Starry Night

Starry Night by Van Gogh

This week I continued my exploration of inquiry based teaching in my Year 7 English classes. We are currently working on a poetry unit and I thought that this provided a great opportunity to put into practice what I had learnt from MoMA. As it turned out, there was much more to it than just a beautiful piece of art.

I started the week with the simple inquiry question: “What is poetry?” They were mostly silent to begin with but once people started mentioning types of poems, the names of poems and poets started flowing. It was also interesting to see the technical language they used such as rhyme because it gave me a good insight into how much work will be required to teach them analysis skills. This tied in well with the course I have been doing on differentiation and it was pleasing to see the two ideas intersect.

I then followed this mind mapping activity up with a hands-on poetry experience. One of my fears when I teach poetry is that students think poetry is either incomprehensible garbage or just a laundry list of technical terms applied to words, lines and stanzas. I remember at school how much fun I had discovering poetry through the work of William Carlos Williams and I wanted them to know that poetry is accessible and fun. So, with a pen in hand, we headed out to the school oval with a 5 senses scaffold (created from a 5 sense picture of Google images). My idea was simple: experience the oval and write a poem about it. After a few brief instructions, with most students ignoring my pleading to “please do this activity by yourself”, I had them touching and eating grass, sniffing the breeze, examining the various items left on the oval and gazing upwards at the sky. We then headed over to some tables and wrote. Unsurprisingly, many of them chose to write acrostic poems but I told myself that next time I would push them to write something more ‘proper’ because I didn’t want to be too restrictive this early on.

The next day, having already successfully written one poem, I decided to try the activity again but using Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting. I got the idea from the MoMA education page using their theme based categories. Not only was the painting visually appealing, particularly the way the stars are portrayed, but it captured a wonder I hoped would inspire the kids. Moreover, I decided to team teach the lesson with my colleague as we both had reduced classes due to a school activity.

Using the same 5 sense scaffold, together we elicited responses to the painting. Using that great question of “what else do you see?” we were able to generate an extensive list of items and feelings. I was really impressed by the way the students could see different interpretations in the painting, such as the hills being a tsunami or wave, and the interactions the painting generated as students were keen to share their ideas. In fact, they were so keen to share that we had to remind them to share with the class rather than just blurt out answers to their friends. Next we got them to write a 7 to 10 line poem about Starry Night.

I was amazed!

The quality of the work they produced was out of this world – and only 1 or 2 acrostic poems in sight. From poems about drowning to trips down some filled alleys, the students were able to use the 5 senses to create moving poems as diverse as the class itself. Moreover, everyone was able to complete the task and I didn’t hear a single complaint about poetry being boring or too difficult. I especially loved being able to share some of the poems with the class as both of us teachers discussed how our childhood memories effected our own poems. The highlight though for me was the work of a Chinese student who is just learning English and the wonderfully natural way he crafts his poems. He often asks for help because he sees himself as weak in English but every poem of his I read amazes me with its grace.

Thus, inquiry based learning once again came up with the unexpected and rewarding. The painting and activities is definitely something I will reuse plus this way of getting the students to write poetry is really effective. Rather than complaints about poems being too boring or difficult, artwork allows them to express what they see in the work and how they interpret the world. The results so far have been wonderful and I have the pleasure of putting their poems together in a book for the class. Just like the glistening, golden stars in the painting, my students really showed me how they shined.

It's all in the journey

Mickey Arthur at a Cricket Australia press conference

Successful teachers and coaches have a lot in common: the skills required to get a team or individual to be the best in their sporting field is not that dissimilar to getting a student to ace an exam or write a great assignment. So it was with some interest that I saw a tweet about an interview with former Australian cricket coach Mickey Arthur (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-22/interview-mickey-arthur/4905796?section=sport).

For those who don't know, Mickey Arthur was the South African born coach of the Australian cricket team up until just before the Ashes started a month or so ago. A controversial selection in the first place, his tenure as coach was littered with rumblings about his style and ability to deal with the various egos that dominated the team. The most notorious of these incidents became known as "homework-gate" in which a number of players were sent home during a tour of India for not abiding by team rules and failing to hand in a reflection task on how they could contribute to the team's future success. Predictably at the time there was a chorus of criticism: how dare this non-Australian blow in tell our cricketers what to do (but of course we aren't racist in Australia, we just don't let the foreigners near the cricket team unless they are good spin bowlers) and why is he treating them like children and making them do homework?

