Episode 12 Contextualising your practice with Janice Atkin

In this episode, I interview Janice Atkin and discuss how contextualising your practice can help to create life-long learners. This interview covers everything from surface and deep learning, to ways you can personalise learning for your students while still achieving the same learning goals.Contextualising your practice with Janice Atkin by Daniel Jackson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Join the Facebook CommunityJanice is an education consultant, former Senior curriculum manager at ACARA for HPE and currently co-founder of inclusive schools Australia.Janice's WebsiteInclusive SchoolsWhat do you mean by contextualising teaching practices?Personalising our programs and classroom practiceMoving beyond presenting content and focusing on the deep learningConnecting what is being learnt to the student's real-life and providing meaningProviding choice in content consumption, critiquing, creating and reflectionWhat they do end up doing in a classroom is specific for them because they have chosen activities or they've combined it in different ways or they've linked it to things outside of the classroom that they are particularly interested in you don't actually have to do all that writing yourself.-Dan JacksonWhat does it look like in the classroom?Creating a buffet of options for students to select fromIt is NOT differentiated where "smart" kids do the deeper learning and the others do surface level. They all can choose from the options that cover both.Use a hyperdocKasey Bell talks about using Menu BoardsWe talk about this idea of creating a buffet of options and student then self select what they're going to take from the buffet.- Janice AtkinHow does it create life-long learners?It enables students to learn how to research, consume and critique the contentIt enables them to become teachers as they help each otherIt creates meaning to their learning, increasing their motivation to learn and experiences of success leading to students that identify as successful learnersIt creates a community for learning, not learning in isolationGive it a go!2 Step process:Identify the challenges, behaviours and decisions you are trying to influenceHelp students to develop the skills they need to effectively address those challenges, behaviours and decisionswhat are the challenges or the behaviours or a decision that kids are making that you're trying to influence... then start thinking about within your curriculum what are the skills and understandings that sit within your curriculum that are going to support students to effectively address those challenges decisions and behaviours.- Janice Atkins