Blogs

On 27 July 2016, I took my first learning power profile, and the results were rather curious. Curiosity and Sense Making where the areas of strength for me, Hope and Optimism, Collaboration and Belonging not far behind. The areas that needed greatest improvement were Mindful Agency and Creativity. On 19 October 2016, I took a… Read more: Thoughts on Learning Power Profile

After 5 weeks of sheer madness, and 2 weeks of catching up on the gazillion things I put off because of what will henceforth be known as the ‘block’, I’ve finally found a moment to share my thoughts on how the block went. It seems natural to start with what I wanted to achieve in… Read more: “Prac Block” Reflection

I had an interesting experience in teaching in forming a number of groups in a class. My experience is that you need to really understand the class and individuals prior to allocating groups. I noticed some of the students did not want to be in particular groups as there appeared to be some issues in… Read more: Group Work in Teaching

inSITE Update 13.10.2016 This week marks the last week of my 5 week professional placement at Turramurra High School. It can be said that those 5 weeks have been interesting but also a rewarding experience. I will admit the first few weeks were hard on me as I tried to adapt to the eclectic classroom environments… Read more: My Journey So Far…

When I first heard of the inSITE program, I was extremely excited about the different opportunities that this program would provide me in my journey to become a teacher. I expected the journey to be an easy one as I had some experience teaching and I was sure that I would not have much difficulty… Read more: Experiences with inSITE

My first practicum in Turramurra High School is nearly ended. It is a wonderful time to teach in the classroom, communicate with students, learn from experienced teachers, and share experience with other student teachers. Skills from teaching content to interacting with students have been improved from both success and failure. This prac has given me… Read more: My first practicum

Hello world! It’s been about a month and a half since my last post. Since then I have been working with a new supervisor and have been teaching year 7s, 8s and 10s. It’s safe to say that my experience is increasingly growing in a positive manner. My new supervisor is an experienced teacher and has been… Read more: Back to School!

I have been extremely pleased with the InSite programme to date especially in terms of providing me with the ability to integrate with the school from an early stage.  Especially for a student such a smyself from a slightly mature background, more practical experience gained would provide a greater learning. Having a mentor and supervising… Read more: Experience of practical teaching at Turramurra High School

My professional colleague Mr. Blackburn and I are writing our first blogs today. I feel like as a blogger I should be writing down recipes I have stolen from out of date food magazines that still use empirical measurements or a new fitness regime that has absolutely no scientific support but claims of incredible weight… Read more: My Very First Blog

I’ve been back in Sydney for three weeks and with the benefit of distance and an English summer, I’ve been reflecting on how important it is that we learn how to innovate and make step changes in how we do things. Like most people on InSITE I think it’s been a challenge from day one, but… Read more: Innovating is hard work

Most of the time working through carefully structured exercises can deliver the appropriate content. But at times this just is not enough, some in-depth explanation is needed … the connections, the reasons for working this way, some of the motivation for the ideas, emphasis on the how and why of aspects of some exercises. If… Read more: Listening? Doing?

… has been at the cutting edge of physics since the 60s, he has the fairly unique opportunity to sprinkle theorems which bear his name into his books. Here is a book that I found a really good read last year. It isn’t for spending that odd 30 seconds you might find spare during prac… Read more: Roger Penrose

if you are staring at the keyboard, wondering what your position is on ontologies … typographic chemistry  might inspire a whole new perspective on the nature of being. Maybe.

I had a very powerful experience yesterday. John had asked me to concentrate on classroom management and control for Friday’s Y9 class, so I did. For this I was addressing a few needs that I perceived. There is a problem in my classes related to some students being bored with the exercises, which they probably… Read more: too wild … too tamed

This is truly awful software. It is supposed to be primarily about writing thoughts and posting. It offers a draft section. It does nothing at all to cache your input. If anything causes you to close the page, which is very easy to do accidentally on a touch screen, the back button simply returns to… Read more: WordPress!!

