Values-based Education

I would love to know what people think about this journal article.

Here is an abstract:

Evidence is mounting that values education is providing positive outcomes for students, teachers and schools (Benninga, Berkowitz, Kuehn, & Smith, 2006; DEST, 2008; Hattie, 2003; Lovat, Clement, Dally, & Toomey, 2010). Despite this, Australian pre-service teacher education does not appear to be changing in ways necessary to support skilling teachers to teach with a values focus (Lovat, Dally, Clement, and Toomey, 2011). This article presents findings from a case study that explored current teachers’ perceptions of the skills pre-service teachers need to teach values education effectively. Teachers who currently teach with a values focus highlighted that pre-service teacher education degrees need to encourage an ongoing commitment to continual learning, critical reflection and growth in pre-service teachers, along with excellent questioning and listening skills. Further, they argued that pre-service teachers need to be skilled in recognising and responding to student diversity. This article ends by arguing for some changes that need to occur in pre-service teacher education in order for teachers to teach effectively with a values focus, including the need for stronger connections between pre- service and experienced teachers.

Assignment 3!

Today Assignment 3 is due. This is a massive assignment and I will be glad to select the submit button as this will be my last piece of assessment for Semester 1.

This course has been one of the most time consuming courses I have done to date. There was so much involved from writing weekly blogs, which I had never done before, to making sure all the learning paths have been ticked off. With all this said I have learnt so much, not just about teaching with ICT but about myself through blogging. I am certainly not a convert, I will not continue blogging 3 times a week when the course is compete but I may still take the time to stop and reflect on my learning and experiences through the rest of my degree.

Story Retelling

I found the use of story retelling very useful to help students develop their comprehension.

Depending on students abilities you can vary the activity, keeping in mind that students should do this with books in their reading level.

Retelling using pictures that are already in order and students write a sentence under each picture describing what happened.

Retelling putting the pictures in order then writing a sentence.

Retelling the story with no visual aids.

Ask students to write a review on the book.

There are so many ideas out there, pinterest has many ideas from jus and teachers around the world you might like to explore.

Happy pinning!

Spelling Mastery

I used this on prac the school combined Year 5 and 6 with levels up to F, I looked after level E and this is the websites description:

Spelling Mastery, Teacher Materials, Level E Replacing the old assign-and-test spelling book, Spelling Mastery is an effective, research-based program presents spelling strategies, patterns, and reliable rules. Benefits: Spelling Mastery interweaves three spelling strategies according to students’ skill development. The phonemic approach helps beginning spellers learn and apply relationships between spoken sound and written letters to spelling. The morphemic approach shows advanced spellers how to spell prefixes, bases, suffixes and how to combine them to spell multisyllabic words. The intensive whole-word approach teaches students at all levels common words that cannot be taught with phonemic or morphemic strategies. Reliable spelling rules help students move beyond memorization to understand how words are spelled.

Reading Groups

I was introduced to an effective ‘Reading Groups’ rotation on my practical experience. The three main rotations that we utilised were:

1. Pre-read activity. This varies depending on the groups ability. It can be memory with tricky words and pictures to writing predictions on what they think the book will be about based on the front cover.

2. Guided reading. This is a great activity for the teacher to observe a students reading level and engage in their previous activity. For more on guided reading click here.

3. Post activity. This can include retelling the story through pictures or researching an activity in the book and producing a poster advertising it.

I enjoyed this time with my class.

The Foundation of Learning

I am doing Middle School Years but I was reminded when reading Astrid’s blog about my last prac experience in Prep. This prac I was placed in a Year 5 classroom and realised how important a students foundational knowledge is. Like Astrid I too think Prep teachers are underrated but also being a prep teacher holds a lot of responsibility and is a privilege. The idea that you can be part of someone’s educational foundation is an amazing concept, on this prac I realised it is just as important to be able to build upon that foundation with integral structure. As teachers we all hold responsibility and privilege and I definitely don’t take any of this for granted!

ESL

English as a Second Language

50% of my school is ESL and 2 students in my class you would classify as non-English speaking. This was a new challenge for me, however I thoroughly enjoyed it.

What I learnt was that although audible communication was difficult, visually communication gave us some common ground. We used a lot of gestures and pictures to help explain. It was amazing to see how quickly they could pick up concepts when we took the time to explain through multiple modes of communication. Even over the 3 weeks I was there, their English improved immensely.

Although this was my forth prac I had never had students who couldn’t speak basic English before, so now I can say that I have successful taught ESL students and I am a much better teacher for it.

Click here to see what the Queensland Government says about support for ESL students.

Educating the WHOLE student…is that the responsibility of teachers?

I saw britz blog on teaching physical activity and it got me thinking about where the line is drawn on what is the teachers responsibility to teach and what is the parents….

Eating healthy and exercising is covered in HPE units by educators but does that mean it is the teachers responsibility to check lunchboxes? We explore how to treat people nicely and co-operative play but is it then a teachers responsibility to ensure students have friends and that they use manners?

Honestly the list could go on forever, to be fair I don’t know where the line lies. Perhaps if it is not in the curriculum then it is not the teachers responsibility, or teachers can do as much as they feel comfortable, or teachers should be teaching the whole student and therefore whether or not a child has friends and uses manners is up to the teacher. It just got me thinking about what kind of teacher I am wanting to be.

E is for …

I love the 5 E’s model, here is a brief overview:

Engage: This phase of the 5 E’s starts the process. An “engage” activity should do the following:

1. Make connections between past and present learning experiences
2. Anticipate activities and focus students’ thinking on the learning outcomes of current activities. Students should become mentally engaged in the concept, process, or skill to be learned.

Explore: This phase of the 5 E’s provides students with a common base of experiences. They identify and develop concepts, processes, and skills. During this phase, students actively explore their environment or manipulate materials.

Explain: This phase of the 5 E’s helps students explain the concepts they have been exploring. They have opportunities to verbalize their conceptual understanding or to demonstrate new skills or behaviours. This phase also provides opportunities for teachers to introduce formal terms, definitions, and explanations for concepts, processes, skills, or behaviours.

Elaborate: This phase of the 5 E’s extends students’ conceptual understanding and allows them to practice skills and behaviours. Through new experiences, the learners develop deeper and broader understanding of major concepts, obtain more information about areas of interest, and refine their skills.

Evaluate: This phase of the 5 E’s encourages learners to assess their understanding and abilities and lets teachers evaluate students’ understanding of key concepts and skill development.

To view where this information came from and to further read about the 5E’s model please click here.

Engagement!

I came across Michaela’s blog about engagement and loved it. She talks about how critical it is for students to be engaged and that engagement over a long period of time shows true success. Could I go so far as to say that an engagement is supposed to end in a marriage and therefore the idea that we should have a relationship with classroom technologies all year round is essential.

I too, like Michaela, came to see the success of the IWB and how much it allowed for the implement the I Do, We Do, You Do model that was a requirement of the school.