First Teacher Ollie’s takeaways in a while… Trying to get back on the horse!

I hope you enjoy this instalment : )

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Shaping a maths department’s philosophy and consistency, via @greg_ashman

Greg Ashman recently presented at the ResearchEd conference on a model of explicit teaching in the maths classroom. I had two main takeaways from his presentation.

First is the reading list of what he has stuff read when they first come into the maths department:

I think that the idea of assigning readings when a new teacher joins your team is a fantastic idea, and an excellent way to communicate the teaching and learning philosophy of your department.

The second takeaway for me was the way in which Greg and his team promote consistency of instruction. This is a great idea, watch the video from 34:57 via this link to find out how Greg does it.

Or watch the whole presentation from the start here.

Top tips for designing good writing assessments, via @JudithCHochman and @natwexler

Judy Hochman and Natalie Wexler are absolute leaders in the writing instruction space around the world. My podcast discussions with each of them (Judy here and Natalie here) are two of the most popular episodes of the ERRR podcast.

In this brief white paper, Judy and Natalie provide a series of top tips for designing writing assessments. These include what kind of prompts you can and should use (with some great examples given also), as well as what we should be assessing students’ writing based upon (and how frequently to do it!).

Read the top tips here.

Coaching novice teachers, via @adamboxer1

This is an excellent article by Tom Sherrington on giving feedback to beginning teachers based upon lesson observations. Here are some of my takeaways. Firstly, provide feedback on repeatable things, i.e., things that have an impact upon multiple lessons rather than feedback specific to just that lesson that you just watched.

Secondly, follow the waterfall. From Adam:

When observing a lesson, don’t plan to watch the whole thing. Go at the start of the lesson and watch until you see something that the novice could have done better. Wait another minute or two to see what the outcome of that was, then leave. You don’t need to see any more of the lesson. Bambrick-Santoyo uses the phrase “waterfall” to describe approaches like this, where you start at the top and work your way down (1) (Note that you can also do this by video instead of going in person).

There is MUCH more excellent advice in the blog post about coaching than I have space to summarise here. If you’re working in the coaching space, I highly recommend that you check it out!

How to build a coherent curriculum, by @RobmMrchetto and @Smithre5

Clarendon College in Ballarat is known for their excellent knowledge-rich curriculum. In this blog post, Rob Marchetto summarises a presentation by Reid Smith on the topic. Their curriculum is founded on four key ideas:

• • Knowledge provides a driving, underpinning philosophy.
  • The knowledge content is specified in detail.
  • Knowledge is taught to be remembered, not merely encountered.
    
  • Knowledge is sequenced and mapped deliberately and coherently.

If you’re interested in building a coherent curriculum, you might like to check out the post!

What makes effective Professional Development, by @teacherhead

The following is an excerpt from my summary of the ERRR Podcast episode with Tom Sherrington. Each month, supporters of the ERRR podcast receive a summary of my key takeaways from the episode. Find out more here.

In response to the question, ‘What’s the most important thing for establishing effective professional development for teachers?’, Tom provided the following advice…

You need to have an overall structure for the system! There needs to be a rhythm to it, and all the pieces need to form a part of an overall framework. I suggested that perhaps CPD can be effectively thought of as designing a ‘curriculum’ of professional development.

It’s also valuable to have layers of teams: Whole school, subject departments, then triads within these, who can support each other and reflect/review.

When there’s an overall structure, teachers can see what you’re moving towards over time, and can understand the big picture of why this PD matters and makes sense.

Another key thing on the CPD front is to lock your CPD sessions into the school calendar at the very start of the year. This provides you a rhythm and schedule to plan to, and reflects the high priority that teacher development should take.

See more of Tom’s recent insights on effective CPD here (some really great blog posts here, well worth checking out).

Incredible list of youtubers for effective online learning, via the son of @mrmoneymustache

I love the work and writings of Mr. Money Mustache. He advocates for a life of financial independence and stripping back life to what truly makes it great rather than getting caught up in the rat race and just following the crowd. Even better, he provides practical advice regarding how to get there (start here to find out more).

It seems that this independent streak has rubbed off, as his 15 year old son has recently decided to quit school and educate himself. I highly recommend reading about this transition here, and watching his son’s youtube video on his decision here.

