As educators, we often refer to ‘Wait Time’ as the time between when you ask a question and when you expect an answer. Cast out a question to your class and if you don’t provide wait time, then when the first student begins to answer (takes a bite), all your other students are ‘off the […]
Tag: questioning
Training and Coaching
I’m at my daughter’s synchronized swimming Provincials. She just finished her combo routine and there is over an hour wait for her Team routine. Having trained for water polo just one pool bulkhead away from National level synchronized swimmers, I’ve always had high regard for their athleticism. With my daughter training 22+ hours a week […]
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Shifting Learning – Presentation for RSCON4
Shifting Learning – What Did You Learn At School Today? We hear a lot these days about project based learning, inquiry based learning, etc… What does that mean? What does it look like when schools shift away from “drill and kill” learning towards big ideas, questions, and “no right answer” kind of learning? And what […]
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Still the same conversation
If we are asking the question “Do we need to change?” then we are not yet changing and adapting to the conditions that made us ask the question. It is a paradigm shift to move beyond the question of need, recognize necessity, and act in a proactive rather than reactive way. We can keep having […]
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7 Ways to Transform Your Classroom
I’m honoured to have been invited as a guest on Classroom 2.0 Live this Saturday morning, September 29th, 2012. I joined the Classroom2.0 Ning back in 2007, and I think it is a wonderful network to help new and seasoned teachers engage in a meaningful social network. [UPDATE: Here are audio & video recordings of […]
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Truly Questioning Everything
Yesterday I read a great post by Ira Socol: Question Everything. I love the Boeing 787 story, and the Guardian newspaper video commercial is one of those self-explanatory examples that I just know I’ll use in the future. Ira reminded me of my post: Question Everything that I wrote, while still in China, to start […]
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Slowly By Slowly
A while back I read a great article that I found in the December 2007- January 2008 edition of Focus on Dalian, “Slowly By Slowly” by Rob Giebitz. This was the first piece Rob wrote for his monthly column, ‘The eXpat Manager’. The article starts: “I first heard this phrase from our Chinese production manager. […]
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Question EVERYTHING!
Bruce Wellman said in a recent comment, “Mental models organized by an entrenched image of what teaching is will stay firmly in place until we move the conversation to an intense focus on learning… At this point, we appear to have a 19th century curriculum, 20th century buildings and organizations and 21st century students facing […]
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Parents as partners
I firmly believe that “It takes a community to raise a child” and so without cooperation and communication between a school and their parent community, ‘we’ cannot fully support our children and their learning. That said, I often wonder about how we can more meaningfully engage parents in a way that they want to be […]
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Promoting a Spirit of Inquiry
Introduction I have just spent my 2nd of 3 days with Bruce Wellman of Mira Via in a Pro-D session tittled Developing & Facilitating Collaborative Groups. The first session had a focus on facilitating groups and my personal learning focus centered around two main ideas: 1. Being deliberate about when we use Discussion and when […]
