Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Featured on Core Education's EDtalks!


Thanks to Core Education's unrelenting support of #edchatNZ!
Here is the latest video they put together for the EDtalks site.
And a special thank you to all those of you out there who are part of the  network!

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Reflexagons

I received an email from Steve Mouldey a few days ago that said:

And yes. He is right. I haven't blogged in a while. And since I have been very working on my masters, school, life etc... My philosophy of 'share your work' means I definitely should have shared more already! Thanks for the reminder Steve.



So here is what I am working on at the moment. One of my professional goals this year is:
How might I ensure that I am deeply challenging my learners to promote further learning that leads to pathways for academic success?
This goal is centred around how I might make sure that I am preparing my students effectively to be successful in NCEA. As I have limited experience teaching at an NCEA level, I wanted to make sure that my creative (often slightly crazy) style of teaching is doing the job. (Ideally though, I hope that it is doing much more than that but for now, this is the goal.) 

As a result, I have been working on a template to use with my students as they unpack ideas around the carbon cycle. My students have name these reflexagons - reflective hexagons. In the spirit of showing your work, I have shared both the first and second iteration. Would love your suggestions for the next iteration.

Version 1: Access the google drawing template here


Version 2: Access the google drawing template here

Update:
Last night I was revisiting some ideas from John Hattie about what makes the biggest differences for learners in regards to achievement. And of course, that brings my back to feedback... So as a next interaction on the reflexagon task, I have create a rubric with a self and peer assessment sheet to further extend the learning from this task. You can see the full self and peer assessment sheet here.