“Practical Application, engaging students through literacy and numeracy”
Graeme Read and Brett Tickner presented a seminar on August 11th in Palmerston North. Brett earlier delivered the seminar in Masterton and Graeme joined him for the second presentation. Graeme teaches in the National Certificate in Computing and the foundation programme Certificate Tertiary Skills Level 1 in Palmerston North; Brett teaches in Masterton in both the Joinery, Carpentry and is Programme Leader for Youth Tec in Certificate Tertiary Skills level 1. The teaching teams have consulted each other, which has included site visits. Their programmes have quite a bit in common, especially the demographic of their students. Brett and Graeme presented a seminar full of the practical ways they engage the interest of their students with learning tied to “real life”. Brett use “Bob” and “Bob’s experience and approaches to provide meaningful learning, so the presentation was subtitled “How does Bob build it?” This was a lively, well planned and delivered, practically illustrated seminar.
Both these teachers have achieved the Certificate Adult Teaching Advanced (CATA) and National Certificate Adult Literacy Education (NCALE). Both acknowledged the positive effect this had on their understanding and practice. Graeme and Brett attended the symposium at the National Centre of Literacy and Numeracy for Adults (NCLANA) in Hamilton earlier this year. They found this inspirational and very practically useful as they were exposed to some great teaching practice and tools for teaching. They also met some fired up teachers who wanted to share their practice and their materials. The symposium fuelled their own passion for teaching numbers, numeracy and maths’ skills in order to achieve good results with students.
This was the first joint presentation for Brett and Graeme; Brett had previously given a presentation on this theme as part of AIC in Wairarapa. The two men described a little of their own learning journeys which enabled them to understand where their students were coming from. Brett said working with youth he was teaching “the me’s”, as they were rather like he was at 16. Graeme’s decision to come to UCOL as a student at the time his son started school had been the best one he could have made. His learning journey had equipped him with several qualifications and eventually a lecturing role. Neither of these people could have told you back then that they would become teachers with a real passion for engaging students in meaningful learning, but this is where they are today.
They described and demonstrated teaching that is not based on any assumptions about the learner. This might mean that in maths, the students might not be able to read a ruler or have a concept of something basic like what a metre is. Learning starts with building a relationship with each student in the early days of class. This allows the teacher to understand the barriers to learning that exist and work with the student to establish trust and then find out how to reach the person by finding the best way for each student to learn the individual’s own way.
Graeme and Brett described times when they learned another way to do something or see things from students. Both worked to help students see the patterns in number. For example, Brett used “Rainbow Maths” to boost students’ confidence with numbers:
415 people lined up to go into a nightclub but 96 of them were turned away. How many people got in?
There are several ways to do this (e.g. round up to 100, then add 4 to the answer or straight subtraction) but Brett showed his students another way:
4 300 15
96 100 400 415
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Put the two figures at either end of the line or spectrum; pick two other numbers in between. Write the difference between the numbers (3 new numbers) above. Add the three new numbers together (4, 300, 15). This gives the same answer as the subtraction (415-96), but students like this because it is fun and they become very confident about their ability to problem solve using this method.
Confidence is the key to learning for everyone but especially those who have bad learning experiences in the past. Brett and Graeme saw connecting with students in terms of what the students bring to the learning as vital for successful teaching. They use the students’ interests to generate examples and engage the knowledge students bring to the classroom.
While this presentation focussed on students who may have had some barriers to learning in the past, the application of the principles of good teaching apply to all students. It was clear to everyone present that Graeme and Brett love teaching. They continue to grow and learn in their own practice and seize on new materials that bring life into the classroom. They are not afraid to borrow from the past, as in the use of “old fashioned” individual slate mini-whiteboards for each student to use in a variety of ways. They use technology with their students, through www.khanacademy.org , for example, which is an online repository for thousands of maths problems and solutions that students love to use.
Good teaching is about all the things demonstrated in the seminar: curiosity, patience, inventive thinking, paying attention to what students can do, and working through what they can’t.
Graeme and Brett provide excellent examples of good teaching and what good teaching can achieve.
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