Survival Island (Critical Thinking)

I started the first day of the school year assessing my student's ability to think critically. It was a full day activity that I found hugely successful and the students had fun!

I had the desks arranged in groups of four before the students entered the class. As the students filtered in I told them to think carefully about where they sat because there was an exciting challenge ahead. They needed to sit with people they thought they could work well with and who they thought were good problem solvers and finders.

Through this activity I was able to see who was creative, who had leadership qualities, who thought outside the box, what their work ethic, their questioning skills and was like and who was confident in sharing their ideas.






Examples of Student Work:

Teacher Only Day: Session Three

21st Century Teaching and Learning

How do you engage students in quality thinking?

3 Student Engagement Myths

1. High-Tech works best

- This is has well intentions
- More tech is coming into play and teachers think they need it all
- We don't need 6 usb ports at every desk and 25 3D printers to have quality thinking and learning
- It is a tool not a strategy
- The high touch works, not the high tech
- The number one driver of student learning is what does the student bring to the learning?

2. You must be like them

- You don't need to dress, walk and talk like them
- Don't be a generational transvestite
- They don't want you to be like them
- Be yourself, and be real!

3, They are Self Sufficient

- On the outside students look self assured, in control and can use all the tech.
- Behind this confidence is a generation who crave mentoring, leadership and connection with adults
- This is a fatherless generation, with 62% growing up in single mother homes
- We need to bridge the gap to help form relationships the are craving


The 6 Keys to Engaging Tomorrow's Students 


1. Put Relationship Before Role

- "The teachers we connect with are the ones who treat us like people and not like students"
- Common sense isn't always common practise
- Many teachers were taught the phrase "Don't smile until Easter" - This is the Industrial approach of power and control, authority developing distance and fostering fear and intimidation. This is the separation of role and relationship, this does not work today!
- "I don't care how much you know till I know how much you care"
- Today's students learn teachers not subjects

Be Authentic

- Make opportunities to be real with your students
- Be willing to look silly
- Break down barriers
- They sense BS faster than any other generation, as soon as they sense hypocrisy, fakeness or double standards that wall of trust is gone and they will shut down
- Show weakness - this is a strength today, students value honesty
- Apologise for mistakes
- Give up the control!
- Be vulnerable

Be Interested

- Weave pop culture into the classroom to create relevance
- When you take an interest in them, they will want to learn about you - 2 way exchange

Be Flexible

- Less rules - Less ways for you to be frustrated, let down and upset 
- Pick your battles - does it really matter?
- Are the rules you have set up in the context of a relationship?
- Rules without relationships lead to rebellion, rules with relationships lead to respect

2. Matrix Learning

- Show students how what you teach is connected to other subjects, learning and the outside world
- Students need to see the interconnectedness of knowledge
- Knowledge spread across a range of subject areas is vital
- Show connections between skills - if not students will fail to see the relevance - "Why are we learning this? Why do I need this? When will I ever use this?"
- Connect learning to things that are real - tangible
- Be honest with students, if it doesn't connect tell them. This will earn their trust - "Hey let's play the game together, you need to learn this just because you do"

3. Adopt a Facilitator Role

- Be the facilitator of learning and knowledge
- A facilitator asks all the right questions
- We have a generation of 'lazy' learners because all the answers are a click away
- The purpose of a good question isn't to get an answer, it is to promote discussion and self reflection

5 Ingredients to a Powerful Question

1. Avoid closed questions
2. Ask with a curious and inquiring tone
3. Answer a question with a question
4. Adjust your expectations of what an appropriate response is
5. Don't ever start a question with the word 'Why'

- If you start a question with the word 'Why' you have instantly set up an adversarial scenario. You have set that student up to fail, they will get on the defence, justify and argue or they will play the game.
- Change from "Why did you do that?" to "What made you do that?"

4. Give Regular Positive Feedback

- What gets recognised and rewarded gets repeated
- How often are we recognising behaviours we don't want repeated?
- If you want to get the best out of the students, you need to catch students doing the right thing and reward it
- Don't catch students doing the wrong thing and punish it
- Give feedback personally
- Give feedback publicly
- Give feedback proportionately to the amount of effort put in
- Generation Y are incredibly competitive and will work hard to get public praise
- However if you are praising all the time students will become desensitised to the praise

5. Use Stories to Make your Point

- Narrative is effective
- Put the lessons and principles to life
- You are no longer the messenger of content, you are the key part
- Stories are powerful
- "Don't tell me it's right, show me it works"
- Don't feel like you are wasting class time if you are telling a story with a purpose
- Share your experiences and let them make the connections of commonality
- Don't just tell good stories, share your mistakes


6. Go for Commitment not Compliance

- When trying to get students to adopt actions and behaviours, are you opting for commitment or compliance?
- Give students a reason to want to commit
- This is all done by the language we use:

Compliance

- You must...
- You should...
- We expect...
- In the past we have done...
- It is always been...
- The punishment will be...
- The rules clearly say....

Commitment

- You might find...
- You could...
- The benefit would be...
- There is great value in...
- It might be a good idea if...
- The reward for...
- The advantage is...

