There just ISN’T enough TIME!!!!!

I think the most difficult thing about teaching is the TIME conflict! Teachers’ feel so much pressure from so many different places: children, parents, team members, school management, BOT, ERO, the community, the media, themselves. It becomes a real juggling act, keeping all your clients and supervisors happy and up-to-date, and still achieve your priorities. If you can get it balanced, then those priorities should mesh, and achieving your own priorities, should be the same as the other demands on you, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to always be the case.

What does this mean in terms of implementing Learning Pathways?

1. Get smart with your initial planning – when you’re setting up your planning for the term, make sure the skills teaching that you want to do in writing and reading are linked with probable directions in your Learning Pathways. In this way you will be able to kill two birds with one stone. eg If your topic is going to need report writing, then make this is the designated  writing skill for the term.

2. Daily Focus Points – Use the opportunity of times of whole class focus to keep the topic in front of the students. Don’t have your Inquiry as a separate subject that only pops up for two hours a week. Keep it in front of the children every day.  Have a daily current events session related to your topic - there are different ways of doing this, one child a day, one group a week, a monitor who checks the Internet before school for a news item related to your topic newsboards. Wall map with pins with related news items etc At Shared Reading time – use material related to the topic. You can tailor your teaching points to work with this material. Journalling and Reflection – I think I’ll make this a topic for a whole other post – the role of reflection in your Inquiry is so important with much research showing the importance and success of this technique in children’s learning, and in your knowledge about each student. Make this a regular occurrence, whether a quick verbal round-up of progress at the end of a session of what was achieved that day, or a written journal, or a weekly sharing session where the children share and support each other in their projects.

3. Flexibility – recognize that the way you go about teaching subjects such as Reading will vary at different stages of your Inquiry, and that your planning for Reading should reflect this. eg In the Immersion phase, give the students material in their guided lessons that will teach them about the topic. When groups are researching, give them time in your programme, such as in their group rotation to carry out their research. Where your lower achievers need greater support, small group work is an ideal opportunity to teach them skills as well as to enable them to gain the information that they need. When it is time to present work, use your writing time for them to write up their reports. At ICT time, choose a meaningful task related to what they need to do for their Inquiry, rather than doing something separate. At the research phase, use it for research, at the presentation phase, use it for presentation.

4. Observe/Reflect/Respond – You cannot completely plan the term ahead in terms of the children’s needs. Neither can you ignore the children’s needs. You can however, predict what the children MAY need, and plan to teach to these needs as they arrise. You have a hugely important role when the students are working “independently” on their projects. You need to keep close tabs on what each group is doing, think about their future directions, and whether what they are doing is taking them in the right direction, diagnose their needs and MEET those needs. This may simply be on-the-spot guidance, or it may be recognizing that individuals, groups or the whole class have particular needs which you will need to plan and teach for. 

5. Prioritise – Don’t let yourself get sidetracked by side issues. Stick to your inquiry as your main focus. Don’t forget to use homework for the Inquiries, OR for the students to do rote work, that then doesn’t have to take time away from your Inquiry work.

6.Have fun with it!!! IF YOU ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT IT, THE CHILDREN WILL BE TOO!

 

“I don’t think the kids are learning much from this Learning Pathways stuff…?

I didn’t say it! No. A reliever in our school said it in the staffroom.

Am I concerned? Yes!

Do I believe it? Hmmm….. Do I believe the children are currently learning as much as they CAN from “this Learning Pathways stuff” yet? No.

Are they learning much?

YES!

When I questioned the relieving teacher further about her concerns, she talked about one group in particular who were having a lot of trouble working together, who were continuously fighting and not getting much work done. 

Groups working together is a very significant issue and part of the cooperative nature of the Inquiry process. I personally have a strong belief in the cooperative classrooms process, and the enhanced learning that takes place. I believe there were a few things that needs to happen for this group and others like it to be successful.

a) Teacher input at the time of groups being set up. 

eg  Is the class ready for group research -this can be a tricky activity for some students. The teacher needs to make decisions about the size of the group – maybe pairs are a good way to start as it doesn’t require as much expertise from the students in terms of group dynamics, it allows easier allocation and sharing of tasks, and ensures greater individual accountability. The teacher needs to look at who the children are who are working together – is this a workable group? Is there a leader in the group? The teacher needs to think about where the children sit on the developmental continuum for Information Literacy Skills – those children who are at the lower levels need greater teacher support, and these children could be grouped together. In the cooperative classrooms model, these children can be supported by other children in a group working at a higher developmental level, however, the success of this will depend on the group dynamics. Students who are at a lower level will often hang around the edges of a group with more capable peers and not actually do any real research themselves and therefore learn very little.

b) Teaching around cooperative work.

This is on-going, and a necessary part of classrooms working in a cooperative way. It might include class discussions, T or Y charts about aspects of cooperative work, games which practice cooperative skills etc. There are a lot of resources around about cooperative classrooms and the types of activities which facilitate this sort of learning. Here is one link http://host401.ipowerweb.com/~teachers/mcc.pdf There are many more!

c) Learning about planning a research project and individual accountability.

