Professional development is an integral aspect to continual learning. As a teacher in my thirteenth year of educating students, I still find myself learning everyday. Contradiction perhaps, but there has never been a day go by where I believed that I knew all there is to teaching.
At IFS we are constantly challenging ourselves and with the project based learning delivery of our content, this has become ever more apparent. Recently Laura organised for the teaching staff to engage in a positive professional development day with Bianca Hewes. Bianca has been successfully implementing PBL within her English lessons at her Northen Beaches college since 2010 and has amassed an array of resources, ideas and results from doing so. She reinvigorated my passion for PBL and I spent much time discussing her ideas and strategies of delivering content. As a result, last week Bec and I decided to introduce the ‘gallery walk’.
Stage 5 students are currently working on an English project, working in teams to develop an understanding of the characters of the play Fossil. The gallery walk works by placing the student’s work up on the open learning space walls. Each student then assesses the content of their peers’ work. They may comment on what they like, and why, as well as what they think could be developed with suggestions for ways this could be done. This process allows for students to informally assess, check and clarify that they are developing their own understanding of the work and allows time to amend and include suggestions for improvement.
I enjoyed watching the engagement of the students during this ‘new’ aspect of PBL. The comments I read on the work were specific and valid and allowed teams to gain valuable feedback.
The photos I took show engagement and interactive learning, where the students become the teachers – twenty first century skills, putting students at the centre of their learning, while also teaching me how effective it can be to sometimes step back and let the students take a lead.
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