At the time I felt a fair bit of sympathy for Mickey Arthur and I secretly suspected all cricket following teachers might have too - even if they didn't like a South African coaching Australia. The frustration of students not completing homework can become a huge millstone around your neck as you are required to cajole then threaten and finally carry through on detentions and phone calls home to get that one paragraph summary that would only take 5 minutes to write if they just bloody did it! The alternative is to make threats and not follow through but that then makes the situation worse as you need to reinforce any punishments that much more to ensure they don't take advantage of you. So I could understand his annoyance at paid professionals, with honestly not that much to do apart from attend training and play cricket, being too lazy to write a few sentences suggesting ways they could contribute in the next game. Apart from the trivialisation of homework (NB: I'm sure every cricket following student in Australia saw it as tacit encouragement to not do their homework), it seemed to me much more about respect and attitude. The act of not handing in something the coach asked is just disrespectful and says that you don't care about the team or anyone apart from yourself. Moreover, the players sent home did seem to have the biggest egos in the squad so maybe this assertion was not far off the mark.

Fast forward to the Ashes and Mickey Arthur is sacked as Australian coach. Cricket Australia cite poor performances and a lack of team discipline as the reasons - the irony being that this came from the same people who refused to properly sanction the "homework-gate" offenders and allowed them to retain their senior positions in the team. They then appoint an Australian - thank God the masses cry as they vehemently deny that it was performance and not Arthur's South Africaness they disliked - to coach the team as ex-players galore claim that this is the boost the team needs to win the series. Moreover, the ill-disciplined boof-head (sorry David but it is true) that sparked Arthur's sacking even admits he is to blame for destroying someone else's career while he gets second chance after second chance and making heaps of money for his troubles. Unsurprisingly to anyone who could stop being a one-eyed supporter for half a minute, the Australian team has not performed any better under new management and all hope now rests on home ground advantage. So it was great at this time for Mickey Arthur to give an interview on ABC Radio.

If I had been in Mickey Arthur's shoes I would have been pretty bitter and angry. Here was a guy trying to coach a team in a period of rebuilding, following unprecedented and sustained success, and rather than support he gets the boot. Also, the irony that the same players who were ill-disciplined are rewarded with spots in the team and full forgiveness by the new coach would have made my blood boil. So as I eagerly await his first hand grenade about the Australian team all I get is... happiness. What is this? Isn't he angry or upset? Where does this happiness come from? He must be nuts.

As I listened more carefully, particularly as he described his coaching philosophy, I realised that he was a much better person than I am because he was above all that. His main concern at the time, and to this day as he watches the Ashes from his living room, was the individual development of players as people not cricketers. For him, it was much more important to develop an environment and culture with the right values that fostered individual development rather than just teach them the right way to bat or bowl. Moreover, even though he no longer coaches them, he recounted with passion his frustration at watching them make the same mistakes over and over, wishing he could just step in and give them a quiet word about hitting the ball straighter so that they don't get out again. Finally, he was still so in love with a game that had treated him badly of late. Rather than throw in the towel, he was working at a school and starting his own cricket academy: giving back to a game that has given him so much, as he put it.

This got me thinking about the parallels between what he does as a cricket coach and my job as a teacher. Every time my students attempt to analyse a film or research a history topic they are like a Shane Watson striding out to the middle to face an over from Jimmy Anderson. I can give them all the advice, encouragement and wisdom of my many years of teaching as I like but ultimately they have to score the runs of learning themselves without me. Moreover, we all try to create that particular learning environment that fosters creativity, exploration and learning within each class for every lesson and we can run into a Warner or Watson who just won't play ball. However, they just don't do their homework but go out on the field and deliberately sabotage the game for everyone else into the bargain. So do we write them off? Fortunately, teachers tend to take the Mickey Arthur approach of giving them another chance and helping them along their journey rather than cheer on their failures.

