I'm enjoying the advertising unit my juniors are doing at the moment. They have been posting their favourite ads and I'm thrilled to see some old favourites making an appearance - like coca cola.
Not watching much network TV these days has meant the 2013 coke campaign has passed me by until this point. This new campaign centres on feel good, pay it forward real life escapades that celebrate people. Humanity - weird and crazy and bizarre and it goes better with coke.
Now I love coke - I love the taste, the brand, the range, and yes I love the ads!
Here's a couple of superb coke adverts linked, appropriately, by Supertramp's Give a Little Bit:
And then there are feel good awe inspiring Red Bull ads:
I'm doing an advertising mini unit within a media project with my junior classes now that the seniors have left for exam leave.
While planning the unit, it struck me how many of my old video tape resources are now redundant with new technology. This is not a bad thing though. The videos, if they're good enough, are all available on YouTube. Wahoo!!
At the press of a button, in class, on a big screen, I can get good quality product.
Like my favourite advertisement of all time
(Route 66 Levis ad) and others.
And here's an ad that a student in my Year 9 class alerted me to. I've been laughing about it all day!
I'm not a huge fan of student appraisals of teachers.
The concept is that students give quality, objective feedback to teachers about their teaching.
With me so far? Sounds cool huh?
Students are of course entitled to pass judgement on teachers - that's happened since the days of the Roman Empire when Plato and Socrates handed out appraisal tablets to their students.
So what's my problem?
It's just that the feedback tends to be wildly subjective but considered scientific and therefore 'important'. If it's positive it can often be platitudinous (you're the most wonderful teacher in the world) and if it's negative it often comes from a severely narrow experience base or worse, hidden agendas come into play and it becomes largely unusable.
I would rather the appraisal was of the course and dispensed with the cult of personality as much as possible.
I gave out some appraisal forms to a couple of randomly chosen classes this week and the customary things happened - I dwelt on the one negative comment much more than I should have until I noticed the student rated highly the 'I enjoy this class' statement, and I quickly moved over the 'I love your teaching' comments.
The next stage for me personally is to try to highlight any areas that the girls thought I needed to work on. I then want to refine my appraisal form to get some more specific information that I can use to improve my teaching and that's after all what the process should be about.
Right?
Exam revision time is a challenge in so many ways.
To avoid getting into a Mr Bean examination scenario...
...there are many study tips out there and really the only decent two are (apart from learning by osmosis with the book placed under your pillow at night) - be active, not passive in your approach and create a study timetable to cover all aspects/all subjects and when the exams are on.
That means rewriting stuff and rereading primary sources (texts), not glancing over notes or pretending to engage in revising things or being distracted by social media.
The girls that I am teaching run the full continuum from fully motivated (redoing/ improving essays and answering textual questions, then getting my feedback) to doing zip zilch nothing (sitting on a computer looking at Spotify for songs to download). Thankfully only one or two in that last category, so most of them are in between those two extremes.
Startling revelation 1: some students don't seem to want to improve. They are unmotivated to do well in external exams for whatever reason.
Startling revelation 2: some students who want to improve are difficult to help. When I've suggested on a couple of occasions to individuals that they do something more focused than they are engaged in they have reacted negatively.
I get it - revision is an individual thing but teachers are experienced in sitting exams and preparing students for exams.
All part of being a teenager I guess.
NCEA provides some challenges too - the girls have different strengths and weaknesses in the different external standards so for focused revision they need to have individual programmes - tough to work through as a teacher but great differentiated learning for the girls.
So - back to motivation. I came across this nifty talk about what motivates people and found myself nodding along. I can also vouch for the message as the blog can attest - bonus schemes (yes - you, Cognition Education), DO NOT WORK!!!!!!
NCEA External exams are imminent.
This means three things to teachers and invigilators the world over.
One - revision sessions for the exams
Two - Exam supervisions
and Three - a seemingly endless marking grind (reading the same stuff over and over again makes my brain hurt).
How did it come to this?
Ha ha - oh yeah, I forgot!
My friend Toni Westcott wrote a nifty post on her blog recently about relationships. Toni says: Getting to know students both socially and academically is crucial.
She is so right.
I have been at Woodford House for nearly two terms now and the relationships are improving all the time. You can't beat time spent getting to know the students in different contexts.
Taking a football team (or any extra-curricular activity) is a huge way to improve relationships that translate to improved relationships in the classroom.
That's been the case this term. My football team had a very successful season with (I think) only two losses. Better than that - the relationships between team mates and between them all and me evolved and gelled over the course of the season.
The girls had an informal prize giving recently and gave me a signed football for my efforts. Fantastic! Anyone reading the messages on the football would be puzzled as the in-jokes and funny moments during the season were seized upon, but that little moment meant a lot to me - it was evidence of relationship strengthening and connection.
The longer I am a teacher, the more it is apparent how key it is to have positive relationships.
I had to do some research recently on my Y12 English class. I looked at their PATs from Year 9 and other data. One girl who has done outstanding work this year under trying personal circumstances was not a strong Y9 English student.
When I asked her about it she said words to the effect that she improved a lot when she began loving English because of the relationships she'd gradually established with her teachers.
Toleja! There it is - the key to happiness and success. Relationships!
What do we want?
Apparently one of the things we want is a project based format for learning.
We want/need adaptable learners/thinkers who can be more independent in their approach to learning so that they are better prepared for a rapidly changing world/ job market.
Is there anyone out there who would argue with that?
We have Student Learning Systems (like Schoology) and we have the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) that lends itself to an inquiry learning approach. I am no longer solely a teacher of content, I am a facilitator.
Again - is there anyone out there who would argue with that?
So - let's adapt. Let's practice what we preach. Let's think!
I can see how we can chunk our English courses into discreet blocks.
We block our classes - we can offer this chunking and we can staff it. We can let the students elect various areas of interest within a structure. We can timetable it and, to a large extent, we allow the students to elect how they use the opportunity.
Maybe it's face to face tutorial time with a teacher, maybe it's working in a learning space using Schoology, maybe it's working in a collegial way with other students.
The Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) is a great example of this kind of project learning.
Students form their own company and learn all the aspects of setting up and running their own business. They create a company, set up roles and appoint individuals, develop a product, manufacture or import the product, market and sell their product, manage their finances, report in an annual report and hopefully make a profit.
Not only do students become visibly more motivated (I've seen it as some of my reluctant English students become energised by a practical project) - often working far beyond the classroom's timetabled hours. They enjoy independent experiences and success along the way that cannot be gained to the same extent in a classroom.
Why have other subjects not built their own YES. Why couldn't English develop a film or writing scheme like this?
What would it look like?
