Wednesday 19 October 2011

#tmclv - Chair/space personalised learning and Inspiring outdoor learning

Personalised Chair

 

This post is created for #tmclv, which I will be attending tomorrow night.

The main theme of my presentation is dealing with a time issue I have found since I have joined a new school.

Last year I was use to 1 hour lessons now I'm down to dealing with learning taking place in 50 minutes.

 

My main issue was with a couple of my classes. My main classroom is on the 2nd floor, but for a couple of my lessons during the week I teach on the ground floor. By the time I finished a lesson on the ground floor and climbed the stairs (I had a knee op in the holidays) I had lost 3 minutes of the lesson with the students waiting. 

I tried giving them some bell work to get on with whilst they waited. I found that some times these were ok but not personalised and some struggled.

 

So How could I make sure that this 1st 5 minutes to the lesson without me would be productive, and click the students into gear so that when I arrived we are cooking on gas and have a learning atmosphere straight away.

Enter the personalised chair.

Photo-17
This picture highlights my idea.

Each class have a 'personalised' section on each chair. I found that I had lots of strips of paper that was just going into the recycling bin after the paper cutter was unleashed on some paping sheets.

After a quick lesson it became apparent that the personalised learning sheets needed to be laminated. I to make sure they were stronger and also to make sure the strips could be reused, using a whiteboard pen. The strips are attached by velcro circle discs. During the lesson when the strips are reattached if a student messes with them I hear the rip very clear and the students dont even bother.

I did a survey of all the students who had a smart phone that could accept a QR code scan.

Those students were linked with students from other classes so they were seated on the QR code seats.

Photo-16
They would be sent to a page which would have a simple task for the students to focus on for 2 weeks.

This sounds a massive task I know but it took me an hour to set up and lasts for 2 weeks for ALL students I teach so 3 hours each half term for personalised bell work for ALL students.

He is the idea in a little video clip. 

IMG_1715.MOV Watch on Posterous

The students were asked what they liked about the personalised chair? They gave a wide array of answers from,

'It is different and I wanted to know what it was about'

'The work gave me a clue on what I was could improve with my descriptions and asked me to practice'

'It allowed me to be creative with misson explore'

'It brought on my handwriting as it was time to practice when sir wasn't here'

'My question was different from everyone else'

This is only 2 weeks in but it has made a real difference with all classes and means I don't feel AS pressured to glance at the clock and think AHHHHH!

 

Misson explore

As you saw in the personalised learning strip I used in the video. One passion that my students are really enjoying experimenting with and are stretching their creativity juices with www.missionexplore.net I'll show this off at the Genius Bar as it is an outside learning resource my students are loving.

Concertina form information 

As a form tutor I find me asking the parental questions more and more. 'So what are you learning about in your subjects?'

PLTs is big in lots of schools so I thought why not create concertinas for the different aspects.

So now in form the students add to it how they have used each aspect during the week. From it I can evaluate as a school are we hammering a certain aspect of PLTs and as a result mission lots of it out or are we allowing students to practice and improve each aspect? Or do we do one PLTs one week and then forget about it for months?

 

Other learning that is getting my juices flowing ALL I'VE FOUND OUT ABOUT VIA TWITTER!!!

  • Tait Coles Punk Learning
  • SOLO Taxonomy
  • Researching tools for students - mashpedia, 
  • Skyfire App for ipad - enables flash and searches for videos which are related to your choice.
  • Stop animation - Jellycam
  • websites similar to ones you know - moreofit.com

 

I'll add others on my twitter page. 

@JOHNSAYERS