Reframing middle school units within the senior school pedagogical frameworks

Within the future senior education system are a range of conceptual and pedagogical frameworks that guide each subject. Overarching all syllabi is Marzano and Kendall's taxonomy of educational objectives. This means a refining of the use of cognitive verbs within middle school to ensure the language of cognition is purposely developed. Each syllabus includes a conceptual and / or pedagogical framework that underpins the subject. In the image on this post, you will see the framework from the Physical Education syllabus.

What I am intending to create are a range of introductory images / slides for each unit within my middle school program that outlines for teachers and students the "placement" of this unit within the syllabus framework, the specific cognitions students will be asked to demonstrate and how the syllabus framework will be interpreted within the unit.

In the image, based on a year 7 ball sports unit, the unit is represented as an interpretation of the Physical Education framework. Cognitive verbs are represented in color depending on the "level". Retrieval and comprehension are red, analysis are green, and knowledge utilisation are blue.

Across my middle school program, each unit will draw on either the Health syllabus or the Physical Education syllabus. And as such, a similar resource will be developed.

Do you think this will assist teachers and students to align middle school units with the senior programs?

2018 - Leading HPE in preparation for syllabus change

In 2019, the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority will implement an entirely new senior education system, including a complete suite of new subjects and a new assessment and grading system. This presents a challenge to high schools in 2018 to effectively prepare for the implementation.

Fortunately, the syllabi for the new suite of subjects has been released. We can therefore familiarise with the subject matter, pedagogical concepts and assessment practices. Preparing staff and students for these whilst maintaining our 7 - 10 Australian Curriculum and 11 - 12 current senior system will require purposeful planning.

What I intend to share through this blog is how I will lead my HPE faculty through 2018 in preparation for 2019. What is definite;

• all year 7 - 10 students will experience the new senior system when they get to year 11.
• even though few teachers will teach the new subjects next year, all teachers will have students this year that need some preparation
• enabling teachers to utilise subject matter in current units will provide opportunity for reflection and refinement in 2019
• enabling students to experience similar types of assessment that they will experience in year 11 will prepare them for the conditions they will experience
• Australian Curriculum, specifically the 5 propositions, develop students for the new system
• whole-scale curriculum change would not be fair to teachers or students

There are a number of actions already undertaken, and I will blog about each of these in future posts. 

Within my faculty I will be responsible for 3 of the new subjects in 2019;

• Health
• Physical Education
• Psychology

Psychology will present a specific challenge as it is a science based subject and therefore has not considered Australian Curriculum HPE in its development. At this stage the entirety of the impact on our middle school program that incorporating Psychology into our senior will have is unknown. Impact of new syllabi in Physical Education and Health is much more concrete.

Let's review week 1 (Sunday 3rd January)

This post starts a new habit I am trying to form, where I review my week at the end of each week throughout the year. Its part of a productivity push and in response to many readings where a weekly review is recommended. You can read more about that through a web search. So my plan is to reflect at the end of each week. These reflections will be posted here, simply for a place to store them and review over time. Feel free to read and comment if you can be bothered spending the time doing so.

Week 1:

Significant events - Lifesaving patrol 6 hours Saturday, Surf club (nippers) meeting 2 hours Thursday. Significant events are noted as they will either occupy a significant amount of time or result in tasks to be completed. Noting the significant events is a double up from my calendar but has allowed me to be realistic in what I can achieve during the week.

Goals achieved - Fix something. The fix for the week was a system to stop our dogs from pushing their food bowls off their "tables" when they eat. We use a raised surface to take strain off their necks while eating. This fix will hopefully result in less mess on the floor when they eat.

Goals not achieved - daily yoga (once), 4 cardio sessions (3), 2 strength sessions (none), 2 guitar sessions (none), reading for leisure daily (twice), learn something.

Insights - Having the plan has certainly enabled the review. I remember reading the reviews of another blogger a few years back and trying to implement a similar approach. What I had missed was the plan. The plan I am using has been developed from advice by my supervisors at work. Its an adaptation of a requirement for our faculty plans. If you have any interest you can see the plan template here.

