Electronic+Whiteboards

Below are some questions and ideas – a starting point only – for thinking about the possibilities and approaches when you or your students are using an IWB during class. - acquiring and recalling information - problem solving - learning of rules - concept learning - relationships between ideas; similarities and differences - strategies for learning how to learn and think - classify and organise into groups - think or work through a sequence from beginning to end - linking ideas and activities with each other or to the big ideas - reflecting on learning; visualising thinking - literacy and numeracy skills and understanding. We might find it useful to organise our ideas and experiences – captured in brief descriptions and examples – using the following framework:  1. Share intellectual control with the students over both teaching and assessment.  2. Encourage the students to work out part of (or all) of the content or instructions.  3. Provide opportunities for independent decision-making.  4. Provide a diverse range of ways of experiencing success.  5. Promote talk that is exploratory, tentative and hypothetical.  6. Encourage students to listen seriously to other students’ questions and comments.  7. Build a classroom environment that supports risk-taking.  8. Use a wide variety of intellectually challenging teaching procedures. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Arial Narrow'"> 9. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">Specifically target different components of passive learning and the correspondent aspects of quality teaching. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Arial Narrow'"> 10. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">Develop students’ awareness of the big picture : how the various activities fit together and link to the big ideas. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Arial Narrow'"> 11. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">Regularly raise students’ awareness of the nature of components of quality learning. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Arial Narrow'"> 12. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">Assess for different aspects of quality learning, not for rote learning. -  //<span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">Encourage the students to work out part of (or all) of the content or instructions. // -   //<span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">Promote talk that is exploratory, tentative and hypothetical. // <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">One of the most obvious ways of encouraging the students to use the board is by encouraging them to manipulate and move objects. In this case, the Year 7 students used the board to rearrange a paragraph (reviewing their understanding of TEEL and discussing their decisions, speculating and justifying their reasons and selections) as well as completing a ‘cloze’ passage. This example involved the students reordering a poem by manipulating and moving the verses around on the board. They had to: - discuss and share their ideas; - speculate about the connections between verses - justify their decisions with reference to the words and ideas (I have annotated one of those)
 * How can we use IWBs to develop our students cognitive and metacognitive skills, abilities and processes? **
 * How can we use an IWB to: **
 * For example: **

This example was the result of a class discussion relating to the ‘steps used when reading and understanding a text’. The students were planning to write an instructional piece (combined procedure and explanation text) – while the students worked in small groups on another task, one student was given the task to rearrange the steps and ‘self-questions’ in the ‘correct’ order and number them. Later, we discussed his reasoning and choices. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"> -  <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">Develop students’ awareness of the big picture : how the various activities fit together and link to the big ideas. -  <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">Regularly raise students’ awareness of the nature of components of quality learning. This is one of the most obvious and effective uses of an IWB – especially as a way of modelling the ‘Writing on the Reading’ strategy (as a way of promoting an active reading and thinking strategy) and as a way of linking back to previous discussion and examples. In a way, a sequence of lessons can be created which in turn become a learning diary – a way of monitoring the thinking and learning, the mistakes, new vocabulary etc and a talking point for discussion. - building understanding of a thinking procedure while doing it. Linking back to a previous discussion - extending and reviewing ideas, knowledge and understanding.
 * TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW (PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ABOUT ‘NARRATIVES’) **
 * This strategy is called ‘Write on Reading’ and is basically a way of ‘talking back’ to the writer and annotating the text (comments, opinions, clarifying questions, defining new words, linking to their lives / real world events etc. **
 * How to write on the reading **

- cloze + unjumble – the focus on structure and ordering, giving reasons (the students had to justify their reasons for putting choosing the order that they did) – students have to interact with the board. - developing understanding on ‘dramatic structure’ – orientation, rising action and what happens during these parts and linking this to key words (eg orientation = who, what, where and introduction of problem / conflict) - cloze – speculating about possible words – which word would fit best? (building vocabulary, making choices and justifying) - experience – best to have 2 or 3 students working at the board at once. Order as a class and then each part using 2 or 3 students only. - Link to building word bank (eg instead of swimming – what word suits best? Paddled? Etc) <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"> <span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">- Regularly raise students’ awareness of the nature of components of quality learning. The IWBs have great potential to look back, make links and reflect on previous discussions. Below is a week 3 review of the learning so far (Year 7 English). There is no limit – at the bottom you can extend the screen to go on, and on, and on…you never run out of space. Introducing students to graphic organisers (eg story triangle / dramatic structure) and having them annotate. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"> - like a visual diary - Reviewing thinking – building a narrative checklist with the students and introducing them to the idea of self-questions. The potential to link back to previous discussions and build on these, reflect on learning etc is endless. <span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial Narrow'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"> Start a class with ‘Describe the kind of thinking we did last class’ (eg replacing words (use, consider, encourage, permit, allow), thinking about possibilities (**//civilised//** society), extending ideas (extremely unfair, excruciatingly painful death), clarifying terms, organising and ordering thinking (TEEL – Topic sentence), writing on the reading while we are discussing). I used the below visual record of a class discussion to remind the students of the thinking they did and build from there.
 * Above: **
 * Linking back to previous discussions. **