Our brains naturally prefer big picture learning. Understanding how everything fits together.
This video asks us to think about the way that school structures our learning. Teachers know that students learn best when there is integration of subjects and opportunities to explore areas of interest deeply.
Before I explore a couple of take-aways from this video, I want to offer a bit of caution about romanticizing the “way things used to be”. For instance, the image of a child learning to farm glosses over the fact that in this scenerio learning was limited to the narrow field of occupations held by one’s parents or close relatives.
The Take Aways: Big Picture Personalized Learning
One challenge I hear about time and time again is how to provide big picture learning experiences when the Ontario curriculum is organized into discrete subject areas with a litany of expectations in several “strands” per subject. I’ve worked with many teachers who are able to create incredible learning opportunities for students by pulling together the big ideas across a variety of subject areas. This comes from knowing the curriculum inside out.
In Ontario curriculum revisions going back as far as 2008 have adopted a “Big Picture” approach:
Another challenge is how to harness the interests and passions of all students in the class. Teachers who do this best connect with their students and see their job not as delivering content, but as forming relationships with individuals to nurture them in their learning. When that connection happens and when a teacher shares his or her joy of learning, the relationship becomes akin to that of apprentice and master. The master teacher instinctually differentiates because of that relationship. The teacher is constantly on the look out for ways to meet the learning needs of the students. This happens when the teacher knows the student inside and out.
The Big Five: Strategies for Effective Instruction in OCDSB Schools
The Ottawa Carleton District School Board’s “Board Improvement Plan for Student Achievement” (BIPSA) includes a key strategy focused on creative, innovative, and critical thinking and problem-solving. During a fall session of our leadership PLCs, we explored the question, “What does effective instruction look like, feel like and sound like for all students in our classrooms?” five strategies surfaced in our answers again and again:
The TASKengages learners.
FEEDBACKguides learners.
CRITERIAinforms learners.
MODERATION supports learners.
DIFFERENTIATIONinvites learners.
Underlying these “Big Five” strategies were 3 key elements:
engagement of students, staff and parents/guardians
relationships as a community of learners
happiness/joy of learning
It is through working together to improve learning that we develop our relationships and it is those relationships that bind us together in our commitment to all learners.
Lead Learner Series
The effective change leader actively participates as a learner in helping the organization improve
– Michael Fullan (Change Leader: Learning to do what matters most)
Later this month, administrative teams from all elementary schools across the District will participate in sessions with Garfield Gini-Newman, Senior Lecturer at OISE/UT and Senior National Consultant with The Critical Thinking Consortium. The specific focus for these sessions will be on the “TASK”. We will be exploring how to craft learning tasks that do the following:
focus on the big ideas and enduring understandings of The Ontario Curriculum
inspire open-ended inquiry that reflects authentic, relevant and meaningful contexts
promote creativity, innovation, critical thinking and problem-solving.
The “Lead Learner” series will continue with subsequent learning opportunities for administrators across the District to explore the Big 5 strategies. The series is aimed at developing capacity within our school leaders, while providing opportunities for us to learn together, thus building our District’s “social capital”. Capacity building, teamwork, instruction and systemic strategies are the four drivers identified as most successful in whole system reform efforts, according to Michael Fullan in his paper, “Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform“. Given that the Lead Learner series is based on all of the “right” drivers, it should be an effective process. I will be sharing reflections as I participate in the process and I invite you to join the conversation around the “Big 5″, beginning with the TASK. What does an engaging task look like?
Earlier this week I read Chris Kennedy’s blog post “Education and Social Media in British Columbia“. Chris takes stock of where edublogging is at in BC and includes the provocative claim that BC is numero uno across Canada when it comes to the use of social media in education. As much as I like to remind myself that I am not competitive, it just isn’t true Chris’ claim got to me.
I tweeted his post to share it with others with the lament, “wish I could say the same for Ontario”.
Doug Peterson tweeted back:
We were both preparing to craft responses to Chris’ post and it occurred to us that we should work on it together using a google doc. Then we thought – hey, why not invite everyone from the active Ontario Edubloggers’ community! So we tweeted the link and invited the gang to get in on the post. Visit the Ontario ConnectEd Leaders’ Consortium to see what we came up with as a group.
Take a look at the list – what resonates with you? Are we close to surpassing the tipping point? Will BYOD be more widely implemented? Will IWB’s evolve to better meet the needs of students?
1. Web 2.0 tools will continue to dismantle classroom walls to empower greater teaching innovation, collaboration, promoting enhanced student engagement. Watch for Web 3.0 tools such as natural speech recognition to take hold in 2012!
2. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and cloud computing will get beyond the pilot phase in schools and into the mainstream.
