Brendan Jones

To have a comeback, you have to have a setback

Posted on February 6, 2018 by Brendan Jones Posted in Change, Learning, Physical education .

I had a bit of a set back today. On reflection, I can pin it to a few things.

Me, thinking that something like a school sport afternoon would be easy to plan for and carry off. I planned activities and decided to follow a routine that normally sees me through most practical PE lessons without too much grief.

Me, thinking that my years of practical PE teaching experience would help me wing it through any tricky spots I might encounter. I mean, I know how to wrangle kids and get them travelling in the right direction, at various speeds, right? I’ve done so for pretty much most of my career to date.

But I was taken completely off guard by a factor that I didn’t realise carried as much weight as it eventually did.

Mindset.

I introduced my plan to the combined Year 9 and Year 10 group for the hour of activity that was left after setting out expectations for the Term. Heads started turning, whispering and concerned looks started amongst the troops.

One brave kid spoke up and said “But that’s not what we usually do”.

“Interesting response” I thought. Without missing a beat, I carried on with the message that this was what we were doing today and let’s get going.

At the end of the sport period, as I put the gear away, I reflected on the experience that I, and some of the kids, had just been through.

75% of the group made the most of their time and engaged, at various levels, with the activities.

The other 25% actively tried to disrupt the lesson. Actually work actively to stop the lesson, in some cases. As I circulated to get them back on task, invariably the response I got as to why they didn’t want to buy in was “this isn’t what we usually do, so I don’t want to do it”

I have seen what School Sport groups usually do as part of past casual observations. This is a sport afternoon where supervising staff (usually nominated by their faculty head and often with little or no experience of supervising students in practical lessons) have run sport by rolling out basketballs and allowed them to “play”. Staff roles were in effect to supervise, rather than facilitating movement. Staff have been offered training for running these sessions, with varying degrees of effectiveness.

This was the very reason I went in with a different set of activities and a different mindset. The activities I chose involved movement and opportunities to do things differently. And thinking about it, that was probably where I went wrong, mostly.

Change can be good. Change can be necessary. But too much change, too quickly, can be overwhelming for some, so their natural reaction is to resist. And I saw that first hand in some (not all) of the students. I had too many resistors and it crippled my plans. It made me think of this:

Source: https://medium.com/@ruth_obe/growth-mindset-a3b13566a78d

As I mentioned on Twitter:

Sometimes they are the best kind of days!

— Nathan Horne (@PENathan) February 6, 2018

I definitely agree with Nathan’s reply.

So I’ve got some baseline data now on how some of these kids think about change. It only wasn’t about movement, or me (well, maybe a little) – it was more about too much change, too quickly. I didn’t know what the existing social and movement landscape for the students was about before I charged in with my change. I know I will need to tweak what I do to reduce the fear of change and coax more students on board my vision for the sport afternoon next week. I’ve got some ideas, and I’m not afraid to listen to the kids and include their thoughts and feedback in my plans.

As I said to Nathan:

True. I definitely contributed to it. That I can work on. Class mindset was also in play. That’s going to be a bit harder, but I’m a glass half sort of guy 🍷

— Brendan Jones 🚴 (@jonesytheteachr) February 6, 2018

So how do you react to mindsets (student or adult) that resist the work you try to do?

By the way – the title of this blog is a quote from Mr T. No one ignores advice from Mr T.

Newton’s First Law

Posted on December 2, 2017 by Brendan Jones Posted in Games for Learning, Inquiry, Learning, Physical education .

“An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force”(That pretty much sums up my view on teaching – every now and then we need some unbalancing to shift us out of our inertia as practitioners.)

I guess I should start this reflection on a couple of moments from my year with some context.

I haven’t been Head Teacher of my faculty this year. I’ve been filling in as ICT Co-Ordinator at my school, which has been a nice (but very challenging at times) change from being a curriculum leader. My teaching load has reduced a little to accommodate the change of role, and all of classes are still PDHPE classes.

I’ve used the year to play around with some ideas on combining technology with a student-centred learning routine that used a variety of delivery pathways. Some worked, some didn’t. I’ll mention a couple where the process or the outcomes surprised me.

