Quality not Quantity

There is a partially perceived, partially real pressure to push students through the curriculum as quickly as possible. The National Standards of course take much of the blame for this, however while I am a "National Standards Native", I'm sure this pressure existed well before the National Standards took force.

As a school, we are about to embark on some professional development around teaching reading with Dr. Rebecca Jesson. I sense that this will head towards the "quality not quantity" end of the scale too.

While there is a definite need for students in the junior years to read as much as possible, I have been thinking about how to make the learning tasks around these junior books more independent, creative and challenging - looking at the quality of the tasks not the quantity. Our PD this year to date has included SOLO Taxonomy as well as the SAMR Ladder - so the theme of high cognitive engagement is very apparent.

Here are some examples from recent Explain Everything follow up projects:

Using Explain Everything in Maths

I have been thinking about different ways I can use Explain Everything in maths time. I have got many ideas from other teachers, and now I am trying to put some things together to create interesting, motivating, cognitively engaging maths follow up activities.

Heres is where I am at at the moment:

Where am I up to? Term 2 - SLOW DOWN!

Ok, so there has been a lot of thinking going on recently, but not a lot of blogging. I reflect constantly on what I am doing in the classroom, as many teachers do. My reflections sometimes result in a change of practice, sometimes in a conversation with a colleague, sometimes with some research or investigation.

I have been looking at how to create Explain Everything activities that provide high cognitive engagement, specifically in reading. I have come up with some concepts that have worked and I will continue to include in follow up activities, but I have also realised that I am too time poor to change the world in a day. While this sounds overly dramatic, in all seriousness I need to slow down with my changes as it is going to drive myself and my kids batty. My students are never going to be independent if I keep changing what they do. When I think about the greatest need in my class this year, it is to develop some level of independence.

Fortunately, a couple of amazing teachers (Michelle George and Karen Belt) paved the way for this roll out of iPads with an iPad pilot class in 2014. They created a fantastic bank of Explain Everything activities for a number of PM readers and these have become the basis of a lot of the follow up work we are giving our children. The beauty of this is that we can slowly develop our own style of Explain Everything follow up tasks in reading, while having a bank of very good activities to use at the same time. I sometimes use these activities as they are, I sometimes add to them before I give them to the students, and I sometimes create my own from scratch.

Over the holidays I pondered the cognitive engagement of my students in maths time. I hadn't felt like maths had been ticking along particularly well in term one - there seemed to be many interruptions, the students appeared to be even less independent in maths than in literacy, and I was finding it hard to give them things that would extend their knowledge as well as practice essential skills needed for Stages 0-4.

So.... where to next? I'm looking more at maths as well as reading, keeping on sharing ideas with colleagues, and using what is already made and making adaptations to them.

My most recent word of the moment was TEMPLATES. My new words are COLLABORATE and ADAPT.

Keep it real Laura and stop ordering a combo when you really only need the fries.

Inquiry Reflection - Term 1

Templates templates templates...

If I want to work efficiently, produce high quality learning opportunities for my class of characters, and make conscious decisions about the cognitive level of the activities, then I need to be producing some templates that I can use in multiple ways.

Here is my first attempt. This is a template that I have customised for a particular book for one of my reading groups.

SOLO vs SAMR and How Can I Combine the Best of Both?

I have been thinking about SOLO Taxomony and how to link this with the SAMR model. One extends students' thinking into the realms of high cognitive engagement while the other aims to use the affordances of technology to give students learning opportunities they would not otherwise have.

Easy, right?

I'm going to give it a go and see. With the use of Explain Everything, there are all sorts of possibilities with the technology, however some of these are simply replications of pen and paper activities. I was finding a wonderful world of online texts, resources, links through Google docs while teaching my year fours on chrome books last year, however right now I'm feeling a little limited with how I can creatively extend the thinking of my year twos. I need some serious time set aside to play with Explain Everything, and to think about how the actives can lead to higher order thinking.

For now, I'm going to play around with some activities based on the following verbs: to describe, to sequence, to compare and contrast.

How the heck is this possible?

Cognitive engagement? Higher order thinking? Metacognition?

Any ideas on how do achieve that with 5 and 6 year olds?

Well, I need to start somewhere, and right now that is at the bottom. I have enthusiasm, a few years of teaching experience, lots of travel experience, a passion for teaching kids to be inquisitive about the wider world and a class of Year 2 students who need to be accelerating their learning in order to be successful citizens.

My inquiry topic for this year is to look at how I can attain high cognitive engagement by using Explain Everything (and possibly other resources/apps) to accelerate the progress of my students.

No mean feat. But I'll give it a very good go.