3. Open Learning and the notion of students having the options to take courses beyond their chosen university. Providing students with greater flexibility.
4. Tablets, tablets, and more tablets. And smart phones. While Apple dominates many low cost providers will come to the party with education focused devices and richer relevant education content.
5. Books are not dead yet! Content (rich media) is still king! Dynamic rich eTextbooks will continue to gain ground in high school and post-secondary institutions. Hence, while books are not dead yet, publishers are scrambling to offer multiple platform options.
6. IWB’s (Interactive Whiteboards) will better integrate with tablets and the classroom ecosystem.
7. Finally getting beyond Malcolm Gladwell’s classic “tipping point” where more than 25% of teachers are using ICT in the classroom.
8. Funding Challenges will give rise to greater education and industry partnerships to support sustainable learning environments
9. More Blended Learning options for K12 and Post-secondary students.
10. Desktops . . . what are they again?
11. Canadian Faculties of Education will finally wake up and realize they are the centres for teacher innovation.
12. The notion of 21st Century learning will be embraced by all provinces and territories across Canada.
Of course teachers should welcome any object, device, book or idea a student brings to class that contributes to the learning process. Every thing a child brings to school in her heart, head or backpack is a potential gift to the learning environment. However, BYOD is bad policy that constrains student creativity, limits learning opportunities and will lead to less support for public education in the future.
I find the wording on prediction #6 interesting: “IWB’s will better integrate…” (emphasis my own). I’m just not radical enough to say that IWBs should be burned in effigy because they replicate poor teaching practice. Or am I?
Enough said.
Well, maybe I am capable of keeping an open mind and seeing what developments help them to “better integrate” in the classroom. Sceptical. You?
The Tipping Point
Let’s face it, there are many tipping points here. It feels as though we have been on the verge of the tipping point with regards to the use of ICT in the classroom. I’m more interested in how it is being used. I’m looking at when we will get beyond the tipping point of using ICT in the classroom to differentiate learning, including assessment, for students. This might be a “jagged edge” issue, both across the country, across the province and across Districts themselves. Bring it on. What is your sense – is surpassing the tipping point going to happen in your school or your district in 2012?
The Mindshare predictions provide a nice starting point for some reflection and discussion. Feel free to share to jump into the conversation – what do you think of where we are at and where we are headed?
Some colleagues have asked how I am using social media to engage our parents at W. Erskine Johnston. Then this evening I had a quick back and forth with Lorna Costantini on twitter, who was looking for an Ontario principal who uses social media to engage the community. I thought it might be helpful to write it up my experiences here as a reference for anyone who wishes to know the how and why of using social media to engage your community.
Step 1: Set up a school blog:
A school blog is a must these days. With a plethora of FREE blogging platforms available, there need be no extra cost (check out Blogger, WordPress and Edublogs for starters). While it does take a bit of time to get the blog set up, a basic school blog can be set up in less than an hour. Learning how to post, embed media files and link to other web content takes some fiddling around at first, but for the best instructional videos, head over to youtube and you will find exactly what you are looking for in a matter of seconds.
As a sidebar, we do not mandate that teachers maintain class blogs. I offered a few workshops last year and invited any interested teachers to attend. Several attended and then several more, etc…. We now have 21 class blogs, which means we have over 90 % of the classrooms in the school represented. Why has it caught on? Teachers have several different reasons for blogging. Some like that it saves them time and work when they are able to post assignments and resources on the blog. If a student misplaces anything, it is all available for download. Some staff appreciate sharing their teaching and learning from the blogs their colleagues maintain. Some teachers thrive off the positive feedback from parents who appreciate the blogs.
While our teachers are using Edublogs, I moved the school blog to a self-hosted wordpress blog about 2 years ago. We have an easy to remember URL – wejps.net. I have devoted some time to customizing the appearance of the blog in an effort to brand us as a truly cutting-edge school. Our home page includes links to the classroom blogs, as well as our twitter account and a “like” box for our facebook page. The final key feature is our “subscribe via email” box which allows parents and students who wish to receive notifications when a new post is published to get an email. We currently have approximately 140 subscribers to our blog.
Parents stop me in the hall all the time to express their appreciation for the blog. They also leave comments, sometimes asking for further information or clarification, sometimes providing feedback for us to consider. The following is an example of a kind comment left by one of our parents:
Step 2: Setting up a school twitter account.
The next natural step was to set up a twitter account for the school. I chose — you guessed it — @wejps as our twitter identification. I created the following three short videos to show how to set up a twitter account:
The twitter account allows us to post quick and timely snippets of information. For instance, if one of our ski buses was late returning from the hill or if the student transportation was cancelled because of inclement weather, I send out a tweet.
