Maths S2: Number Patterns

Just saw a maths lesson on number patterns. After using an IWB activity where students made number patterns on a 100 chart, they were split into three prearranged groups.

One group was making patterns with shapes with the teacher,

One group was colouring patterns on a 100 chart,

One group (with whom I was working) was playing a computer game: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/maths/number/number_patterns/play.shtml
This was by far the most popular rotation. However, it includes negative numbers (which most of the students said they were not familiar with). Also, many students figured out that they could solve both rounds more quickly by trial and error than by working out the correct number pattern.

The older BBC game has naff graphics, but has some advantages over the current game:
It only occasionally uses negative numbers;
it isn't against the clock, so they have more time to figure it out; and
there are more choices which makes trial and error less enticing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/teachers/ks2_activities/maths/number_patterns.shtml

How Teachers Learn: Helen Timperley

After writing my last post, I remembered something Helen Timperley said earlier this year about the teacher as 'adaptive expert'. Timperley is a lecturer at the University of Auckland, and (among her other distinctions) is a big fish in the relatively small pond of the study of teacher professional learning. She looks at all the different kinds of professional learning that teachers engage in, to figure out the features of professional learning that is successful enough to actually get all the way through to the classroom. Her publication on Teacher Professional Learning and Development is here.

She based her discussion on How People Learn, in her words 'one of the most profound pieces of work in education.' Teachers are people too: so how teachers learn is the same way as how students (and everybody else) learns:

1. Learning must engage the learner's preconceptions
2. It needs to lay a deep foundation of factual knowledge organized in a conceptual framework - again this is the same for students and for teachers, and for people in general.  Learning plans for students need to be developed so that they are linked to a conceptual framework. The key job for school leaders leading professional learning in schools is to help teachers develop conceptual frameworks that are consistent. so students see the coherence
3. It must encourage and presuppose a self regulatory approach – so teachers can take control of their own learning.  The teacher is an adaptive expert, and this way of working is critical in the age we live in now. Teachers don’t do ‘this’ or ‘that’: they have to be adaptive. Teachers need to be able to identify when routines work and stick with them, and when they need to be changed and change them. 

The difference between teacher learning and learning at large is that teacher learning needs a specific feedback loop within the classroom, as teacher learning needs to be put into practice, and the success of this is measured by the success of student learning. As adaptive experts, teachers need to respond to feedback from students on how their learning is going, and adapt the teaching accordingly. Taking this responsibility, to identify what they need to learn, learn it, apply it in the classroom, monitor the effectiveness according to student outcomes, and then

Revolution in the Classroom: What's not to love?

Four Corners ran a fascinating documentary this week, Revolution in the Classroom. It followed a state government pilot to give 47 schools more autonomy over staffing and budget. The schools spent their money on strategies to provide teachers with guidance and feedback on their work in the classroom. Toronto High, for example, funded a Teacher Development position, to work with teachers in the classroom and focus on their teaching. The schools’ HSC and NAPLAN results spoke for themselves. It seemed to be a perfect ratification of the importance of improving teacher quality by giving feedback.

The central point that I will be taking away from Revolution in the Classroom, though, is the confirmation that feedback is key: both to teachers to tell them how they are going, and back to students to let them know how their learning is going. That doesn’t necessarily mean relying on another teacher in the room, or even on student focus groups about how they think their learning is going, though these are hugely valuable wherever they are possible. The feedback that is continuously available to teachers is the student’s learning, and it is crucial to make this learning as visible as possible as it happens.

As John Hattie says,

“The critical element is the way in which teachers use assessment to find out how they’re having an impact and with whom. The critical element is teachers getting feedback from the kids about whether those kids are making growth, where they’re making a difference. The critical element is schools that work with teachers to know that kind of difference. (10 mins)

I couldn’t help wondering why the Teachers’ Federation would be opposed to something that seemed so successful (11.55). Having dug into it a little, I understand a bit more. The Boston Review makes clear that the State Government sees devolution of power as a cost-cutting possibility: quite simply, principals do the work that would previously have been done at head office. Extra funding provided for the pilot scheme would not be budgeted for a wider rollout.

The answer seems quite clear to me… The State Government knows that to improve student outcomes it needs to improve teacher quality. Even if it didn’t know that from the pilot, there is plenty of research pointing that way. Having seen the strategies that work in the pilot, why can’t it provide schools with the resources to implement similar schemes? If having a Teacher Development officer works to provide teachers with feedback on their lessons, why not give schools at least the choice of having one – not by rearranging their own budgets to take resources away from somewhere else where they are necessary.  Maybe it’s expensive – but it seems a small price to pay. 

Fighting Bullying With Babies NYT 2010/11/08

Hello, back again, this time with an interesting article from the NY Times about a strategy for addressing bullying in schools - by taking babies into classrooms. It began as a parenting education program, but it turned out that by playing with a baby once a week, watching it grow and develop, the children's negative aggression decreased and their kindness and acceptance of others increased. I was reminded of the 'shoes off' schools that Stephen Heppell talks about... it just seems to work.

Kohn, A. (2005) Getting Hit on the Head

Kohn, A. (2005) Getting Hit on the Head Lessons: Justifying Bad Educational Practices as Preparation for More of the Same. Education Week, September 7, 2005.

Don't justify pedagogy (eg standardised tests, setting homework) by saying it's something the kids just need to get used to because they'll be doing it when they are older. Fair enough. 

Freund, Margaret, How Primary Teachers Feel About What They Do

http://tiny.cc/k8qj7

Freund acknowledges that students are social agents too, but seems to both overemphasise and underemphasise the students' conscious ability and will to perform the emotional work of contributing to the classroom environment. In the first case, Freund argues that,

children learn that they should not be too assertive or aggressive, like Susan, a child in Mrs. D's class they will be described as a ‘little madam’, for once a child has been typified as disliked, it is almost impossible to change the typification (King 1984).

However true it may unfortunately be, the fact that labels tend to stick is an unlikely reason for Susan to avoid aggression.  On the other hand, Freund notes an instance in which she argues that students are 'social actors who have a part to play in the way that the social order of the classroom is constructed', and suggests 'being cute' is one of these 'strategies':

Being ‘cute’, is a guaranteed way of getting a response from a teacher and a special response when children use a stereotype of innocence and ‘babyish’ behaviour by acting in ways that appear submissive. Aaron was younger than the rest of his kindergarten class, physically smaller with pudgy, soft baby features, and when he was trying to avoid trouble he would sit passively with his head on the side like a puppy, a picture of innocence and soft baby features .

Aaron's physical appearance here is something he has no control over, and sitting quietly to avoid trouble is more a tautology than a deliberate attempt to get a response from a teacher.

Teaching the Facebook Generation, SMH 27/02/11

An article in the Herald about "Teaching the Facebook Generation" suggests schools are wary about allowing social media to be used during class time. So how are kids supposed to learn about it - and learn with it? Tim Hawkes is still on the Herald's speed dial, and seems to be taking a sensible approach - ''Ineffective policy is to ban use; prohibition has never worked... We want to ensure that each student's electronic footprint is one they are proud of."