Beijing Learning Summit, I'm going !

The 3 phases of bringing technology into the classroom (J Liester)

Teachers are the new leaders

Leaders cause change

Change makes progress possible
 
Management is about moving resources form A to B and back

Classroom teachers cause change everyday

Classroom teachers are the leaders

Teachers make a difference.

Take a break

Few professions make the demands of teaching

You must perform everyday from dawn

The audience can be unforgiving

You are allowed no weakness

Prepare each performance like it was an opening night show

then reflect for improvement

You have to be everything to everyone, and you don't get to choose your customers

To do that you need to rest

Take a break this weekend

be 100% on Monday morning

Study with purpose

How do I revise Biology?

1. Get a copy of the IB Biology syllabus.
2. Revise using the syllabus statements don't just read without purpose. You need short term specific goals.

3. Here's an example:    2.1.1 Outline the cell theory

4. Focus on the Command Term,  'Outline' this is the instruction what to do in your revision.

5. Page 11 of the syllabus the Command terms. Outline means to give a brief account or summary.

6. So to complete this syllabus statement you only need the key issues without vast amounts of detail. There's no point in reading huge amounts of literature on cell Theory, here we are revising for an exam! We are 'goal orientated'.

7. Now a key point to realise is that the exam questions will also be limited to the command term for that syllabus statement. Don't expect a question that says explain Cell Theory, that's beyond the remit of the syllabus. When this does happen teachers complain to the exam board.

8. In this way you can make sure that you are clearly addressing the syllabus requirements. Ticking off the syllabus statements as you revise is a great way to chart progress and keep tabs on what needs to be done.



Starting them on Solids

Biochemists not babies!

A simple recommendation here:

carbohydrates, give them solid glucose, get the students to explore the properties, its crystalline, sweet, it dissolves.

Dissolve a couple of spatula worth of  glucose in a boiling tube and add enough Benedict's solution to turn it blue. Into the water bath........record the colour change.

Don't start with prepared  solutions, students don't know this from water. Give them the solid stuff.

Repeat with start, demonstrate the lack of solubility...you see if you make up a starch suspension this point is missed.

Start them on solids

Differentiation vs Peer Instruction

ILP is just a ridiculous pressure on a teacher. Within the context of the IB Biology syllabus its pretty difficult to justify or deliver.

I find heterogeneous sub-groups much more useful. Small groups 3-5 students containing a mix of abilities if possible. And employ the communication skills of the student themselves to get ideas over.

The problem with being experienced is that there is too much distance between you and the conceptual difficulties of a learner. (Eric Mazur). This is quite long but excellent story.

Having prepared for the lesson through Flip-Learning and tested on their homeLearning on arrival. After that we go through a series of instruction cycles with the quicker students in each group acting like 'assistant instructors'.

My assistants speak a language called 'teenage-learner' and can translate my 'aged-learner' language to the other students for me. This has two benefits:

• Better communication of the learning to more students particularly those struggling.
• Assistant instructors meta-cognition of the problem makes their communication of the concept that much better.

The idea is to shift the focus from teaching to helping students learn.

Go and listen to Eric Mazur's video, that will fill in  a lot of the gaps in this very brief comment.

One way to do your homework!!

Flip Thinking Techniques

Just a quick addition, to the technique outlined below(you need to read Progressive Flip Thinking first).

So, lets say the kids arrive, they have prepared for the lesson doing some of the easy work at home. How you need to test them.

Multiple Choice questions are a fast way to get coverage of the topic.

I want to use some kind of 'clicker' to record the students response. OK no cash for that !

So a colleague came up with using 5 coloured cards, A, B, C, D and E on different colours.

Students vote their answer. 

So only a couple get it wrong, you need to do a quick follow up for them.

Many wrong answers, well ask the students to pair with a different colour.

Peer Instruction, students have to convince each other of the correct answer.

Re-test the students answers.

Biology Textbooks update

And here's a great piece of news on the Biology textbook front:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/wilson-free-biology-textbook/

Introducing statistics to biologists.

IB Biology topic 1. We are only addressing (training)this criteria so it cannot be used for assessment.

1. Get a box of seeds (I used Copper pod seeds) or any biological material such as snail shells.

2. Split the sample into two. Give them an appropriate name e.g collected from park, collected in school grounds.

3. Ask the students to do an initial qualitative description of the two samples (to be recorded).

4. Student select a dependent variable to measure (or done as a class). e.g. mass

5. Data collection, student record all raw data into an appropriate table (criteria 1) units/uncertainty/ table

6. Introduce the the concept of the central tendency (average) mode, median or mean. Select appropriate average.

7. Since we are measuring on a continuous scale (mass) we will select the mean. Do the calculation. Use graphic calculator or spreadsheet.

8. Find the min/ max  plot the two samples as  the means with min/ max (Excel version perhaps)

9. Introduce the concept of standard deviation, just calculate it / plot it and then discuss the concept.

10. From here you can do visual comparison of the overlap of the mean +/- SD. This is still  based on 'opinion' and will give the opportunity to introduce the idea of a statistical test.

11. The obvious progression is to a stats test, t-test. How to/justification of test choice/ interpretation of answer/ relate to a hypothesis

12. When all of this is finished it does provide an excellent reference point for the future and also a jumping off point for discussion on design.

One Minute Essay

Still one of my fav plenary activities.

With 3 minutes left in the lesson the student get a scrap of paper. Anonymous or named, up to you.

"You have one minute to write down one thing you have learned in the lesson.

You must also write down one thing that you are still uncertain about".

The rest is obvious, the feedback to you immediate.

The provides and excellent starter for the next lesson.

Textbook disgrace

I've just skim read another new Biology textbook. What disgrace, although re-titled to 'address the new syllabus' the book is in fact a repackaging of the previous edition.

The structure and presentation is the same systematic plodding through the structure and function facts that can be found in any textbook. More to the point the information can be found for free on the Internet where it can be kept more up to date. Where the going gets tough in the syllabus requiring higher order thinking the author devolves responsibility to some web links.

Here's the thing. The lower order thinking, facts can be gained from thousands of websites for free. These authors singularly fail to address the higher order thinking by just pointing to sources but providing no skill instructions how to go about evaluating these sources or creating a new synthesis.

Schools and teachers need to stop supporting these charlatans, link the kids to the good web sites and introduce them to great science writing.

The pressure to be remarkable

It’s no longer good enough to be good at what you do. When we used to work in relative isolation a mediocre performance might have been locally good. Now with increased connectivity we are all under pressure to make our work remarkable. The pressure is to assimilated all that is great and new in the pedagogy and still consistently perform from one lesson to the next.


In Five Minds for the Future, Gardner suggests that major creative breakthroughs are relatively rare. Indeed we might even be suspicious of such revelations. Instead the ‘rewards accrue’ to those who fashion small but significant changes in professional practice’.

Don’t seek the one major creative breakthrough, ‘ instead fashion small significant changes’, spread the changes through collaboration.

Its Cool to Achieve

John