BLOG
TED TALKS TO INSPIRE YOU THROUGH MID-TERM
Rita Pierson comes from a family of teachers and has been a teacher herself for 40 years. Her remarkable TED talk is a reminder of the importance of human connection and relationships in the teaching environment. Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like, and while you may not like them all, it’s important to build connections with all children in the classroom. Education should be about self-esteem and academic achievement at the same time. Teaching and learning should bring joy. Pierson paints a picture of education as a collaborative and joyful process where people focus on the positive and build spaces for children to flourish. She asks the audience: ‘How powerful would our world be if we had kids who were not afraid to take risks, who were not afraid to think, and who had a champion?’ As you listen to Rita’s words, you can see her absolute obsession for creating the love first, and the education second.
Teach Teachers how to create Magic
Christopher Emdin uses his talk about ‘creating magic’ in the classroom to show, not tell, us how to be more engaging. He does this by creating narratives of teachers who aren’t given the resources to inspire and students who are struggling to connect with their education. Then, he provides us with a seemingly simple solution: be engaging. But we don’t learn how to be engaging when we study how to teach; some teachers just have ‘the magic’. However, Emdin reassures us that the magic can be taught. Institutions focus too much on theory and not always enough on engagement and how to teach. Emdin talks about the importance of learning from others who have that power to engage their target audience.
The power of believing you can improve
Carol Dweck researches how to foster success. Her research has focused on the importance of developing a ‘growth mindset’. Her talk centres on the idea of ‘yet’. You haven’t failed, you just haven’t succeeded yet. Helping students develop a growth mindset teaches them to engage with, and overcome, problems rather than running from them. The first step is changing what you praise. Instead of praising intelligence or talent, shift the praise to their effort, their focus, the way that they engage with the work, and their improvement. This mindset increases engagement and confidence levels as it provides a path forward to higher achievement.
To further foster the power of mindset in the classroom we have a wonderful cut and paste activity in the Lizard Learning Club PLUS Membership, where children have to identity the differences in fixed and growth mindsets and sort the differences into the correct columns.
Ramsey Musallam explores the importance of curiosity in education. He believes that a teacher’s most important tool is students’ questions. Taking a risk and finding ways to evoke interest and questions can be tricky. Many students check out when presented with flat, impersonal education, so it becomes incredibly important to foster an environment of curiosity and encourage students to be adventurous. Young children are inherently curious, and our job as teachers is to grow this curiosity and teach children how to carry it throughout their lives.
Musallam’s Three Rules
Rule number one: Curiosity comes first.
Rule number two: Embrace the mess. Trial and error can be an informal part of what we do every single day.
Rule number three: Practise reflection. What we do is essential. It deserves our care, but it also deserves our revision.
Remember, if you are feeling overwhelmed with planning, you’re spending too much time on school work and not enough at home with your family, your leisure time is non-existent…we give you all this free-time back by planning, preparing and creating teaching resources that have been developed by classroom teachers who have over 40 years’ experience teaching children in the classroom.
Sign-up free for a whole week FREE sample of the 10 Quick Questions a Day program, as seen on channel 9’s TODAY SHOW, which gives you 5 literacy and 5 numeracy questions every single day for 40 weeks to have all your revision needs covered and most importantly, peace of mind knowing the fundamental basics are consistently and constantly being revised.
Sign-up FREE to the Lizard Learning Club. We provide free teaching resources to your email inbox regularly. These resources include literacy, numeracy, games, special day’s activities, posters, handwriting fun and much more.
Please like, share and comment as we always love to hear your thoughts and feedback.
LIZARD LEARNING PLUS CLUB MEMBERSHIP
LIZARD LEARNING AUSTRALIA YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Teachers Rock
Cindy xo
Media & Events
0 Comments