Category Archives: collaborative teaching

Bright ideas – Inventions for Stage 2

Posted on by

Bloom’s (Revised) Taxonomy now puts “Creation” above “Evaluation”, as seen in this revised diagram.

Here’s the blackline original I created to help out Stage 2 students to finish up their science and technology unit on “Inventions”. Hopefully, the students were able to create some new knowledge, using all the essential field knowledge and skills developed by the unit:

BLM - inventions

And two completed creations:

PROBLEM: “Falling out of bed” by Maria:
invention 2

PROBLEM: “Falling off a motorbike” by John:
invention 1
(Note the “invented spelling” of “exhaust pipes” on this one.)

Wrapping up the rap

Posted on by

Term 4 has seen about 200 class groups of Kindergarten and Stage 1 (Years 1 and 2) students, across NSW and beyond, participate in the Bear and Chook Books Rap. A book rap is a discussion between schools about a selected literary topic, conducted via a blog. This particular book rap focused on two picture books, Bear and Chook and Bear and Chook by the sea by Lisa Shanahan and Emma Quay, who contributed generously to the blog discussion as special guests.

In NSW, book raps are hosted by the Department of Education and Training’s School Libraries and Information Literacy Unit, and are supported by online programming and teaching notes and a concurrent Teacher Rap. This rap also featured a streamed video of the creators reading Bear and Chook by the sea. Students, their teachers and teacher librarians, enjoyed exploring the relationship between the written and visual texts of these excellent picture books, and the theme of friendship. Groups of students created digital stories based on the main characters, and posed questions to the books’ creators.

The book rap is “wrapping up” this week, but the discussions are archived for viewing at: http://rapblog6.edublogs.org/
Bear and Chook books rap

Counting for Canberra

Posted on by

Our Stage 3 students are studying Australian government, to be topped off by a culminating activity: an excursion and camp to Canberra.

The educational activities on the Australian Electoral Commission website are proving useful. We’ve been using our votes predicting the CBCA Book Week award winners to practise

Counting the votes for the House of Representatives

and

Counting the votes for the Senate.

These video clips have been quite engaging!

The students have also enjoyed using the Practise voting demonstration on the library’s IWB.

Meeting the future learning goals of schools?

Posted on by

Over on the School Libraries 21C blog, the point is made re “the cost of ‘modern’ resources, especially online ones”. For most NSW DET schools, it is very difficult to justify the expenses of specialist online subscription databases, especially when many topics might only get revisited every two or three years in a cyclic teaching program. Hence we tend fall back on free online material (.com, .org, .edu) and the ubiquitous Wikipedia (although the advantages and disadvantages of such material can be useful teaching points). And, of course, books… which remain viable even in a power blackout.

I perceive a move to more schools sharing campus library facilities. I assume studies are being done on the successes of the NSW “education precincts” already set up. It would be interesting to hear how those experiments are faring. (Did these end up being “libraries of the future”?)

Challenging students to research widely – via collaboratively-planned, taught and assessed Guided Enquiry activities – would seem to be a most effective way to ensure that students will be able to achieve success, especially if the pool of relevant/available resources is already limited by budget. I like the strategy where the students agree they must use a variety of resource types as they research a topic.

Making time for teachers and teacher librarians to plan their collaborations would seem to need to be a high priority, too: ie. one of the school library’s current and future primary responsibilities and functions to meet the learning goals of schools.

But… a school library can’t be setting up its responsibilities and functions in isolation. The addition of outcomes and indicators in all syllabuses puts the learner first. How often do some of us put the learners first in other considerations? Furthermore, individual school communities articulate expectations which can and should inform the learning goals for each school. The trained teacher librarian is an invaluable human resource in ensuring that learners, educators, resources and technology come together in an organised way to achieve the goals.

If the school of the future is not clear as to its learning goals, the school library of the future can’t be expected to be helping to achieve them effectively.

I really like the “What did you do in school today?“ research findings of the Canadian Education Association. Our school has now had numerous sessions on the “development of ideas through the disciplines and through work on authentic problems”, including an excellent one-day session here with Jamie McKenzie, but I think we’d all agree that finding that little bit of extra planning time, to make lessons more focused on authentic problems is the hardest bit. The school day goes by so fast; not to mention finding more time to assess the work before students move on to create their final product. The more “authentic problems” become embedded into our syllabuses and teaching strategies, the more things will improve, but for many staff it’s a challenging hurdle. The way of the future, but we’re not there yet.

