With an increase in findings from education research, more education books that tell us about what we should be doing in schools alongside so many professional learning opportunities, it is worth considering, where do we start with change in our schools? Certainly, the context of our schools, what is going well and what students need […]
Category Archives: Teaching and Learning
We need web literacy for teachers not just students
This talk from Alan November got me thinking further to a post that I wrote called: Avoiding “Just Google it!” with your students. One of the points in Alan’s talk refers to the need to explicitly teach web literacy skills to students in schools. Upon reflection, I too am short of some techniques in […]
10 ways that teachers can support students with academic honesty
Last week I wrote about the need to support students with academic honesty in their studies and explained some of the reasons why students may engage in academic malpractice. Solely having a rulebook, punitive approach to dealing with academic malpractice is not supportive of students in developing the important habits associated with academic honesty. School […]
Achieving student academic honesty starts with understanding the problem
As students move upwards through the secondary school one could argue that the academic achievement stakes become higher with students and parents eagerly seeking placement at a good college / university. Subsequently, there is significant interest in students achieving the highest marks possible. The media has given much exposure to security breaches surrounding the SAT, […]
Supporting students with learning core transferable academic skills
When observing classes in high schools, it is possible to see two extremes of teacher support. Firstly, there is complete hand-holding or, as some teachers would like to say, spoon feeding, with the teacher doing most of the work. Secondly, at the opposite end of the spectrum we have some teachers who provide little […]
A downside of setting student academic results targets in schools
When I reflect on the positives of working in my current school and share my thoughts with colleagues from other schools, they are often amazed when I tell them that we do not set specific targets for student results. Our school does not have a specific average score that it needs to achieve from IB […]