THREE years with Barrie

October 30, 2009

Something Old + Something New = You Tell Me

Recently I have begun to take the concepts presented from our Barrie Bennett sessions regarding Instructional Intelligence and trying to incorporate these ideas with educational technology (more specifically SmartBoards).

I have had some success utilizing Concept Attainment Strategies of Yes/No and Testers. And have begun exploring the introduction of Mind Maps to help formalize concepts the students are exploring during the lesson.

Personally, I have had times when I needed to totally redo an entire file, because I left little hints throughout the lesson as to what the concept was... For example, when the first slide was titled "RATIOS", and then I asked the class what concept they were exploring one student politely told me Ratios. I asked them how they knew this, and they told me it was on the first slide...

Throughout this experience, I will realize that I have been spoon feeding my students too much... And that it is easy to rely on this method... However I am getting better. In the next couple of posts I will be posting some of the SmartBoard files I have created, with a brief explanation in how they were used, and what was done, and how the students performed on the development of the specific concept the lesson was about.

However, I will point out that all video's have been removed, for either FOIP or other legal reasons. I will mention in the post, what the general video was about, and if you so chose you will be able to locate a video of your own choosing...

Let me know how I have done...

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Filed under // barrie bennett concept attainment instructional intelligence smartboard tom yes/no

Posted by Tom Whyte

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October 20, 2009

8G's First Fishbone

After two intensive periods this morning, both my 8G and 8H class finished their Fishbone Diagram's on the science concept "How to Separate Mixtures".

These pictures represent the completed Fishbone Diagrams for 8G. The effort my students put forth can be clearly seen, however at this point with a new approach I cannot clearly say the overall effect this approach will have towards student achievement. In my future summative assessments I hope to be able to accurately judge the effectiveness of this instructional approach.