How many times have you had a great idea – done the “time” maths on that and decided to be practical and do your best with what you have because you cannot justify the time spent creating exciting new tasks against the small ( but undoubtedly highly effective) outcome?
As a teacher for many years in junior or prep classes – I often would spend hours …firstly developing concepts, tweaking, organizing them into manageable packages and then sharing those inspired tasks ……to have them mastered in 10 minutes!
Effective? – yes – the children mastered them.
Creative? – yes – the children loved them.
Outcomes? – certainly – the children achieved well
BUT
Time management? Well – there’s another story!!!!
Perhaps the children may not have been as engaged but most would probably have achieved as well had I presented a less inspired lesson – a less teacher time consuming lesson!
It’s a dilemma, isn’t it?
As a teacher for over 30 years I decided to provide some practical, hands on solutions to a few of the issues ALL teachers seem to have.
My passion, both as a teacher and an individual, is reading.
I see the ability to read as being core to any learning. In fact, John Hattie, a leading NZ educational researcher has just published a book called Visible Learning, where he synthesized over 50,000 studies related to student achievement. One of his key findings was that repeated reading programmes had a significant impact on student performance.….so its not just my gut feeling over 30+ years in class – there is evidence to back my teacher instincts!
Teachers have taught reading over time in a myriad of fashions with a diverse range of tools…. BUT the age old problem of being ideas rich and time poor – is a massive barrier to our being as effective as we would like.
Nowadays there are so many resources available online – shared by some wonderfully enthusiastic teachers
SO
You can spend the hours that in the past you spent creating – trawling through the volumes to find that one that
- is of the quality you want
- targets the child’s exact needs
- will achieve another of John Hattie’s high impact, evidence based strategies… the inclusion of metacognitive skills.
This ‘lack of time but need for quality is one of the teacher needs that inspired me to create my business Read Think Learn:
Capturing the creativity, learning needs and critical thinking into one metacognitive package delivered in a variety of resource types – in an organized way that is readily accessible online….. addressing, above all, the ‘time poor’ aspect of every teacher’s life!
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