Assessment

Although assessments are fundamental to my teaching practice and students learning, I find it hard to put forward my best teaching during this busy time. Time management and routines help to keep classroom management settled.

Communicating this to colleague, she was able to give me some tips/advice for this aspect of my teaching practice. One big part of her advice was to not let the idea of assessment overwhelm me, introducing strategies to make this easier for me:

• Must do, Can do bookmark for individual/buddy work.
• Teacher's released during feed and read.
• Essential spelling lists - gluing a copy of marked test in the back of their writing book. Then it is right at their fingertips they can tick the words they are fluently using them in their writing.  
• Have a rotation of which learners you are going to focus on during the week.

Education - happy and healthy?

'What if we based education on the study and practice of being happy and healthy?'

I always want my students to always feel happy and engaged in their learning but this video clip enlightened me to be more conscious when including their interests to the learning programme. This integration, I believe will impact the students learning through increasing their agency and creating a positive effect on the learning environment.

Logan LaPlante references Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk about killing creativity and how ‘Traditional Schooling’ can be linked to this. As much as I connect to the message of this video, there are certain aspects of education that just have to be covered. However I do believe in trying out and experimenting.
I myself am in the process of trying something different as I am currently teaching in a school which utilises open modern learning environments . There are great opportunities for learners to incorporate the practice of being happy and healthy. For example, Breakthrough is a chance where learners get to strive to achieve happiness in learning and life, to explore their passions and collaborate to create learning that is social, open, engaging and real.

This TED Talk reaffirmed how important this aspect is to education and to my teaching practice.

Also - how cool and brave is this 13 year old!! GO LOGAN.

“Hackschooling makes me Happy” - TED Talk
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