Isolation of skills

Some time ago, I made a post about the effectiveness of deliberate practice in an article I came across. It made a lot of sense then, so I have decided to put it to practice this term.

When we introduce our new upper secondary classes to Art, we made it very clear to our pupils our expectations of them, and the eventual examination's expectations of them. Unlike the lower secondary Art classes where there is more emphasis in creative expression, there is a higher degree of need for our upper secondary pupils to be equipped with a more specific set of skills. Of these, the foundation of drawing is critical. It is through drawing that most will convey their thoughts and processes.

To build up good drawing skills, we have always leverage on doing still life drawings, sessions where pupils get to keenly observe a specimen at close proximity and to draw them as realistically as possible, complete with shading. Instead of doing the still life lessons as usual, I have decided to isolate the skills for such a drawing to smaller parts. They are mainly constructing the reference lines, drawing the specimen and shading. Instead of doing everything sequentially in one sitting, we just did the reference lines and the drawing, repeatedly.

In between the 2 sittings for drawing, feedback of what are the strengths and weaknesses are given individually to each pupil when they present their work to the class. The outcome is better than I thought. Below is a sample of a pupil's work, showcasing her strong progress over a mere span of 3 hours. Exhibit A was done without much understanding of the use of reference lines and the general proportion of the specimen while Exhibit B shows a much stronger drawing in the 2 aspects.

Improvement in still life drawing made by a pupil over 3 hours

It is noteworthy that we increase the level of difficulty just slightly beyond their reach when repetitions are carried out so that pupils will feel a sense challenge. So here we go again, Skill Isolation, Repeated Practice and Feedback. Really important stuff when it comes to building skills.

GTD follow up

I bought a stack of post-its to implement the low tech GTD (Getting Things Done) approach which I am trying out with my Sec 4 Art class. My pupils and I had a discussion about how we are going to do it on their existing organisers and a very simple system was devised. The conventional diary style entry of having static lists of things to do on fixed dates does not work for me. What I want to achieve is to have a simple, fluid and constantly adjustable system of collecting, focusing and tracking the numerous to dos. Below is a simple diagram of the process.

A simple Collect, Focus and Tracking system

Step 1. Next

Disregarding the layout of different organisers that pupils have, this low tech GTD method focuses on 3 main areas. The first is called Next, it is like a giant inbox of things one has got to do next. Each to-do is written on a post-it, with it's due date noted at the corner. The description of the to-do must be simple and straightforward e.g. complete mushroom still life drawing and not ambiguous e.g. complete coursework. If the to-dos are already overdue, it's date will be highlighted. This area for Next will belong in the front part of the pupil's organiser.

Step 2. Today

The whole list in Next can be quite daunting for the pupils to work on, so they would need to focus and prioritise on what is to be done today. From the list in Next, the to-dos will be migrated to the Today list. This allows the pupil to focus his/her attention on the tasks that is do be done on that day itself. The area to deposit the post-its for Today can be on that particular day's calendar box, which are commonly found in organisers.

Step 3. Done

Whatever to-dos which are completed will be migrated onto the Done area of the organiser. I have chosen the back page to collect this log of completed entries. The Done list is important as pupils will likely feel a sense of accomplishment when the list builds up there, visually recognising what they had completed. Having the post-its collected there also means that whatever left over to-dos between the front and end sections of the organiser has not been cleared.

With these 3 areas in place and the practice of using them active, a weekly review can be done when I see my Sec 4s. They will get to go through with me in a reflection of what they had or had not done.

This low tech way of having a fluid list is of course no where near what a computer program like Things can do, but at least it is within the means of access for everyone in class. This is at any time, better than the conventional diary entry in my opinion.

Will need to monitor and revise this system as I learn more about it from my Sec 4s.

Aesthetics Day

Some thoughts on Friday's Aesthetics Day. We shifted Aesthetics Day to the beginning of the year this year with the objective of increasing the pupils' and parents' awareness of the various units in the department to create interest. This is different from the previous years' approach of getting each unit to sum up the academic year in Term 4, showcasing what each had accomplished.

Due to a concurrent meeting in the afternoon, I was not there the whole time to have a closer observation. My immediate sense is that the objective was not really met. As much as we enjoyed the high traffic the whole afternoon due to the CCA Open House, I am not so certain if we caught much attention as a working department. Got to ask my team the next meeting about this. Nevertheless, there is no harm trying. If we don't, we will not know.

AFL Training

Let me just record this somewhere before my fresh impression erodes away. I attended the AFL training this afternoon from the costly consultants we had engaged. Frankly, I was expecting more value from the 3 hour session we went through. Towards the end, when we were each asked to pen down what we had learnt using the Know-What-Learn approach, I was really having some difficulty for a while, pondering over what we have not already known.