Episode 1 – “We all make choices in life, but in the end our choices make us.” – Andrew Ryan, Bioshock

I’ve always liked the idea of using game mechanics as a vehicle for engaging students with units of work. I play games, and they get me to engage in learning cycles not unlike the ones I want my kids i class to follow. Not gamification though – I’m still suspicious about the use of that concept in teaching and learning – it’s the fairy floss of games based approaches in my humble opinion – starts off great but can lose its appeal quickly when kids discover that there’s a finite amount of interest you can devote to tangible (and ultimately, relatively valueless) trinkets or badges. I’d really like to explore real life loot boxes or special powers that kids could win and use at school based on their progress through an RPG game called Learning, but I haven’t figured that out yet. It needs more adults to be gamemasters for that to happen, most likely.

More context. Most Fridays this year I’ve attended what we like to refer as guild meetings (we have a tag #TMFoghorn) at our guildhouse – Foghorn Brewhouse. By we, I mean like minded educator guild class people like Dean Groom and Lorraine Hawdon from the International Football School at Kariong. Our chats have given my plans real shape. All welcome. Fridays from 4pm.

Anyway, back to the game mechanics. Dean and Lorraine at IFS talked about using episodes to organise units of work – like following campaign mode in a game, with project work as the product. I’ve always liked the idea of choose your own adventure learning – covering outcomes based content and skills with an element of self-determination over the pathways you take. The first step and ultimate destination are the same for all players, but the individual pathways from inside the first door could vary.

I tried something along these lines, using a Google Form – well, a Google Form in multiple sections – that behaves like a choose your own adventure book. Fair warning – it’s a first go – check it out if you want.

How can we stay safe in a world with drugs?

Episode 2 – “Laziness pays off sometimes” – Brendan Jones

Just this week my own lack of preparation actually paid off. If you’re a beginning teacher, don’t tell anyone I said that. Lesson plans rule, OK.

I was caught up in things at school (as you do) and realised that I’d forgotten to prepare for a Year 7 practical lesson. I’m not usually the “roll out the ball” type of PE teacher, but it was looking like the easiest solution. But, no – let’s ask Mr Google if he has any quick ideas on a ball games unit activity that I hadn’t done before. Fortuitously I rolled the dice and came across this…

I only watched the first 30 seconds, but an idea was hatched.

I used @thepespecialist ‘s idea (hat tip), using a gym ball and a variety of large and small, heavier and lighter balls. I also made a few modifications in scoring i.e. simplified to “your team wins if you can force the gym ball over the other teams throwing line”. Very simple.

The kids played and were literally 100% engaged. High fives all round, end of story, a half decent activity. Well not so fast. The coolest bit hasn’t been mentioned.

As per usual, using a game sense approach, I initially let the kids play with a basic set of rules to make sense of the game, intending to stop and talk refinement of their performance. When we stopped, I introduced the word “momentum” to our conversation. I was interested to see if (a) the kids had heard of the word and (b) how they might apply it to this setting. Not expecting much of response, I heard one Kid 1 say “momentum is when the weight and speed of something is added together and it affects moving”. Then Kid 2 said “it’s got something to do with Newton’s Laws, hasn’t it?” Another one goes “Once something builds up momentum, it can be hard to stop”.

That was unexpected

So then I asked “How does momentum apply to this game?”

Quick as flash Kid 1 says “Well the big ball will stay at rest unless it’s acted on by the ones we throw”.

Wow.

Kid 3 says “For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, so if we hit the big ball with the little ball they will bounce off because of that”

Wow squared.

Another one goes “We can use momentum to stop the big ball too”

Games resumes, and the student talk in the game from then on was all about changing the momentum of the big ball, about what balls were more effective in affecting momentum. Not to me, mind – they were talking to each other.

I asked some kids later where they’d picked up their knowledge (because they had to have been exposed to this knowledge somewhere before my lesson) and one said “we learned about this in Science a while ago, but it never made sense to me before today…”

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions on what this means for instruction and learning, but it instilled in me a renewed desire to try and connect PE with other subjects in a meaningful way. Build some cross curricular momentum, you might say.

Merry Christmas, and keep disrupting.

Future focused learning space? Lose the desk.

Posted on March 10, 2017 by Brendan Jones Posted in Change, Leading .