Step 3: A facebook page
I didn’t set up a facebook page right away. I was not as familiar with facebook back then and didn’t understand the potential for connecting with students and parents. When I did set up the account (http://facebook.com/WEJPS) , it became quite popular very quickly. Our blog has approximately 130 followers who subsribe. It is also the platform with the highest growth over the past little while and I anticipate that it will be the “go-to” place for most of our parents and students in the future. To learn how to set up your own facebook page for your school, here is a great guide.
Step 4: Linking it all together
If I were to update each of these individually, I would not be saving myself any time at all and I would have given up long ago. I use twitterfeed to link all the accounts up so that, except when I want to tweet a short and timely alert, I only update the blog. It then publishes to twitter and our facebook page. Twitterfeed offers a quick set up guide on their site and it takes less than 10 minutes to link up. This is a huge time-saver for me, which is essential. I refuse to make more work for myself, don’t you?
Step 5: A Youtube Channel
The most recent addition to our W. Erskine Johnston PS digital footprint is our Youtube Channel , which I set up in the fall. I have posted a video of our band performing at the Remembrance Day ceremony and plan to add more content throughout the year.
Enjoy the performance!
If you are using social media to engage your community, please take a moment to let me know in the comments.
So, I have been really bad about recording my clarinet practices, but I swear I have been good about practicing. There have been times when I have felt that I might just as well give up because the progress is slow with me. The students, on the other hand, are flying along! I have been working on Galactic Episode, which I find a challenge because there is a tempo change midway through – hope it is apparent in my rendition!
I like to practice my clarinet in the morning before I head out to work. I find it relaxing and I think that because I have to focus so hard on what I am doing, my practice time is a good break for my brain. It is almost meditative and because the breathing is such a key part of playing (and I have to focus on getting that right), I think I breathe more deeply during practice too.
Watch for a cameo by Jude the Cat, who seems perturbed that he isn’t centre stage
P.S. Last week I met Dean Shareski, the guy who started the whole #learningproject thing. It was fun to meet him in person on his recent stop in Ottawa.
So, I fell on the ski hill yesterday. No big deal. I was actually stationary and had turned to watch my son snowboard down behind me when I caught an edge or something and hit the ground with a smack. No big deal. Except that I hadn’t fallen in years. Years! I’m not a hot-doggin’ skier by any stretch, and it never occurred to me that I hadn’t fallen in recent memory until I did.
And then I couldn’t get back up.
My daughter stifled giggles as I flopped around like a ski-clad fish on the snow. I got a cramp in my hip as I heaved myself back up. Ouch. Gettin’ old.
There is definitely something to be said for pushing it a little bit, falling and getting back up.
Getting back up is hard if we don’t permit ourselves a few good falls.
Back when I first became a Vice Principal, the entire cohort of new Principals and Vice Principals was brought together for a day of PD to kick off the year-long internship program. For one activity, we were put into groups and given a mason jar, a bag of sand, a bag of rocks and a bag of ping pong balls. We were charged with fitting everything into the jar. At first glance, it appeared to be impossible. The ping pong balls themselves looked like they would take up all the space. Feeling clever, my group decided that we could stomp the ping pong balls and put them in crushed. So we did. And we were giddy with our success when we easily put all contents into the jar.
However, our glee turned to mortification when we learned that the point of the exercise was to put the ping pong balls in first — intact — and that the rest — the sand and rocks — would tumble into the cracks left so that all fit in the jar if put into it in the correct order. The message was to protect, honour and make time and space for the most precious items — our relationships with family and friends — and we would find a way to fit in all the other “stuff” — the demands of our new roles.
Oops!
That lesson has stuck with me ever since. We have two kiddos – Dono is 9 and Violet is 11. Those are the most precious things. They come first always.
Brent and I work incredibly hard as school leaders and to say that we live, eat and breathe EDUCATION would be fairly accurate. We are mindful that being a school leader often means additional time at school, whether it is attending to students in need, working with staff outside school hours or meeting with parents. We also devote time to professional learning, including attending and presenting at conferences both in town and out. There are certain times of the year when the pace feels particularly feverish. And there are times when we tuck the kids into bed and spend the rest of the evening brainstorming ways to support when one of us has a family in crisis or a student in a difficult situation. It is what we do.
It has been a bit more frantic this fall as I prepared presentations for ECOO2011 and the K12OnlineConference, and, together with a handful of other incredible Ontario educators, started up the Ontario ConnectEd Leaders’ Consortium and we launched our first twitter chat (#OntCL). I also went through the rigorous Principal Selection Process for our District. A lot of sand to fit into the jar, I know, but I do love playing in the sand.