I am not saying that the trainers are ineffective or uninteresting, to be fair, everything was well prepared and the facilitation of activities was good and well-paced. The consultants are encouraging and appear confident and purposeful in their delivery. Everything in fact went without a glitch. However, I am just not very convinced about what is the net gain from the exposure this afternoon.

It would perhaps be better if the consultants can observe what our lessons are like in real life situation and give us feedback about our performance gaps in AFL as classroom teachers. They can give us an evaluation about our processes and approaches and comment on our current strengths and weaknesses to make recommendations on what are the 'next steps' we should adopt, preferably customised to each subject area and context. Units can come together and discuss about these suggested 'next steps' and consider their adoption.

If scheduling does not allow for that to happen, perhaps sample video recordings of some kind can be made available to them to be evaluated. It is quite difficult to form a deeper understanding of how we can improve in this area in terms of classroom practice without a professional assessment of our present gaps, and this, I am sure, is within the contribution our consultants can offer. I will share my thoughts concerning this with our SSD.

GTD for the Sec 4s

I am quite excited to introduce the GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology to my pupils doing coursework yesterday. Excited about the possibilities in increasing speed, sense of urgency and overall effctiveness in managing a very long spanning project. I set up a context in which each pupil has to manage a multitude of tasks and got them thinking about how best to effectively collect all these 'things' they are supposed to do and to follow up with processing whether each of them has be done.

List of 'things' on pupils' minds when we did an exercise about how to manage our lives.

Before I go on, let me elaborate a little about what this GTD is all about. The context behind this is that people in general have got a lot of things to do (pupils all rigourously agree to this). Our mind takes up so much energy with all these information about what we are supposed to do that it cripples our creatively and our general productivity. The central goal to this approach is to clear the mind with everything it has to do, trusting this list of things to be collected and eventually cleared entirely on an external system where it can be intuitively acted on and reviewed on a regular basis.

My pupils understand the idea behind and is kind of hopeful that perhaps this may indeed bring about a better level of mindfulness in managing their busy lives.

Having a large following on the Internet, there are many online platforms created to tackle the demands of GTD. Examples such as 'Remember the Milk', 'Toodledo' are well evolved and free of charge. iPhone apps such as 'To Do' and 'Things' also received rave reviews about their usefulness. However, the challenge to me here is to create the most low-tech system possible which is easy to use, and highly mobile. Although the Internet platform and other mobile IT devices have proven their usefulness to so many people, pupils do not have instant access to these tools any time they want and irregular accessibility creates a serious problem to implementing this method successfully. That is because if pupils cannot have instant access to a place to deposit all these information about what they have to do, there will be many open loops. Things will be forgotten, the system compromises its reliability and failure is certain.

So what we had devised together as a team yesterday was to try using Post-its on personal calendars. Unlike the typical way of entry where lists are hand written and static. Post-its enables the lists to be flexible and fluid, the items can be sorted by due dates, priority, context. Procrastinated items get noted. I get to also see the 'Completed' list. The context of what can be done on computers implemented on something very simple, low-tech and still highly mobile.

Going to try this out by getting lots of Post-its.

Apple's Last Macworld

It happened finally this Tuesday. The curtains closed with Tony Bennett's 'I left my Heart in San Francisco'. Apple's last Macworld, an annual event which I always look forward to ever since its video coverage is available online. It is actually an items on my bucket's list to attend one, witnessing the great fearless leader on stage pulling out even more pieces of art. Well, it seems definite now that this will be left forever unchecked.

What education perspective can I draw from this? For one, it illustrates just how critical is the succession of leadership in any organisation. How much of the leader's good attributes gets infused into the organisation's DNA? Its common belief, shared values, work ethnics. I guess only unrelenting effort in excellence and having a strong, shared sense of vision can achieve this.

I wish that the fearless leader will be recovering well and be back to make a few more dents in the industry before all is done.

A morning scene

First day of school! Wow! After teaching for so many years, I still have problem getting to sleep early the day before school reopens. I belong to the group of nocturnal people and this trait is the most prevalent in the holidays. I would love to stay up deep into the night as my mind is the most alert during those hours and would only get out of bed near noon if left on my own. Such is the luxury of total, discretionary time during the holidays.

As I hurried out of my house this morning, a scene caught my attention. Not too far away was a couple with their daughter, and I suppose this is the little girl's very first day in school. They seem like they are probably waiting for the school bus. What was extraordinary of this seemingly common morning scene was that the father had a camera with him, and was taking a snapshot of his daughter carrying her little rucksack, getting ready for school. All three of them were smiling and there was so much hope and enthusiasm in their eyes. It was a very heart warming scene.

This hope and enthusiasm for life is inextricably linked to what we do everyday in school. We have to be mindful that the child's innate fire is not dampened through our invented processes.