Teach Tip Tuesday: Plan a Strategy now to Conquer your Marking 

Posted on March 6, 2017 by cmcaton

It’s week 7 in QLD and we are approaching the pointy end of the term.

For many of you, the mountain of marking may have already started to grow. This mountain can easily start to become overwhelming, and you feel the need to start working day and night to clear it.

Go digital to streamline your marking and save time.

While I dedicate part of every school holidays to planning and general school work this term I want to avoid marking in the holidays if possible. I want to be able to focus on developing videos and resources for my flipped classroom instead of the dreaded marking.

This year as part of addressing my work-life balance I’m heading into week 8 with a plan to manage my marking,  reporting and end of term management jobs. Read my post on work-life balance here. See below for my 5 Tips to plan to conquer your marking and an example of my planning.

Plan to fail.png

5 steps to a planned marking and reporting period.

1. Identify when each piece of assessment marking is coming in and any moderation deadlines and reporting deadlines that you must meet. 

2. Determine what time you can reasonably allocate outside of 9 to 3. Exclude days with extra curricula activities. Keep some of the weekend free. 

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Maintaining a Positive Outlook

Posted on March 1, 2017 by cmcaton

As we pass the hump point of the term and look forward to the holidays, it can be hard on some days to continue to maintain a positive outlook about the rest of the term.

Right about now our students are settled in our classes; rules and routines have been established and maybe the drudge of daily school life is starting to settle in. Now is the time that some students to start to raise their heads, maybe make a lesson a nightmare or  with all the pending assessment they  just act out over their stress.

Stay positive.jpeg

I know that some days I find it hard to remember the positive parts of my day and I’m pretty sure everyday has some and that’s what this weeks post is about. Keeping your outlook positive even when it seems hard to remember those positive events in your day or week. This week we have 5 suggestions of ways to keep the positive things that are happening at work front and centre.

5 Ideas to Keep the Positives Front and Centre

1. Every time you have a positive thought or experience through the day record it and bottle it. This way when you are feeling down and having difficulty remembering why you do this job pull out one or two of your positive thoughts. 

2017-Memory-Jar.png

Making a memory jar by lalaleelou.com Continue reading →

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Teaching Students to Actively Watch Videos

Posted on February 22, 2017 by cmcaton

We live in a society where we consume media and videos at an extreme pace. We passively watch, are entertained in the moment and then forget most of what we have viewed.

giphy.gifvia GIPHY

When taking the step into using videos to provide content to students to support flipped learning, we might make the assumption that students will be able to engage with the video and by the end of 5 minutes will understand what they have viewed.

Wrong!

Students have been trained to watch most media passively. Only the most extreme media is remembered for prolonged periods of time. Well I don’t know about you but I don’t intend to teach students about solving linear equations by standing from a sloped platform as a I balance between 2 thirty storey buildings.

So if students only watch actively the most extreme videos how do we get them to engage with probably pretty “boring” videos so that they can learn the content.

The answer just like anything else in education is that we need to teach them.

So how do you teach a student to actively watch a video? You use a coaching model like the “I Do, We Do, You Do” model. In this model you allow students to see how you can break down a video to extract the important parts that they need to know and what they should write. If you are using the right video 90% of the video should be important otherwise why is it included, videos don’t need padding.

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This is the second year that I have used this model to get students actively watching videos and this year I’ve stretched it out a little longer and its great. True my students aren’t currently watching videos at home, in fact they have had very little homework. My thoughts are that a little time spent in class in these first few weeks is a worthy investment for the rest of the year.

Here is a summary of how I went about implementing the 3 coaching stages to teach my students to watch their flipped videos.

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Teach Tip Tuesday: Pace your patience

Posted on February 20, 2017 by cmcaton

Patience is something that I have a lot of but sometimes having too much patience or tolerance can have the opposite effect that you are aiming to achieve and can stop you from keeping cool, calm and collected.

For this particular Teach Tip Tuesday when referring to patience I’m mainly referring to the patience that we show students in their behaviours and their ability to meet our expectations.

patience

Patience in regard to students learning should be adhered to where possible but I suppose even in this instance a little shove in the right direction can always help.

We all know the type of class that try our patience, they push the boundaries that we set. In a particular lesson they might come in and be chatty so you patiently wait for their attention. Those 5 pointy students then start to make minor disruptions and you selectively ignore their behaviours. You continue with your lesson, the disruptions increase and you try proximity and a range of strategies before they get a verbal warning. By this time your nearly at the end of your patience or tolerance for their behaviour. The next warning is for something far more minor then their previous transgressions and then they are sent out of the class to prevent them disrupting further. At this stage your patience is pretty much gone and you have little left to deal with minor behavioural issue from other students and this is where pacing your patience comes in.

5 Ways to Pace your Patience (Graphic: text below)

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Canva as a design tool for teachers and students

Posted on February 15, 2017 by cmcaton

This week I wanted to share a tool with you that I have been using to develop graphics for multiple aspects of my work and am looking forward to including in my units.

