If I was to summarise the key things I took away from this Professional Development what would they be and why?
Marshall's inspiring presentation was aiming to empower teachers to understand boys as learners and equip them with skills and strategies to enable boys to achieve and succeed in literacy and in their learning in general. As we know every child is different but boys do learn differently to girls, and it was great to listen to his ideas and reflect on my own practice. These are some of the points I found most interesting:
- Being CLEAR means being KIND to the boys
- Competition gets them excited
- Boys learn best with short and sharp exercises (active games, PE breaks, brain breaks, etc)
- Who are their male role models? Do they see men writing for fun?
- Are there spaces where boys like to learn?
- What topics do they prefer to read about? What will engage them?
- Be firm, fair and fun
- How much talking is happening in a lesson? More reading/writing, less talking (teacher talk)
- Relationships with our students is a priority
- Learning is more important than the result
- Align the curriculum with the child and put the child at the centre.
I haven't changed my thinking, this PLD just confirmed that the use of the LCS pedagogy helps empower my male students to succeed in their learning. This year, I was impressed by the enthusiasm and engagement shown by the boys during our LCS projects. I'm very glad that I managed to involve more junior syndicate teachers in our LCS projects and see our boys' growing engagement and love of learning!
What aspects of my practice would I consider changing as a result of this professional development and why?
There are some pretty amazing things happening in our school but we can always be reflective and look at ways of improving. My plan is to have this conversation during our next team meeting and develop a plan to support our male learners:
- introduce short breaks and include them in our daily planning:
- Word association game (president = Trump, Fruit = orange etc.)
- Give a fist pump to 4 people/elbow bump, touch 4 walls, find 4 green objects, etc
- Ninja punctuation activity: Capital letters - fist pump, Full stops - turn, Comma - twist, Number - signal, Paragraph - yee hah
- Summary (in 3 words). Turn to your buddy and tell him/her what are you going to do this holiday? Then the buddy has to summarise in 3 words. Other students are to guess:-)
- Catch hand/finger game (activate both hemispheres of the brain - brain exercises)
- Word scrabble: how many words can you make from this one word (give time frame).
- Literacy - inspiring topics: Factual/ Competition/ Humour/ Survival/ Conflict/ Adventure
- Shared reading - big books - align with their interest and our LCS Term 4 plan
- S. Cameron and L.Dempsey activities
- LCS project - our learners have to be active participants
- Art - collect student voice! Differentiation.
- Maths - problem-solving and hands-on learning vs drilling
- Inclusiveness - identity and connections
- Digital curriculum and digital tools to support boys' learning/ engagement
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