My wonderful G12 students leave this week and I've spent a lot of time thinking about this massive transition and what we can do to really make those last few days super memorable and enjoyable for them. I always felt like I was one of those people who "embraced change" - after all I've changed … Continue reading How can we make the last days of school memorable?
I was super excited to go the first ever unconference with EdCamp Singapore (@edcampsg) hosted by the wonderful Kim Beeman and Karen Blumberg last weekend. This blog is all about what an unconference is, what the advantages are and what I learned during this experience. Until last week the idea of an "unconference" was entirely new … Continue reading EdCampSG – #FeelingInspired
BLOG CHALLENGE - Week one "In the future, students will need to be nimble. They will need to know how to experiment, iterate, and pivot. " (Spencer) @FriedEnglish shared "7 ways to inspire divergent thinking" with me last week and the article resonated with me immensely. After all, as a scientist this is our bread … Continue reading Divergent thinking – It’s all about classroom culture
About 6 months ago I decided that I was going to write a teaching blog. I read many articles about the benefits of blogging just like this "Why every teacher should blog" and the idea sounded awesome. I like to write, I like to think about my teaching principles and I like to read about … Continue reading Why did no one tell me blogging was hard?
I've chatted a lot about the challenges with reflections but nobody likes those people who just point out problems without offering any solutions. So in the festive spirit of giving, these are my top 10 ways for getting students engaged in reflection! Pick one, try it and let me know how it goes.... either comment … Continue reading Top 10 creative reflection activities
If you teach High School (or maybe Middle School) I can almost guarantee that you've made a document that looks a bit like this with the intention of giving students the opportunity to reflect at the end of every unit. Faultless! If you're like me, you also struggled to find the time to do it … Continue reading Who are reflections for?
The default reflection time is the end of the unit. With the test returned and corrections made, this seems like the obvious time to think about how things are going. I didn't like the way that reflections ended up focusing so heavily on how the exam had gone and how students should 'work harder' or … Continue reading When to reflect?
There's a real focus on reflection in many schools around the world and rightly so - it been shown to improve wellbeing and self awareness (Hoyer and Klein, 2000) and their ability to articulate issues. However, if your students are anything like mine the mere suggestion of "reflection" can be enough to set off a … Continue reading The “R Word” – Getting students engaged in reflection
Imagine arriving at a train station in a completely new city and navigating your way to your hotel. If it's a short distance most of us would just use google maps to navigate the journey and walk the quickest route. If the following day you lost your phone, there would almost certainly be some panic … Continue reading The gift of mild confusion
Kirstie Parker 