The biggest thing for me though was how Mickey Arthur talked about developing the cricket side as a journey. His greatest disappointment was not getting the chance to turn good players into great ones: the lost chance at tapping into the undeveloped potential that the team contained. This reminds me of a student I mentored for 2 years and who is a mad Liverpool fan. I was surprised when he asked me to act as his mentor, he didn't seem that keen on me as a teacher, but I wanted a chance to work with someone one on one through to year 12. After a slowish start, we were both a bit tentative and unsure of how to be a mentor/mentee we eventually found a nice balance of study advice, proof reading and just talking football. For me the joy was in watching him go from lacking confidence in his studies to becoming a more confident and diligent student. It didn't matter what marks he got at the end of the day because I had seen him grow as a student and that made the whole process worthwhile. I can think of similar cases with some of my unofficial students and they all have the same core principle: it was the journey that mattered, often ending with a good result too.

The other big thing for me was the reasons Mickey Arthur went into coaching. Recognising his own limitations as a cricketer, good but not great, he used his love of cricket along with his communication skills to become a successful international coach with the South African team. It was his desire to communicate with people and build relationships that brought him this success. More importantly, even though he was sacked, he could still be satisfied with the effort he put in. As he stated, he gave everything for the job while he did it and thus even the events surrounding his sacking could not diminish the pride he had in his effort. This too is a lot like being a teacher: sometimes we can work really hard with a particular student, from one on one help to special scaffolds and differentiating tasks, but still experience that same disappointment when they either give up or maybe fail in the big test or assessment. However, if we know that we did all we could to help that student then we can take the satisfaction of the effort we put in and hope that next time it pays off.

So that's my longer than expected rant/reflection/potted history of Mickey Arthur and his relevance to teaching. I recommend that everyone listen to the interview (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-22/interview-mickey-arthur/4905796?section=sport), even if you aren't a teacher but then why are you reading this blog(?), just so you can be inspired by his passion, dedication and sheer positivity in the face of hard times. While coaching the Australian cricket team and teaching in a classroom may seem poles apart, his journey and the journey he wanted to take the team on can inspire us all to give everything we have to every day of class. We might see our kids get out leg before again and again but hopefully we can help them far enough along their journeys to eventually reach that century.

Time to Meet Your Maker... Model

There is one good reason why every high school in Australia should have an iPad or laptop program for every student: differentiation.  Not only does this technology provide opportunities to support every learner in the classroom but they make implementing a differentiated curriculum that much easier.

For those educators who have been living under a rock for the past couple of years, differentiation is

“the recognition of and commitment to plan for student differences. A differentiated classroom provides different avenues to acquire content, to process or make sense of information and ideas and to develop products. The goal of a differentiated classroom is to maximise student growth and to promote individual student success.” (Tomlinson 1999)

In essence, differentiation is ensuring that you modify:

•  what you teach
• how you teach it, and
• how the students show you they understand

for every student. While this may seem daunting, it is something teachers naturally do every day in the classroom. From a slightly more complex question to a small extension task, these are great examples of modifying the curriculum to suit a particular student’s needs and abilities.

Recently I started an online PD about differentiation in order to get more skills in this area. One of the models of differentiation they used was the Maker Model and I used it this week to teach my Year 7 English class film analysis skills. Essentially, the Maker Model focuses on:

• Content – varying the level of abstraction and complexity of concepts covered
• Process – giving students alternative methods to complete tasks as well as different types of graphics organisers
• Product – allow students to demonstrate mastery through a variety of forms
• Learning environment – student-centred and flexible areas that encourage independent learning

Using this as a template, I tried to design a lesson where my best kids could push themselves to deeply analyse the ideas and techniques behind the film we were studying while also providing my lower ability kids with the chance to successfully write an analytical paragraph. In terms of content, the Maker Model helped me focus on the bigger concepts behind the film as well as the task. So rather than just add more clips for my better kids to analyse as I might have done, I tried to choose clips with different themes that showed different aspects of the message of the film. While each student had to write an analytical paragraph, I used the process and product elements to really differentiate what I was doing. Hence, I had students completing everything from 1 properly structured paragraph through to mini-essays. Thus, rather than have my better students finish early and become bored, I was able to keep them on task and occupied for the whole lesson. Importantly too, it pushed them to make connections between the themes and film techniques and hence engage their higher order thinking skills in a meaningful way. Finally, I was able to utilise the student laptops to allow them to work individually or in pairs to view the clips and type their responses.