I was pretty excited this year – I was getting my own room for the first time in about 30 years of teaching. It was an old Art room, at the arse end of the school campus. No-one wanted it, but I saw the potential of making it into a space that kids would be comfortable working (and hopefully learning) in.
Luckily it was scheduled for a refurb, so over the summer break it got a fresh paint job, new vinyl on the floor and a general spruce up.
I learned later that it wasn’t actually exclusively mine – I would be sharing it with another class ( a Japanese class, actually), but it was mainly mine, so I didn’t really object. The teacher knew I intended to try some new things. I mean, what could possibly be wrong with that?
I phished around for grants to put in some furniture, but had no luck. No even our own DoE Futures Learning Unit were willing to take up my offer to be a demo room in our region. I planned to scrounge some old couches, or hit up Gumtree for some bargains, but as of yet I haven’t had any luck.
I’d obviously mentioned to colleagues that I intended to get couches etc for the room, because not long after the teacher of the Japanese class sought me out and expressed their concern at not having the room set up “normally”. This both amused and saddened me. But it didn’t shake my resolve to do something a bit different.
So I had to make do with an assortment of tables and chairs that were available. I quickly realised that it was in the arrangement, not the type of furniture, that made all the difference to the kid’s disposition in my class. We went for islands of work spaces – tables of small groups. I consciously avoided creating a “front of the room”. The projector and display board are on one wall, but I don’t focus on that as the front. I move around a lot, so there is no focal front in the room.
I put together some visuals on SOLO taxonomy explained and an adaption for inquiry learning that modeled a learning cycle I wanted the kids to adopt. they went up on the walls as stimulus and guidance.
I also made a decision about the teacher’s desk. I wasn’t going to have one in my room. I had a laptop stand near the projector. That was the only place I repeatedly visited if I demo something from my laptop. It’s been 7 weeks now, and I can honestly say I don’t miss it.

Things were looking sweet.

So imagine my surprise when I went into my room yesterday – AND THERE WAS A TEACHER’S DESK AT THE “FRONT” OF THE ROOM.
I think I even exclaimed “WHAT THE HELL?” in front of the kids.
There was only one thing for it. With the help of a few kids, we lugged the desk out again and hid it under the stairs. Like a commando mission.

I did this for two reasons. One, I had no use for it. Secondly, I wanted to prove a point to whomever decided to put it in there. I think that teachers assume some symbols of their practice (like desks at the front of the room) are so ingrained and traditional that they need to be there to “be” a teacher. I disagree. I find without a desk I feel free-er; I feel compelled to move around and spend more time with the kids. If the teacher (and I’m sure it was a teacher) that put it there wants to know where it is, then I’ll take it as an opportunity for a professional dialogue.

Maybe that’s just me. Are you anchored in your room? Are you prepared to ditch the desk?

Meddling from the back seat

Posted on January 11, 2017 by Brendan Jones Posted in Inquiry, Learning, Pedagogy, teacherstuff .

I wrote the majority this from the back seat of our family car, returning home after our annual trip north to visit friends at Crescent Head.
I’m in the backseat because both my sons have wanted to sit in the driving seat on the way home – Dom is a “P” plater, and Matt is a learner. Their licenses have speed restrictions on them, so, sure the trip is slower than if my wife or I were driving but they both wanted the experience in a new situation. Which both made me proud and made me think a lot about helping them on their learning journeys.

As we were traveling, and being freed from driving, I had the opportunity to tweet along in a #pechat about Inquiry Learning in PE, and I was interested to see what people had to say about the conditions of learning that best facilitated inquiry based approaches. Watching people talking about allowing the students to sit in the drivers seat, and then maybe throwing questions about their investigations to the teacher sitting in the back seat seemed to be a very poignant observation. And what I was actually living at that moment.
When we got home I got to thinking about the ways teachers run their classes. I found a really cool article by Erica McWilliam called “Teaching for creativity: from sage to guide to meddler”. I love the idea of meddling in, rather than just leading, the kids learning. One passage from her work resonated with me:
“The Meddler-in-the Middle does not rush to save students from the struggle that higher order thinking involves, by giving them either the answer or the template for finding it. They allow their students to experience the risks and confusion of authentic learning by allowing their students to stay in the grey of unresolvedness, supporting any and all attempts on the part of their students to experiment with possibilities in ways that put their ignorance to work. Moreover, they do not presume that the highest achievers in the class are the best learners. Indeed, they anticipate that many of the students who are on the margins of the school culture may have more to offer in terms of creative effort.”
Meddling needs thought. Teachers are good at giving advice, maybe too much at times. I know if I run a commentary when Matt is driving, it works sometimes. Other times me just being quiet and letting him sort it out works just as well, if not better (for him). My takeaway from that is maybe listening to learners, and taking your cue from them, not always the other way will promote the sort of reflection and learning we want in learners. Advanced warning of hazards or roadblocks always helps, but doesn’t need to be the only thing we as educators have to speak about.
So this year I’m going to plan on how I can take more of a strategic backseat in my teaching, and meddle with the traditional learning process.What that looks like will no doubt be contextual and evolutionary. I’m keen, though, for my students to develop their own road skills.

