30/11: PD - Flipped Learning

PD: Flipped Learning

30th November 2017

This morning I attended another optional PD course as apart of the schools end of year initiative. This session was about flipped learning and was run by Lauren Lethbridge, a Classics & Languages teacher. She started off the session by explaining what flipped learning was and how she does it with her classes. Below are some notes and key points that I took away from today's session:


How to give content?

Lauren explained that her flipped learning journey started partially because she didn't like standing up and talking in front of her class as a teaching style and also because Classics is very content heavy. She created iBooks and Keynotes for her classes and then proceeded to turn these keynotes into videos. When flipping her classroom Lauren focusses on the students learning the content at home before completing the higher thinking of that content in class. This content is accessible in two different forms via the class iTunes U course - written notes or a video. This helps to provide students an opportunity to work with their preferred learning style. Each task is accompanied by questions to help guide students with their note taking.


How do you get students on board?

• Started the year by explaining what they are doing in regards to the flipped classroom and why they are doing it e.g. why it is worth while, receiving student feedback
• Used a Blooms Taxonomy task in regards to skills and levels of thinking and related it to A, M & E
• Students are given all info upfront so they can organise themselves e.g. if they are busy they can complete prep earlier etc. 10-15 min chunks of prep per lesson (80% of lessons). This can be completed can do it on one large chunk or small bits e.g. nightly prep
• What you do in the lesson needs to be thought out carefully and needs to be worth them doing the prep - higher level thinking rather than content, answering questions that arose from the prep and create your own questions. These were discussed this at the start of each lesson
• Up to the teacher if they want to police the work done at home. Whether you want students to answer questions in a Google Form or a worksheet that is handed in through iTunes U, a quiz at the start of the lesson focussing on the prep the night before or check notes. Lauren said that those who didn't complete there prep were excluded from the class activity until they had completed it and caught up

How to create a video?

There are a few different options of how to create a video. There are some apps and sites that allow you to create flipped videos such as - Screencastify or Edpuzzle. Lauren has even made a video to explain how she creates her videos in Keynote here (similar function is also available on PowerPoint.
Another list of apps can be found here & sites here.


How might I do this next year?

I am aware that the IGCSE Physical Education course is a very content heavy course, as are all IG courses. I like this idea that students will be able to be introduced to new content by learning about it home and bring their questions with them to class. This also gives me more of an opportunity to differentiate learning (one of my goals for next year) and also apply it practically in class.

17/11: PD - Quizlet

PD: Quizlet

Friday 17th November

As the year is coming to an end, we start to prepare for 2018. School has brought in the initiative of optional PD courses that are run over numerous periods in weeks 5-7. The courses are mainly e-learning themed and focus on a variety of different apps. These include; Quizlet, iBooks, Turnitin & Notes. Each staff member needs to attend a minimum of two courses, but as per usual I find more than two fascinating and have the time so I have signed up for five. 

This morning I went to my first session on Quizlet. I was interested to find out more about Quizlet as I am a lover of Kahoot and have heard they are similar. In short Quizlet is used to learn terms and definitions and has just brought out a new function of being able to label diagrams. As a teacher you can find, adapt or create 'sets' of flashcards. These are just sets of terms and definitions that can then be played in multiple ways for students to learn. These can include the following:

• Live - work collaboratively with your team to gain points, the trick is that the term that matches the answer might be on a team mates iPad
• Gravity – more game like, need to write the definition or term to try and blast the meteors as they fall towards earth (individual)
• Write – type the answer, term or definition (individual)
• Test – written, multi choice, matching etc
• Flashcards – creates flashcard sets
• Match – mix n match (individual for time)

Steph who was running the session, suggested that live may be the best form to introduce Quizlet to the students. It brings a collaborative and competitive approach to learning simple terms. The main differences between Quizlet and Kahoot is that Quizlet's live form is collaborative and unlike Kahoot if you get a question wrong all of your team's points are lost. This brings less of an influence on time and more towards getting the right answer. Sometimes with Kahoot students focus more on answering the questions quickly, rather than getting the question right. 

