I've been part of a team presenting a study skills program to Year 11 students this term, aiming to bed them down effectively with the tools they need to handle the demands and requirements of senior studies effectively.
1. Most of our day-to-day actions are ruled by habit, custom, and environment.
2. Reflective thinking/planning goes a long way towards finding new things to do, but it’s still very easy to default to habits, custom, and environment.
3. The process of changing habits and customs takes a while. I call it “scratching and clawing forwards” – that’s what it feels like sometimes.
4. Set small, achievable goals on habit/custom change. I recommend aiming for 70% success rates, and making consistent incremental progress.
5. The biggest bang for your buck in the short term is moving your environment around. This can be big stuff like finding a new place to hang out after work, or little stuff like setting your gym clothes by your shower the night before. It works.
I've just been compiling/creating the evaluation survey for the senior study skills program for Year 11 in which I've been involved through this term.
SurveyMonkey (mentioned previously on this blog) is what I've been using; the school has subscribed to this so we can create more detailed surveys than the free option allows (note that there is a free option, though!).
Toddling around the FAQ, I discovered that there is a fabulous freebie there, an information booklet pdf, Smart Survey Design.
Here's what that text says under the title:
This guide provides information on writing successful and effective survey questions, creating survey flow and layout, calculating response rates, tips for increasing response rates, and the pros and cons of online surveys. (Plus an appendix of links and works cited for additional help in survey design.)
And doesn't that sound handy-dandy for all those students in subjects like Society and Culture who create surveys as part of the process involved in their PIPs (personal interest projects) etc?
I've filled out some doozies for those (teacher librarians being notoriously easy to find at break times/study periods, so they can be asked to fill in surveys). My fave are the ones that divide the world into ages in this kind of style:
12-13
14-15
16-17
18-23
over 23
(because over 23 is, of course, OLD! Sometimes they might go, 24-30, 40-60... Bless!)
I'll be popping this link on over to the Society and Culture teachers, and any others with subjects where the kids have to compile surveys.
Another one to share with your Science, Geography and Earth and Environment teachers. You could also suggest that students could do their own versions, sourcing their own images and content in this 12-slide format.
Cheers
Ruth
Image source is Flickr: Volcanic Eruption Eyjafjallajökull. Click on the image to go to the photographer's photostream. Creative Commons licensed.
One of my most consistently useful Twitter contacts is @brainpicker. I'm often bookmarking links from those tweets. The associated blog, Brain Pickings, is also worth delving through for gems, ideas, inspiration. For example, this entry on Erin Hanson's Need to Want series.
I enjoyed Brain Pickings' analysis of these.
The ones I've chosen for here are the ones that most caught my attention as being of use for the study skills program I'm doing for Year 11 this term.
It's not what the kids will expect: always a good way to grab their attention and get them learning in spite of themselves. I suspect this next one won't be the most popular with them, though.
Find the whole set here (source of these images), and the philosophy informing it:
Toddling about the internet, collecting resources and ideas for the senior study skills program, I came across this article: "I shipped in 2010 - you can too" by Doug Johnson on his Blue Skunk blog. While his main focus is on the extras he did related to his work, such as conference presentations, papers and articles, one sentence jumped out at me for its use with students.
I personally measure my days not whether they were happy or unhappy, but whether they were productive or unproductive.
One aspect of my work as a teacher is talking with students about their work. They sit in my office and tell me their successes, failures, concerns. Sometimes, tissues are involved. It's always been part of my work, not only through mentoring programs etc but also just because I'm findable, there, a listening ear. Thinking over what they say, often enough it is about happiness - "I feel terrible" "Nothing is working" etc - stuff related to feelings/emotions.
The rest of the paragraph reads like this:
Did I have a fruitful conversation or meeting? Did I get something finished? Did I write something worth sharing? Did I read something challenging? Did I do an hour's worth of physical activity? Did I clean up a mess, revise an article, or organize something for the future? Did I do something that made my own life or someone else's just a tad better?
Looking at this idea, it's one I plan to try with students, and see how it can be worked into the study skills program, too. Refocusing from emotions (so much trickier to wrangle) to more measurable activities/achievements that can be done/replicated and from which positive feelings can flow seems like a useful idea to play with. I'm not saying that feelings aren't important, but rather that this is a way to get from the tissues/tears/frustrations/sense of impotence/being stuck that some of those students have when they plonk themselves in a chair in my office, and help them onwards. From a study skills program perspective, it also points a way from the emotional to the measurable, helping students to progress.
