Marshall Matters #533

Marshall Memo #533 offers some thought provoking ideas and thoughts. As we come to the end of our academic year, I am placing my efforts of reflecting on this year and looking at ways that I can improve my work processes next year. So, let's get started with my 2 top interesting things from Marshall Memo #533:

1. Parental involvement does not necessarily impact positively on children's learning, here are a list of things that do not necessarily boost achievement:

-   Observing a child’s class;

-   Contacting the school about a child’s behavior;

-   Checking in with the teacher;

-   Attending PTA meetings;

-   Helping decide a child’s high-school courses;

-   Helping a child with homework.

In contrast to this list the writers suggest that the following strategies are much more effective in supporting children in their learning

-   Discuss what the child is doing in school (in most racial/ethnic groups);

-   Request a particular teacher for a child.

-   Communicate the importance of school and an expectation that the child will go to college;

Does parent involvement ever help? Yes, say Robinson and Harris. “We believe that parents are critical for how well children perform in school, just not in the conventional ways that our society has been promoting.

“Parental Involvement Is Overrated” by Keith Robinson and Angel Harris in The New York Times, April 13, 2014 (p. SR7), http://nyti.ms/1gvtDCn

2. Challenging Gifted Children

Every student deserves to learn something new every day. Having just completed a Walkthrough reflection with my PMP leader I am pondering the notion of differentiation. I know the 4-5 year olds in my class well, I constantly check in with them to see how they are, what their interests are and ways that I can support and challenge them. I have a class of 15 students, of these 15 students 10 of them are English Language Learners. I have a group of students who are incredibly talented and resourceful. They are my thinkers, they are my theorists. This article confirms what I have been pondering for some time.

Bestowing the “gifted” label isn’t a helpful response to this situation, argue the authors. Instead, they suggest doing a better job with differentiation:-   Identify specific instances where students’ academic needs aren’t being met. Teachers might ask themselves, “Who is not being challenged in my math classroom today?” or “Which students won’t learn anything new from next year’s science curriculum?”
-   Create or locate appropriate interventions to meet those needs.

“Gifted Ed. Is Crucial, But the Label Isn’t” by Scott Peters, Scott Barry Kaufman, Michael Matthews, Matthew McBee, and Betsy McCoach in Education Week, April 16, 2014 (Vol. 33, #28, p. 40, 34), www.edweek.org; Peters can be reached at peterss@uww.edu.

Smartphones....and dumb people - Look up!

Marshall Memo Matter

TKS have signed up to Marshall Memo "A weekly round up of important ideas and research in K-12 Education. Here is an excerpt from the website:

The Marshall Memo, published since 2003, is designed to keep principals, teachers, superintendents, and others very well-informed on current research and best practices in the field. Kim Marshall, drawing on his experience as a teacher, principal, central office administrator, consultant, and writer, lightens the load of busy educators by serving as their "designated reader." 

To produce the Marshall Memo, Kim subscribes to 64 carefully-chosen publications and looks through scores of articles each week to select 5-10 that have the greatest potential to improve teaching, leadership, and learning. He then writes a brief summary of each article, provides e-links to full articles when available, highlights a few striking quotes, and e-mails the Memo to subscribers every Monday (with the exception of a one-week break at Christmas and a two-week mid-summer vacation).

In my bid to stay current I will be reading these each week and picking my Top 5 points from the text that are relevant and interesting to me as a mother and educator.

Here's to the crazy ones...

It's nearly two decades old and still this video inspires me as an educator. I here the chit chatter about children that cause a fuss, don't follow the rules, really rile teachers up, think outside the box and have the most random thoughts and I think "Yes, little one, keep your spirit, we need you to make this world a better place".

Aurasma in ECC - Bringing wall displays to life

I've been in and out of my Twitter PLN for the past year. Coming to Saudi Arabia to teach has had it's challenges and is a vast difference from my role as an IT facilitator traveling New Zealand facilitating learning and delivering workshops. We are somewhat isolated here at TKS - access to educational technology conferences like Ulearn are not so easy. Instead, I turn to Twitter and Blogs to get the professional learning I need as an educator.

Thankfully, Twitter never fails in providing the bit of enthusiasm I need to push my own educational boundaries.  A few weeks ago @PanaAsavavatana shared her exciting discovery in her classroom using Aurasma through Twitter.

Here are all of the links I used to get motivated.

http://passionforlearningandteaching.blogspot.ca/2013/09/aurasma-app-in-k.html

http://www.maggiehosmcgrane.com/2013/10/green-screening-and-augmented-reality.html

http://mspanasays.com/using-aurasma-to-create-interactive-displays/

http://mspanasays.com/aurasma-the-app-vs-aurasma-studio/

http://mspanasays.com/aurasma-and-chatterpix-a-fun-way-to-bring-photos-to-life/

https://aurasma.zendesk.com/entries/24377126--Are-you-a-teacher-Guidance-for-teachers-and-other-educators-getting-started-with-Aurasma-

http://ipad4schools.org/2013/09/28/bring-schools-to-life-with-aurasma-app/

Today we had our K2 Open House - an opportunity for families to come along and spend a morning with their children in our classroom engaging in typical learning activities. I was very mindful not to have parents perform or commit to time frames. Everyone is busy! Especially at this time of year and I wanted to make sure there were a variety of activities (all optional) where they could take the lead from their child and spend as little as long or as long as they could.

Here's what we had on offer. 

As a former IT facilitator I was very excited about using technology to share video snippets of children with their families (Read: awwww cute). We have been working on a collaborative mural over the past month and have been adding to this bit by bit. We've dabbled in some of the Skype Education lessons for Ocean Exploration month and looked at various stories to support our thinking and inquiry. I videoed each child and asked them "What lives in the ocean?" and asked them to share their ideas. 

I created name tags for each child with their name and an ocean creature and used these as the 'trigger image'. I used the children's videos as the overlay and had iPads available for families who did not have access to a device. Families could see their own child's video by hovering over their child's name - in most cases the child lead this process because many parents were not familiar with using iPads in general.

I can see a variety of ways I can use this in future and can't wait to test my ideas -watch this space!