In terms of the actual lesson, it turned out to be a success. My introduction and explanation of the task definitely needed work, especially in distributing the tasks (which I could have used the laptops to do), but once the class got started they were quiet and on task for the whole lesson. I really enjoyed the opportunity to work more one-on-one with the lower ability students as well as seeing the higher ability kids embrace the challenge I set them. In particular, two students who usually get all their work done but I don’t really extend all that much, were a little surprised when I gave them the mini-essay task but were animatedly talking and writing for the whole lesson. Moreover, they asked more questions than usual and I was able to teach them some new technical terms that I wouldn't cover with the rest of the class. On the other end, all my lower ability students produced an edited, structured, analytical paragraph and were beaming with pride because they had completed all the class work. So all up, every student was engaged and on task for the whole lesson as they developed their film analysis skills.

The important thing for me from this experience was that using a structure like the Maker Model made my differentiated class more focused and effective. Sure, I have been differentiating my lessons for years, but the Maker Model helped me see my lesson content and procedures in a new light and thus be able to better tailor my differentiation for my own purposes. It is a model I will use to plan differentiated lessons in the future and I think it is definitely worth a try.

The Little Monsters! (App-tastic! #1 Class Dojo)

It would be remiss of me to have a technology and education blog without reference to some of my favourite educational technologies, so today I will tell you about my one of my current favourite apps for the classroom …

Class Dojo

I discovered this app through a colleague at a previous job. One day he started talking about this program that allowed you to award points to students for their good behaviour and take points away for their bad behaviour. At first I was sceptical; this seemed a bit too much like a primary school app rather than something to be used in a secondary classroom. Still I downloaded the app (it was free after all) and after spotting some funny shaped creatures decided it was not an app for me.

Fast forward and I can now admit that I was a little short sighted. Has the app changed? Not all that much: still funny shaped creatures, still awarding points. However, I have come to the realisation that while the appearance may be targeted at a younger audience, the uses for the app (affordances) are for all classrooms. Not only does this app allow you to keep real time track of student behaviour but it can actually improve your class’s behaviour.

I first tried this app with my Year 9 History class for a bit of fun. This is probably my best behaved class and I felt they would see the spirit of fun the app aimed at and not be offended that I was treating them like primary students. So I put it up on the overhead projector as they were working on an inquiry based task (see my previous blog for inquiry based learning) and just started awarding points for on task behaviour, helping others and hard work. The effect was almost immediate, some turned around and tried psychoanalysing their funny shaped creature as my representation of them (by the way: the creatures are randomly assigned) while others took a few seconds notice and got on with their work. However, once they got over the initial excitement of the creatures their behaviour started to change: they started behaving for points! As I said, this is my best behaved class but even the most off task of students started knuckling down to their research in an effort to be recognised and earn another point. This worked particularly well during the class discussion as everyone wanted to contribute so they got a participation point. At no point did I offer a reward for the person with the most points or signal that the points meant anything: they simply wanted more points and that was enough.

A word of warning though, the points system does not work for all students. In the same class discussed above, I had one of my best and one of my worst students both react negatively towards the point system. Both deliberately tried to get negative points as a protest against the system and thus needed more traditional classroom management techniques to get them back on task. So the lesson I learnt from this is that while it is fun to make the points public, it is better to keep them private and maybe just show the student their totals at the end of class or even not at all.

