How Learning Platforms could become the new 'worksheet'

I was adding some maths games to my school's Google Apps domain the other day when suddenly a warning bell went off in my mind. What if I was filling up the learning platform with so much stuff, it would detract from the relationships between the adult and the child?

Let me explain myself a little.

I've been doing some research on the use of social media in maths learning and what I've found is that social media can be used to promote 'negotiated scaffolding'. Some people call this co-construction. It's a pedagogy that fits within the realm of 'social constructivism'. What I also found is that most primary (elementary) children are exposed to mainly 'rigid scaffolding'. Now I have to admit at this point that I'm not completely clued up as to where a pedagogy starts and a teaching strategy starts, but suffice it to say that in my own teaching I'm a social constructivist who's good at making connections between ideas. I use two main strategies: negotiated and rigid scaffolding to take children into their zone of proximal development and onto 'the edge of learning' (Vygotsky).

Is that enough jargon yet? I'll put it another way - essentially my lessons take 2 forms:

• Lessons where I start from a point the children have specified, negotiate the learning goals and guide them to achieve them. (You can see why co-construction is a useful term for this, as the children work together with the adult to 'constuct' the scaffold).
• Lessons where I define the learning goal, set the specified success criteria (or steps to success, learning ladder - whatever you want to call it) and teach the various stages until the children achieve the learning goal.

Or going back to the terminology, I use 2 types of scaffolding - negotiated and rigid.

So in my research I did a half-term of negotiated scaffolding, using blogging, Twitter, video sharing and Google Docs for the children to collaborate with each other and beyond to the wider world. One of the particular highlights was when a student, writing the date asked the question: "I wonder if there's a birthday on every day of the year?" She posted the question to the blog, I put it out on Twitter and there were some great responses from maths teachers in different parts of the world by the next day. Excited, motivated, inspired - the children went on to solve the problem the next day.

I then did a half-term of 'rigid scaffolding'. I mainly taught skills like written methods and simplification of fractions. Sounds pretty tedious.

What was interesting was that the children made progress in both periods, during both the rigid and the negotiated scaffolding. And not only that they made double the expected progress. There may be many different explanations for this, but I suspect that the ownership that the children were able to take from the negotiated scaffolding part carried over into the rigid scaffolding part - the children knew that they were in a learning relationship with myself, each other and also people beyond the classroom and it motivated them to really excel.

Sadly, much teaching in the UK primary sector (especially in maths), is dominated by the rigid scaffold. Alexander (2004) calls it 'pedagogical prescription' and Thompson (2008) says:

“at the deeper level of classroom discourse, pupil– teacher interaction was still dominated by closed questions, emphasizing recall rather than speculation and problem-solving”

And with the 'rigid scaffold' the worksheet is king. It enables a teacher to give a 'learning ladder'; to leave the children to get on with it; to ask mainly closed questions

The fact is that social media had enabled me and the children to recapture the dialogue. It forced us to think 'socially'; to talk about what we were doing; to ask questions that were more open-ended.

So why the warning bell?

Well it suddenly struck me that the learning platform - if I filled it up with stuff - would become just like a worksheet. I had talking the 'blank sheet' approach of Google Docs and was busy writing over the lovely blank spaces with content. I could continue fill it up with an activity for every piece of learning needed, forgetting that each child may have different starting points and forgetting that negotiating the way through the learning is an extra-ordinarily powerful method.

The lesson for me is that I need to be prepared to continue the dialogue with the children, finding ways in the learning platform to do it. I need to avoid the temptation of 'closing off' the learning platform, making everything rigid and I need to enable children to negotiate their own learning on the learning platform with me - to become creators of content themselves. A helpful progression for developing learning platforms can be found on this #edjournal article: 'Implementing New Technological Tools in Schools.'

Conclusion

There's still a place for the rigid scaffold, but it needs to be blended with the negotiated one. In the same way there's still a place for the worksheet and the highly structured online course, but they need to be blended with negotiation and dialogue, both face-to-face and social media.

Brummie Phonics: boy or bye?

When @Mr_Thorne uploaded his new 'oi' sound video on mrthornedoesphonics.com , it reminded me of a seminal experience I had when teaching a year 4 class in North Birmingham some 10 years ago.

I was teaching homophones and during the introduction, after a hesitant start, a boy enthusiastically joined the discussion with that face that just says: 'I've got it!' You know - that AHA moment that all teachers thrive on.

What he actually said was: "Oh, I know! It's like 'boy' and 'buoy!'"

I could have left it there. Moved on to the next child for more examples of homophones they could think of. But I was astounded: an eight year-old living in one of the most deprived council estates in Birmingham who knew the word 'buoy'. I had to investigate the further.

So I asked "What do you mean, 'boy' and 'buoy'?"

His response was "'Boy' as in me. And 'buoy' as in 'buoy buoy'!"

And then he waved at me.

My turn to have an AHA moment! I realised: in Brummie (the Birmingham accent) 'boy' and 'bye' ARE homophones.

Anyone got any other interesting regional phonics stories?

Running out of ideas to increase skills in gifted children

The picture is what we use as the pinnacle of our '99' club test. This was a test that we introduced a few years ago to help increase children's instant recall and mental mathematics skills. Unfortunately, 99 club wasn't big enough, so introduced a 'superstars club'. Then that was completed so we made up a 'mega-stars' club. Even that wasn't enough, so I designed a killer test - Gigastars club, thinking no self-respecting 10 or 11 year old would pass that. Even my brother-in-law who's a red-hot software designer type could only do half of it in the required 10 minutes.

But then last year, one plucky 10-year old did the test. In only ten-minutes. We allow 3 wrong to get the certificate. She got 2 wrong. What a star. What a 'giga-star' in fact!

But now, what do we do now? She's still got a year with us. Helpful suggestions about where to go next with our skills development would be most appreciated.

Paganel Scalextric Project

In the Academic Year 2009 to 2010, Year 6 at Paganel designed, molded, vac-formed, laser-cut, assembled, glued and soldered their own scalextric cars.

 

Then they learnt how to commentate.

 

Then they raced them and shared the racing with the whole school.

 

This is how it happened:

Download now or watch on posterous

1-Paganel_Scalextric_Cut_2_Web.mp4 (83303 KB)

We'd like to do the project again this year, but want to share it with more than only Paganel children. So if you have a group of Year 5 or 6 children and you're free at the end of March, let us know and we'll do the whole thing together - we have all the kit, we just want some more friends to share it with...