A year or so ago I was introduced to an amazing online design tool, Canva.

graphic-design-for-teachers-and-students

Canva is a free online based program that produces a large range of graphics including posters, flyers, brochures, infographics etc. Canva is also available as an IPAD app and therefore can be used in multi device classes.

While I am yet to use Canva with my classes, I now have over 20 different graphics that I have personally designed for my use. All images in today’s post have been made using Canva!

I am looking forward to utilising this program to create explanatory graphics in my math class.

Today’s post features 5 suggestions for using graphic design in your class and a summary of why Canva is a great choice for your class.

5 Places you can use graphic design in your classes

1. Summarise informationForget the teacher Guilt and keep your work life balance with 6 easy strategies.

  • Posters and brochures can be a great way to teach students to construct concise summaries.
  • Summarising information using graphics can also reinforce the benefits of visual association with topics.

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Teach Tip Tuesday: Use Visual Cues to Improve Student Engagement

Posted on February 13, 2017 by cmcaton

I love to use visual cues in my classes to reduce the amount of time I need to give instructions to students. It also reduces the number of times that I have to repeat instructions for students.

In a quick google search of visual cues in the classroom most references that come up relate to students with special learning needs however visual cues can be useful in classrooms of all ages and subjects.

Visual cues are a great way to keep students engaged by providing silent reminders and also a great addition to any behaviour management plan. Visual Cues.png

5 Visual Cues to use with students for better engagement

1. Laminated Signs or Powerpoint inserts

  • For my junior classes especially I find that visual reminders of what they are supposed to be doing and how they are supposed to do it provide a great support to students.
  • When it comes to my cues for how to work I use a series of images that show single, pair and groups. I also provide cues on where they might be working in their books like the front (which is margin ruled) or the back (half divided page) or on a whiteboard.
  • Below is an example of how I might use visual cues for part of my lesson. example-task-cues
  • These classroom management signs are great for any year level:

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Forget the teacher guilt and fill your bucket.

Posted on February 8, 2017 by cmcaton

When our students are little we talk to them about filling their buckets with good feelings by being kind, generous and compassionate.

As we get older filling our bucket takes on a whole new meaning. As teachers we continually give away part of ourselves to our students, colleagues and family. And to keep doing this we have to fill our buckets to make sure we can continue to be patient, generous and compassionate with our students. Even though we know they need filling I know I have been guilty of neglecting it.

As a teacher our job description is open to interpretation which means that our work is never done. I don’t know about you but I have never begun a school term with the thought “How awesome, all my work and preparation is done for the term!” No matter how many hours I put in there is always more that I could do. Thus the teacher guilt.

We all suffer from teacher guilt sometimes when we are sick, at PD, need to care for our own families or just needed that night off. But the question is why should we feel guilty? That’s right we shouldn’t!

Forget the teacher guilt. Maintain your work-life balance.png

This year I am focusing on reducing my teacher guilt and filling my bucket regularly so that I can be the best teacher for my students and the best ‘me’ for my family.

Worklife balance is something that we all struggle with and these are the strategies that I am trying this year to make sure that my work is not my life.

6 Strategies to help keep my Work-life balance in 2017

1. Set maximum work hours. 

  • This year I have set myself a goal to leave work by a set time. Essentially this means that I will be at work for about 9 hours each day, 45 hours per week. A reasonable working week.
  • When my hours need to be longer, I will make time for family or hobbies that can help me to refill my bucket.

2. Work hard

  • I will work hard when I am at work or working.
  • It’s not that I haven’t always worked hard at work but sometimes it’s easy to get distracted and try and do multiple tasks at the sometime. This is not productive even though it does seem so at the time.

3. Plan my daily tasksproductivity

  • Each day I plan in my calendar the tasks that I have to do, like teaching, observations, student management.
  • I will also pick 1 – 2 additional tasks that I could accomplish in the day or make a good start on. It’s important to be realistic about the number of tasks that you can complete in a day. Most days I can expect many interruptions so 2 tasks means that I don’t feel overwhelmed with work in the last 2 hours that I am at school.
  • I target the hardest task first so that it gets my freshest attention and therefore will be most productive with it. This is called eating the frog.
  • Task that I can’t complete but are time sensitive are added to my calendar with a due date so that they are already prioritised.

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Teach Tip Tuesday: Create your own teaching space without your own room

Posted on February 6, 2017 by cmcaton

I’m not sure about other teachers out there but at my school and many other schools I have worked at most teachers don’t have their own rooms.

I have to admit when I troll through pinterest I’m jealous of the awesome classroom setups that some people have.

If you are lucky enough to have your very own space or maybe share with one other, I am happy for you but for the other side out there here are a few tips for making your classroom each lesson feel like your own.

The key to having a classroom feel like you own it is that student feel at home, safe and comfortable. Now we cant go adding alternate seating, plastering the walls with paper, lining the room with fun novels or activities but there are a few things that we can bring with us that can help it along.

5 Tips to Create your own teaching space when you don’t have a room. 

1. Define for yourself where your “front” is in the classroom. 

front-room

This doesn’t have to be your front. 