With this important lesson learnt, I spent this week using it in my Year 7 English class. I did not make the points public this time but instead just used it to keep track of their behaviour. This private use of the system made it easier for me as I didn’t feel pressured to award points and it helped me to be available to every student in the class. In particular, the random student selector option prompts you to award positive or negative points to a randomly selected student. This has been really useful as it helps me to get to all the students and see what they are up to rather than then handful of students who regularly monopolise my time. This has the added benefits of ensuring that I am moving around the classroom and making everyone feel more included. Moreover, the reports that can be generated from the app make long term classroom management planning easier. For instance, after each class I print off the scoring for each student – where it shows how many positive and negative points they got that lesson and the behaviours displayed – and quickly review them looking for multiple negative behaviours. By doing this, I have been able to identify some organisational issues that effect a well-intentioned and generally hard working student that I might have not noticed otherwise. So rather than miss an opportunity to help him improve his learning across all classes, consequently I have also noticed he is often the last to leave his locker and head to class, Class Dojo has alerted me to a problem through mere data.

In summary, Class Dojo is a great app for keeping track of behaviour in the classroom. While it can be used in a public sense to get students to monitor their own behaviour, I prefer to use it privately to help me keep track of all the students in my class. Not only can you record and monitor their positive and negative behaviour but the system allows you to add your own behaviours and thus customize the system. This has been particularly useful as I try to get my students to focus on organisation and practice Good Learning Behaviours (GLBs) and thus I can reward them for these specific behaviours. Moreover, the random student function provides a friendly reminder to get around to all students in every class and the summary data helps in long term planning. The best bit is that it is free and the recent update has made it much more user friendly. So try it today… you’ll never see your little monsters the same way again!

For all the 3 out of 10 kids

What numbers are the kids in our classrooms given everyday?

Watching the film The Way Way Back today reminded me of the positive influence we teachers can have on students.

The film starts with the main character, Duncan played by Liam James, being given a free character assessment by the critical, hypocritical, future step-father, Trent played by Steve Carell. Asked to give himself a rating out of ten, Duncan like most people struggles to come up with an answer. How can you judge your own worth? What aspects of ourselves do we focus on? Pressed he comes up with a safe answer of six, middle of the road and safely uncommitted. However, Trent is not to be stopped and roughly informs him he is in fact a three. A three! Duncan sits there speechless as Trent then proceeds to list his faults and ends with a half-hearted pep talk to use the trip as a chance to improve his score.

Needless to say, this is a somewhat comedic moment, the archetypal start to a coming of age film. However, this is in fact a sad reflection of how many of our students come to us. They may not be told in such a blunt way how much they are valued, and indeed some may be told their faults on a regular basis, but the labels they get in the non-school world hangs around their necks whether they like it or not.

Unsurprisingly, when Trent tries to get Duncan to follow a simple curfew and house rules later in the film he meets strong resistance. Taking the moral high ground he says that they need to work together based on trust and respect for the sake of the family. To me this is the funnier moment of the two: after disrespecting Duncan in the car, making him wear a life jacket unnecessarily on a boat trip and generally treating him like a slave, he says that Duncan lacks respect for him – the pot calling the kettle black in any language.

However, the issues of respect and trust are central to productive and friendly classrooms. Unless you can develop a trusting, caring environment then students will not be willing to take risks and explore all their talents. Unfortunately, how they learn to show this respect and develop this trust may be undermined by the home and outside world. From simple acts of discourtesy on public transport or in the shops to road rage and our politicians abusing each other every night on the news, our students are exposed to models of behaviour that promote disrespect, rudeness and the individual above all.

Fortunately, the film has the saving character of the water park operator Owen, a man child who follows his own path after experiencing similar bad parenting to what Duncan has to put up with. Owen shows patience with Duncan, first to break through the awkwardness to make a connection then later to build his self-worth. Owen doesn’t judge Duncan as a three, nor does he put any number on him whatsoever. He sees a human being not having a good time and tries to help him out. Moreover, by giving him a job and extra responsibilities, he is able to show Duncan his inner strength and that he is valued by others.

While I know this is just a film and that this may fairly be called pointless psychoanalysis of a well-worn plot, I think we all have the responsibility of being more like Owen and not like Trent. We are role models for our students and the way we treat each other, colleagues and other school staff, in a respectful way is vital to showing them the right ways to act. Particularly as the world gets more isolated, through increasing online communication, it is important we show students the need to value everyone.

