Jellybean Scoop (yum)

This service combines some of my favourite things for students - News and Writing.

Games for review /revision activities

This site has loads of great ideas, some that can be modified to suit your topic.

ESL Links for Learning

Some great links for ESL lessons and learning

1. 5 ways to support Vocabulary Learning
2. Ninja dictionary
3. ESL Library
4. ESL flashcards

Happy learning :)

Malaysia Boleh

I haven't blogged since I arrived in Johor Bahru in May this year so I thought it was time to get 'back on the blog'.
I am very privileged to be working here as an Education Advisor contracted through a company called LeapEd, to the Malaysian Government.  We are working on a transformation project in government schools called Trust Schools.  To meet accreditation in Year 5 of the programme these schools must meet certain standards across a range of criteria.
The biggest shift is in the Teaching and Learning in these schools and some teachers have come a very long way on an amazing journey. To that end some of the biggest challenges are to meet the AfL and differentiation criteria.
At the highest level this means students need to have far more autonomy and be able to set their own goals, using strategies that suit them and their individual learning styles. To support teachers in doing this it is essential they understand the development and progression of students across the range of skills in their curriculum area. So (or 'jadi' in Malay) to that end I am currently working with a group of teachers in the two schools where I am based to encourage teachers - and ultimately students, to be clear about next steps in learning.
I have found some amazing resources on pinterest and will attach one example with some other links here.

From Pinterest

Grade 5 LearningTargets
Young Teacher Love
How to Write Learning Targets
Learning Targets Images & Examples

Teach with contests website for teachers

Could be some good motivation for your learners on this site - a range of 'doable' contests

Woz

I love this post about one of the inspirational people of our time - it reminds me a lot of why I want to still be a classroom teacher. Why do I love it? This is all about the joys and frustration of ‘teaching’ - the student you would love to have in your class but struggle to help him get credits and always having to defend him against the ‘management/admin’ side of things! Bring them on - I want classes full of these dudes to keep inspiring and challenging me!

Social media in learning

An interesting 'comment' about social media and learning - thanks to Will Richardson for alerting me to this

Two great articles from EdWeekly

There are two blogs here that are both worthy of reading
“MUST read EdWeek article by Alfie Kohn - It not about the teaching-it about the learning! http://tinyurl.com/596osp”2:16 pm - Comment“Teachers helping teachers integrate technology into their classrooms - http://tinyurl.com/6hk3ns”

Creating a product

Today I am working on a flowgram of step by step instructions for learners to create their own multi-media product. I have decided to go with flowgram because I realise that I enjoy having the audio aspect to instructions for anything I am doing, so this must be the case for lots of my students as well. It involves time, and quite a bit of nervousness so I am hopeful there will be a payoff in student engagement - fingers crossed that they all get into it like the 11 year old student here!
I am convinced that because they will be creating something rather than being expected to soak up more fabricated 'learning' there will be a bit of a buzz. Speaking of buzz, it was great today to collaborate with Allanah King on a buzzword document I had created as part of these instructions.

Lisa's notes

I enjoyed reading these - Lisa Huff's eduplan wiki notes on what 21st Century Learning 'is not'.  I would like to add to this too - I am absolutely 100% positive that it is also NOT about what is in student's exercise books. This brings me to thinking about the definition of an exercise book - all suggestions and contributions to this discussion are welcome (particularly in light of the fact that my competence as a teacher it now seems could be judged on what is in my students' exercise books - I would have thought it was what was going in their brains that mattered)!

Let's start with this one as an example - any thoughts?

"A booklet for students, containing either problems and exercises or blank pages for writing answers"