6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice
Proficient: Participate in learning to update knowledge and practice, targeted to professional needs and school and/or system priorities.
Example:
I was fortunate to be invited to attend a Sheena Cameron workshop on reading comprehension strategies during a five week teaching block. I had been using her strategies with the class, so it was fantastic to experience how she explicitly teaches some of the skills I had been teaching in my class. The examples she used mostly affirmed how I was using them with my students, and the workshop inspired me to be more creative with the summative learning tasks I had set the students as part of our novel study (see 2.1).
I was particularly excited to learn that she has co-written a writing book which will be my next resource purchase! And even more excited to learn of her wikispace (http://readingcomprehensiondownloads.wikispaces.com/Downloads) where she shares many resources to assist teachers in explicitly teaching the reading strategies. I recently used the 'Duck Overbaord' story from this site to engage students in a summarising activity.
Below are two of the activities we were engaged in during the workshop:
I was fortunate to be invited to attend a Sheena Cameron workshop on reading comprehension strategies during a five week teaching block. I had been using her strategies with the class, so it was fantastic to experience how she explicitly teaches some of the skills I had been teaching in my class. The examples she used mostly affirmed how I was using them with my students, and the workshop inspired me to be more creative with the summative learning tasks I had set the students as part of our novel study (see 2.1).
I was particularly excited to learn that she has co-written a writing book which will be my next resource purchase! And even more excited to learn of her wikispace (http://readingcomprehensiondownloads.wikispaces.com/Downloads) where she shares many resources to assist teachers in explicitly teaching the reading strategies. I recently used the 'Duck Overbaord' story from this site to engage students in a summarising activity.
Below are two of the activities we were engaged in during the workshop:
Example:
As a new educator I am continually looking for opportunities to improve my practice. One of my main concerns is with effective classroom (behaviour) management. As a TRT it is essential to be able to to build relationships with the students as quickly as possible and having effective strategies in place can assist this process. I recently completed a two day practical workshop on Classroom Management (see 4.3). Following on from this is a second two day workshop on Student Engagement. I have so far participated in the first day, much to my enjoyment.
As a new educator I am continually looking for opportunities to improve my practice. One of my main concerns is with effective classroom (behaviour) management. As a TRT it is essential to be able to to build relationships with the students as quickly as possible and having effective strategies in place can assist this process. I recently completed a two day practical workshop on Classroom Management (see 4.3). Following on from this is a second two day workshop on Student Engagement. I have so far participated in the first day, much to my enjoyment.
This workshop was practical and provided many examples of how to effectively engage students in their learning. These are some of the main points I have taken from this course:
- Encouraging active participation increases the chance that more of the students will be involved in more of the learning more of the time
- Group work needs to be cooperative learning. It provides a safe environment for students to rehearse their ideas before presenting in a more public setting (whole class)
- Increasing students' accountability helps overcome avoidance by increasing the level of concern of public failure
- It is essential to frame your questions carefully and be aware of your own responses to student responses
The presenters were experienced high school teachers and effectively modelled a number of strategies that can work with students of all year levels. Some of the strategies I would like to try this term include:
(Certificate for workshop can be found here)
- Placemat - groups of students work both alone and together around the same piece of paper. Students record their reflections and ideas related to a key question or issue
- Jigsaw - task is divided into parts with each group member being given one part of the information to study and become 'expert' about. Experts from other groups meet together to become experts together before heading back to their group to pass on the information learned
- Graffiti - creative brainstorming! Each group has large piece of paper with same topic in centre. Students have think time, then time to record own responses on paper, then each move onto another piece of paper & add their ideas
- Mill to music - Play music and students move around the room. When music stops they share with closest person
- Snowball - students write answer to questions on paper, If they don't know it they can write 'pass'. They then screw paper into ball & throw into box/hat. Teacher randomly passes balls to students who then read out the answers
(Certificate for workshop can be found here)