All of these functions could be used as a great form of introducing new terms to students, revising and also collating informal feedback on the learning area. As the free version of Quizlet does not allow you to collect data, this could be used for informal feedback or copies of the tests could be printed and collected for evidence.

So what are my thoughts on Quizlet? Overall I like that the more formal feel of Quizlet. It still has the fun competitive side like Kahoot but can be more collaborative and information can be reused in different forms. It can also be accessible for students when revising for exams. This app could prove really useful with the IG PE course next year and I am planning to use this throughout my course next year.

9/11: Reflection on 2017 - Level 2

Reflection on 2017 - Level 2

9th November 2017

Now that the seniors have gone it's time to reflect back on the year that has been, in particular what went well and what needs to be improved. Teachers of Level 2 have already sat down to analyse our results and data from 2017 by standard. This is more of a personal reflection of 2017 with my Level 2 students. I will start by doing my own personal review of each standard before adding any other comments.

2.4 - Perform a physical activity in an applied setting

What went well? Why?

• Nice way to start the year – great way to build class relationships

• Video from Sport Waitakere with explanation of rules was a nice, simple way to allow students to learn the rules – could have put the link to this on Schoolbox so students had access to this

• Broke down assessment criteria of what A, M & E looks like

• By completing this standard first students also got the idea that their year of Physical Education would be more practical

• Although I broke down criteria with the students I didn’t go in enough depth for Ki-O-Rahi specifically – could have done this and got students to self-assess themselves against this criteria before starting to help increase knowledge of game play. Students may then be able to create links to other invasion games they have played before and identify how they can transfer their skills

• Could have gone into more depth around the traditions of the game to help increase understanding

• Students were either on par with their self assessment marking or marking generously. I could have got students to assess themselves more often and had more detailed checkpoints in which I could have provided students with feedback and where I currently see them to help with the disparity and help to improve grades

• Anatomy displayed the greatest depth of knowledge across all students and this reflected through to the assessment – students think creating videos around each joint helped with this

• Identified priority learners, sought support from Housemasters, mentors & parents/guardians. However this quite close to the due date of the assessment as I was struggling to differentiate who was being lazy and leaving it to the last minute and who was struggling with content and needed extra support

• Plenty of teaching time available - planning and time management of lessons = great

• Used a variety of teaching methods e.g. group work, collaboration, expert groups, practicals, worksheets, note taking, practise paragraphs, breaking down of paragraph structure. This was to see what students responded to best and to try and suit the needs of my learners and their individual learning styles in which they identified at the start of the year

• Assessment needs to be changed – quite repetitive even though it just serves as a reminder

• Could have actually introduced a mini performance improvement practical section to help create an authentic learning environment and allow deeper understanding of skill acquisition

• Some students really struggled with this being the first written assessment. It also has the most content knowledge – especially if new to PE. This could be changed by possibly moving it later on in the year. Also hoping to see a difference in 2018's L2s as they will be the first to have completed the new Junior PE programme which prepares them for success at senior level

• Had already identified priority learners and those who need extra motivation in first written assessment so knew who I had to keep an eye on

• The use of checkpoints and due dates throughout the assessment worked well. It was easy to identify those struggling or behind and put strategies in place to ensure they met these e.g. missed deadline could result in no practical lesson when planned, spending time doing their work during lunch or after school, DTs etc.

• The use of checkpoints and having already identified priority learners meant that I was easily able to create a network of support around students earlier by involving parents & Housemasters

• Used results from student voice at the end of 2.2, especially in regards to learning activities and teaching styles and ensured to use the preferred learning styles across this assessment

• Although I had a set plan of how the unit may look I was able to be flexible and adapt so the programme could best suit the needs of my students e.g. more teacher led training sessions with group evaluations compared to student training sessions or moving practicals out of period 5 since there wasn't enough time to complete an adequate training session

• In regards to the training programme I ensured to complete a teacher led training programme as an example. We then broke this down and evaluated it as a class. Students could then also draw links and relevance to assessment task evaluation. I also used the teacher led training programmes to help create variety and complete different forms of training that I would not expect students to choose for themselves

• My planning in regards to session layout could have been completed better e.g. not having student training sessions in period 5 where it is a short period. However, realised this throughout the programme and was able to adapt this as I went

