Checking for Understanding

They say a picture paints a thousand words and this is a great wee graphic that speaks volumes. It came through on twitter from @impactwales Some great tools to encourage understanding and reflection in your learning setting.

LEARNING LEADING CHANGE: Claire Victoria Amos: NZ Educators casualties of flawed opinion piece

LEARNING LEADING CHANGE: Claire Victoria Amos: NZ Educators casualties of flawed opinion piece



This a very well written article in response to a Herald opinion piece published last week. Thank you Claire for going to the time to pen such an eloquent, well thought out response.

Another blogpost worth reading is from the Principal of Hobsonville Point Secondary School, Maurie Abraham.

Here is the link to the original Herald article by Bernadine Oliver Kirby. Need to read both sides of the argument I guess.

More Mindsets

Whilst this blog post is essentially US based there are some predictions well worth thinking about. Having watched 'Most Likely to Succeed' last week I would also suggest that there are a few more that could be added, particularly for secondary hill.

1. Exam based assessment be a thing of the past - why ask students to perform in isolation without access to information? They will never have to do this again in their lives!

2. Subject integration has to be the norm, where in life to we face an issue to only consider one aspect?

Any others you can think of?

Modern, Innovative Learning and Practice

This is a great post from Derek Wenmouth from CORE. It examines what is the most important thing about MLEs and that is the practice. Does an MLE suit all learners, turning the question on it's head we consider does a traditional classroom suit all learners? The answer is simply "it depends". Derek poses some great questions to consider when reflecting on practice and moving forward with modern learning environments and practices. By visiting this page you can browse through categories to find other thoughtful blog posts on MLE and other topics of interest.

Preparing Children for their Future

This a provocative and entertaining clip that suggests a future outcome for a student taught in a restrictive learning environment. It might be useful to share with teachers or learners about the kind of future that we are preparing our students for.

• What can we do differently?
• How can this be avoided?
• How are we equipping them for a future?

Learning needs to be...

• engaging, personalised, real life, collaborative, relevant, responsive and messy
• connected - subjects don't occur in isolation in real life
• helpful to our students
• changing to meet the needs of a changing world, we can't keep doing it the same way
• flexible

Our students will need to...

• deal with data
• work globally
• self manage
• organise, collaborate, plan, reflect and assess
• learn through real life enquiries
• work with different people; ages, cultures, thinkers
• be digitally responsible

What are we doing to encourage this kind of thinking and learning?

Challenging Practice

Why do you do what you do?

Would you want to be in your class?

How much of your day is having an impact?

How do you use student voice in your learning design?

How effective are the teams that you are working in?

This is a predecessor of a recent post about the effectiveness of school teams. It is a quick measure and is worth reading and reflecting on the teams that you are a part of.

Growth Mindsets

Attending the Learning Network conference a few weeks ago has had a profound effect on my teaching, feedback and thinking, particularly thinking about growth mindsets and the impact they have on learning.

I stumbled across this post from Karen Boyes which I enjoyed and started me thinking about what we celebrate and report to parents. Are we celebrating the attitude children have to their learning or is the focus on achievement? Do we ensure we have shared enough about the progress children have made and the effort they have put into learning? What are we awarding certificates for? Do they reinforce what we believe about mindsets and learning?

I am always one for quotes and pictures and I have grabbed these from the article Karen shared. If you would like to read the article in full, follow the link, http://www.karentuiboyes.com/2014/11/effort-vs-accompishment/

Feedback and a Growth Mindset

Austin's Butterfly is a fabulous illustration of how children are able to respond to quality feedback and make improvements to their work. In order to do this children must have a growth mindset and be aware that learning is a process, seeking to challenge and improve. The use of praise is interesting too, Austin is given praise for persevering and his efforts that lead to improvements.





Dylan Wiliam shares a snippet of his work with self and peer assessment.  This is not the marking of another's work but time for students to formatively assess each others work which has huge benefits for both children involved in the process.

Mindmapping and Beyond

When I had the privilege of teaching Year 6 students a few years ago, I enjoyed introducing them to the skill of mind mapping. I love these diagrams and ways of recording notes. I would have a lot of fun making them and they are far more interesting to revise than pages and pages of written notes. Maybe time could be spent in reading and/or writing lessons developing this skill.

Click on the picture to visit te@chthought and explore this idea further.

Formative Assessment

We know that one of the best ways to improve student outcomes is to provide quality feedback. It is also essential we give students the tools to clarify their understanding.

Love this link to a post on one of my favourite education sites, Edutopia.


This page provides a download to a list to keep in your planning folder as a reference to pop in reflection and revision ideas when planning your week.