#189 Tools and Tips for Teachers: Episode 11 (with Ollie Lovell)
Apr 18, 2024
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Ollie Lovell, a passionate teacher and education consultant, shares invaluable insights into effective teaching strategies. He stresses the significance of choosing impactful examples for enhancing student engagement and understanding. The conversation delves into innovative methods like hands-up cold calling to foster inclusivity in discussions. They also touch on the importance of healthy eating habits with green smoothies, linking lifestyle choices to educational performance. Overall, the discussion underscores the need for thoughtful planning in teaching practices.
Selecting a variety of examples in lessons can significantly enhance student understanding and prevent misconceptions in mathematical concepts.
Employing hands-up cold calling encourages student engagement while providing insights into who may require additional support during instruction.
Building strong relationships between teachers and students is crucial for effective classroom management and fostering a sense of belonging.
Deep dives
Introducing ClassPad: A Revolution in Learning
ClassPad is a groundbreaking web-based emulator platform from Casio that greatly enhances the teaching and learning of mathematics. It features the ClassWiz emulator, allowing teachers to display calculators on a large screen, promoting a visual understanding of mathematical concepts. Beyond merely projecting calculators, it provides tools for generating graphs, exploring geometric shapes, and creating number lines, all on an infinite canvas. This interconnected approach enables students to visualize the relationships among different mathematical representations, fostering a deeper understanding of the subject.
The Power of Examples in Teaching
The selection of examples used in lessons plays a critical role in student learning and understanding. Teachers are encouraged to avoid relying solely on prototypical examples, which can lead to misconceptions, and instead use a variety of cases to illustrate concepts. It's advised to choose examples that focus on core concepts without introducing unnecessary variables that could distract students. By doing so, teachers can help students solidify their understanding and apply it to a wider range of problems.
Hands-Up Cold Call: Encouraging Participation
Hands-up cold calling is a teaching technique that prompts students to raise their hands when they feel confident in answering a question, creating a tangible atmosphere of engagement. This method not only allows teachers to gauge student participation, but also highlights those who may need additional support to engage with the material. Utilizing this approach encourages teachers to check for understanding actively and adjust their instructional strategies based on real-time feedback. By fostering an environment where all students feel invited to share their thoughts, it helps build a culture of learning and accountability in the classroom.
The Importance of Student-Teacher Relationships
A strong rapport between students and teachers is essential for effective classroom management and learning. School leaders and teachers alike must prioritize building relationships to ensure that students understand the purpose behind behavior systems and classroom expectations. This relational aspect of teaching fosters a sense of belonging among students, encouraging them to engage more fully. By investing time in connecting with students, teachers create an environment where students feel valued and motivated to learn.
Time Management in Teaching: Prioritizing Understanding
Teachers often face the challenge of balancing time spent on questions their students already understand and those that need more focus. Many educators mistakenly spend too long reinforcing known concepts instead of allocating that time to areas where students struggle. By now utilizing mini whiteboards to assess student understanding quickly, teachers can make more informed decisions about how to direct their time. Acknowledging and addressing this opportunity cost improves lesson effectiveness and ensures that all students advance in their learning.
In this conversation, Craig Barton and Ollie Lovell discuss various teaching strategies and approaches. They cover topics such as the importance of choosing effective examples, the benefits of using green smoothies for breakfast, and the concept of hands-up cold call. They also explore the idea of starting with general examples instead of easy specific cases, and how this can improve student understanding and engagement. Overall, the conversation highlights the importance of thoughtful planning and effective teaching practices. Teachers often spend too much time on questions where understanding is secure and not enough time on questions where understanding is not secure. This can be a result of relying on cold call or hands up instead of using mini whiteboards to assess understanding. It can also stem from a desire to probe further and ensure complete understanding, even when the majority of students have already grasped the concept. This can lead to a missed opportunity to address areas of struggle and allocate time more effectively.