An amazing idea- headphones made from recycled vinyl records.
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My latest design.
A magnetic bottle cap catcher, inspired a) by a bar in Beijing and b) a mango tree outside of my home in Kuala Lumpur.
A fairly simple project with lots of professional consolidation here, including jointing wood, creating a recess, working with high strength magnets, sanding, finishing, using epoxy glue, applying polyeurthane.
'The Tree'- if you know, you know.
During a CPD session at my previous school (hosted by the excellent Ross McGill) one of my biggest takeaway’s was consistency- or Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE).
CTE was first formally brought to my attention in around 2011/12, but as with many great ideas, it takes CTE and the correct structures to actually make it stick.
In the run-up to- and during a recent department development day, we decided that CTE was definitely something that we wanted to introduce within our department- in the hope of influencing whole-school change.
To this end, we agreed on certain structures that we will use in the next academic term.
-Low risk / high reward starters that will free-up working memory.
-The bigger picture to be shared every lesson (see previous post on left brain vs right brain).
-3D learning objectives, with a focus on bringing the learning into the real world with a ‘why’ am I learning this, within the activation stage of the lesson.
-A deliberate pause / opportunity for students to ask any question about the learning.
-A question about the learning.
-At least two collaborative Kagan structures per lesson.
-Modelled / Worked examples with success criteria.
-A demonstration of learning phase.
-A plenary which recaps the learning and encourages students to pose questions about, and unpick their own learning.
-Finishing the lesson off with a look ahead to next lesson and ‘shout outs’ to the class.
-Homework tasks based on recapping the learning and building up literacy skills.
I feel that we have developed quite a rigid and tight structure, which perhaps isn’t particularly dynamic or gimmicky. This was mainly due to the fact that students have spent almost two full school years of learning online, and as we (hopefully) return to face-to-face teaching in the autumn, students will need time to relearn how to learn in a physical environment.
Coupled with this was the refreshing of our projects- and also cutting out some of the excess theory work, so that when they return, students can focus on learning by being hands-on, something which has largely not been possible for the previous two years of their education.
I attach the lesson template below, any feedback is warmly welcomed.
Please feel free to use, adapt or ignore.
I also fell down an internet wormhole and found this excellent site (storyset.com) for making simple animations for presentations.
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