• Some students struggled with definitions of certain principles. I wonder if I could have created a more interesting & effective way of getting this information across. Also independent students made note of these as we went through these in class and others did not

• Students loved the authentic learning environment of snow camp. This reflected through to the specific examples students were able to provide throughout their assessment, resulting in our best results out of all the written standards

• A lot of the lessons allowed students to learn practically resulting in higher levels of understanding of content

• I could tell I had a great understanding of the content along with the students. I felt like my questioning had improved greatly and I was able to get students thinking about different aspects and guide them to certain points through the use of my questioning. This was also particular and relevant when one of the students was injured and unable to attend camp and instead wrote about a previous experience. She still gained an Excellence as she sought the extra help to ensure her level of understanding was correct

• In some ways the amount of time allocated for the learning based around 2.7 was too long. Some students were feeling bored especially in regards to content and terminology. When reflecting on my own lessons some started to get repetitive as I tried to use different contexts to get the same points across. I could have sought help in how I could have created more variation

• There was talk of doing a mini run through of the assessment by doing a practical activity off site such as rock climbing. This was unable to happen but sounds like a cool idea

• Students had the choice of 5 topics. If they wanted to do another topic out of these 5 they could have indicated their interest and had this approved

• Broke down assessment criteria especially what was needed for A, M & E when introducing them to the standard

• In lessons where students were working independently on there assessment I had a couple of lessons in which I was able to go around the class and talk individually to each and every single student as to how they were progressing in there assessment. This included giving students the chance to ask questions, for mer to read some of their work and give feedback, as well as also asking them questions to help lead them to further points they could include. I found that this was the most effective form of help for the students

• Students struggled with motivation being the end of term 3 - unsure if there is anything extra I could have done to help encourage students/make lessons more interesting

• Felt put off that there wasn’t a big teaching & learning process unlike past assessments so felt like they were thrown in the deep end & was there first socio-cultural assessment asking them to think critically (didn’t help I was out for a week on tournament week)

• First time for me teaching a critical thinking assessment so I think my questioning process could have been better

• I made the decision to start the year with a week of ABL activities. I noticed in the first class that I met them that they were very awkward and there was a large segregation between boys and girls as well as old vs new students.  I made this decision to get the class to work together before them completing their first assessment and feel like it was the right one

• Used student voice multiple times with this class especially in regards to learning activities and my teaching style. I always made sure to respond to this student feedback - whether this was summarising the results to the class, explaining the reason behind activities in relation to results etc. 

• I feel I could have potentially shared some more information about myself with my students to quick start some of the relationship building. I feel like the reason I may not have done this as well is because I had already taught half of the students

• I feel like a lot of my lesson's could have been differentiated more e.g. different forms of the same activity for different levels of understanding. Most of my lessons were aimed towards the mid to low end of the class which could have resulted in some boredom in the class

• I think I should have taught students some more in regards to giving feedback and constructive criticism. Their feedback wasn't always specific or useful when collecting student voice. E.g. they would infer something needed to change but not state what could have been done differently

• I'm not sure that the use of the different google folders for students is the most effective form of note taking, although it is nice easy access to be able to see student work. Could possibly look into this and try an alternative method next year?

• I think I need to be more effective and efficient to regards to standards. Sometimes I set my high standards and students make me feel like they are too high and too hard to be met so I can find myself lowering them

• I didn't always break down the standard with students at the being of the assessment. This sometimes resulted in students being unsure of the importance of certain aspects to then click when they see the standard. However, sometimes the risk in doing this is teaching to the assessment

What could have been improved? Why?

2.2 - Demonstrate understanding of how and why biophysical principles relate to the learning of physical skills

What went well? Why?

What could have been improved? Why?

2.3 - Demonstrate understanding of the application of biophysical principles to training for physical activity

What went well? Why?

What could have been improved? Why?

2.7 - Analyse the application of risk management strategies to a challenging outdoor activity

What went well? Why?

What could have been improved? Why?

2.5 - Examine the significance for self, others and society of a sporting event, a physical activity, or a festival

What went well? Why?

What could have been improved? Why?

Other comments

What went well? Why?

What could have been improved? Why?