This game is unplayable in its current state

Posted on October 29, 2016 by Brendan Jones Posted in Change, Leading, teacherstuff .

When a game become unplayable in its current state, the frustration felt by players is proportional to their level of investment in it. I’m both a player of games, and a player in the educational sector of my state. It’s surprising how similar these settings have been lately.

Recently I’ve been playing Battlefield 1 on PC, from the Beta release stage through and beyond the official release in mid October 2016. The Beta looked unreal and played well. Well, except for the occasional in game glitches and graphics driver crashes that you’d normally expect from a testing ground environment. I decided to sign up for the early release Deluxe edition and when it turned up, started playing.
I’ve made it to level 24 in the time so far, which is pretty good for a one dimensional player like me. More excitingly, I discussed on my work based Yammer network the possibility of forming a teacher based squad so we could co-op together. So far we have three takers – Darcy Moore, Nick Patsianas and myself. Hopefully we can get it to grow, because the multiplayer aspect of the game is the most interesting from both a gamer and an educational perspective.
Unfortunately for most of us, the game play experience has been disjointed and in some respects ruined by the gap between what we should be experiencing and what the reality of game play is. We were promised so much in the call to arms that is the official trailer

In an effort to rectify community disquiet about fractured game play, graphics cards makers and the game creators issue updates and patches to try and fix things. Patches and driver updates make a small difference for a short time anyway, but the issues seem to recur and for some of us the game is unplayable in it’s current state. It’s left us a bit deflated, and not sure of what we can do to improve the situation.

Co-incidentally I was scanning Twitter last last week and I saw the tag feed from the NSW Education Symposium 2016 . Great word, symposium. Sounds really important. Different to a conference I suppose. There were some heavy hitters tweeting from there – The NSW Education Minister, Adrian Piccoli; our new NSW Secretary of the Department of Education, Mark Scott and other glitterati of the cross sector education scene in NSW. Now, I’m not glitterati, but I consider myself to reasonably well connected to educators online, and I’d never heard of it. I did find out it was invitation only, so I asked the obvious question:

Hand up if you got an invite to #NSWedu16 ?

— Brendan Jones (@jonesytheteachr) October 27, 2016

There were a few questions but no-one said yes. Special invite indeed.

I saw some tweets about the call to arms speeches that The Minister and The Secretary gave. Click on their names to have a read.
On reflection, I don’t see much difference between their call to arms and the BF1 official trailer. Each give a vision of what could be, which to date is very different to what the actual state of play represents.
I get that their speeches are meant to set the scene, to provide a framework for the future. But I would contend that these call to arms speeches are given too easily, and the structural mechanic needed to translate the call into actionable change is glitched. The thrust of the symposium was to overcome resistance to change and “make education great” again in NSW through cultural change in all education sectors. Ironically this call for seems to forget that equilibrium is systemically built in to education and appears to be immune to change. Take the HSC for instance – in my “if I were Minister” moments this archaic rite of passage that models out of date learning and assessment is the first thing against the wall in my education revolution. But change in this area seems to mean adding a literacy qualification, not re imagining what the (currently) final two years of senior school could look like. “That’s too hard, there’s too much invested in the current set up, it serves its purpose” would be their argument – interestingly these are the excuses The Minister used to encourage an assault on the resistance to change from some teachers.
Another facet of the symposium were the aspirationally cliched messages that were being tweeted out. I know not being there makes context for these difficult to convey, but I have to say it sounded like just another weekly educational chat that clogs Twitter with feel good back slapping. The rubber hits the road when the participants at #nswedu16 start producing the change that The Minister urges them over the top to achieve. I wasn’t at the symposium, so how will we know when the change reaches me? In fact some the calls for action were initiatives or directions that I’d heard of years ago, but failed to materialise. Most infuriatingly, one person’s identification of an aspirational target (cross sector sharing and professional learning) was the focus of an innovative project that I spent some time on, developing that very focus,costing a considerable amount of money, that was eventually shut down because ironically there was a lack of cross sectoral support for its purpose and thus existence.