There are times when I say “no” to taking on extras because I know my kids need more of me at that particular time. The other morning I arrived to work a meagre 30 minutes before the bell because Dono needed me to spend time with him talking through an issue he is having with a friend at school. I sorted lego while he built. I listened while he talked. We moved from sad to ok. It was precious time for both of us.
Likewise, I am foregoing an incredible learning opportunity this weekend — the edcamp quinte — to put the brakes on and be home with Brent and the kids. We are going to pick out our tree, put it up, decorate and make cookies. I know I will be missing an incredible event. Hey – maybe you can go and tweet some highlights or write a blog post for me to catch up on after I’ve tended to the most precious things?
Wishing you a most joyous holiday season. Take time to step back, catch a snowflake on your tongue, snuggle up by the fire and enjoy the most precious things in your life.
It has been several weeks since I started to learn the clarinet. I’ve documented four lessons, each showing (I hope) a bit of progress. At first I felt very frustrated that I was barely able to make a sound with the instrument. Then I went through a couple of weeks were I felt like I was making great progress, even though I was struggling with some aspects, such as getting my timing and breathing right. I still struggle with those things, but this past weekend, when I sat down to practice after having neglected the clarinet for several days in a row, I was really crushed to find myself feeling like I was back at square one. I felt like I had lost ground big time!
Of course, the lesson here is that regular practice and commitment are necessary if I am going to experience success. In reflecting on that (and admonishing myself for not carving out regular practice time), I revisited the clip below:
Daniel Coyle’s “The Talent Code” explores the notion of talent and lays out three key ingredients to developing talent:
1. Practice, Practice, Practice!
Myelin, the material that insulates the nerve pathways in our brains, grows when actions are repeated and protects the nerve pathways for those actions, allowing them to pass the signals more quickly and accurately.
2. Great Teaching (Coaching):
According to Coyle, great teachers provide feedback that is broken into small, manageable chunks of information. In breaking down the steps a student needs to improve, the feedback is also completely personalized. Coach Martinez gets to the heart of what a great teacher does when he says, “… you take the worst kid and you say ‘give him to me for 15 minutes’ and then watch him mechanically”. In order to provide the feedback students need to improve, we need to attend to them, to watch them in a systematic way, looking for where the learning is breaking down. Teachers need to be “intensely watchful”.
3. Total Concentration (Focus/Immersion):
Coyle suggests that, “if you don’t feel that frustration edge, failing and fixing sensation, you are not stretching your skill circuits … that finding and fixing is at the core of the process.” So, while the teacher must attend to the student in an intensely watchful way, the student also attends to his or her learning in the same intense manner.
Coyle’s thinking resonates strongly with that of David Shenk. I revisited Shenk’s work after reading a post earlier this week by Steve Miranda. Steve shared a quote from Shenk’s book in which musician Brian Eno talks about “talent” and how beautiful things come through nurturing:
Everybody thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head, that it somehow appeared there and formed in his head, and all he had to do what write them down . . . What would really be a lesson that everybody should learn is that . . . things come out of nothing. Things evolve out of nothing. The tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest, and then, the most promising seed in the wrong situation turns into nothing . . .
I think this would be important for people to understand because it gives people confidence in their own lives to know that that’s how things work. If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted, that they have these wonderful things in their head, but you’re not one of them, you’re just sort of . . . a “normal” person. [But with this insight], you could have another kind of life. You could say, “Well, I know that things come from nothing very much and start from unpromising beginnings, and I’m an unpromising beginning—I could start something.
Reflecting on Coyle’s and Shenk’s points, together with my own experience learning something new, I am now focused on finding ways to bring this into the classroom. In what ways does Coyle ask us to reconsider the approaches we take and how we envision our roles within the classroom? How do we work together as a team to foster more opportunities for “intensely watching” our students’ learning, providing small chunks of deeply personalized feedback and greater opportunities to practice and solidify learning, while creating the type of learning environment that encourages students to “lean into” their learning? Are we able to embrace the notion that with the right nurturing, all of our students are capable of starting something spectacular? Do we believe it of ourselves? I echo Miranda’s urgency — “kids have a shelf life”. I will be exploring my own practice within the classroom this week as I work with students in Grade 8 on some critical thinking and writing activities. I will share reflections on that shortly, but I wonder what you are doing in your classroom right now to nurture students and create spaces where great things happen today?
So, below is my fourth clarinet lesson – I’m sticking with it, and curious to see how it goes after some instruction this week and some time to reflect on the learning process itself:
The views expressed in this blog are those of Shannon Smith and do not necessarily represent the views of the OCDSB staff, Board of Trustees, policies or positions.
Chris’ claim got to me.
