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PEEL conference session
A link to contact info.
2008
PEEL started 23 years ago in a
secondary school in Melbourne. What started as a project involving ten
teachers and two university researchers has grown into a phenomenon that has reached thousands of teachers in a number of countries. When PEEL began there was little discussion about
how students approached learning. More than 20 years later, these ideas had become much
more mainstream and there had been many initiatives with goals consistent with
those of PEEL.
Idea of the Month
Each month a new idea or procedure will be published here. Most of these ideas are published along with many others in PEEL Seeds. Our Idea of the Month archive currently contains a number of excellent ideas developed by teachers for use in their classrooms.
PEEL newsletter
For the last 23 years PEEL teachers have been documenting their
practice and have now built up a large database of good teaching ideas
which is constantly being added to. If you would like to receive tips
that you can use in your teaching, regular updates about new
publications, meetings, courses and professional
development please contact us to receive a monthly email
newsletter. Just send your request to David Lumb PEEL Project Officer. We have developed the following specialised
mailing lists. Could you please indicate in your email to David which list/s you
would like to be added to:
PEEL (general list)
Primary PEEL
PEEL and Year 12
Using the website
Some features of the website include
- Detailed information about PEEL including PEEL Groups in schools and Primary PEEL
- A tutorial showing the features of and a how to use guide of PEEL in Practice which contains a huge repository of teacher knowledge acquired over the 23 years of the Project
- Regular updates of Idea of the Month
- Easy ordering of all PEEL publications together with summaries of the contents of each item
- For
registered users of PEEL in Practice online an easy log in. Simply log
in with your user name and password on the side of this page and you
will see
the active link at the top of the page "Start PEEL in Practice
application". This
will enable you to access all the articles published up until the end
of 2007.
- A Search facility which will enable you to find articles on a huge range of topics from the PEEL in Practice database. To access the articles you will need to subscribe to become a registered user or buy the CD but a free two week trial is available.
New developments in 2008
Interactive Whiteboards
IWBs (Interactive whiteboards) are now being used in many schools and have the potential to improve the learning of students. At a PEEL steering group meeting in 2007 we decided to fund some days where teachers share expertise and ideas around a specific theme and document these in a theme edition of PEEL SEEDS. (SEEDS #58 on ICTs and #72 on PEEL and Year 12 are examples). On Friday July 20th 2007 we ran a day on using interactive whiteboards to promote the sort of learning that fits in with PEEL.
A number of teachers from both the primary and secondary sectors explained how they used interactive whiteboards to enhance student learning. A common theme of the discussions was the need to use a different pedagogical approach. If the boards were used in traditional ways as a means of showing a Powerpoint display or a video they didnt have any real advantage over other forms of media and did little to improve learning of the students. What led to more powerful learning was giving the power to the students to use the board themselves in what were often small group activities. The ability to bring together and link a wider range of resources was also seen as a very effective way of using the boards. In whole class activities turning the control of the board over to the students led to more interaction and better learning. Another benefit was the visual nature of the display and the ability to engage kinaesthetic learners through the physical manipulation of text and images on the board. The December 2007 issue of PEEL SEEDS focused on the use of interactive whiteboards in ways which improve student learning.A research group was formed in 2008 to investigate IWBs. We had an initial planning meeting on April 30th with two subsequent meetings. The aim of the project is find new ways of learning with interactive whiteboards. Our team is engaging in research in their classrooms. We have set up a wiki to enable particpants in the project to post their ideas. A session was run at the recent PEEL conference on these findings. If you are using interactive whiteboards and would like to find out more, please contact David Lumb
Sharing pedagogical
purposes project:
This was set up early in 2008. Some of
the themes being investigated by participants include:
- Doing things WITH students, not for or to them.
- Teacher models being a learner/thinker
- Remembering/recounting vs reflecting
- Noticing good learning (and getting excited)
- Students select procedures.
- The physical environment
- The emotional environment
- Language for learning
- Learning as a journey.