There is, wandering about in the education world, an assumption by some that the success of some ethnic groups is related to their ethnicity. A recent SMH article, reporting on a DET NSW forum, debunks this. Chinese students top the tests out of habit, not ethnicity, study shows, by Anna Patty was published on 29 December 2010. (nb: sometimes the SMH only leaves articles up free for a couple of weeks, and then you have to pay - try the link, but apologies if it doesn't work).
Key points:
The place where children do their homework - whether at a desk or in front of the television - may play a big role in how well they do at school
''Successful students see homework as a daily routine,'' Mr Coutts-Trotter said. ''They have a desk of their own and a school and family that help them develop scholarly routines.
"Visiting libraries regularly is another thing successful students do.''
Children do better sitting at a desk than on a bed; implies a different attitude
From primary school, some groups establish better habits - study each day, and for longer. In the year 3 group studied, the children of Chinese background spent about an hour every night of the week, compared with children of Pacific Islander background - 10 minutes for two to three nights a week - and Anglo Australian children - about 20 minutes on only some nights during the week.
Socio-economic background wasn't necessarily a factor in success/failure - good habits helped at any level
I'm interested in this because I'm working on a study skills program for Year 11 which will be running in term 1 this year. This sort of information demonstrates that students can choose how successful they are; one theme running through the program will be the small choices that add up to greater achievement. Time. A desk. Habits.
I've been bookmarking some resources for this program over in my Delicious Diigo; I'll likely highlight some here, but if you want to toddle over there for a squizz, you're very welcome (there is a preview of the most recent ones over on the right). If you have ideas/bookmarks you'd like to share in return, please do leave a comment.
While the PocketMod, as previously mentioned on this blog, is a handy-dandy, cute as a button one-week planner for students, the site's availability seems to vary.
So if you have a mentor group, or year group, or kids needing study/organisational help, this might be just what you're looking for. More than a grid, but less (alas!) than the folding and cutting fun and cuteness factor of the PocketMod. (Confession: I ended up making a version of the PocketMod using Publisher, just to share with my kids here. But the VCE planner is a good one too).
While going through our DER laptop student responsibilities with Year 9 last Friday, I touched on social networking and privacy. At present, they can't access social networking on their DER laptops at home or at school, but this may change in the future; and right now, they certainly are using social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
Facebook Privacy: a bewildering tangle of options is a New York Times article with a detailed graphic illustrating just how many privacy options there are - and where - in Facebook. On the one hand, it's complex enough to make lots of people (including students) toss up their hands and run in the other direction. On the other hand, if you do, then the choice is letting far more information than you may wish or realise become public.
although I find myself disagreeing on a couple of choices. I discussed the fabulous picture book, Where Willy Went, in this GIFSL* 30 entry, concerning naughty books about sex:
...and it's still a winner, finding friends most lunchtimes who read and chuckle (and maybe learn something too).
Last year, we started a hot chocolate draw with classes coming in to read in fiction on a regular basis (you can read about it here).
Well, right now it's summer, and hot/sticky/humid as February so often is. We have a bunch of classes coming in regularly to read (more than last year! yay!), and nobody in their right mind would particularly savour hot chocolate.
An iceblock, though...
I know, I know, no eating or drinking in the library. And the general rule still stands. But I can break 'em if I want to. I've not yet had any kid spill a hot chocolate or drip an iceblock.
Plenty of supermarkets sell those long iceblocks in plastic tubes. Freeze 'em up, and it's an inexpensive treat (I pay for these out of my own pocket, in case you wonder - not from any school-provided library budget. Some of the teachers also contribute for their classes). Summer is definitely cheaper than winter.
I've improved the method for selecting the lucky recipients, too. Was getting the teachers to note the names of students Doing The Right Thing (reading silently). But that takes time and a bit of effort, and at the start of the year teachers don't necessarily know the name of every student. Plan B: a class list and a random number generator site (eg. this one http://www.mathgoodies.com/calculators/random_no_custom.html ). Randomly generate a number between 1 and 30, see which kid is at this number on the class list, teacher decides if said kid has been doing the right thing, (all kids start off in the draw, but if they misbehave, they have rendered themselves ineligible) and it's done. Happy kid collects iceblock, classmates see random reward for virtue...
