Monday, November 23, 2015

CETA Big Day Out - 23 .11 . 15


Workshop 1  - Using Games to teach Creative Writing 
A workshop of ideas to use games to engage students in writing and learning activities - Jenny Burgham (Lincoln HS). 

Creating Ideas 
- roll the dice and create a story from the learning grids (UK based) 



- variations - study grids (film terms) - they can also create their own 



Sentence types

- sentence randomiser  games - roll the game, identify the sentence type 
-  also use for vocab, language features 
- use whiteboards cos then not permanent in their books 
- use the dice, have to write the sentences the dice identifies 

Kahoot
- language terms
- identifying features 

Relay Races - writing to describe - teams, post its, each person in the team has to complete a different sentence 

Round 1 - describe your favourite place 
- hear 
- metaphor

No Red Ink - free, anyone can enter, but class has to be loaded
- individualised language tasks 
- can do a lot of diagnostic of language skills 

Cantamath - proof reading, Cantamaths style, gets them up and moving, and they like the competitive element 
- capital letters, full stops, spelling 
- one person walks, only one up at a time 
- approved, you're get the next sheet
- all take turns being the walker - 30 secs penalty 
- walker must wear badge 
TIPS - colour page for each group, have an answer page 

Workshop 2 - preparing for University English 
Dr Nicholas Wright

Why do students value English? 
What does Level 8 of the curriculum look and sound like? How do we create critical thinkers? 

The liberal humanist mode of teaching English - there are more than one way of reading any text?
Think about the image of 'good' teachers in Hollywood 'movies' ? Most are the 'liberal humanist' depiction of teachers and teaching. 

What aspects of English do kids find difficult? Generally it's the writing? 
You're not actually thinking until you're writing? 

Situated in the context of the here and now ? 

Liberal Humanism 
- Skeptisicm about thinking critically - do we read enough into anything?
literature can teach us about the world, but is that all that it should do? Assumption that there are essential truths  in all literature that we have to 'crack ' the code of. 
- a discourse that suggests that the value of a text is like the value of an individual?

Timelessness 'empties' the text of what it means in a changing time ? 


These bullet points can all be argued against.

Looking at texts from a cultural; racial; social; economic; gender view point changes perspective, for example - how can you study a text in isolation from its time and place?

Beyond the close reading of a text: 
- adopt a differ enrolled position
- whose voice is not heard? that's critical literacy!!
- Memories back to my MastEd @ Waikato Uni - when I analysed Anthony Horowitz's Storm Rider  novels from a critical feminist viewpoint 

- critical sale awareness through an academic voice - where does your voice fit into the voice of others
- everything is inter-textual 
- how do language and representation - counteract the liberal humanist approach 

- discussion is vital - everyone's reading is different from each other's - a community of scholars - this is how you augment your learning 
- the way you process or decipher the texts is what's important - that's critical? 
- what's weird about this text? What's missing? What's the problem? 

Imagine if Gatsby had Facebook! We're all Gatsby's because of Facebook! 

What do you gain by looking at something from a different perspective? 

Workshop 3 - Teaching English and Media - mgh@papanui.school.nz 

- teaching English in a Media context
- Eng and Media standards
- all writing authentic media contexts

No Media Studies taught at Papanui HS - students choose this or straight English 

- production standard get progressively harder from L1 to 3 

Check out Papanui HS YouTube site. 






 

 

















Saturday, November 21, 2015

The MindLab Weeks 17-20 - getting organised

The second half of the PostGrad is around school-based research and inquiry.

Our Saturday group has created a Google+ Group for discussing each week's readings and reviews.

Focussing on the Lit Review





Tell the story of why your question is important and what we want find out....and look for the gap

Think about: Abstract
Theoretical Framework
Needs to be broken up by themes or question - several people can be referenced under one theme OR one piece under different themes
What are the strengths, weakness and where are the gaps - why is the research needed
Think about the research question - make sure it is concrete and specific

When searching - key words are then important - make sure that you have the synonyms for key words - internationally different terms are words.

The best piece of advice was to use an excel document to create a grid of tall the readings - work out the themes - keep the page references - pull out themes from the literature as you do the reading for the lit review - FABULOUS

Get the Q right - f the question is wrong - the research becomes a 'living hell'.
A focussed and specific question

What/How ......IS THE  .......FOR .....AT

My MEd thesis (integrating blogging into classroom practice)  the tension between teacher as research - how much do you intervene and how much does this impact on the research data.
The Week 18 readings on making us if academic readings and making sense / collating your data reminded me of the plethora of paperwork that one collects when doing research - even with digitial PDFs and Google notemaker .....



I'm looking forward to the next few week's readings based around Teaching as Inquiry - as we have been working this model for our teacher appraisal for the last few years - and I am thinkiong of using Google Sites for the second part of this paper's assessment.