Some of the stories of the
teachers engaged in this innovative project were presented at the
August PEEL conference. These will be published in a forthcoming
edition of PEEL SEEDS.
Team members telling their stories at the August PEEL conference
Please contact us if you are
interested in finding out more about this project
SHORT COURSES and PD
PROFESSIONAL
LEARNING TEAMS THAT FOCUS ON LEARNING.
The focus of this
day is building and sustaining professional learning teams that support
teachers in building increasingly rich pedagogies that are focused on promoting
learning that is more intellectually active, reflective, purposeful and
independent.
The day draws on
two sets of experiences; one is the 24 year long Project for Enhancing
Effective Learning (PEEL). PEEL was founded by teachers who were dissatisfied
with the prevalence of passive, unreflective, dependent student learning, even
in apparently successful lessons. The project has spread to many schools
and operates as a network of autonomous groups of teachers who focus on how
their students go about learning, and who operate in what we would now call
professional learning teams.
PEEL has always
been a voluntary project, however the other set of experiences that inform this
in-service is a range of ways that different schools have established
professional learning team structures that involve all staff a more difficult
challenge.
The day is aimed
at teachers and school leaders who are interested in establishing or sustaining
either one or more PEEL groups, or learning teams that have a strong focus on improving
how students learn.
The interactive
program will focus on issues of leadership and teacher change and includes the
following topics:
- What do we mean by quality learning
- Features of a successful teacher group
- Skills of leading team meetings.
- Initiating and sustaining groups
- Links to initiatives such as the PoLTs
and the Thinking Processes & Personal Learning VELS
- Using PEEL resources as a springboard
for further innovations
- Documenting and sharing ideas
- Dealing with common problems
|
Presenter: |
Drs Ian and Judie Mitchell, |
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Venue: |
Faculty of Education, |
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Date: |
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Time: |
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Cost: |
The cost is $240
(inc GST), this includes lunch and
materials. |
If interested in attending, please contact Howard
Brown
PEEL has expertise in the following four areas
- How
to promote quality learning and metacognition.
- How
to put it all together in the classroom (eg content, thinking, reflection
etc)
- How
to get a team to focus on learning.
- How
to get sustain and develop a team over a prolonged period of time.
These tend to lend themselves to a two day course focussing
on 1 and 2, and a one day course focussing on 3 and 4.
Let us know if there are other areas PEEL should provide courses on e.g Science, Maths in addtion to the Grammar days run in 2007.
PEEL Conference
The 2008 PEEL conference was held on August 18th and
19th 2008 in the Victoria University Conference Centre in
The second day of the conference consisted of a visits
program where conference participants visited schools with active PEEL
programs. This was also very successful with comments such as 'Congratulations on two excellent days for Leia and I. We
found the Keys to what we were looking for at Lovely Lara SC. We are both
indebted to you for enabling us to witness Peel In Action. Leia has only been
teaching for two or so years, I twenty or so. I have never experienced this
before and I was so glad that Leia witnessed it and we were there together to
debrief on the train on the way home. We are forming a long term plan
here for fellow teachers and will be acting from next Term to invite staff into
our rooms to observe. All the theory in the
world will never replace that last hour and a half on the last day.'
' The school visit was a
great success. The visiting teachers watched, questioned and worked with a
group of Yr 7 students who were working on making slowmation films - some kids
(3 groups of Yr 7s) were planning and developing a prior knowledge film about 'solids,
liquids and gases', one group was completing their new knowledge film and
comparing this to their prior knowledge and using the stem 'I used to
think...but now I think...' to evaluate their learning. It was very 'hands-on'
and the visiting teachers spent a lot of time talking with the kids, asking
them why they were doing this kind of activity/thinking (their purpose) and
what they were getting out of it.'
PEEL Resources
PEEL in Practice
The 2008 edition
features new and revised procedures to reflect ideas from 2007.
There are many new articles on the database with search fields
that enable to find articles relevant to their students and classrooms.