I find that a lot of what happens in my school’s library program fits with that idea of “individual and collective knowledge building”, especially in a PSP (Priority Schools Program) school. Teacher librarians seem to be well placed to help students – and teachers – to make connections, and I encourage the ongoing development of field knowledge constantly. Although my IWB has only just arrived, I have seen glimpses of amazing programs that can be used on it during brainstorming and synthesis sessions to take that knowledge building so much further. There’s just so much to learn! The way of the future, but we’re not there yet.

The IWB being placed in the library is certainly also challenging me to maximise the “effective learning time”, since each class only visits for 45 minute sessions, and our semi-flexible timetable has fewer gaps than would be ideal.

Our school has worked hard to ensure we have a positive classroom disciplinary climate” and we have regular, weekly meetings where students who slip through the learning and disciplinary cracks are monitored, discussed and reevaluated, and this helps keep everyone on track. The previous teacher-librarian was always a regular part of this committee, and I made sure I kept up that participation as part of my role when I moved back into the TL position. It’s constantly enlightening, and I know I bring a unique perspective to these meetings.

Our school also tries to have “high expectations for success”. Again, very important, and often very, very hard to maintain, especially in the face of disappointing test results. Inevitably high expectations won’t always be achieved. But you’re unlikely to achieve high results without aiming high in the first place. (But, sadly how often do we hear students, student teachers – or even TLs undergoing their post-grad work – saying, “I only need 51% to get a pass”.)

The importance of “positive relationships with teachers” is also paramount to the survival of future school librares. I do seem to put a lot of energy into that. It pays off, so I keep doing it (Pavlov’s dog.) I think some teacher-librarians still allow themselves to become marginalised in a school staff. That old adage of finding one person you can work well with, then presenting your successes as a team to the other staff, then slowly working with more and more people, is so important.

I know there are some TLs that feel they are unable to do this. (It’s never been my personal experience, and I’m sure it’s not just that I’ve led a charmed life as to what TL appointments I’ve ended up in. Building positive relationships with other staff is a crucial responsibility and, if it’s unable to occur, then it becomes a whole-school problem. Again, this is something that needs explicit training for the participants – in this case the learners are the staff, not the students.)

As Lee Cutler’s group suggest in their post on 21C, “school libraries are the ONLY facility in a school where ALL learning goals of every student and teacher of every KLA and school initiative is supported”.

Sounds good to me. “Developing intellectual engagement” (re the Canadian Education Association’s findings) may well be a good umbrella term for what future school libraries will be able to do best.

How do current school libraries impact on student learning?

Posted on by

Dr Ross J Todd observes, over at School Libraries 21C that, in many schools, outcomes and impacts are often “assumed some how to be lurking in there”. When a new syllabus comes in, educators often try to bend existing units of work to fit the new document, rather than to use the new outcomes to plan new, statistically-valid, pre- and post- tests that will enable staff to prove that learning has occurred. I’m guilty of that myself, trying to stretch old print-based resources to fit new units when library budgets are too tight.

Unless a school has cause to collect measurable data of the students’ achieved outcomes – eg. schools defending expeditures in Priority Schools Programs; teacher librarians undertaking post-graduate study (and requiring valid results for their assignments); etc – that all-important post-test, and results analysis, often get lost in the shuffle in the end-of-term mayhem, and that often happens four times a year, of course.

In a previous school, long before outcomes appeared in every KLA syllabus, we had our first taste of the power of collaboratively-planning valid, measurable, pre- and post- tests, when we re-examined our school-based science and technology units, spent a considerable amount of money on relevant resources that truly supported what we were hoping to achieve, and ensured that every S&T unit maximised the capacity for Talking & Listening (in English).

Schools need to plan for constant revisiting of syllabuses and evaluation strategies. I was going to say especially in schools with a high turnover of staff but, no, every school needs to do this in a structured, cyclic way.