After tending a bit too challenging I’ve recently put up exercises a couple of times that were nice and standard, nothing unexpected, just straightforward examples to work through … it seems a sure-fire way to a very dull class with students either quietly drifting around somewhere else entirely … or else chatting off-topic amongst themselves if… Read more: Too easy … Too hard

The last few weeks have really showed me the “behind the scenes” of a teacher’s life. I must say that it is extremely busy. I have so much respect for my supervisors as well as the other teachers in THS for the amount of work they put in before, during and after school. As much as… Read more: 30 August 2016

Here is one of my favorite commentaries … today’s turns up just as I am preparing “Linear Relationships” and “Scatter Graphs”. He started this journey a couple of thousand drawings ago, when he was still in NASA I think. For certain tastes this version might appeal.

Sometimes it really does not go as planned … I started a new topic today and gave out a worksheet of algebra questions first, for a bit of practice in manipulating equations and to help remind students of some of the techniques we’d be using before introducing the new topic … but I was somewhat… Read more: Accidental digressions …

After 4 weeks of periodical teaching Year 7s and Year 11s, one thing that I’ve truly come to appreciate is the professional relationship with my mentor. Initially, I was reluctant to take risks. However, with her encouragement, I’ve tried different things with varying amounts of success. I’ve had a couple of difficult moments, particularly with Year 7s, which… Read more: Taking a Risk

Jumping into several new topics starting Friday … after a couple of weeks of very necessary being the student of teaching rather than the student-teacher practicing! teaching a full topic at the beginning of semester, with time to really consider the approach and content as a whole, was a very strong experience … by lesson… Read more: Back to school

I’m helping with a weekly 1/2 hour session with 4 year 7 students needing help to get their maths up to a level they can effectively participate in year 7. Working with these students is looking like being very worthwhile for them, some longer term individual help is much needed, and certainly is not in the… Read more: Y7T …

After speaking to Anne about my research proposal, I’ve settled on my research question – how much can teacher immediacy and differentiation (in concert) help to attenuate disengaged behaviours amongst students?

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve spoken to many people about an experience I had in a Year 8 Science classroom, and this has had an impact on my approach to the glut of assessment tasks I’ve just had. The experience in question was that the Year 8 students were learning circuitry in groups, specifically… Read more: Fostering Engagement

Well I’m now back in the UK for three months about to engage with learning frameworks for how the UK can renew its infrastructure systems. That was a gruelling but productive three months with you guys helping to set up the InSITE programme. I’ve learned a lot myself and it’s pushed me way beyond my… Read more: Reflections from the UK

This is the video for this week’s check-in. https://youtu.be/ThHt2miXBV0

This is the video for my check-in. https://youtu.be/9Me4g7-usHI

An interesting conversation came up last Thursday with the rest of the InSITE group: Does the way we as teachers learn bias the way we facilitate students’ learning? We all agreed that it does. So what can we do about it as teachers to avoid our own metacognitive biases attenuating the learning of our students?… Read more: The Learning Bias

It is better to know how to learn than to know.

This was my interpretation of the meaning behind a ‘narrative methodology’: Narrative methodology is important to us because our field revolves around people – their life stories and learning journeys. This is significant because we can use those stories to further gain insight into how those around us develop as people and learners, and so… Read more: Narrative Methodology

On May 25th the InSITE Team presented at the Connected Intelligence Centre at UTS. It was an exciting, and challenging event which drew people from schools and the wider University. We have much to celebrate. Here is the video of our first few weeks As I reflect on the first three months, it feels as though… Read more: Learning by Doing

The first truly confronting thought I’ve had in my learning journey has been transforming from a facilitator of adult learning to a facilitator of adolescent learning. The greatest cause of discomfort was the thought of not being able to get the kids ‘on my side’, so to speak. To make them want to learn from me. From my… Read more: Be Inspiring

Hi everyone, I feel as if I have greatly improved from the start of this experience. I believe this is due to the ongoing support of my supervisors. I believe my teaching ablity  consists of a range of tools. These tools cover a huge scope, from classroom management to admin. My supervisors directly add or… Read more: The tools of the trade