Personal Best Goals – Dr Andrew Martin

Over the past two days I’ve had the pleasure of attending the National Summit on Student Engagement, Learning & Behaviour. Not something you usually feel about professional development. It was a very relevant and engaging conference. Dr Andrew Martin presented on Personal Best (PB) Approaches to School and Schoolwork: Motivational Strategies to Optimise Students’ Academic Development. It was a relevant presentation on how to engage students and I’ll provide some links to the practical documents provided that can be used in the classroom. Personal Best Goals (PB) are specific and challenging. PB increases emphasis on personal excellence and reduce focus on comparisons with others. Dr Andrew Martin says Personal Best Goals (PB) result in students who:

Keeping time for exams

A useful tool for the electronic whiteboard during exams. Thanks Mr Hicks for sharing this one with me this week. Set the online stopwatch to countdown the time remaining for students during an exam.

http://www.online-stopwatch.com/countdown-timer/

10 things ESL students can do with Evernote on their tablets

OUPELTGlobal

Mohamed El-Ashiry takes a look at how Evernote can be used in the classroom

Portfolio assessment in the ESL classroom offers many benefits. On the Prince George’s County Public Schools’ website, a portfolio is defined as ‘a purposeful collection of student work that exhibits the student’s efforts, progress, and achievements in one or more areas of the curriculum’. Brown & Hudson (1998) have also described portfolios as a ‘family of assessments’. Some of the benefits of using portfolios, as described by Brown & Hudson (1998) include: (1) focusing student attention on learning processes; and (2) increasing student involvement in the learning processes. I have always been a fan of such ‘alternatives in assessment‘ because of the fact that they focus a lot more on the ‘process of learning’ as opposed to the ‘product of learning’ (Brown & Hudson, 1998).

Now that iPads and tablets are spreading into many…

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How I’ve been able to increase fairness with Edmodo

Edmodo Background

For those who are unaware edmodo is a free online learning environment. Students do not need an email account to join, although they do have the option to receive email or SMS alerts when new posts are added to their class page. The interface looks a lot like facebook, and has a social aspect to it. Posts can be moderated by the teacher if desired. Students can only join groups created by teachers and can only communicate directly to the teacher or class. They can’t privately chat with other students. The teacher can set up small group situations with in the class group. The teacher can create folders of documents and share with students. The teacher can write posts and share links or documents. The teacher can post or schedule quizzes, polls, assessments, and alerts. The teacher can also create and award student badges.

How I use edmodo to increase fairness.

In my Year 12 Rec class there are students who are absent or at TAFE on a weekly basis. This term we have an end of term exam. These students are missing segments of knowledge that will be assessed on the exam. After each lesson I upload my presentation to edmodo and send it in a post to the students who were away. Letting them know to read the presentation and catch up with me if they have any questions. On my presentations I put a note pad symbol on the slides students need to copy into their notes as opposed to sides we just discuss. This assists the students in class with the flow of the lesson but also assists those who are away to be able to discriminate what is most important. In my post to absent students I will give a one sentence explanation of what they need to be able to do with the knowledge. For example “Make sure you can explain how CPR is performed differently for different casualties”. In addition I set revision quizzes at the beginning of the next lesson on the previous lessons work. In the quizzes I have the option to include multiple choice, true/false, matching, and short response questions. Edmodo will mark all but the short answer questions and provide a breakdown of individual student results as well as overall class results by question. I can instantly see which questions the class struggled most with and use this information to identify concepts I may need to reteach. This quiz strategy is great as it allows me to get instant feedback from all my students on how they are going, not just the students that speak up in class or are present on the day. In addition all the students get feedback on how they are going and areas they may need to study in more detail. With the short answer questions I have the option to mark it as correct or incorrect but also leave a comment, to further guide the student learning.

In addition students can post questions to me, so if a student is away for a series of lessons they don’t have to wait until they are back at school to get clarification on their question and continue learning.

I have found edmodo to be quick and easy to use and something I can do on the fly in a busy teaching day. I hope this post has helped you to consider another option for increasing fairness in your classroom. If you are interested in using edmodo visit http://www.edmodo.com

Assessment Submission: to allow email submission of assignments or not?

Image: Marking…or living with a teacher! By Pkabz

An interesting item for the school policy agenda was raised today during professional development at my current practicum school. The schools current policy is that assessment must be handed in as a hard copy and cannot be emailed to teachers. I will explain why after some considered thought I’m for online submission but against email submission of assignments.