.
The children's own lives, their cultures, the sensory experiences gained exploring their immediate environment, and challenging class studies based on their own questions, need to provide the required meaningful contexts.
These approaches are restricted with the current politically inspired literacy approaches with their focus on reading.
Communication occurs naturally when students are involved in stimulating experiences. 'Curiosity is at the heart of all learning' as it says in the revised New Zealand Curriculum; we want all students to become 'seekers, users,and creators of their own knowledge'.
The teachers role ,as Jerome Bruner has written , 'is the canny art of intellectual temptation'. Teachers need to establish their classrooms as communities of scientists and artists exploring whatever captures their attention. And to do this all aspects of learning need to be integrated. Instead we are still focusing on a isolated curriculum centred approach. Even innovative schools I visit sadly keep literacy and numeracy separate from their inquiry programme.
Worst of all current 'best practice' approaches, and Education Office Review pressure, and even internal school bureaucracy are an attack on the autonomy of teachers. Conformity or consistency is being valued over teacher enterprise and creativity. Current approaches ignore the power of transformational experiences that give students 'feeling for' whatever they are learning. Current approaches all too often disassociate literacy and language from the real lives of children.
To really develop integrated approaches we need to celebrate the artistry and creativity of teachers not just the ideas of contracted advisers most of who may never applied what they are 'delivering'. Principals need to create the conditions for teacher leaders to feel safe to develop more creative ways of teaching that respects the learning identities of all the children they teach. Approaches that see students as producers rather than reproducers; approaches that result in rooms full of examples of the diversity of children's 'voices' and creativity as seen through their written language, inquiry research and their art.
Teachers need to be responsible for negotiating with their students a unique curriculum that is sensitive to their needs. For many students ( those lumped into the 'achievement tail') recognising and building on their culture and their lived experiences are important. Pioneer New Zealand teachers such as Elwyn Richardson and Sylvia Ashton Warner knew this as did many language arts teachers up until the technocratic curriculum imposed during the late 80s sidelined them. Paulo Freire, long ago, worked with illiterate peasants in Brazil and taught them to read and write by being interested in their thoughts. As they gained confidence in sharing their ideas he helped them write down key words and phrases. From these words the peasants learnt to read and write and gained liberating power in the process. All in eight weeks. An intensive language arts programme based on real purpose!! Not unfamiliar to approaches used by creative teachers such as Elwyn and Sylvia.
If we are to develop the language capability of all students we need to re-integrate literacy with our inquiry programmes. The inquiry topics should be the source of the creative energy of the classrooms. As part of this 'reframing' it is also time to rename the literacy time the language art block.
We now need to celebrate diversity in our classrooms and help all students achieve their personal best in all they do. We need to move away from the one dimensional classrooms that result from the current conformist undemocratic 'best practice' approaches. We need to 'scaffold' our help to children with care. Both teachers and students need freedom to learn in their own ways. Knowing the rules and criteria ought not constrain individuality and creativity.
Current approaches are marginalizing our students imagination; their individual ways of seeing and interpreting their experiences. By tapping into the real world of children, by valuing their thoughts, ideas and questions students could achieve so much more - beyond what can be easily measured or achieved.
Through developing their language capability children will become more powerful as individuals and learners. Through positive language experiences students develop a powerful positive sense of self; a sense of new possibilities for themselves. Education ought to be about chances for students to find out who theyare is and who they might be.
Learners currently placed in the 'achievement tail' need to be given the power to escape such a restrictive definition by experiencing equally powerful classroom cultures that build on their own cultures and experiences.
It is time to re-integrate language with the total classroom programme so all students can become 'seekers, users and creators of their own knowledge'.
This thing called mathematics!
Is this work by Escher art or maths? Increasingly once fixed lines between subject areas are becoming blurred.
Over the years there have many attempts to develop a more active math programme but for all this far too many students leave school with anything but a positive feeling for the subject. The introduction of the mystery of algebra finishes most of us off.
