Category Archives: plan

TEACH: Joining the dots – approaches, assessments, evaluation

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Joining the dots

In real life, a lot of your planning happens in your head. Sometimes this is explicit. In other words, you’re aware of what you’re doing as you go about planning how you will teach something.

At other times, your planning process might be much less explicit. Planning is a bit like literacy and numeracy. It’s there, but sometimes it’s just not visible.

Because this is a professional development programme for tutors and teachers, we need you to have a go at making it a bit more explicit and visible for us. Otherwise, we (and you) can’t actually see what’s going on.

This brings us to one final part of the planning process. We’ve dealt with lesson planning, activities and resources. And to finish things off we’d like you to make it clear in your assessment how you’re planning three other aspects of your teaching.

These including how you are planning to:

  • Use some of the approaches and concepts we discussed earlier.
  • Assess learner progress for literacy and numeracy.
  • Evaluate the work that you’ve been doing in this project as a whole.

Let’s take each of these in turn. There’s a worksheet you can download to take notes in as you go. You don’t have to use it. As always, it’s just there if it helps you move things forward.

What approaches am I planning to use?

In Collection 2, we looked a range of approaches and concepts from both mainstream education and Te Ao Māori.

What we need you to do next is tell us how you plan on using some of these to help you teach in a way that is more learner-centred. At the moment, it’s just planning. But later, you’ll need to reflect on how it went.

You can pick any approaches that you like. Also, you may want to refer back to what you wrote in your Assessment 2 for this course. It’s normal if your thinking has changed or shifted around.

But if you not sure on what to pick, we can recommend these two for maximum effect:

  • Ako
  • Tuakana-teina

You need to write about at least two approaches or concepts that you’re planning on using.

How will I assess learner progress for literacy and numeracy?

We think you should tackle this in two different ways. These are

  • Planning to measure learner progress after the teaching sessions are finished by reusing the contextualised assessments that you developed earlier to give clear before and after scores.
  • Experimenting with a collaborative assessment. In other words, planning to get the group to assess themselves as a group.

Let’s look at each of these as well.

Reusing your contextualised assessments for literacy and numeracy

Unless there has been some major change to your circumstances, you should be able to just re-use your contextualised assessments for literacy and numeracy.

Refer back to the work that you did in Collection 5. It might be a simple as just reusing your pre-tests here as post-tests. If that’s it, then just tell us what you’re doing.

If it’s become a bit more complicated, then you should let us know what’s going on. If you can’t reuse your contextualised assessments we probably need to have a chat and figure out a way to keep moving forward. Just get in touch.

Doing some kind of collaborative assessment with the group

Group collaborative assessment is when two or more learners attempt to assess some aspect or aspects of their own learning together. In other words, the focus in a collaborative assessment is on what the group thinks they have learned.

We have a worksheet you can use or adapt here for trying a collaborative approach if it’s new to you.

Everything that you’re planning here for assessment is going to pop up again in the final assessment. Assessment 7 is where you’ll report on the post-test data.

How are you going to evaluate this project?

Here we’re talking about the whole package deal across the work you did in Collection 5, but also the teaching that you’re planning here.

You should plan to do some kind of short evaluation with your learners when the teaching part is finished. If it’s appropriate, it might be better if you arrange a colleague to come and do this for you. We’ll give you some examples of what this might look like in Collection 7.

You’re going to need three different kinds of evaluation data for the final assessment. This includes from your learners, from your supervisor and your own reflections.

It’s good to plan how you’re going to gather this now learner evaluation data now.

TEACH: Planning your resources

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By now you should have a clear idea of the kinds of resources you need to support your activities. If you know what you’re doing, then make sure that you’ve downloaded Assessment template 6. Please do add a few brief notes there about what you’re planning.

If you’re unsure about what resources you need or you just want to take some notes, you can download the worksheet below. This is not assessed, but you can use it to record what you’re thinking.

Alternatively, discuss the prompts from the worksheet with a colleague or coworker. Sometimes thinking works better when you’re writing or talking.