In the blog post about the decision, Mr. Money Mustache shares a list of fantastic online learning resources, collated by him and his son together. I wanted to share this because it’s just a fantastic list of youtube channels that absolutely anyone could get into! (I’ll add my own channel to this one… For poetry, check out Tim McGee, and you might like to start with this video!)

General Science

• Vsauce (which has grown to include Vsauce2 and Vsauce3)
• Physics Girl – fun to watch explorations of a wide range of real-world physics and science things
• Thought Emporium – gene editing through both chemical methods and DNA 3-d printers! And art too
• Scott Manley – a charming Scottish Astrophysicist / Apple engineer with hundreds of great videos on the Kerbal Space Program simulation game, plus now detailed coverage on space and astrophysics
• Anton Petrov – daily videos on new discoveries in science (and a fun look at current events from a science perspective too)
• Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell – short but intelligent summaries of all sorts of neat things, featuring a dynamic British narrator and fun cartoony graphics
• Deep Dive – a relatively new but very promising channel with great big-issue science videos. We are hoping they put out more!
• Stratzenblitz75 – Kerbal Space program videos with nice lessons on the science behind them (like orbital mechanics)
• Wendover Productions – neat explanations of wide-ranging things (including transportation logistics!)

Inventions and Building Stuff

• Colin Furze – crazy, energetic, brilliant videos about building things like a home-made hoverbike, two story bicycle, giant mech robot suit
• Simone Giertz – a super clever and witty engineer/builder, perhaps most famous for her DIY conversion of a Tesla model 3 into a badass mini pickup truck
• Wintergatan – a hauntingly genius, gentle dude in Sweden who works on a beautiful “marble machine” musical instrument and so many other things. Awesome musician too!
• Mark Rober – a former Nasa engineer who now makes really fun videos about his complicated and whimsical inventions (best known for the “glitter bomb” anti-theft devices)
• Styropyro – guy who makes crazy powerful lasers, etc

Video creation, 3D Animation and Youtubing Strategy

• Lazy Tutorials – Ian Huber teaches you 3-D animation with Blender at the speed of thought. He also maintains the Default Cube channel.
• Blender Guru – personable, easy to watch, in-depth blender tutorials
• CG Matter – fast, advanced Blender tutorials
• CG Geek – longer, more detailed Blender tutorials
• Captain Disillusion – video editing and special effects, this man puts a lot of work into each of his super-entertaining videos
• Daniel Krafft – useful blender tips and tutorials
• Iridesium – tutorials on how to create movie-quality special effects in Blender

Coding and Artificial Intelligence

• Two Minute Papers (AI) – super smart guy summarizes academic papers in the Artificial Intelligence field in a really interesting and easy to understand way, with visual examples
• Code Bullet (AI) – software developer incorporates machine learning/AI into his own code and demonstrates the results in a wide variety of contexts
• Carykh – AI and building some interesting apps including the famous “size of the universe” interactive
• Sebastian Lague – the Bob Ross of coding, this young gentleman walks us peacefully through a fun series of iterative improvements on a variety of advanced programming projects
• CodeParade – great bits of coding, math, and graphics combined

Math

• Vi Hart – the original “Mathemusician”, Vi’s soulfully brilliant explanations of math concepts are great for small kids and adults alike
• Zach Star – math puzzles and other interesting stuff
• Numberphile – another fun math channel, sometimes with fun visuals and special guest experts

History, English, Etc.

• Tom Scott – linguistics and various travel and geography stories
• History of the Earth – the History Brothers cover multimillion year periods of our planet’s history
• Half as Interesting – light-hearted tidbits of English history and other things

Music

• Andrew Huang – so clever, so energetic, so talented, and teaches you SO much about music! (his own songs are great too, as are his youtube buddies)
• Roomie Official – fun to watch, educational, and a ridiculously good and versatile singer
• Davie504 – an amazing bass player, and fellow bass enthusiasts might learn a few things too
• Adam Neely – fantastic music theory and neat analysis of existing stuff
• AU5 – one of my favorite emerging electronic music artists, who also teaches you how to make the stuff in Ableton and related tools