Certainly, I’ve noticed renewed opportunities for the teacher-librarian to be more involved in collaboratively-planning valid, measurable, pre- and post- tests as a result of my voluntary role as an editor of several teaching colleagues’ half-yearly student reports. When educators have to clearly articulate just where on the learning continuum each student is, and for each key learning area, the traditional, waffly comments of yesteryear just don’t wash. I can see where certain gaps are exposed, and then I try my best to lend assistance.

Statements about students’ achievement, at our school, now have to be written in terms of outcomes. The new online reports, as daunting as they are, do seem to be assisting with providing a strong focus on value-added results. Of course, the new reports have brought in an additional problem: many outcomes sound too much like eduspeak, and that can really make some parents feel even more out of the loop.

And, of course, sometimes the best ideas for how something could have been evaluated come too late. (Hurray for cyclic programs, which can be improved each time the units are revisited.)

Similarly, a few years ago, I volunteered my services as an editor of the Annual School Report, and we noticed that the library had, previously, not really rated a mention in the ASR. The last few years have seen added paragraphs about the interrelationship of this school library with other important, high-profile school programs and events: Holiday Reading Is Rad, reading picnics, visiting storytellers, participation in annual community artshows, book reviews in the local newspaper, Circle Time, Premier’s Reading challenge, book raps, and a wiki.

This year, I hope to add OASIS Library borrowing statistics, too, and this is another easily-obtained set of data.

How to ensure that higher order thinking, and pre- and post-tests, are vital elements of the teaching program?

Well, I’m a great advocate of the online book raps and event raps run by the School Libraries and Information Literacy Unit (NSW DET). Programming and planning (including evaluation strategies) are provided. At the conclusion of each rap, we have solid data of learning progress, and the students’ jointly-constructed responses to the rap points remain online, for parents to visit via home or local library computers.

While the maximum benefit from book raps would, ideally, include teachers and the teacher librarian working collaboratively on the rap points, we have also used a highly effective “withdrawal of rappers” strategy, that requires the students reporting back to their classmates. We timetable what is achievable, and that can vary. Because book rapping takes place in the school library – and the new interactive whiteboard arrived this term, and is also in the library – the profile of the library is constantly being flagged (and raised).

Our school wiki (which I instigated, and made a point of branding as the Penrith PS Library Wiki (see “Scan” vol 28 no 1, 2009, pp 30-37) has several pages dedicated to outcomes-based annotations of the students’ progress, much of it in the students’ own words – pre-, during and post- tests, as gathered through whole-school Talking & Listening programs, such as Circle Time (see “Scan” vol 26 no 4, 2007, pp 4-7).

School libraries in 21st century schools?

Posted on by

The School Libraries & Information Literacy Unit at State Office, NSW DET, is asking for comments on the question, “Do we need a school library in 21st century schools?”. There is a School Libraries 21C blog and associated readings.

Today I added thusly:

I love those reports from country towns, where their tiny public library facility would be under threat of closure – and many of the people who turn up to the town meeting would be residents who’ve never actually stepped foot into the library. But they realise its importance, and they don’t wish to contemplate the possibility of life without a public library. Just in case…

Even for myself, I tend to buy most books I want/must have/need to read. My own ventures into libraries unknown (public, university and school) – as a then-class teacher, when a mature age student, and also when researching a commercial piece of freelance writing – are quite sporadic, but the thought of a 21st century that’s somehow “moved on” from the concept of a physical library space is quite abhorrent.

But I think I am ready for any future library to have a different size, shape, location (partly in holographic or even cyber space?) or collection. I stare at my amazing, new iPhone – which is so reminiscent of Dick Tracy’s funky little two-way wrist radio/computer in comic strips of the 50s – and am lost for words. I mean, I only just discovered that my iPhone has been diligently copying across all songs I’ve been downloading from iTunes to my Macbook Pro, ever since I bought it last September. I simply hadn’t thought to look in that bit up till now!

The other day, while doing a presentation about wikis and blogs, and relying on a live Internet connection, the link went down and we had to call for a replacement computer. Only later, I remembered that all of my extended notes, on another page of the wiki, were accessible via my iPhone’s internet connection. I had my palm cards, of course, but the PowerPoint material and much more were only a few button-presses away!