I have been trying to break my dependence on coffee this week. I have done this successfully a couple of years ago so this time around the headaches are not as bad. It has affected my mood, with periods of feeling grumpy.

I also re-started tracking my nutrition for both energy balance and nutrient analysis. Not enough information here to see if there is any impact on my week yet.

Blogging as an exam - I deem it successful.

Each year, our Year 12 Health Education course completes a blog as an exam. The process is;

1. I provide a stimulus statement.
2. They respond to the statement.
3. They read each other's posts and challenge the arguments of their peers.
4. They choose one challenge on their post, and respond to that challenge.

Each year I am astounded by the work that they produce, and the engagement they show with the assessment process. Initially the public presentation of an assessment response causes some hesitation (and extra care) in their writing. However once we move to the phase where they can read each other's work and challenge their peers, the intellect really comes to the fore. The requirement to understand the argument of a peer and then challenge them on that argument can only occur through extensive knowledge of the concepts represented in the stimulus statement and the health theories studied throughout the course.

The stimulus statement: The development of independent thinking skills for impaired students in a supported learning environment is significantly more important than the development of self efficacy.

An excerpt of a student response (below) contains reference to a number of health theories as well as the two concepts represented in the stimulus statement.

Independent thinking skills teaches intellectually impaired students how to think rather than what to think (Institute of Education Sciences, 2014). Independent thinking skills help students create meaning, gain an understanding, and therefore enables them to make judgements, good decisions and choices about a task or an issue. Additionally in consequence it is more likely that they would be able to effectively complete the task or solve the issue. The lack of critical thinking skills utilized within the classroom greatly diminishes the students’ chance for success (Irfaner, 2006). Independent thinking skills are one of the hardest things to teach intellectually impaired students as they have deficits in learning, communication, deduction and reasoning skills, decision making and information retrieval. However the development of these independent thinking skills is important as it enables the students to apply their individual knowledge and skills to a new or old task, and therefore to progress to the next level and reach their full potential. This is important as it will enable them to think for themselves and not heavily rely on their support networks for every aspect in their lives.

And a challenge posed to this student was;

You mention that independent thinking skills are needed in order for the students to overcome possible barriers to our failures of tasks but having high self-efficacy assists in overcoming barriers. isn't it more likely that developing self-efficacy is more important than independent thinking skills initially as without it the students could view the challenge as difficulties and change their attitudes towards the task when considering their outcome expectation?

I truly believe the students could not have demonstrated this level of cognition or understanding of theory in a standard exam (single response to a stimulus). And by assessing the quality of the challenges they post as well as the response to the stimulus, then quality challenges result.

Have you tried, or would you be willing, to try a blog as an exam?

Enabling productivity - a selection of tips and tricks

I recently posted about a daily self management strategy I would be trialing. One of the critical aspects was identifying the Most Important Tasks for the day. Recently I lead a collaborative discussion on the challenges faced by HPE Leaders in Leading a department. One of the ideas I shared in the discussion on time management was the concept of the number of most important tasks being equal to or less than the number of spare lessons I had on that day. (Both of these posts are linked below for your reference).

This post will explore more specifically how I decide which tasks become the most important tasks for the day.

Ultimately, I use Evernote to manage two separate task lists, and all the relevant information for the tasks on these lists. I selected Evernote (premium subscription) due to its cross platform capabilities and limitations within my corporate network. Inside my Evernote, I have a notebook entitled "!Actions" that holds the "job list" and "!Today" notes. "Job List" holds every task that is currently required of me. I only access this note to add new tasks or at the end of the day when I complete a daily reflection. "!Actions" holds a checklist of the most important tasks for the day.

