Thinking about learning

 Students don't want to listen to a teacher talking for an hour. They would like to interact and hand on activities are great. Tie die and the  Maths road show is one way to make the students engaged and be involved. Mathhex is a great way to create activity and involvement inn the class Students work in groups and running around. Robotics and coding can create similar experiences.. Go out  and measure and count cars and doing survey is a great way to get away from the computer  Kahoots  and Soctative is another way to get engagement if it is not used to frequently.Whiteboards  is very use-full in small groups.  Using Maths games is good, but I found when thinking is involved students quickly change to the shooting  and chasing games instead of doing maths in a maths games. The more fun students have the more  they will be involved and learning will happen.

 Making lessons  more interesting is one way to motivate students. One way to do this use info graphics . It is more visual than documents and engage students more. Better yet, if they can create infographics. Statistics lend itself to this. One way to do this is using applications  on the internet.  We did a workshop and this is one infographic that I created. The workshop was very informative and we will use it more in the future to motivate the students Another application we learned about in another workshop is about flippely. You can create digital flashcards for you students. Better yet, they can create and share their own games and it with their class students. here is one about percentages that I created to motivate the students

Google Calendar Daily planning is done on Google Calendars. The lesson is written out and links provided. Students who are absent can work from Home . This replace the Black Daily planner. My Google calendar has been up to date and complete. for the last three years. This is linked to my website and is visible. My personal calendar was visible. I was asked to make every year group visible only for that year group . When  I link the individual year groups on my site , you can see them but it was not visible to the outside world.  I went online and got help. I was told to create new calendars and this time it worked.... for a while. Then  it stopped. At home alone I suddenly miss been at school where it will be easy to collaborate and repair the technical problem with colleges. I relinked the calanders again and again. It is showing in the website but is not visible to the outside world.  Even when all the public buttons were activated Eventually , I contact an...

Competition bring the best out of people.Small in class competitions create excitement and engagement. Kahoots and Socrative is very popular and teams compete agains each other In a mix ability class it is important to make the make the teams even. Mat-hex is another good chance  to create competition. The algebra substitution boardgames was very popular running competition in a small format. The biggest and best competition was the Education perfect Burgerfuel competition. this really motivated the students 

Ako- Building good relationships  This is important to create positive learning environment. However, when students are not working, off task , unmotivated and disruptive is very difficult to be  keep good relationships. When you start threatening , yelling and pushing to hard, you will lose the good relationships and they will never learn.  This is the time to encourage and support and motivate  students more than ever. They must know and feel that they are important and that you care. Once you build a good relationship  and they trust you they might be more willing to try  to achieve. There are many ways to create a positive learning environment.You can stand at the door and greet each one. Then  use their names properly. set routine and celebrating success. Pan for gold and don't dig for dirt. work on the positive and celebrate small successes. Teach culturally---acknowledge where they came from and use Maori or Tongan words and frases in the cla...