An off-the-cuff mention of Tasmania tigers yesterday, during Year 6’s library lesson (we were looking at a unique picture book, “How WEIRD is that?”, one of this year’s Crichton Award CBCA nominees), permitted the impromptu calling-up of 1930s b/w moving footage of Australia’s last captive Thylacine, and now we can display him on the IWB at point of need.

Library books aren’t going away – I’m especially reminded on those days when air-conditioner-overload causes yet another blackout in the library, but the power of us having so much instantaneous information is both exciting, and another whole can of worms (as to helping students to be able to sift their way through it all).

Double identity

Posted on by

Last year the School Libraries and Information Literacy Unit of NSW DET conducted a rap, Identity: Sharing Our Stories for Stages 3 and 4. Due to the success of this rap, via the Edublogs blogging facility, it is being run again this term!

The rap addresses outcomes in English, HSIE, PDHPE, Music and Aboriginal Studies. It draws on a range of contemporary texts, including personal stories, to explore Aboriginal perspectives on what builds strong identity. The rap is helpful for cultural understanding for all students. It also supports the Stage 4 secondary COG unit, “Cultural identity”.

Many teachers complain that they find it difficult to make sure they address Aboriginal perspectives in their programs correctly, and to find relevant resources to support their units of work in this area. Even if your school is not planning to participate, I would again urge teacher-librarians to visit the pages as the rap unfolds. Rapping is a great learning experience – for students, teachers, teacher librarians, AEOs (Aboriginal Education Officers) and community members. A range of excellent online resources is available, including: programming and planning, proformas, music, and online factual texts. This rap offers an excellent way to develop an educator’s familiarity with blogging as an educational tool, embedded in your program of work.

This year, our Year 5 students will be working in groups on the rap activities, and utilising our brand new interactive whiteboard (IWB), which is located in our library. Now that’s exciting! The new version of the Identity rap starts the week of 18 May 2009, and runs for about six weeks. Schools can use as much or as little, as suits their unique situations.

Web 2.0 – where to start?

Posted on by

Today, a teacher-librarian colleague asked for what she called “an idiot’s guide” to getting started with a school library blog.

It got me thinking back to where it all began for me. In 1996, just after getting my first home Internet connection, I was eager to start my own home page immediately, and I bought the book “Creating websites for dummies” – which warned that the biggest mistake new web composers made was not exploring what’s already out there, good and bad, before creating their own site. Nothing worse than a pretty web site that took many minutes for the graphics to upload. “For dummies…” recommended a good three months of ‘Net surfing first.

Extrapolating that warning to Web 2.0, which was a whole new learning curve, I would encourage potential Web 2.0 educators to become a surfer and commenter on other people’s education blogs, wikis and library sites first – to satisfy themselves as to what works well, and what doesn’t work. Also, they can sample the list of blog links of their favourite library blogs. They’ll hopefully start to realise the strengths and weaknesses of various Web 2.0 software, the importance of currency/relevance of information, how well each web composer responds to their commenters, and so on. With Web 2.0, you can really only learn by doing. Try some links off this site’s blog roll, for example.

Then, I suggested, make notes of what your dream school library blog might include. What pages can be static, and what parts could be regularly updated via a blog or wiki? Are you planning to permit indivisual responses (beware of cyber bullying, and who will “approve” messages), or will group-negotiated student responses be done in cooperative cohorts with teacher guidance?

My colleague had asked for an “Idiot’s Guide” – I really like the commercial “For Dummies…” format myself, so if you feel you need such help after a few months of browsing/commenting, I’m sure there’s a great “Wikis and blogs for dummies” title out there. Also, most Web 2.0 sites have excellent user services attached to their pages. Edublogs has a bbs where questions, no matter how dumb, can be answerered by other users and Edublogs volunteers.

As for wikis, “pbwiki” is now known as “PBworks”, and all old “pbwiki” URLs are automatically reverting to the new confiiguration for the moment. I have found “pbwiki” to be very easy to use, although the new upgrades have taken some getting used to.

My school library wiki, which has been referenced in several “Scan” articles, is now at:
http://penrithpslibrary.pbworks.com

Our school’s two Kinder wiki projects are fully annotated – with attached pages of pre- and post-evaluations, student comments, teacher decision-making, etc. – so those pages might be useful for teachers wondering just how to take the plunge into Web 2.0.

