Tony Ryan’s workshop “Transformational Teaching” inspired and motivated me. His presentation was positive and practical. During his workshop he touched on some values he thought were key for education and then shared a practical example for helping students apply values. This was what I was looking for. Our New Zealand Curriculum encourages the development of values but we all know that it is easier to talk about them than apply them.

His practical idea to encourage the application of values was called “Academic Controversy”:

1. Form into teams of 4 and appoint two ‘yes’ and two ‘no’ representatives.
2. Identify the statement. Eg: Every human being must be respected and tolerated, without expectation.
3. In your pairs, brainstorm all of the arguments that support your side.
4. Present your arguments to the other pair.
5. Now change sides and present the other perspective.
6. Drop the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ representatives and determine your group’s final response to the topic.
7. Mark your group’s final decision on a Yes/No continuum line and justify your stance to others.

Other ways I am working on that encourage the application of values include:

• Drama: Act out a scene where a value isn’t, and then is applied.
• Goal Setting
• Retelling a Story: Julia Atkin first showed me this technique at ULearn 07. In groups of three:
  • Person #1 tells a story of an act that they admired or touched them in some way where a value was demonstrated.
  • Person #2 retells the story that #1 shared.
  • Person #3 then retells the story from the perspective of the person who was admired.

I would love to hear of other ways you have found that encourage the application of values. Please leave a comment below to share these.

Picture Author: http://tinyurl.com/5kl8r4

The W.A.L.Ts (We Are Learning To) for our Poetry unit this Term were:

• Write a poem using similes to support and emphasise your message.
• Write an acrostic poem using alliteration.
• Write a palindrome poem using onomatopoeias.
• Write a cinquain poem using verbs, adjectives and nouns correctly.
• Recite our poems fluently and with expression to our buddy class.

Yellow Hat Thinking (Positive Reflections):

1. Finding Poetry examples on the net supported the teaching of new poetry forms.
2. The use of visual images on our class W.A.L.Ts (I found these easily using a ‘Google Image’ search)
3. Teaching a variety of poems meant that students learnt and experiemented with different poems.
4. The students were encouraged to keep an “Ideas Book” which enabled them to run with an idea when it was time to write.
5. Sharing our poems with our buddy class via a web conference meant that our students had a live audience.
6. Recording our spoken poems onto a voicethread meant that others could listen and our successful poems were celebrated!

What have you done to make your poetry units successful?

What other ICT tools could be used to enhance a unit like this?

Every year the Year 6 (Grade 5s) do “Chocolate” as a unit of work. This was my first year teaching this age and unit so I was interested in seeing how it went. The motivation and enthusiasm I saw from my students was impressive!

The overal aim of this unit was for students to work co-operatively as a company to design and create a new type of chocolate bar and to produce a visual presentation outlining the process.

The following is a list of the activities the children had to complete:

1. In your chosen Company of 5 members assign the following roles: Co-ordinator, Recorder, Creative Arts Director, Communicator and Collator.
2. Design a Company name, logo and jingle.
3. Develop a timeline showing the history of chocolate.
4. Survey 60 people regarding:
   1. Their favourite chocolate.
   2. Time of day they enjoyed eating chocolate.
   3. How often they ate chocolate each week.
5. Sort, display and comment on the findings of the survey.
6. From these findings design a chocolate to enter into E3’s Chocolate competition.
7. Design a wrapper for your chocolate bar that includes your logo, company name and list of ingredients.
8. Make the chocolate.
9. Present your Company chocolate to the class and include in the presentation:
   1. Graphs displaying the survey and written comments.
   2. Description of the chocolate making process.
   3. Jingle.
   4. An advert for your chocolate eg: Newspaper, T.V or Radio.
   5. A timeline depicting the history of chocolate.
   6. Company chocolate ready for the taste test! (Of course I had the privledge of doing this part)

Green Hat Thinking (creative thoughts) If I was to do the unit again I would…

• Do it at the beginning of the Term when the students are less grumpy/tired. The co-operative nature of the unit was socially very demanding.
• Give the rubric out earlier in the process so students had a clearer picture of the expectations.
• Give more demonstrations and examples of the successful criteria set out in the rubric.

Overall it was a very successful unit as students worked through a motivating subject overcoming relationship issues to produce a tangible and tasty product :+)

Has anyone else taught a similar unit? What worked well for the students/teaching in your unit?

Picture Authors:
http://www.chocolate-world.net/images/Chocolate.png