To get from "Job List" to "!Actions" is a specific process. I would not be alone in admitting the difficulty that can arise by attempting to prioritise an extensive list into the most important tasks. To achieve this I follow the following processes;

1. Begin with the end in mind
   
   This is habit 2 of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Within this habit Covey encourages the development of a personal mission statement (or philosophy or creed). An important step in this is the recognition of the various roles we hold within our lives. My "Job List" categorises tasks into these roles that I hold. For reference I use three roles to categorise my professional life, two roles to categorise community or voluntary contributions, family, and a "special interest" that can hold items that don't fit these categories.


2. Build a detailed calendar
   
   Decisions on how many tasks make the most important tasks are easier when all commitments are outlined. These commitments include the commitments of other family members. We each have a shared Google calendar so our commitments are seen by all, however my work calendar is private as the other family members don't need to see my commitments during work hours. As an example a snapshot of Mondays is below. (red = my work, blue = my other, yellow = oldest son)
   
   
   I will lose at least 90 minutes to travelling to and from work each day, leaving approximately 4 hours on a Monday to complete tasks off the "Job List" (assuming I get to work at 8am and don't have lunch).


3. Schedule planning / strategic time
   
   Too often we prioritise other duties over our own preparation and planning. Have dedicated sessions in your weekly calendar. Personally I don't include any on Mondays as I have found generally I need to proactive in setting faculty processes and procedures in place at the beginning of the week.


4. Use the "Prioritizer"
   
   http://www.idea-sandbox.com/innovation-tools/prioritizer/
   
   This web tool asks you to enter all the tasks you see as important, then essentially plays them off against each other. It is much easier to determine the more important task out of two options, than a number of options. What results is a list in order of priority. I use this to determine the most important tasks for each day.

What results for me is a succint list that becomes the most important tasks on the "!Today" note. At the end of each day, the "!Today" note becomes a note titled with the date in my "!Completed" notebook. Keeping a scoreboard (acknowledging what you have completed) is just as important as managing the task list focus.

Blog post: Daily self management strategy
Blog post: Leading a department

ACHPER conference 15 August: Leading a department

The table below is a record of a collaborative discussion on the challenges HPE leaders face in their jobs. Thank you to the group for contributing ideas and discussion around these important issues. It would be interesting to see what any readers think through comments to this post.

Challenge	Potential Solutions	Barriers	Facilitators
Resistant staff - T&L change	provide a solution with the problem (constructive insubordination)	staff allocation
Contributing to faculty goals		buy in time to meet	starting with some evidence or policy, then working with group to specify it to your workgroup lobby admin for strategic time. Think offline options. Google docs, OneNote
Collaboration		open contribution never ends	filtering policy into faculty relevant specific timelines
Working with staff	Strengths based approach (how they contribute)	perceptions?(who told you?)
Leadership approach			Know when to stop and recognise successes. Acknowledging success will have greater results than acknowledging weakness
Professional vs. personal (feedback on performance)	you acknowledge the strengths, ask them to acknowledge their opportunities for improvement Think of a continuum, always room for improvement	Performance feedback	setting scene appointments set as "their time" not as a report from a supervisor
Time	limiting tasks per day prioritising delegating (role based, team meetings)	work life balance concept	need a buy in, they need to see the same purpose / vision seeing can't instead of don't want to master job list vs. most important tasks
Preparation	upcoming unit materials shared and partner checked before the start of the unit (not HOD check)
Inbox zero	fit emails onto one screen		allocated times for emails
Self rewarding	don't focus on the rest of the list, give yourself some sort of reward think of term timelines in this also, use your holidays as holidays		Rewards available and accessed

ACHPER conference workshop 14 August

The purpose of this post is to host resources for a workshop on "P-10 Physical Performance Assessment" at the 2014 ACHPER conference.

Workshop handout - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7GAksV-G0MBWUxHZ0tBTUYtWGM/edit?usp=sharing

Easytag cheat sheet - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7GAksV-G0MBWVN5UDdhcGdNZW8/edit?usp=sharing


Coach's Eye cheat sheet - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7GAksV-G0MBbGU4ME1JMDF4WEk/edit?usp=sharing