In-visible thinking debate

Ah, the best laid plans… I was doing really well with the Visible Thinking assignment, but induction weeks, the school show and Glow training stopped my involvement in its tracks, and now everyone’s relaxing, and end of term events are happening all over the place. Including Belgium. I mention Belgium because it currently contains a sizeable [...]

Read Full Post »

Compulsory PE debate

I’m a bit concerned about how the debate is developing. Not surprisingly, most of the questions appearing are firmly based in pupils’ own likes and dislikes, and their experiences following the change to two periods of PE a week last year. Much of the conversation at that time revolved around the comparative value of PE, Maths and English, and [...]

Read Full Post »

Visible thinking

Had a meeting with my three partners in crime from the English department today to work out an outline for our debating. EM has got really into the whole idea, and is off and running with it. I’ve already mentioned the maths as an example of Visible Thinking that she used with her class. Well [...]

Read Full Post »

Performing a balancing act

It’s proving very difficult to find suitable published evidence for the Visible Thinking debate on compulsory PE . I want to provide each class with the same selection of published evidence for pupils to use with the Claim-Support-Question routine. This should provide some “expert” opinions and information, as well as generating further questions. I’ve hit three main problems: [...]

Read Full Post »

On making sense

Brandt, R.S. (1994) On making sense: a conversation with Magdalene Lampert. Educational Leadership, 51 (5), 26-30. Another article to review for university, focusing on teaching for understanding again. Lampert suggests that understanding means ‘sense-making’ (p26), but that once an idea makes sense to the individual, they should be able to communicate their understanding to a [...]

Read Full Post »

Educating for understanding

Gardner, H. (1993)  Educating for understanding. The American School Board Journal, 180 (7), 20-24 We’ve been given some articles for guided reading by the course tutor. Tonight’s work is an article by multiple intelligence theorist, Howard Gardner, who starts with a decent definition of Teaching for Understanding as having a sufficient grasp of concepts, principles, [...]

Read Full Post »

Midway

There are times when I’m on courses which focus on teaching when I find myself thrown by pedagogical concepts which “all teaching students” know about. The chief villains here are Piaget and Constructivists/Behaviourists. I thought one of these moments had come round again today, but our tutor explained the concepts in plain English and moved [...]

Read Full Post »

Lost in thought

New module, and it’s not what I expected. I had assumed that this would touch on multiple intelligences, learning styles etc, but it’s patently not. The main theme so far has been about making learning visible: an interesting concept. We’ve been introduced to Harvard’s Project Zero, which niggled away in the back of my mind [...]

Read Full Post »

Day 29 Spiralbound brains

Read Full Post »

Day 7 Bookbag

Oh the guilt. I have been working on the assignment as much as I can (honest) but too many other things just have to come first. As ZB doesn’t really settle until after 11, that doesn’t leave much time. And while I can write up the reflective diary, concentrating long enough to read is a bit more [...]

Read Full Post »