OK, they don't Need a reward. But it's all part of our library marketing. The library's a place where you can be comfortable. Where treats happen. Where good things are found. A nice place to go, a good place to be, somewhere to look forward to, somewhere to enjoy. Doesn't that sound like somewhere you'd like to visit?
It's not necessarily going to happen every lesson, but then again it might, the students don't know... everything that gets them in and settled and reading is useful to their progress.
I know I bang on with the phrase, 'the happy life of teacher librarians'. I have of course all sorts of agendas for this, but one is to say, look, it can be HEAPS of fun to be a teacher librarian. An article by Charles Waterstreet in the Sydney Morning Herald on the weekend had an apt section quoting Kahlil Gibran:
...when pursuing a career, one should always choose one that coincides with passions, and not just with convenience, the wishes of parents or perhaps even financial security. If you have a job, then love the one you have.
The great Lebanese-born philosopher and poet Kahlil Gibran said it best:
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
If you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
If we show by our actions and words and the atmosphere we create in our libraries every day that we are happy to be there, it cannot but make our libraries better places to work, better places to visit, more effective in our schools (and it kills off the disappointingly persistent cliche of the cranky librarian). One of the most important things any teacher brings to a classroom is their enthusiasm for being there. I know I'm not perfect on this - it's something I have to remember every day.
And thus one can continue working on the happy life of teacher librarians.
In re-imagining our library over the last while, we've changed a bunch of things, and tried new things, and looked at what's been working, and tweaked, and.... I guess we've been designing - experiences, spaces, signage, all sorts of aspects of our school library. . Helene Blowers has a brilliant entry on her blog, LibraryBytes about 'thinking like a designer'. And I quote: . In reading these tips, I think it’s important to recognize that these tips aren’t really related to the craft of “designing” stuff. Instead they’re related to the craft of “thinking about design” and as Garr* also notes most can be applied to any profession.
. 1) Embrace constraints. Constraints and limitations are wonderful allies and lead to enhanced creativity and ingenious solutions that without constraints never would have been discovered or created. . 2) Practice restraint. Any fool can be complicated and add more, it takes discipline of mind and strength of will to make the hard choices about what to include and what to exclude. . 3) Adopt the beginner's mind. As the old saying goes, in the expert's mind there are few possibilities, but for one with the beginner's mind, the world is wide open. . 4) Check your ego at the door. This is not about you, it's about them (your audience, customer, patient, student, etc.). Look at the problem from their point of view -- put yourself in their shoes. . 5) Focus on the experience of the design. It's not the thing, it's the experience of the thing. . 6) Become a master storyteller. Often it's not only the design — i.e., the solution to a problem — that is important, but the story of it. . 7) Think communication not decoration. Design — even graphic design — is not about beautification. Design is not just about aesthetics, though aesthetics are important. More than anything, design is about solving problems or making the current situation a little better than before. . 8) Obsess about ideas not tools. Tools are important and necessary, but they come and go as better tools come along. Obsess instead about ideas. Good advice is to go analog in the beginning with the simplest tools possible. . 9) Clarify your intention. Design is about choices and intentions, it is not accidental. . 10) Sharpen your vision & curiosity and learn from the lessons around you. Good designers are skilled at noticing and observing. They are able to see both the big picture and the details of the world around them. . Bonus: .
(11) Learn all the "rules" and know when and why to break them. .
Read the full post to get more of Garr’s insights to each of the tips above. There’s some great thoughts that I think can be applied to many areas of library services. You don’t have to be a designer to think like one. You just have to be willing to embrace some new approaches. . *This is based on work by Garr Reynolds: 10 tips on how to think like a designer, from his blog PresentationZen. He expands on each of these points - it is worth reading his thoughts. . Now what else can we design and change and improve....? . Cheers . Ruth .
Looking for some climate change games for a colleague doing climate change/greenhouse effect etc with Year 8, I came across a few likely looking prospects. I haven't entirely played all these, but they looked promising.
From New Zealand, this game of 150 turns (but you can take them FAST to grow your city) offers development options and choices - stay green? get big? and the players need to keep their choices supplied with electricity. Games can be saved, and there are viewable examples of other people's cities to see various possibilities. Lots of scope in this one - let kids loose, or maybe set some to grow a metropolis, others to set up an ecologically sustainable place (that is also still economically viable). Students should pay attention to the hints tab... I used this one with a class group, and it's now VERY popular at lunchtimes too - engaging/challenging enough for students to want to play it more to increase their scores and skill.
