Welcome


My interest in the idea of sharing pedagogical purposes comes directly with the contact I have had with the Project for Enhancing Effective Learning at Monash University in Australia. Now each of these teachers were very active in establishing learning agendas with their classes. The impact they were having was inspiring. Each classroom tool can have a purpose beyond delivering content, and this needs to be shared.
I suppose the purpose of this website is collate, crystalise and open dialogues about how to increase this within classrooms. As the quote from Carl Bereiter illustrates this classroom methodology can empower our students.

Wednesday 17 July 2019

How good am I at explaining?

As teachers, our audience, our students can be a great source of feedback upon our craft. They see you teach more than you do. So one way to develop our ability to explain things well is not only in their understanding of the subject, but also in identifying what aspect(s) we need to improve upon. This may be a structural, signalling, clarity or supportive feature of your communication. Further details can be read here and here and here.

These features are broken down in the following student voice survey. As always I worry that a checklist in the wrong hands turns into a management tool, and that is not the intention here. So if anyone tries tell them to do one. This is a professional reflection tool, for teachers to check their own classroom practice on their own or with some feedback from their classes.
A downloadable version can be found here.

My teacher...
Always
Mostly
Sometimes
Rarely 
Never
explanations are clear and understandable





goes at the right speed





teacher makes clear points





teacher loses track of what they are saying





teacher says urr, um, em during their explanations





teachers explanations emphasise important ideas





explanations contain extra, unhelpful, statements





Explanations review or summarise  key ideas





Makes mistakes when explaining





Finish the explanation





Build up/ breakdown complex ideas into chunks. 





Remind me of what we have already studied





link ideas together





Make clear what they are about to explain





Make useful notes on the board





Point/ highlight key parts of diagrams or idea on the whiteboard





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