Heart rate calculations

In a recent class there was a timetable mix up so many students were late. There was a component of the class that involved numeracy. Many students struggled with this whilst others found it quite easy and the class became talkative and off task. Students who finished early would have been bored and therefore talked and students who couldn’t understand may have got confused and therefore talked.

On reflection I can see there are ways I could have taught it better. Next time I will need to slow down and dedicate more time to that part of the lesson and not rush to get through the planned content. I will have to use more repetition of concepts and processes and go through more worked examples. I will have to find some engaging real world examples and use students’ data as an example.

A technique that I could try would be the folded line. The students would line up in order of how competent they feel they are after they have attempted the first activity. I would then fold the two ends of the line together bringing the most competent and the least competent students together. The students could then work in pairs to complete further exercises thereby utilising the expertise of the more ‘competent student’ to help the student who is struggling.

The students who finished early would have a task to carry on with and the students who were struggling would have a tutor. Hopefully the talking in class would then remain on task and we would get a better result.

Some of the students appeared to have the preconception that they wouldn’t be able to complete the numeracy aspect of the task before they even saw it. Samson, a colleague from a different department who teaches Maths told us he took over a class that was struggling and underachieving. He told them that he expects that they all will pass if they do what he tells them. He found that his expectations have positively changed the results his students are obtaining. Next time this is a technique I could also use.

Fear in the Classroom

We had a discussion in class using the 'Post-its ranking frame' technique as a starting point. We had to think about who had an impact on our learning and what did they do. Then we had to write words on a post-it and form a ranking frame within our group of most effective and least effective techniques.

Interestingly fear came out at the top and bottom of our ranking frame. The top 2 learning experiences involved fear of letting the teacher down , not knowing the answer and the consequences that would occur. This lead to excellent learning outcomes. So high expectations and demands from the teacher lead to academic success.

The worst learning experience also involved fear. The student was so scarred and intimidated by the teacher she wouldn't engage or ask questions so she failed.

The challenge for us as lecturers is to create a climate that demands excellence without scaring students and stopping their learning.

Some good tips were
- when asking if there are any questions if there is silence ask if there are any comments or what questions aren't they asking.
- Use hangman to encourage students to voice an answer
- Give the first letter of an answer to get students started.
- Ask the question and pause before naming someone to answer it. This forces everyone to actively think rather than just the person you name before asking the question.
- If someone can't answer then give them the option of phoning a friend
- Emailing students after a good class praising how well they went and reinforcing key points and good behaviours.

Design and Delivery Jigsaw Reading 2

Last night at the literacy class I found out that what I described in my previous post was called "Expert Groups". Students are divided into a group (eg colour-Pink, Green, Blue) then each member is also given a number. A larger reading is broken into parts and is assigned to each group. When your colour group has become expert in that one part then the class is broken into its number groups and they teach each other their expert topics.
This exercise utlises what we learnt about how people learn (see above). Hopefully instead of remembering 10% of what they read they will remember 70-95% of what they talk about with others and teach each other.

Design and Delivery Jigsaw reading

Kate set up a Jigsaw reading exercise for us in class. There was a piece of information for us to read but instead of everyone reading the whole paper we were broken into groups and told to feedback on one section to the class.

We used this technique in Exercise perscription with descriptions of program design. There were 5 concepts so each group took 1 and had to be ready to teach the rest of the class. The class was quite large so you could see there were some students doing the work and others that weren't engaged. To rectify this, the next time we used this activity the groups were told they would be broken up into twos to form new groups so that each member of the group was going to have to explain/teach their concept to their new group. This worked well to ensure every student was engaged.

Design and Delivery

We did a 'Quick Write' in our 'Design and Delivery' class. We were given 5 minutes to write as much as we could remember about a topic. This was a good tool to link concepts or previous classes together and to get formative feedback on your teaching and how much your students have retained and understood.

I tried this in my own teaching and found holes in student's knowledge that I was able to correct. This is a valuable tool that I will use again.

Another vartiation of this is the KWL. This stands for what do I KNOW, what do I WANT to know and what have I LEARNT. Formative feedback is given to add reflective practice and focus on student's needs.

Teaching inspirations

Teaching inspirations

When Pamela Tarulevicz spoke to us in class there were many aspects of her teaching that I could apply to my teaching.

She developed numerous resources that she recycled so that she could tailor an activity to whatever level her students were at.

She had many variations of the same handout that were progressively more difficult ie. Full info, matching, 1 side empty, different parts empty with partners with answers, models/jigsaws on laminated cards.

My colleague Scott said he used these techniques with his high school students and mentioned he used to put magnets on the back of his models/jigsaws so students could present their group’s work. I can see many opportunities to use this in my subject areas.

I was discussing with Scott that it seems good tertiary teaching appears to be more similar to what we used to do in primary and secondary school and very different from our experiences in university.

Other things that were discussed in class were role play and using emit to complete a circle of learning. I have been using emit more in this role. Also make sure you have lots of beginnings and endings, don’t talk too long and break up sessions with activities- individual, pairs and groups, and get students to feed back and teach, and have a standout example. The standout example Pamela used was when she turned the lights off to demonstrate a concept and she was able to refer back to this for the rest of the paper and the students would remember.

Pamela got us to compose a twitter to concisely summarise what we had learnt - this is a good technique that I can see my class could relate to. It also gives the lecturer feedback as to what level of understanding has been achieved.

Bjorn mentioned that he has been using many techniques we have learnt in class but many students were still not getting it. Techniques used included pairing up brighter students with those who were struggling, presenting the information in different ways, using activities and making it practical and applied. After discussion Pamela said keep up the good work and continue with repetition, repetition, repetition because even the most simple person can spell their name!

Other ideas that I can use in my teaching are using puzzlemaker.com and having one member of a pair act out the clues to solve the puzzle and using the postbox activity we did in class to generate questions for groups to quiz each other. Also Diane showed me an article where at med school they were using Plasticine to build anatomical models and using colouring in to show concepts.

After a recent lecture on levers and biomechanics I have been thinking of ways to make it more practical and applied. I came across a teachertube video using lego to create the 3 different types of levers. This would be a good activity to try next year.

Reflecting on other department’s lessons (2)

The social workers presentation contained a good learning spiral where the lesson linked to an activity on emit and then to her next lesson. This is great for repetition and for creating more beginnings and endings to facilitate learning. This is something that I think I can bring into my lessons. Instead of having discrete lectures having only one beginning and end I can have emit links and reviews of previous lectures before starting a new one. The other thing I liked about the social worker's presentation was the use of a high end solo question at the completion of the lesson to promote deeper thought.

When the accountants were questioned about the use of pair work versus group work they said they chose pair work so that both people were involved in the activity. With larger groups some students can slack off or be lost in the crowd. This is something I should consider when giving out tasks.