Literacy

  • I could design a set of cards for matching up words and definitions that relates to…
  • I could extend this with a resource for…
  • One of the texts my learners struggle to read and understand is…
  • I could create a set of comprehension questions for…
  • What If I made a game that…
  • Another idea could be…

Numeracy

  • I could use the Place Value charts with my learners to…
  • I could follow up this work with..
  • I could use the Hundreds Grids to…
  • And I could follow that up with…
  • What if I made a game for…
  • Another idea I’ve been thinking about is…

TEACH: Numeracy resources – Hundreds grid

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This is a blank Hundreds Grid. Again, it’s a resource that would lend itself to a wide range of numeracy activities.

Here are some ideas for activities using the Hundreds Grid. You could use it for:

  • Developing a visual understanding of basic fractions including half, quarters and three-quarters.
  • Developing an understanding of the link from basic fractions to more complex fractions and percentages.
  • Developing an understanding of decimal numbers and how they relate to percentages and fractions.

How else could you use or build from this resource?

TEACH: Numeracy resources – Place Value Chart

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This is a blank place value chart that you can print and use for a wide range of different activities. We think that you should really have a giant one of these across the top of your whiteboard. But this is a handy size that you can print and use with learners anywhere and anytime.

Here are some ideas of activities developing or practising place value. Use the place value chart for:

  • Showing how the place of the number determines its value.
  • Any calculations, but especially involving big numbers or really small numbers including decimals.
  • Showing how numbers shift left or right depending on whether they are multiplied or divided by 10, 100, 1000
  • Doing conversions within a system, such as from millimetres to metres for metric measurement.

You can refer back to the example we used earlier for planning a numeracy activity. This used a place value chart. Also, you can refer to any of the place value activities in the Learning Progressions. This resource would work with any and all of them.

How else could you use or build from this resource?

TEACH: Literacy Resources – Types of questions you can ask for reading comprehension activities

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This is a set of different kinds of questions for creating reading comprehension activities. You can use this as your own resource for developing different kinds of questions for any text that your learners need to read and understand.

Here are some ideas for different reading comprehension activities that you could develop depending on your learning outcome.

Use the list of question types to help you write reading comprehension questions that ask your learners to:

  • Identify something. E.g. “What year was the company started?”, “Which person has only one item of the list?”.
  • Fill in a gap or complete a sentence. E.g. ““New graduates must…”, “The aim of the study was too…”, “The purpose of this notice is to…”
  • Choose from multiple choice answers. E.g. Choose from one of four possible answers.
  • Choose from a forced choice. E.g. Choose whether something is true or false, correct or incorrect, or answer yes or no.
  • Underline or circle something in the text they are reading.

And then if you want to use the same list of question types to push yourself and your learners, you’ll need to distinguish between the following kinds of questions:

  • Inferencing required to answer. This means “reading between the lines” a little.
  • The answer stated explicitly. No inferencing required.

Inferencing is what you do when you can’t get the answer directly from the text. You have to “read between the lines” to get the answer or draw your conclusion. In other words, you have to infer an answer when understanding something that is not stated explicitly in the text.

Learners who can answer inferencing questions are usually at or above step 5 in the Learning Progressions for comprehension and reading critically. This is also often the way to tell who is a good reader and who is not.

When you’re designing a sequence of activities, you can consider how you want to make them easier or harder by using (or not using) inferencing questions.

How else could you use or build from this resource?

 

TEACH: Literacy resources – Word and definition matching cards

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Word and definition matching cards

These are cards for matching up terms and definitions. Use the template for your own purposes by adding words from your programme (e.g. technical jargon or high-frequency words) on one side, and plain English explanations on the other side.

