Homework - The Age Old Frustration!

Don't know about you, but homework seems to generate some of the biggest debates and most regular issues within schools. I have just been reading an article called "5 Hallmarks of Good Homework" by Cathy Vatterott [http://ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept10/vol68/num01/Five-Hallmarks-of-Good-Homework.aspx]

The article identifies 5 fundamental characteristics of effective homework...

1. Purposeful
   Everyone should be clear about the academic purpose of homework. Is it to provide practice, develop understanding or apply knowledge and skills?
2. Efficiency
   Are the tasks begin set efficient in the amount of time they take versus the evidence of learning they show?
3. Ownership
   We need to generate "a personal relationship between the student and the content". We need to be giving them choices and relevance in their homework.
4. Competence
   One-size-fits-all homework does not reflect the different competencies within a class. Students need to be able to complete homework independently. therefore consideration needs to be given to quantity of homework as well as the structure within homework.
5. Aesthetic Appeal
   How homework looks is important. It needs to be inviting.

We as a staff have reflected this year on homework, it's purpose and guidelines for it's implementation. One key area we have identified is the need to make home work timebound rather than quantity bound.

So what are your thoughts on homework? Have a say!

Insights for Success

I have just finished reading an article in the latest Educational Leadership Magazine, Leaving Nothing to Chance by Karin Chenoweth. The article explores what lessons can be learned by leaders of what can be classed as 'challenging' schools who have raised student achievement.

The starting point has to be the quality of the leadership of the school.

From here the author identified five common traits or lessons...

• It's everyone's job to run the school.
  We need to lift ourselves our of the mire of day-to-day crisis and trust others to deal with much of this. We need to set clear expectations that grow a shared ownership and commitment from all to be continually improving and involved in the decision making process.
  
  
• Inspect what you expect - and expect that all students will meet or exceed standards.
  Principals need to provide the critical eye over expectations. We need to be monitoring what we have set as important.
  
  
• Be relentlessly respectful - and respectfully relentless.
  We need to model the attitude and values we expect from others. Tolerance, respect coupled with high expectations.We need to set the professional expectation that all students will meet or exceed school expectations. Decisions are not made based on personal preferences, but rather on student achievement needs.
  
  
• Use student achievement data to evaluate decisions.
  Student achievement data needs to be used to either confirm or reconsider decisions.
  
  
• Do whatever it takes to make sure students learn.
  We need to be dynamic, creative and often adventurous in order to meet students learning needs. This won't always be popular.

School leaders must be guardians of their students' future, not of their staff members' happiness.

It is important that I understand what my role is. I am the students advocate, with the task of creating the conditions under which children will learn.

SHARED LEADERSHIP - Your decision, our decision, my decision!

I was reading an article, "The Lure of Consensus" in the latest Educational Leadership magazine. [www.ascd.org] It was discussing the difficult we have as principal when it comes to keeping everyone happy. In reality, we can't. Our role will always contain a degree of confrontation and conflict. This is often a very draining part of our role. The article emphasised the following points...

• "Consensus is like lukewarm vanilla ice cream, with no sauce."
• It is important to make clear who is responsible for what decision making. There are your decisions [other party decides], our decisions [collaborative decisions] and my decisions [when we have to make the call].
• "Shared leadership doesn't mean principals abdicate making decisions; it does mean being thoughtful about who decides what."

So with a strong push for collaborative leadership, of which I am supportive, it is important to make sure it is understood who is responsible for what.

The following link provides some information of the Educational Leaders site.

http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Distributed-shared-leadership

Tyranny of the Urgent

Lee posed the question, “How many important things are going on around us that we don’t see because of the tyranny of the urgent?” Lee helped emphasis this point by showing us a video and asking us to count how many passes are made between the students wearing white shirts. Count the number of passes for yourself by clicking on the image below to take you to the YouTube video.

Now watch it again without counting passes and see if you notice anything else in your second watch. It was amazing how many people missed certain details the first time. What did you see?

It has made me consider how much I miss in the busy nature of my day. Also made me consider what am I looking for.

Understanding the Digital Connection

The first Key Note speaker at the ULearn Conference was Lee Crockett. You can find out more about him and the organisation he is connect with here and here. He was a dynamic and entertaining speaker who challenged us to consider the fact that we face a world on the move and therefore we face a different student.

Lee challenged us that we are currently in a temporary paradigm paralysis – a paralysis caused by learning and behaviours embedded throughout our life. We get comfortable with one way of doing things and don’t always consider that there is another way.

Our world is getting digitised at a phenomenal rate. He shared the following statistics from an american study…

In 2003 there was an estimated 5 exabyte’s of information on the net.
In 2009 there was an estimated 500 exabyte’s of information on the net. [It would take a stack of books all the way to Pluto 13 times over to hold this amount of information].

We were asked to consider what implications this digitalization progress has on the skills required by our children, our learners? Are we developing our students for this world?

This current generation has grown up in a world where an image on a screen is not for passive interaction but is to be engaged and interacted with. We face a different type of student.

Although todays kids look the same on the outside they look very different on the inside due to digital bombardment. They have hyperlinked mind. Their brains are pliable. Eyes process images 60,000 times faster than text.

Lee described our learners today as having a Digital Learners Learning Style. Research has shown that they prefer…

• Receiving quick releases of information from a range of sources.
• Parallel processing and multi-tasking.
• Processing pictures, sounds, colours and videos before text.
• Random access to hyper-linked multimedia info.
• Network simultaneously with many others.
• To learn just in time.
• Instant gratification and instance rewards.

It has challenged me to consider…

• How do I learn?
• Has my learning style changed in a digital world?
• What learning styles do our classrooms utilise?
• What gets measured at our school?

Le continually challenged us that we face a world on the move. We face a different student.

He commented that digital citizen requires…

• Solution fluency
• Creative fluency
• Information fluency
• Media fluency
• Collaboration fluency

You can access more information about this on the 21^st Century Fluency Project website.

I was challenged to consider what barriers I put on people within our learning community to match or relate to my learning style rather that considering how others learn best within a changing world.

It also refined my understanding of this generation of learners. They are not necessary lazy learners due to technology, rather more innovative learners through the use of technology.

Let me know your thoughts.

Who Learn? – ULearn!

I am currently attending the CORE-Education ULearn 2010 conference. It’s focus is on collaborate10, innovate and educate. I am not sure what to expect but will post my learning and thoughts as I go along.

http://www.core-ed.org/ulearn/