You can see a complete description of all the search categories here. The 2008 edition of PEEL in Practice is available from the PEEL office or can be ordered online.
Teaching for Effective Learning, the complete book of PEEL teaching procedures, 3rd Edition
The third edition contains descriptions of the 215
generic teaching procedures developed or adapted by PEEL teachers since 1985. These procedures are generic in that they
allow readers to apply each procedure to a wide range subjects and year levels,
and nearly all are applicable at both primary and secondary levels.
In terms of the
new curriculum initiatives in Victoria, the procedures in this book provide an
ideal vehicle for implementing initiatives such as the Principles of Learning
and Teaching (POLT), and the Thinking Processes and Personal Learning domains; allowing
teachers to expand their practice to address issues in their action plans. Teachers will find that the procedures
encourage more purposeful learning, and higher levels of student engagement and
interest.
Science continuum
In the first half of 2007 a team of writers and researchers from
- Student everyday experiences - this section based on extensive research,
describes many of the preconceived ideas students bring to the concept based on
their everyday experiences
- Scientific view - here the currently accepted, age-appropriate scientific view is provided; encouraging contrast of this with often very different student conceptions
- Critical teaching
ideas are then identified; these are
specific ideas that are interconnected and important for student conceptual
development.
- Teaching
activities - the critical teaching ideas are supported by purposeful teaching activities that
scaffold student conceptual development. These are built around the key idea
that effective science teachers recognise the importance of working from
students existing ideas to build rich understandings of currently accepted
science. The teaching activities have been designed to support conceptual
understanding
http://www.education.vic.gov.au/studentlearning/teachingresources/science/scicontinuum/default.htm
PEEL vignettes
In 2006 PEEL was asked to provide some support material for
the POLTs (Principles of Learning and Teaching), part of the new Victorian
government curriculum initiatives associated with VELS (Victorian Essential
Learning Standards). These take the form of vignettes from the PEEL in Practice
database which exemplify the key Principles.
In order to find these vignettes go to the following
address:
http://www.education.vic.gov.au/studentlearning/teachingprinciples/onlineresource/default.htm
Science CD
As has been reported in PEEL SEEDS #84 and #90, a Monash team under an ASISTM grant established a network of teachers to research ways of improving student engagement in secondary science. Teachers in four metropolitan and two rural schools who had had some involvement in PEEL were approached. The project was structured to link teachers and academics in seven dispersed sites and to build on and extend previous work by PEEL teachers in ways that balanced providing focus and coherence without limiting what teachers chose to explore.
One result of the
project, that
ran in 2005/6 was the production of a CD which contains many of the
ideas
developed by teachers involved in the project. The members of the
project have
spent a lot of time organising their stories , insights and ideas into
a CD
that will be a valuable resource for anyone involved in teaching
secondary
science and would also be of some value to teachers of primary science.
Ian
describes in detail, with examples, what can be found on the CD in an
article in SEEDS #91. The team was looking for ways of generating
student engagement, meaning
both interest and deeper intellectual engagement with the ideas The
teachers
developed 21 different sorts of ways of doing this and these categories
are one
way of searching the CD. Each article
contains a teachers story and some commentaries and reactions written by
Monash staff. With this structure we lead with practice and then draw out
issues that help the ideas to be used in other contexts. The CD is available from the PEEL office for
$25 including GST and postage (AUD$30 for overseas orders). You can order online or contact the PEEL office if you would like a copy.
PEEL Research Fellow
Dr Judie Mitchell is now available for in-service and consultancy work with schools interested in the PEEL project. Judie was a founding member of PEEL (in 1985), and has worked with teachers in PEEL groups for 21 years. She was most recently Head of Teaching and Learning at
Judie is available to
- Run in-services on PEEL
- Assist teachers with research
projects related to PEEL
- Work with PEEL groups within
schools and on school based programs
- Assist Curriculum and
Professional Development Co-ordinators implementing teaching and learning
initiatives
- Assist teachers with writing
articles for PEELSEEDS and longer papers