Did some one say PLANE? https://t.co/q2gt7wp1lr

— Brendan Jones (@jonesytheteachr) October 28, 2016

What we need is real action that produces change. That won’t happen until our drivers are fixed and the final patch is applied. I’m not giving up, but this game is unplayable in its current state.

Uplink – Mystery Bag Challenge

Posted on September 14, 2016 by Brendan Jones Posted in Physical education .

Today I gave two students in my Year 10 Physical Activity and Sport Studies elective class the Mystery Bag Challenge.
In the bag was a collection of balls (soft throwing balls, aero tennis balls, and AFL ball and a Handball), 2 hoops, some marker domes, 2 tennis racquets and some bibs.
While another two students warmed the class up, the Mystery Baggers had 10 – 15 minutes to come up with a game.
They created “Uplink”, and I’ll try to explain the rules as they eventually ended up.

Uplink

Uplink
Set up
2 teams on a basketball sized court.
The hoops were hung from the basketball rings to create a vertical target.
2 soft throwing balls were chosen as game balls (see image)

Uplink balls

Rules
The win condition – the first team to get the ball through the defending team’s hoop.
To start the game, both teams line up against the wall at the end of their defensive end of the court.
The two balls are placed on half way.
On a whistle, the teams send players running to the centre to gain possession of a ball (or both balls if you’re lucky enough)
Players can then roam where ever they want on the court, unimpeded. If you have possession of the ball, and you get tagged in the attacking half of the court. you lose possession of the ball and you get sent back to your defensive half as a reset consequence.
Players can pass as much as they want, wherever they want. They must not get tagged in possession in the attacking half.
To score the ball must be thrown through the hoop, and not touch the backboard
Variation: Instead of having the hoops placed in position before the game starts, the game starts with teams having to get their own hoops in position before they can start scoring. This can be made more difficult by including some penalty constraint – time limit, height limit of the hoop deliverer, etc.
Comment
Like “Capture the flag” , players soon realise there are strategies to consider in both offence and defence. The game becomes a swirling, mass movement affair.
We trialled rules, and then stopped to evaluate them, and then made improvements, at least 3 times in the first 20 minutes. Once the final iteration was settled upon, the game then ran without interruption for 20 minutes.

All this from 15 minutes planning, with a bag of gear they’d never seen before. Never doubt your students ability to create, refine and improve their own games. I never cease to be amazed at their inventiveness.

Cavete ergo discipulus – let the Professional learner beware

Posted on September 11, 2016 by Brendan Jones Posted in Pedagogy, Physical education, Popular culture .

I have been watching PE Twitter recently with the jaundiced eye of a seven year user. (I don’t want this to become a “back in the day” rant, so I promise to watch my step). I still find enough joy in my stream to keep me hanging around, but I’ve noticed something happening that disturbs me. And it’s growing. To frame the issue, consider these questions.

How do you know what makes legitimate and sound Physical Education professional learning, based on referrals from Twitter? Where is the filter that screens out the dross and lets the quality through? Do we have a responsibility to rate and review social media promoted professional learning so that others may benefit from our successes or failures?

We are so often reminded by some that evidenced based practice is the holy grail for which we search in improving our practice, but how much of the professional learning and practice we see spruiked on social media (in particular Twitter) would stand the test of being evidence based, or valid, or reliable? I see Physical Education tweets selling Youtube channels starring “elites” of practice, with no credentials offered that they are. What are “elites of practice” anyway? And who decided that they were elite? The same goes for websites, chats and “masterclasses” hosted by and starring “legends”, “doyens” and “experts”.

I’ll use a favourite pop culture reference that supplies me with teaching ideas – MasterChef Australia – to complement this view, and to also offer a potential solution.