Here are some ideas for different activities that you could develop depending on your learning outcome:

  • Match up the words with the definitions. This activity changes depending on whether a learner did the match-up on their own, with a partner, in a small group or as part of a whole class discussion activity.
  • Use the cards to play a memory game in which all of the cards are laid face down on the table and two cards are flipped face up in each turn. The object of the game is to make matching pairs. Again, learners can play this alone (like Solitaire), or in pairs or groups depending on the number of cards and the level of difficulty.
  • Create a third set of cards with either pictures that explain the words, or an example sentence showing how it’s used in context.
  • Learners use the words and plain-English explanations to create crosswords, word finds and customised glossaries to practice using the words and develop their understanding.

How else could you use or build from this resource?

TEACH: What about resources for embedding literacy and numeracy?

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Depending on what kind of literacy and numeracy activities you are planning, you may need to find, create or adapt some resources. This might include any of the following:

  • Worksheets
  • Handouts
  • Posters or visuals
  • Sets of cards, for example with vocabulary or pictures
  • Games

Another kind of resource includes things that people need to use so they can learn or think while they’re using whatever it is. In maths education, these kinds of resources are called “manipulatives”. These are things that you might need to use or play with while you’re learning or practising concepts.

In maths education, these kinds of resources are called “manipulatives”. These are things that you might need to use or play with while you’re learning or practising something.

For example:

  • Cutting lengths of string for developing an understanding of estimation and measurement.
  • Putting together squares for developing an understanding of area.
  • Stacking up cubes for developing an understanding of volume.
  • Ripping up strips of paper for developing an understanding of fractions.

One of the main things to remember is that whatever your resources are, they need to flow out of your learning outcomes. And these, of course, need to flow out of all of the thinking that sits behind your learning outcomes. This includes knowing the demands of your training and the needs of your learners.

One of the mistakes some tutors make is that someone gives them a resource for literacy and numeracy, but it doesn’t actually flow out of their understanding of what’s needed for their learners and their teaching. They use the resource without thinking about how it really fits with their learners or programme. And this leads to a fragmented approach to embedding literacy and numeracy where it’s “bolted on” rather than “built in”.

We’re going to point you to some examples of different kinds of resources you might want to use or adapt. But first, we need to give you an example of how these get used poorly.

Here’s a common professional development scenario…

You attend a professional development workshop with an expert on literacy or numeracy. It’s fun and exciting. But what you want is activities and resources you can use right now. So the workshop presenter gives you resources and activities which you take back and try to use. Some of them work and some of the don’t. Life carries on as usual.

That’s not what we want here. We want you to see permanent changes to your teaching practice. For this to happen, your own understanding and beliefs need to change.

Any professional development you do now related to literacy and numeracy needs to inform what you already do and know – your growing expertise.

And it needs to fit within the larger framework that we’ve been working with for embedding. This includes the broad content areas for embedding literacy and numeracy that we’ve been discussing.

For example:

  1. CONTEXT: You know what literacy and numeracy are. You should have a good idea now of what kinds of skills and knowledge are already embedded into the content and context that you teach. For any given activity or resource, you should be able to work out if it fits you and your learners.
  2. APPROACHES: You know what teaching approaches and concepts are going to contribute to making this work with your learners. If someone gives you a resource to use, you should trust your judgement as to whether it’s going to feel like it’s “built in” or “bolted on”.
  3. DEMANDS: You have in-depth knowledge of what the literacy and numeracy demands are for your training. If someone gives you a resource to use, even if it seems really interesting, you don’t need to use it if it doesn’t help you target key demands that you’ve already identified.
  4. STRATEGIES: You’ve spent time thinking about what your overall strategies are for embedding literacy and numeracy into your programme. You can use this knowledge to make judgement calls about resources and activities. If they don’t line up with your vision and strategies for embedding, then they don’t fit. Just park them and come back to them later.
  5. BEFORE: You’ve experimented with different kinds of diagnostic assessments. And you’ve mapped your learners. This means that as well as knowing what key demands are for your programme, you know broad and specific needs that your learners have. Let this guide your decisions about which resources are useful. You’re the expert now.

With those thoughts to guide you, we do want to look at some resources. Feel free to adapt them however you like. Or use them as inspiration for your own ideas.

Some of these resources come from graduates of this course. Others come from the Learning Progressions.