In a lovely touch at the end of the film, Owen stands up to Trent as Duncan finally breaks free and says, “I’m friends with the number 3.” The horrible label has come full circle from critical, hurtful label to a badge of friendship. Hopefully, we can all stand up for our students, regardless of their number, to show them that we value them for them because that is enough.

Silence is Golden

One of the great things about the internet is the range of professional development opportunities that exist for teachers. From Sophia (www.sophia.org) to Coursera (www.coursera.org ), there are a range of MOOCs (massive open online courses) that offer a vast array of courses for teachers of all subjects and persuasions. Last week, I began another online course with coursera.org called Art and Inquiry: Museum Teaching Strategies For Your Classroom. Run by the Museum of Modern Art, it focuses on using art to promote inquiry based learning that models the education programs run in the museum.

One of the most exciting things about the course is the direct and practical way that I have been able to use it in my classes this week. Having not taught history for a few years, this inquiry based learning approach suits history pedagogy and the approach of my school. More importantly, it has made class more fun and a nice change from a content heavy curriculum.

I first tried it with my Year 9 class where we are studying slavery and industrialisation. Previously, class had been focused on source analysis and note taking from PowerPoint presentations. Naturally I was a little tentative, the literature said silence was my best friend and the thought of standing there in front of them waiting for a response seemed a little scary. However, I took a deep breath and just began to write on the board my inquiry question: “How do we stop slavery?”

Silence.

More silence.

A tentative hand went up from one my regular contributors, who made a comment about the Emancipation Proclamation. Then another hand: make rich people slaves for a day, then another: pirates from Somalia, and another and another. By the time I had finished the mind map on the board; my fears had been erased and replaced by genuine excitement. This class had a wealth of ideas and historical knowledge, especially about American history, that had previously been in hiding. Moreover, they were engaging in debates about these ideas across the classroom without prompting. This seemed too good to be true.

Drawing on the two key ideas, the Emancipation Proclamation and whether slavery still exists, I set them a simple pair-share research task with a time limit of 20 minutes. This is where the rubber really hit the road: you could have good class discussion but what I wanted to see was research and detail. And off they went, as everything from Yahoo answers to Wikipedia to newspaper articles to YouTube started appearing on their screens. Even better, this was focused, organised work where I didn’t need about 10 different reminders to get exercise books out to take notes.

To finish the class I held a plenary session where I got each subject area to share their findings. Rather than the usual reluctance to provide an answer, usually where there is only one correct response and it goes to a regular contributor, I had everyone battling to get their voice heard. So much so that my regular contributors were starting to feel left out. Moreover, each person was able to add something new or different to the subject. So class ended with 90% of my planned content, back-up in case the experiment failed, waiting for another day. The lesson hadn’t gone quite in the direction I expected but the students were enjoying it and left the room buzzing.

I next tried it with my Year 8 class studying medieval history. Having done a little more reading, I centred this lesson on some pictures of medieval punishments to get them thinking about law and order. The inquiry based learning literature focused on unsolicited viewing and the use of the questions: “What else do you see?” and “What do you see that makes you say that?” So I just put up the pictures on the Apple TV and waited to see who would speak first.

Unlike my Year 9 class, these guys had no issues in putting forth an opinion. The problem was, so many good ideas were coming out I needed to slow it down so that I could get all these ideas on the board. Importantly, just using these questions, I was able to go beyond the obvious content of the punishment itself to expose some of the social issues involved with crime and punishment.

Also unlike my other class, the content for my inquiry question (How were medieval criminals punished?) was a lot more structured and focused. Using a good video from a Tony Robinson television series and their textbook, I was able to direct them to the key ideas around the topic. However, unlike previous lessons where textbook work was greeted with a groan, the students eagerly delved into the text to find out more information to support what they had seen in the video.

Importantly for me though, when they posted their answers to the inquiry question, it contained all the detail outlined in the curriculum documents and more. They even debated their answers and were suggesting areas in which more detail could be included. This was the best lesson I have had with this group and a quick straw poll at lunch confirmed the success of the class.

So a week into my new MOOC and it is already paying dividends. The inquiry based learning approach has re-energised my classrooms and shown me a new side to my students. I can’t wait for the coming week to see what question we will answer next.