Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning
Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a major educational trend, as schools push to engage student and improve educational outcomes. While a lot can be said about the concept and place of PBL in contemporary schools, it is important to understand how to create, implement and assess it within the classroom. Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning: A Proven Approach to Rigorous Classroom Instruction (Larmer, Mergendoller & Boss, ASCD 2015) attempts to do just that, both from a leadership and practitioner's level.
Placing Students on a Literacy Continuum
Over the course of Term 1 in my Professional Learning Team (PLT) at school, we have been analysing the writing skills of (all) the students in Year 7-10. This has been an intensive task, where we have had to analyse up to a hundred pieces of writing each, identify key components in the writing, plot these key components on a literacy continuum, and then identify the overall cluster that the student would belong in.
Literacy Continuum in Mathematics
As part of the PLT (Professional Learning Teams) at Parramatta Marist we are exploring identifying where students sit on the NSW DEC Literacy Continuum.
Pythagoras Proof Worksheet
My favourite proof of Pythagoras' Theorem is this one, for the simple fact that the maths required to understand it is as basic as possible, and the constructions requires only two cuts. With this worksheet students can see that, no matter the dimensions, the theorem stays true.