I started this blog while writing a research essay for my Masters in Education for two reasons. Firstly to organise, record and store my resources and ideas I have had along the way, and secondly so that I reflected on what I am thinking and how my project is going along. I don't expect that many people will read this, in fact I really hope no one does I'm sure I'll reread some of it and wonder what I was thinking when I wrote it. One thing I have found from blogging is that it is the chance that someone else might see it, the possibility of an audience that makes you think a bit more carefully about what you write.
When I have been writing away on my own, and most of this type of work is solitary because it is so specific in nature, I am often not as clear as I could be because I know what I mean. If you know what I mean. I also have to consider confidentiality so the blog forces me to write in this way and think about how I can describe my findings without forgetting my responsibilities.
So I thought I better write my first post.
I have worked in five schools now and each school has had quite a different philosophy of learning, what learning is, how you best achieving it with a classroom full of kids etc, etc.
They have been drastically different from one another in some areas and only slightly different in others, each though unique. Over the years I guess I have come to develop my own philosophy of learning, mostly this has developed through my experiences of belonging in these different learning communities. I liken this to children being in different classes. The thing is that over the years I have become more and more confused, I am getting so many mixed messages about what learning is, what we are aiming for, what matters the most, the point of school, etc, etc.
I wonder if students experience all of these mixed messages. Not only are there mixed messages between schools and classrooms but within schools. Often while a school says they believe something they follow a policy which is not inline with their beliefs. I think this happens in classrooms a lot. Teachers say they value students opinions and then hurry them along when conversations are not in line with the lesson objective. I know I've been guilty of this.
All of this sort of culminated for me working at schools that stipulated that teachers must use WALTS for lessons. Clear specific learning intentions should be given to the children at the beginning of all lessons. This was in such opposition to what I have come to understand about the learning process and my role in this for the children in my class that I felt really unsure about what I was meant to do in my classroom.
I am absolutely not saying that I think teachers should not share their practice and aims with the students in their class, in fact it is because of the lack of clarity that I wanted to find out more about the thinking behind 'explicit teaching'. What I am saying, is that 'explicit teaching' to objectives in isolation, no matter how clear they are, makes understanding the learning process confusing and gives completely the wrong message to children about what learning is.
I realise that this first post for some people may be quite controversial especially people who understand learning as something that they give to children. They talk, children listen, some of them get it and some of them don't. If they don't get it, you tell them again, you explain it differently etc, etc. If I had spent a lot of time trying to be a 'good' teacher and furiously writing out learning intentions and success criteria for children I would be a bit upset about someone saying it was not the best way to help students learn.
If fact I don't know if I can say that, but I think I should be able to say that as a teacher I don't think telling my students what they are going to learn before we have done anything is in line with my philosophy of learning and so I am going to make my teaching explicit in ways that do fit my philosophy. First I had to be sure about what those were...
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
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