I recently received an email from the “PBworks” team congratulating me on the popularity of our school library site. I don’t have any analytics program attached to it, so it was a nice surprise to realise how heavily it is being used across the world. I also recently noticed that our wiki URL popped up during a search for resources on “TaLe”. Here I was, looking for good online sources of activities using nursery rhymes, and my own work from the previous year was being suggested to me! 😉

I also suggested trying the next rap (using blog format) from NSW DET. This strategy gives a fledging Web 2.0 educator a change to see a blog working that is fully integrated into a school or class program, addresses outcomes, and encourages cooperative learning and collaborative teaching. There’s always a “Teacher” section, where teachers and teacher-librarians can chat about their learning curve, and receive prompt advice re problems.

The “Identity: sharing our stories” rap starts very soon, but there are also links to many completed raps and book raps on that menu page.

Mathematics and the teacher-librarian

Posted on by

A primary teacher-librarian asked about how T-L colleagues felt about taking groups of students “to get NAPLAN results up”!

I have no problem with the concept. Working with a group of students on the language used in mathematics, or deconstructing written problems using steps in the information process as a strategy for understanding, or, especially, concentrating on the literacy skills used in reciprocal numeracy, are very much in the domain of a teacher-librarian.

I urged my colleague to take the challenge, but insist on a focus that is drawn from the online NAPLAN support materials. Lots of information-oriented perspectives here!

This term, I’m about to work with several groups of Stage 1 students using mathematical language and nursery rhyme characters, to create wiki pages of short jointly-constructed narratives. Maths literacy is our current PSP focus and I’m happy to share my T-L expertise in this area with teaching colleagues, even though I’ve never considered maths teaching to be a particular personal passion. More on this as the project firms up.

During my time as editor of “Scan” professional journal (1998-2002), I commissioned several articles from both NSW DET curriculum advisors and teacher-librarians on the topic of mathematics and the school library. We had an excellent one from Peter Gould in 2002 on “numeracy” as the “sibling of literacy”. Definitely worth checking out those back issues; some aspects have probably dated a little, but the following list of back-issue abstracts shows that there are many opportunities for TLs to assist with the crucial KLA of mathematics.

GOULD, Peter. ‘More than words’ in “Scan” 21(1) February, 2002, pp 8-12.
“Numeracy involves using mathematics effectively to make sense of the world. It is a fundamental component of learning, performance, discourse, and critique. The State Literacy and Numeracy Plan identifies a range of key objectives in the Department’s support for numeracy.”

TODD, Ross J. & O’CONNELL, Judith. ‘Teachers as learners: transformational leadership and autonomous learning in an electronic age’ in “Scan” 18(3) August, 1999, pp 41-47.
“A professional development program for secondary teachers was constructed… [including…] exploring cross faculty mathematics integration…”

HARDAGE, Paul. ‘The language of other subjects’ in “Scan” 18(1) February, 1999, pp 10-13.
“The social view of language has led to a paradigm shift about language; ‘the language of different subject disciplines’ replaces ‘literacy across the curriculum’. Today’s teachers and teacher-librarians use the explicit instructional practices associated with text types, and emphasise social purpose.”

MAHER, Cynthia, GRAHAM, Peter & LANNEN, Brian. ‘Mathematics + collaboration + technology = success’ in Scan 18(1) February, 1999, pp 20-23.
“Gifted and talented mathematics students from small, isolated schools were involved in the MEGA (Mathematics Enrichment Group Albury) Project. Through email and the Internet, teachers provided activities to a virtual class, culminating in a Maths Activity Day hosted by Holbrook Public School.”

COOK, Jan. ‘Maths on the Net’ in “Scan” 18(1) February, 1999, p 24.
“In the Broken Hill District, a program was initiated which integrates mathematics, problem solving and ICT. Email and the Internet provide communication between virtual teams of students and schools, enhancing: literacy skills in mathematics; cooperation; and training and development of teachers.”

GOULD, Peter. ‘Mathematics K-6: the outcomes addendum’ in “Scan” 17(3) August, 1998, p 4.
“The new ‘Outcomes and indicators addendum for Mathematics K-6′ impacts on schools’ scope and sequence charts and whole-school planning. The article advocates collaborative programming, knowledge of students’ prior achievements and support from the teacher-librarian. A matrix suggests key programming questions.”