When people cook on MasterChef Australia, they are judged and reviewed by a panel of experts in the field. These experts have runs on the board – they run successful restaurants or have worked in the the field of critique for many years and have a industry reputation.

via http://goo.gl/N6VW1U

When they review contestants, I contend that their evaluation and feedback is based on accepted practice, their expert assessment of quality and how well the contestant’s work met the brief that they gave at the beginning of the challenge. Objectives, expected outcomes, best practice, quality feedback. If you asked them to write a rule book for MasterChef Australia, I’m sure that would be the framework. Along with a bit of emotion wrangling for the cameras. Everyone that buys into the MasterChef Australia experience (competitors and viewers) accept that this is the way it is. It wouldn’t work without it. Although it can be seen to be subjective, the experts and their experience and reputation are the bedrock of the concept.

Not so on PE Twitter. I don’t see the review, judgement and feedback on what people put forward as quality professional learning, just because they say it is. Andy Vasily observed this too in a recent conversation we had

So, what’s the solution? I have toyed with a Physical Education membership website that allows the community to review, judge and give feedback on professional learning that they have experienced. I thought about designing it so it included members ratings, comments and recommendations Like anything that runs like a popular vote, it could be subject to distortion. I also had a brainsplosion about an international review team of Physical Education experts that could be charged with official endorsement of professional learning. But who would want to do that? And how would we assemble this Justice League of PE?

via http://goo.gl/42Q4FM

So I guess that puts it back on all of us to be responsible online professional learning consumers to call out the charlatans, the self aggrandisers and reward the quality evidence based practitioners and researchers that will ultimate improve our practice, not cheapen it. What do you think?

How resilient ARE you and your faculty?

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Brendan Jones Posted in Change, Leading, Learning, Physical education, teacherstuff .

I’ve had a interesting week. A proposed change in whole school focus, hosting a TeachMeet, taking a group of Year 10 students on a camp and managing a whole school voice survey. An extraordinary week, actually, and I still had my day job of leading a high school PDHPE faculty of 5.

So today, when I went to visit one of our Deputy Principals about concessional periods for 2017, our discussion turned to timetabling for 2017 and what our Year 9 PE class structure would look like. Without going into too much of the back and forth, the situation played out like this. Traditionally, we have had Year 9 and Year 10 classes come out for PE lessons in groups of 2 or 3 classes at a time (even more sometimes). This has suited us to run SEPEP units for these students. Today I learned that our Year 9 classes in 2017 will come out for PE lessons singly. While I tried to negotiate something closer to what we were used to, it wasn’t possible because of the advanced stage of planning. I think I’m a “glass half full” kind of person, so immediately my mind was running to the opportunities, rather than just the limitations this would place before not just me but the rest of my faculty. I could start to see possibilities, but in the back of my mind was a nagging thought – what will my colleagues think about it? And I must admit I was a bit nervous.

When I got back the the staffroom, I broke the news immediately, interested to hear the response. I must admit I felt proud when the general reaction was “we can work with that if we have to” and ideas then starting tumbling out about the directions we could take in this situation. I left school this afternoon upbeat and confident for the future in a lot of ways.

There are some key points to this story that resonated with me and made me reflect a little. Firstly, it reinforced to me that the notion of the “traditional” way of doing things can be a crutch for safe, repetitive and ultimately dated teaching and learning. I felt proud that my faculty rejected the safety of traditional and were prepared to consider and plan for change willingly. Mainly, and selfishly, because it’s the way I think but also because I knew it opened the road to some exciting times for all of us.

http://goo.gl/LO3WWc

Secondly, I was proud to witness the agility of my faculty in accepting the news and immediately moving into a future focused standing. No gnashing of teeth. No sulking or hesitation about maintaining tradition. I don’t pretend that there will be some work to do in bringing the changes to fruition, but the sense I got was that they were up for it.

So how did it happen that my faculty appear to be so flexible in their thinking? Is it a natural trait, or has the capacity been built in some way by our school? Most of the literature I found online about thinking flexibility was business oriented and embedded with business spin, but I’ll summarise and paraphrase by saying it seems it’s related to accepting challenges, trying and failing, providing mentoring, encouraging incremental risk in decisions and planning. And opportunity to practice. Plenty of practice. Excellent qualities and strategies for teacher to learn, and to model to their students

So here’s a question for faculty leaders. How flexible ARE your faculties in facing changes to tradition and re-tooling their teaching and learning to move into the future? And how do you build capacity in flexible thinking?

All in a days work – Games and the Bee Gees

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Brendan Jones Posted in Games for Learning, Health Education, Learning, Physical education, Technology .