Although this one looks more aimed at primary school level audiences than secondary, it covers a bunch of issues visually and engagingly, and could be useful with younger/lower secondary classes.
This one is a board game rather than online, with a 16-page pdf giving you the playing pieces etc. Having outlined a variety of strategies to level off global warming (eg. wind farms), players then need to select their choice of wedges.
From the BBC, this requires players over several turns to balance out politics and choices to see the impact of these on climate (and voters). I'd recommend the tutorial on this one, so students understand what is required and how the game works.
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Among the sources from which I found these are a links page here and one here and the Wikipedia article on global warming games. All of these offer a bunch more links and ideas on the greenhouse effect, climate change, global warming and so forth and so on.
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Cheers
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Ruth
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PS If you have any other recommendations along similar lines, do please add them in a comment, with the URL, so others can benefit.
As well as the PocketMod I blogged about the other day, I wanted to find some planner sheets for my mentor students to put on their walls. They have school diary/planners, but waking up and SEEING that date looking back at you is therapeutic (or something).
Microsoft Word has templates you can download here for both calendars and planners.
Interestingly, a bit of googling showed me that some sites are blinds for naughty trojan virusy things, so take care. Some sites offer a reasonable amount of free material; some you find want a signup or only offer a sample before wanting dosh. I've also aimed to avoid ones with logos etc.
Here are a few better ones I found (no particular order, look at each to see what suits you and your kids). You may find that Mon-Sun is your preference - many US sites prefer Sun-Sat, but some offer both. I found these links through this ehow list.
Sample Words has free undated weekly planner sheets in Microsoft Word and pdf form here. Calendars (dated) here for a monthly layout.
EprintableCalendars.com has free printable one month calendars here. They also have weekly planners with dates Mon-Sun (eg. August 2009 here) and two month planners with space below for notes Sun-Sat (eg. August - September 2009 here). Three months? (Aug/Sept/Oct is here). And for a whole lot more - planner ideas, blank and dated, daily/weekly/monthly - click here.
The homeschooling community has an interest in planners and organisation - TheHomeSchoolMom has a bunch of links here.
I haven't tried printing these all, but this serves as a collation for me of what seemed most useful - and by sharing it here, I hope you find it handy too. If you have other sites/ideas to suggest, bung them in a comment! I think I'll get my kidlets to print the three month one, so they develop an appreciation for the longer view. At present their work habits seem to be feast or famine, a rather exhausting way of working.
One of the tasks I undertake each year as part of the teaching staff here is to mentor Year 11 students. We nominate how many students we are prepared to take (Year 11 runs at around 120 students, we have around 70 teachers) and the students give at least three choices of their preferred teachers. The idea is that you are someone that the students can go to for advice, someone keeping an eye on them, supporting them, helping them generally with their studies etc. You carry them through to the HSC, so it's a two year commitment.
This year I have three students, and so have decided to set up a more formal organisation for this than I have had in the past. The teacher librarian is, of course, fraffly accessible throughout the school day, and three students at one period each per cycle... no. Can do better than that; and they can benefit from each other, too. So I've set up a fortnightly meeting time with them. We had a meeting this week, and one issue that arose for each of them is organisation - planning, revision, and so forth. It's usually an issue for Year 11, when expectations and the quantity/quality of work expected rise and it can be a little wee shock for them...
So they scoffed gingerbread and coffee/hot chocolate, and we talked of various things, and all went away with homework (including me).
While researching planners etc, I came across The PocketMod. I'd forgotten about the PocketMod. Great little idea, free, simple, customisable, fun.
You go to the Create page, choose the elements you want for each of the eight pages, and print it (oh, btw it seems to print to American A4 rather than Australian A4, the American size is just a tad smaller - fold on the lines and fold in the little extra bit. Easy). Then you have one A4 page with eight little pages. This is where it gets clever....
We'll be able to have Mentoring With Origami next time. What larks, Pip!
The customisable option is great too, so students can choose the configuration that works for them - lists, calendars, planners, and so forth. Go play yourself and see how it works. Simple. Clever. And, as they point out, recyclable (bung it in the paper recycling when you're done).
I'll mention this on the school staff blog too, so others can pick it up and use it with their mentor kids too.
Cheers
Ruth
PS. One reason I have a blog? So I don't forget things. Now I'll remember the PocketMod!