It is important to make the preparation for the project a structured part of the process. Students need to learn the process and think about the steps they are going to take. Tasks need to be allocated to individual students, otherwise a hard-working enthusiast may take over the entire project, which means the other group members don’t take part in the important information gathering, processing and synthesising tasks. Part of the teacher’s role, is ensuring that all students are participating fully, and that may mean group checklists showing who is carrying out which areas of the research and presentation.

d) Monitoring the progress of the groups, and teaching to on-going needs. (Formative Assessment)

This is the “on the hoof” stuff that is totally essential to ensure that the children are learning what they need to. This may take the form of some sort of weekly sharing, where the children talk about the progress they have made, discuss any problems they are having. Some things can be cleared up on the spot in this way, other children can offer help and solutions, and the teacher can also identify learning needs that they can focus on during the following week’s work with specific groups, or in class teaching.

LEARNING PATHWAYS does NOT mean the teacher stands back and watches the children fail! 

I don’t agree with the relieving teacher who muttered, “I don’t think the kids are learning much from this Learning Pathways stuff…” but I do think that we need to continue to work on doing it better! It’s not easy, but it IS worth it!

If I only had TIME!!!!

Teachers are some of the busiest and most tired people I know! Unless you have been a teacher, and experienced the daily energy required to prepare for and manage a class full of kids, then it’s hard to understand what teachers get to feel like – especially towards the end of the term! And then there’s the marking, the paperwork, the parents, your team…..extra-curriculum activities, school fairs….. The list is endless.

This huge workload makes taking on personal new learning really difficult. First of all you need the time to actually reflect on what you need to learn, then the time to investigate, explore, take on board and experiment with new ideas.

Learning takes TIME!

However, I feel it’s really important to take that time, perhaps at lower stress times of the term, and focus on our own personal professional development. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just insert a memory chip in our brain, and the knowledge we need would be there, integrated with what we already know!

In Learning Pathways, we are wanting children to take more responsibility for their learning, to identify what their learning needs are, and to follow these up. This is partly based on the belief that children learn more if they follow their own interests and curiosities, but also with the intent to teach children HOW to learn. We know about information overload, and the fact that there is more knowledge out there than any of us can ever process, therefore while we attempt to drill some small holes in this giant ball of knowledge, we want to teach children how to wield the pneumatic drill in order to get to the guts of it, so they can do it without us at the helm!

My feeling is, that we first of all need to develop our own skills in this area! Many of us have been taught with chalk and talk, and being fed the small bits of knowledge that someone else has decided are important for us. The truth is, of course, that we are the ones that know best what we need to learn! It’s really no good expecting others to drip feed us with the bits they think are best, because you actually need the whole picture and a deeper understanding to be able to make use of those bits in a way that will maximise the benefit to children’s learning.

Modelling learning for children is another way of giving that pneumatic drill a bit of oomph. I think it’s good to share the Learning Pathway that you’re taking personally, with the children. For example, if you are trialling a new Thinking Skill with students, there’s no harm in letting them know this. Teaching children consciously HOW to learn is important. When I introduce a Thinking Skill that’s new to me, I would tell the children up front, that this is a new Thinking Skill I read about, and that we’re going to try, and that I’d like their feedback at the end, about how helpful it was for them. This gives you valuable information about how well it works, enabling you to adjust and adapt your teaching of it, and also helps the students reflect on how they are going about the learning process. They are also learning that you are learning and trying new things too.

Which brings us back to TIME!!

Not only do students need the TIME to reflect about their learning, but so do teachers.

So how do we do this??

I read some research (can’t quote the source, but suspect it was John Hattie on ICT PD in NZ) which says that TIME is often quoted as an issue for teachers, but that in fact, this is often indicative of another sort of block, and once teachers get over that block, then the issue of TIME disappears.  So what can we do? First of all, reflect on what is blocking you! Maybe it really IS time. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe you don’t think you need to learn or change, after all, you’re an experienced successful teacher already, right? Maybe this is a direction you don’t really believe can make a difference to children’s learning. – Whatever it is, try to identify it, and in this way you may be able to overcome it!   Then – plan your time!!!!

a) School Time – difficult but possible – This needs school management to designate meeting times to professional learning. eg Time for professional readings at meeting time, syndicates or teams devoting a meeting to learning something the team needs to focus on, and whole staff PD. Most schools do this now. Some schools have Quality Learning Circles, where teachers get together to share what they’re trialling, the difficulties and the successes. Use your CRT time!

b) Personal Time – plan yourself an hour a week (or more!) to focus on something you need to learn about. It might mean getting up an hour earlier one day a week, or it might mean switching off the TV and reading instead. Do your own personal homework while your kids do THEIR homework…. It’s different for each person, but PLANNING it in, makes all the difference.

c) Share with your colleagues – Make your conversations meaningful – share what you’ve been reading about, and discuss the outcomes. Reflection is crucial to your learning!

d) Decide to take personal responsibility for your own learning. Take the time to explore what your colleagues are doing and saying on the internet, both nationally and globally. There’s a lot of research and exploration going on out there!

e) Weekly Implementation – USE your new learning every week. Plan to implement a new strategy in your planning for your classroom every week, whether it’s for an individual, a group or the whole class. Ask them for feedback about how it helped their learning. Think about how you could change or adapt it for another purpose.

If I only had TIME……..ONLY TIME!!!!!