I enjoyed my work today. I had two lessons where I did something a little bit unconventional and the kids and I had fun. I even had a few “thank you sir” as students left the room. I ended the week on a buzz and it gave me confidence to take a few more chances outside the normal PDHPE square. I also got some good news this week that has me very excited with the possibilities it could offer.

Let’s look at them one at a time.

Period 1 – Year 8 Health
First, let’s step back a bit.
We have finished our assessment period and the program as it stands is tailing away to the end of semester. I took the decision to abandon the useless busy work that this period of time usually represents and do something that I’ve always wanted to do but never really found a viable slot for – games making. I have the top class in Year 8 and I wanted to extend them with something that ties together not just content and concepts, but universal skills as well.
I’m a strong believer in linking my teaching and learning with the real world, so a recent discussion with the class around “what legacy can we leave for Health classes that follow us?” we decided to create artefacts that future students could interact with. When we created the design brief around the features these artefacts needed to have (“fun”, “interesting”, “not go out of date”, “anyone can use them” for e.g.) almost all the class saw that games (of any flavour) have these qualities at their core.
So my plan today was to introduce Game Design 101, and then let them play. We reflected on what qualities each game they played in an embryonic game design document. Next step will be to start their own game design doc and map out where they want their game to go. I’ll keep you posted.

Here’s the link to the Google Slides that I used to introduce games

Here’s the game design document template we used to reflect on the games we played

Period 2 – Year 9 PASS – Sport First Aid and CPR.

This is a pretty motivated class, although there are still some less than motivated here too (does anyone else get that in elective classes? Kids that don’t want to be there, even though it was their choice to be there?) I’ve set up some self paced grid work for them to slog through, sprinkled with active, hands on activities that we do in class for a more formal assessment of their skills. Today, faced with using the resuscitation manikins, I knew I’d face a rebellion from some kids. “I’m not touching that” I could hear them saying (in my mind). So I needed a hook. Music and Vinnie Jones. What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing, as it turns out. The video served as a great stimulus. A little critical media work correcting the emergency phone numbers and we were into it, using real life Bee Gees and an online countdown timer to guide our CPR rhythms.

I have one particular student in this class who isn’t keen on much at all. But guess what. They went the full, two timed minutes of CPR practical (and did it quite well), receiving the kudos of their peers in the meantime (“If I fall over, I want you there” said one helpful classmate). Throw in a little music history about the Bee Gees (“are they all dead yet, sir?”), and we walked out feeling like we’d achieved something.

And my exciting news – we now have WiFi in the school hall. I’ve jealously read about #pegeeks that have it and the things that they can do with it. I have a cunning plan (well, actually a lot of ideas and plans) for using the new extended world that this opportunity presents. But that will be for another time.

Here’s to games and music. The key to a great day of learning!

No uniform? Learning doesn’t stop.

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Brendan Jones Posted in Games for Learning, Physical education .

One of the perennial questions that often get asked, whether it’s in Twitter chats or in staff-rooms, is what do you do with students that don’t get changed? Personally, I reckon the whole point of a PE lesson is movement and participation of some sort. Writing lines, detention or even reporting (on paper) about what the class did during the lesson don’t really honour the movement ethos. I’ve tried them all, and been unhappy with the effect, and I want to share something that I’ve found to be the most effective.

I always carry a collection of laminated stimulus cards with me to each practical lesson – warms ups, minor games or skill practices that suit the activity we are learning. At the moment it’s for a Handball unit. Kids that don’t get changed are given (or choose, depending on my mood) a card, and they deliver an activity to their classmates in small groups.

With thanks to the IHF Working Group Editor: Allan Lund (DEN), Dietrich Späte (GER) Developed by the IHF working group “Handball at school“: Philippe Bana (FRA), Dietrich Späte (GER), Allan Lund (DEN), Patric Strub (IHF office), Amal Khalifa (IHF office) – 2014

In the time that I’ve run this approach with my classes, I’ve noticed some things happening – the rates of students without uniform have dropped (you can interpret that any way you want), and generally the confidence of students in interpersonal situations has become much more convivial.

And what happens when everyone brings their uniform? I still pick kids to do the intro anyway. It’s part of teh skill set I want the kids to develop. The confidence of their leadership in small groups and the communication of what is required to their classmates has improved (anecdotally) noticeably.

So, even if kids don’t come with uniform, why does the learning have to stop?

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Author Archives: Brendan Jones