In recent years lots of teachers would have spotted students developing the habit and tendency to skim read online and the shallow comprehension skills that follow. In Economics we constantly give students resources to read over to supporting their thinking and their understanding of case studies, yet many students will read too quickly and superficially … Continue reading Super easy PDF commenting for better collaborative reading and comprehension
In beginning a new unit, teachers always look for prior knowledge and then attempt to build on these understandings. A wide range of research points to this as an essential way to make 'learning stick', by developing students mental schema and to help them hang new learning from existing frameworks. Activating prior knowledge In starting … Continue reading Sorting, grouping and working with examples: Concept Formation in Economics
For the past few months I have been trialing a hybrid laptop/tablet PC from Hewlett Packard the EliteBook x360. As a school we have used Apple Laptops and iPads exclusively for the last seven years with much success, but over the last 12 months there has been a surge in touch enabled devices with styluses that … Continue reading Exploring the options – touch enabled hybrid laptops
Life as a High School teacher is a tricky balancing game. Conversation in the office revolves around the trade off between doing something in incredible depth through an engaging lesson or skimming over something quickly. This tradeoff comes about because as High School teachers we still feel that we are the best people to explain and … Continue reading When online learning amplifies the face-to-face classroom
A really fundamental model in Economics is the concept of the circular flow and the basic economic system. We use this to help explain the main sectors of the economy and the flows of money between the different component parts. Overtime students come back to this model to help analyse government policy, the ideas of … Continue reading Grappling with the concepts of the circular flow model
Over the past ten years I feel my practice as a teacher has changed beyond recognition. I have experimented, failed, tweaked, written, rephrased and reinvented nearly every aspect of my lessons with the goal of making the learning more effective for my students. Over the years I cannot point to one professional development event that … Continue reading Evolving Professional Learning
A year ago I spotted an interesting development for the International Baccalaureate programme tucked away in a blog post on their website. Substantial planning is underway for the migration of DP examinations from paper to on-screen. We are extremely excited about this important development for the IB. It means that exam papers will no longer be printed … Continue reading IB Diploma Onscreen Assessment – stepping into the unknown
Concept mapping is a visual approach which forces students to focus on the abstract concepts and to make generalisations between interconnecting ideas. It can be used as a pre-assessment or formatively or even revisited through a unit of work if you use a digital tool such as Mindmeister. The approach is applicable to any classroom … Continue reading Concept maps to deepen thinking in Economics
For the final Monday of the school year, we ambitiously took our Grade 11 students off timetable to spend a day helping them looking more deeply at their Extended Essay. They have all begun defining research questions and conducting preliminary research in the last couple of months. Our Extended Essay coordinator Joe Jasina, outlined the aims of the … Continue reading Extended Essay Day
This week's Economist magazine explored a question I have thought about a lot in my career. Is the ability to teach an innate skill that some have, and others do not; or is a skill that can be developed and taught? Our perception of whether great teachers are either born or made, leads to dramatic differences in … Continue reading What makes effective teaching?
Digging a Little Deeper 