With this in mind one wonders why maths takes up so much time in the primary school day. One reason is tradition - left over from the era of the three Rs. Another is that politicians seem fixated on literacy and numeracy as the key to success. No doubt they are important but they need to be seen as foundation skills to be used in learning contexts. And of course schools simply do what they have aways done without questioning the real purpose of mathematics and the time they give to it.
Recently I read a Intermediate School Maths scheme. The introduction was brilliant -all about linking math to real life contexts ( ideas lifted from the revised NZ Curriculum) but when I turned the page the programme was just a series of traditional maths topics.
For many students maths is a 'no mans land that has never quite yielded its secrets' according to Australian educationalist Garth Boomer. He continues saying like most teachers he, 'dwelt largely on the edges of this domain, secretly envious of the very few people...who are truly mathematicians.' I know the feeling; as do too many students.
Where many teachers now make use of their language times to develop ideas and skills to be used in their inquiry programme maths remains watertight. Maths is taught as cut and dried abstracted from real life; a matter of learning the predetermined processes and steps. Many teachers and students actually like this 'right/wrong' approach.
But maths can be so much more than this and many attempts have been made over the years to introduce a more active exploratory approach but these are lost as children grow older and teachers teach mathematics as this is how you do it. Boomer calls this way of teaching catechism - 'the act of asking questions to which one usually knows the answers and where answers are unchanging'. This kind of maths is 'school, learning' and not related to real life problems. No time for exploring, discovering hidden patterns and challenging ones understandings - more like following a pre-planned tourist guide book. This sort of teaching, Boomer writes, 'does not encourage teachers to leave the beaten track' and to use maths to explore and express ideas. Mathematics teachers, he writes, are among the most conservative of teachers.
Mathematics teaching seems decades behind the the teaching of the language arts and science ( although there is not much science to be seen). No matter what suggestion are made, teachers stick to traditional expectations, no doubt reinforced by expectations of parents, politicians and even the students.
Teachers will only change if their learning theory about teaching maths changes. They will need to change from teaching maths as catechism to one where where they see knowledge as being personally constructed and applied by each learners. This is reinforced in the New Zealand Curriculum which states that learners should be their own 'seekers, users and creators of their own knowledge'.
If teachers change their minds about maths students, in turn, will develop a more positive 'feeling for' mathematics. This needn't mean changing all mathematics. There will still be basic things that will need to be learnt until recall is automatic but for the rest a couple of ideas come to mind. The first is to introduce realistic maths experiences for students to explore (and where possible linked to the current inquiry study) and to do fewer things well. And, as well , if teachers do introduce an active maths programme them less time could be given to maths as it would be demanding to use all current time in such an active way. And maths will be a integral part of other curriculum areas.
One idea would be to make it clear to students the difference between 'practice maths' and 'real maths'. Mathematics is a great field to introduce inquiry learning processes. There are some excellent maths resources in schools to help teachers to begin such an active programme. Most physical science studies require mathematics to solve problems. The field of art provides wonderful areas to introduce aesthetic maths. Mathematics itself has plenty of interesting ideas to explore. Such things as number patterns, symmetry, history of zero, maths in other cultures, and so on. Every subject , once the right maths mindset has been established, involves realistic mathematics.
Such an active approach will need to involve collaborative group work. Students need to explore student questions, recording their findings, and then to share their knowledge. Some teachers might like to start with one group of 'real ' maths' while others are busy with 'practice' maths. Or maybe, now and then, a 'real ' maths study could replace the more formal programme.As such ideas are introduced the teachers role will also change. Teacher are already used to interacting with students, valuing students prior ideas and theories, in other areas.
Seymour Papert the computer educationalist has written that there should only be applied maths ( and science).Too much current maths is anything but applied and is only comprehended by students who appreciate the demands of 'pure' or abstract maths.
Another mathematician Dr Z P Dienes ( of dienes block fame) described the classroom situation when he said, 'It is suggested that we shift the emphasis from teaching to learning, from our experience to the children's, in fact, from our world to their world'.
We can't afford students who do not see maths as vital form of communication -a special but accessible language to help them make sense of their world. Currently some students gain a 'feeling for' maths the rest simply give up.
We need an education that sparks children's mathematical imaginations but first we must rekindle our own.