Teacher Only Day: Session Two

The 3 trends that will influence the future of education 

1. The change in the nature of students

Student are becoming increasingly:

- Tech savoy/plugged in
- Grown up 
- Fragile 

Technology has helped students to develop:
- Advanced fine motor skills
- Multi-divided attention
- Spatial awareness

Plugged in:
- This generation can and do learn with noise!
- However there is a distinction between noise and interruption

Grown up:
- We have a generation who know a lot more about adult content and ideas, with this comes adult issues (depression, anxiety).
- You can have deep and higher level discussions with students
- If you try to talk to 7 year old students the same way you did 20 years ago they will be disengaged because they are smarter than that.

Fragile:
- Students have become the opposite of resilient
- Older generations were taught life isn't meant to be easy, therefore life is meant to get difficult
- Advertising and pop culture have taught this generation that life is meant to be fair, easy, convenient and exciting
- This generation begins to think that when life gets hard, and it is meant to be easy, that there must be something wrong with the goal I have set
- If it is not easy then swap paths (new mindset trend)
- If life isn't easy and its not right now then there must be something wrong with me (new mindset trend)
- How do you build the capacity for resilience and persistence in a generation that has not be raised like this?
- Students are craving external validation and feedback - the internal sense of achievement and satisfaction (self esteem) is disappearing
- You are going to be a leader - every student is going to be a leader - this has created a dependency and need for constant affirmation
- We are in the era of self esteem
- Facebook and Instagram posts uploaded because they need validation - the fear has become to put something out and not receive any feedback
- Schools have stopped giving negative feedback because students don't have the self esteem to handle criticism
- The language we use has changed - it is not called failure, it is called deferred success
- You are now awarded for just entering the race


2. The Change in the Climate of the Classroom 

- Technology will change how the functional aspects of the classroom operate
- Teach students how to learn using the technology and tools they have
- Turn your mobile phone ON - this is the most powerful tool students have, they have more information in their hands than countries had in their libraries 100 years ago
- The focus has become how do we change our system of education to meet the needs of every student
- Student focused learning, rather than teacher and system focused education
- Teachers are losing their power and control in the classroom



3. The Change in the Nature and Expectations of Parents

- Helicopter parents = always hovering nearby, making sure their child is safe
- Curling parents = Making sure things are safe, protected and smooth for their kids
- These parents are the ones who were the self raised, independent children - they want to raise their children with all the things they never had, they do the complete opposite (Pendulum effect)
- These parents want to give advice to the teacher
- They keep a ledger of merit awards and parts in school plays - they are keeping teachers in check
- In the last ten years parents have been the number one headache for teachers, this needs to be a trend that schools are prepared for
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These trends will become an issue over the next few years. How will you start preparing now?

Books to look at:

Grown up digital
Free range kids

Teacher Only Day: Session One

Shift Happens: The Changing Face of Education 

Michael McQueen

Session One

School in the 60:

-  An orderly affair
- Uniform and compliance was the name of the game
- Neat rows, silence, windows so high you couldn't see out
- Playground games - elastics, marbles, hopscotch, hula-hoops and yo-yos
- Men worked, women at home
- Family the ultimate goal


Nowadays:

- You can discipline a child, that child texts home and a parent calls and involves a lawyer
- Youth are making unrealistic demands of what they think they deserve - where did this come from?


What has happened to our youth culture? What is changing?

5 Significant shifts that have dramatically changed education:

1. The way society approaches the notion of truth

- Modernist mindset
- Is what we are taught right or wrong?
- How we determine if something is right, proper, ethical and true?
- Manners, ethics, decorum, social norms, politeness
- 'SHOULD'
- The generation coming through is being told by society that truth is relative
- How do you teach truth in lessons, rules, principles and values to a generation where truth is not absolute?


2. Perspectives of the Future

- How do you connect to a post-modern generation?
- The generation where everything is up for negotiation - they will discuss everything
- This generation do not see the future as linear, they see it as mosaic - with many paths and options
- Their goal is to leave their options open till the very last minute
- Prepare for the future, not plan for it. Plan is linear and prepare leaves the door open - this will engage students


3. Approaches to Communication 


- Students fear being disconnected and out of range (Social media)
- FOMO = Fear of missing out
- FONK = Fear of not knowing
- Initialisms is their language that has been accepted by dictionaries - OMG, BRB, U,
- This language is creeping into all areas of communication
- This generation believes that communication is not driven by form (spelling, punctuation, grammar), it is drive by function
- Students are sleep deprived, due to their unwillingness to switch off - Where are their devices?
- Today's students display 40% less empathy than the generation 20 years ago, this is due to the digital filter. They can not read body language, expression and tone of voice because everything is done via devices
- Students are not realizing the weight of their words


4. Assumptions about Respect

- The notion that respect is given based on age, title, experience
- This generation believes that respect needs to be earned
- Respect goes both ways, and as the educator you need to make the first step
- Build relationships!


5. The notions of  risk and danger

- Accidents happen, sometimes in life things go wrong
- We have moved from accidents happen to lawsuits happen
- We are hedging against risk and litigation
- We have to let kids play - but principals are under immense pressure to protect students
- This aversion to risk is having a massive impact on students
- We have a generation of kids who are bored, their playground equipment is just too safe!
- Pain, risk and failure have become public enemy number one, and yet we learn best through these
- Students avoid academic and social risk
- This generation don't know their boundaries because they have never been able to test them
- Kids who are allowed to take some risks are actually safer than those who aren't able to take any risks at all
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