  • just because the projector is at the front of the room that doesn’t mean you have to teach from there. Deciding on where you place yourself in the room promotes the idea that this is your space and you will use it flexibly.
  • I set up my computer at the front of the room and attach to the projector. I rarely stand there to teach and choose to speak from the back of the room or even sit with the students to create the feel of a flexible space.

2. Take the essential with you to each class so students have everything they need. This helps to make students feel like you care and removes excuses. 

  • Imagine what essentials you would have in a classroom if it was your own, then think creatively about how you could move this around.
  • Since I teach in a different classroom for each of my classes I have a tote tray that has stickers, post-its, spare paper, graph paper, pencils, pens, rulers etc all contained in the one tray. For each lesson that I go to I swap out my folder with worksheets if they aren’t digital and my textbook. If I am planning a lesson that needs colouring equipment I have small containers of student sets that I pop in my tote tray.  Rarely have I found I need anything else that’s not in my tray.
  • Essentially working out of a tote tray or trolley comes down to forward planning for each of your lessons.

3. Take posters that you want to refer to often in your folder with magnets attached to the back so they can easily be displayed for the lesson and removed. teel

  • If I am referring to a particular strategy repeatedly rather keep rewriting it up I have it laminated on a piece of paper and magnetic-tapeattach magnets to the back so that it can be on the board for the lesson.
  • This would also work with instructional card, formula posters etc.

 

4. Negotiate a shared cupboard or draw space here students can store work. 

  • In some classes student really need a space for booklets, worksheets etc. that we don’t want to cart around. Where possible I negotiate a small space to store these items in a classroom with the other teachers that use it.
  • If a space can’t be negotiated set a duty roster with your class that includes the collection of said items just prior to or the beginning of each lesson.

5. Teach your class how to manoeuvre desks into group configurations. 

  • This might sound silly but in all the classrooms I have shared none of them have provided group learning spaces. Teaching students how to organise desks for group activities means that you can have a seamless transition between different activities and you don’t have to be confined to paired or rowed desks.
  • Group spaces allow students to interact and participate in discussions more readily.
  • Group spaces can also allow students to improve their behaviour by providing a narrower focus of attention from their peers.

I’m sure there are many other great tips for sharing your classroom space and making it your own when you teach in it. Please share your ideas in the comments below or on our facebook page.

 

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Keeping Accountable in the twenty teens.

Posted on February 1, 2017 by cmcaton

It seems every year more and more is asked of teachers and with every new request is a requirement that we prove that we have done it or achieved it.

It is now entirely possible that a student will come back and hold their school or teacher accountable for what they don’t learn. See this article here about a Victorian case.

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The best defence we have against these illogical possibilities is to document what we do to the best of our ability.

A colleague asked me the other day about what sort of planning I do. So I showed them my overall summary for the term the one that is derived from the unit plan and that I give to my students. Then they asked what sort of planning I do for my lessons and how would I “prove” that I had planned for and taught the content. This question gave me pause; as a senior teacher I don’t tend to fill in a lesson plan anymore so how would I show what I did?

My response to this question was that prior to each lesson I prepare powerpoints that guide my lessons, this process allows me to think out the content of my lessons, consider timing and as per the question above gives me a record of what I did that lesson right down to the exercises I allocated.

The question that then comes from that, is naturally “How do you know the students did it?”

If you’re like me you checklist, so that you have a running record to report back to parents, students, admin and for actual reporting.

So here are my 5 steps to keep you accountable in the twenty teens. 

1. Publish your term plan for your students and the content that they have covered in a LMS. lms

  • By publishing this in a LMS (learning management system) students cannot say that they didn’t have access to anything even if they were absent.
  • Publishing also ensures transparency in what you are doing in your class. (I share my courses with fellow teachers so that they can always see my notes, lessons, video etc)

2. Checklist student workchecklist.jpeg

  • I record all my checklist for students in my idoceo app on my IPAD, it keeps all the information contained and can easily export reports at the same time. Check out the why I love my IPAD post.

 

3. Conduct regular checkpoint testingquiz

  • While this seems to follow the idea of America’s pop testing, we are moving into a new era of external exams in Queensland. Regular checkpoint testing can give valuable feedback to yourself and students.
  • Ensure you record some notes when you do a checkpoint test. (score, audio, video, anecdotal comment etc.

4. Keep regular contact with parents

  • Ensure that you contact parents both when you have concerns and also to celebrate success.
  • Contacts can be via phone, email, sms, a note home etc.
  • Keep a record of these contacts.

5. Ensure your students always know how they are travellingGiving regular feedback has great feedback on student results and student teacher relationships. Go digital to streamline your marking and save time.

  • It can be devastating for a student to find out that they failed at the end of a semester, ensure that you are giving regular feedback on how students can improve throughout the course.
  • Feedback can be given in a number of ways: Check out our digital feedback post.

 

I would love to hear how you keep yourself accountable. Please comment below or post on our facebook page.

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