Update and the lowdown on using Skitch to give your teacher a 'stache.

It's been a long time between posts.

So, an update...

I am really pleased to write that our Home Learning experiment seems to be over its initial hump and is now definitely on the improve. Children in my class are inquiring into baking Sacher Torte, 'doing the splits', creating their own video games, the life of Anne Frank, skydiving and so many more cool things. Just for me, their teacher, it is so much more interesting than the old 'standard' homework. It is really exciting to see their faces light up when they talk about the progress they've made and what they want to work on or find out more about next. They are keen and excited and want to share. This is what learning should be. I love it.

My students are definitely a lot more comfortable using computers for learning now. They have developed some skills and now get excited (instead of nervous!) about trying out new apps and programs. We spent a blissful couple of periods last week learning to use Google Draw and Skitch and I am looking forward to having the children use them in context.

For those not in the know, Skitch is a photo/image annotation app (great for iPads and laptops) that I'm hoping will be very useful for our digital portfolios this year. It was very much worth the couple of lessons we spent in just experimenting with how these apps work - the children learned so much more when they were free to explore on their own than I could ever have 'taught' them. Can you imagine? 'Right then, click here, and then click there and then - no! Stop that! No drawing boogers hanging out of someone's nose!'

As a very wise and respected colleague once told me - the very best way to make sure that children learn how to use technology is to give them time to play with it on their own. 9 and 10-year-olds have a much more intuitive understanding of 21st century tech than I do. It is inevitable that in the course of these 'play' lessons, at least one of my students will discover and teach me how to do something that I wasn't able to before. It is exciting to have the locus of control shift from me to the students.

To end on a high note:
Here is my own piece of Skitch awesomeness, for your viewing pleasure.
This is the quick demo I did to introduce Skitch to my students. And yes, the teeth and moustache were at their request. Ah, the sacrifices we make for learning.

Home Learning so far...

Home Learning is not turning out to be immediately and automatically strike-me-down amazing. Lesson learned: these things take time. 

I still hold that Home Learning is a cool idea (click here for a great example of how one primary school teacher is implementing it). Kids conducting their own inquiries for homework can only be great. Teachers don't need to tie themselves in knots while we try to dream up something that is related to classwork, quick to do, valuable, doesn't take too long to mark and is not too tedious or stressful for anyone. More importantly, kids finally get the opportunity to choose something that they are excited about/interested in, and spend time working on it. 

Unfortunately for me, it turns out that this is an ideal to aim for, not something that is happening right from the get-go. My current theory is that maybe there is a certain amount of 'unschooling' that needs to occur before the children begin to realise Home Learning's possibilities. They are so used to the processes that are 'homework' (looking in books, talking and writing about stuff written in books, researching stuff on the internet, talking and writing about stuff from the internet...) that they need some time and scaffolding to begin to think outside the box. Now to find the ways to get them there! 

At this early stage, many children are choosing topics for projects - studies of animals and places. Which is great, if that's their passion. There have been lots of opportunities to develop and practice research skills and there has been plenty of growth in learning in that area. The children have been working hard! Even so, I have to be very honest and admit that I do feel a little bit like many of them are going through the motions 'because my teacher told me to', which hurts my heart. Am I asking too much?

Over the next weeks, I really want to work on bringing back the fun - kids inquiring by doing, playing and experimenting, not dusty stuff that teachers give them. Lucky for me, our next unit of inquiry is science-based, so there is plenty of scope for learning through play and experimentation. Hopefully this will help to lend a more practical bent to how Home Learning develops.

I'm still on the lookout for good examples of how Home Learning could work. Here's a link to a high school blog, in which the students are required to post regular reflections on the development of their 20% projects. The structure is slightly different to our approach for Home Learning, but the idea of having the children pursue independent inquiries in areas of their own choice is the same. In terms of the sheer diversity of student inquiry focuses, this really is the epitome of my dream for Home Learning. The students are working on inquiries that range from 'Dealing with Divorced Parents', to 'Crocheting' to 'Learning to code with C++'. Am I expecting too much from my 4th graders to want them to come up with an equally diverse (but of course, age-appropriate) selection? I really hope not.

Why I haven't flipped my Maths class.

I started last school year really excited to try flipping my Grade 4 class for Maths. I had done loads of research - read the articles, watched the videos and read plenty of flipped classroom blogs. I met with my school Principal and got his go-ahead. This was a big step for me - ours was the first class in the school to take homework online.

Then I met my class.

My class in 2012-2013 were an amazingly diverse bunch. We're talking something like 18 different nationalities, most of them fluent in 2 or 3 languages.

Concurrently, there was a lot of variation in students' confidence, knowledge and understanding in Maths. This ranged from kids who really needed to revise basic concepts to those who were racing ahead into middle school territory. I quickly realised that I didn't have one class for Maths, but several groups. Introducing a new concept via homework video could only work if that one concept was appropriate for every learner in the class. So I went back to the drawing board.

What really helped my planning was a quick pre-assessment every time we moved on to something new. These little pre-assessments turned out to be much more useful than the beginning of year number assessment I'd done. Each pre-assessment told me where each kid was right now, and allowed for fluidity in student groupings throughout the year.

So then what? In any Maths lesson, there might be a group working on an introductory or revision lesson with me, another one or two groups consolidating or revising independently and another working on extension activities. I was lucky to have an excellent support teacher working with me to help me 'get around' my groups a few lessons each week. At the end of the mini unit, a quick post-assessment told me where to go next.

You can take a look here at last year's homework website to see what I ended up putting together for Maths homework. Each week's homework incorporated a revision video, sites with games for skills revision, a Google form 'worksheet' and a Maths Challenge for extension. At the beginning of the year, activities were specific to the previous week's classwork. By the year's end, we were revising content from throughout the year. Those needing extension could try the problem on the 'Maths Challenge' page. It wasn't 100% perfect, but it worked pretty well.

I want to finish up by saying that I do believe that the flipped approach is a great step forward in teaching and learning. I can attest to the fact that children find the online format motivating and value being able to 'replay' their teacher's words. Feedback from parents at the end of last school year was also pretty positive overall. That said, I think a little evolution is necessary. In my class, introductory videos aimed at 'grade level' would have left some to flounder and others bored stiff. Differentiated groupings in class allowed plenty of scope for problem-solving and discussion as per the flipped approach, but scrapping the introductory video meant that those kids who weren't 'bang on' grade level didn't end up frustrated.