kerry armstrong's Page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_Theory

Conversation Theory is what we experience as instructors when we design classes with A/B partner talk or small groups led by teachers. This is the circle conversation part of the "Propeller Model". Students need to dialogue about what they are learing. Each student needs to have the metalearning vocabulary to dialogue together about learning.

I will use this…

Questioning for Inquiry Based Learning and AFL

Kerry Armstrong May 7, 2013

David Rose presented in Vancouver a few years ago and he used the metaphor of a GPS to describe the parts of learning that we need to have built into instruction to guide successful learners. In my Inquiry Based teaching “The Propeller Model”, I use this UDL metaphor in my planning coupled with Dylan Wiliam’s six strategies of Assessment For Learning…

"I'm just not doing enough!" is how a colleague greeted me this morning when I asked how her 'Inquiry' unit was going; and, that was what I was feeling this morning. Ms S is in the middle of her inquiry unit "What can the experiences of "early Canadians" teach me about what it means to be Canadian? How will learning about their experiences influence my future and transform my ideas of what it means to be a Canadian citizen?" Students must create a passport of a person from the past…

I have neglected the complexities of the UDL principle of multiple means of engagement. When I started with UDL, I believed it was about offering students choice about assignments, adding poetry and art and music, asking for feedback and finding out what students liked best. I worked on creating a community of learners and a place for calm, ordered sharing, discussion, reading, writing and numeracy. And it is all of those things but we know so much more about what children’s brains look like…