Social-emotional learning:
a pathway to high
academic achievement“As we look at evolving our teaching practices, it’s important to acknowledge the facts that are well-established. Children are social beings. Research from the 1940s tells us that students have several layers of need that must be met before they can successfully master complex and rigorous content. Maslow, an American psychologist who was best known for creating the hierarchy triangle of need, depicts this: Students’ physiological needs (food, shelter, clothing) and social-emotional needs (belonging, love, esteem) must be met before they can effectively reach their full potential in a learning environment. A strong teacher-student relationship precedes effective learning”.
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Alternative Parents’ Evenings
At School 21, they replace regular parent-teacher conferences with termly exhibitions where student work across the curriculum is showcased with students on hand to talk about it. This changes the focus entirely, doing a different job to the usual progress check, but is a great way to engage families and to put the work at the centre.
At Parliament Hill, Year 7 parents’ evenings involve key staff and senior leaders seeing parents for an extended appointment where the students present a portfolio of their best work in the year. This puts students and their work at the centre and helps to embed the school’s learning culture with students developing the capacity to talk about their learning and progress from an early stage.
Behaviour Systems that really work.
Thanks to Tom Sherrington for sharing …much wisdom here!
In a couple of schools I’ve visited – including Bedford Free School when I visited in April – they use a card system for all minor transgressions. In every lesson, if students do everything they are meant to, they give themselves a tick; if not, the teacher marks their card. At the end of the week, students with 100% ticks get a reward – they go home earlier than those students with less than perfect cards who stay on for an additional study period. It was a powerful motivation to keep meeting expectations; a system students valued. And it worked incredibly well.
At another school, they had really cracked the issue of students missing central detentions after school. Anyone missing would have an internal exclusion the next day running 10am to 5.00pm – so the missed detention was wrapped in. Very well structured work was provided in the behaviour centre. They would not be allowed to attend lessons until this day was completed, however long it took. By sticking to this absolutely – even when students were absent for days avoiding the internal exclusion – they had brought numbers of detention-duckers down to a tiny handful. This meant that fewer students would then get detentions and everything was improving on a positive spiral.
#education #positive #behaviour #management
Success in School Leadership
On the chronology for success in school leadership
Ted Fujimoto on the 3R’s for building high performing schools in an interview with Sophie Bailey.
He is clear on the format for success for the highest performing schools being relationships, relevance, rigour and is an advocate for real world learning and connectedness.
No lectures, all projects, all connected to real world
He finds rote learning distasteful, ‘I call it lecture, memorise, test and forget’, but is mindful of the rigour aspect of embedding good practice, ‘there’s got to be some protocols, structures and rituals to make things happen.
“Outside the square”
Innovation looks a little like this! Great work for thinking outside the square. Can’t wait to here more. Building a community of collaboration means we must learn from each other and not be afraid to share our successes and failures. Keep up the great work. #cathed #innovation #leadership
“Horizon is the closest I have come to not just seeing outside the square, but being there.” @DartaHovey, via Twitter 6/617.
For the past 18 months I’ve been working with a team of Learning Leaders from Catholic College Wodonga (@CCWodonga) in NE Victoria, Australia, trying to solve a problem. We’re not sure, but we think we have a potential solution.
Our problem was – what is stopping students in our school from really engaging and wanting to do their best? Are we giving every student the opportunity to pursue their passions and areas of interest – in an authentic way, not just a tokenistic nod? Where do we hear our student voice?
Our solution – Horizon.
Horizon is an independent (but collaborative) program that we have begun this semester for 13 students across Years 8-11.
Students effectively have a blank timetable that they fill with the following…
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Projects Vs Project Based Learning: What is the difference?
Love this read. Thanks Gav #pbl all the way
At a conference recently I was asked to reflect on what I remember learning at school. These experiences could include subjects, topics, projects, specific content or skills. I must admit, I actually found this task quite challenging (which could be a reflection on my memory). However, I do have three vivid memories, that I could recall and each one was a project. The first was the wooden pencil box that I made in year 7. The second was the BBQ utensils that I made and marketed in year 8. The third was made in a year 10 commerce project where we marketed a new soft drink product. During a conversation with a colleague, I was challenged to look beyond recalling the product that I created, but to discuss the knowledge that I learnt. I found this extremely difficult and slightly distressing that I could not recall any specific knowledge from these engaging learning experiences…
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Create Great Schools 