Exploring Learning

White Sand Beach, Coral Island nr  Tioman Island Since last July, I have had the privilege not only to have lived in Singapore but to have visited Thailand twice - Phuket last summer and Hua Hin for Christmas - Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Qatar and the beautiful Tioman Island in Malaysia three times! In fact, my family and I just spent the last three weeks on Tioman after a very stressful few weeks of job hunting (see Testing Times ) and packing up to leave Singapore. Upon our return from Tioman, we spent a lovely busy four days in Singapore visiting and saying goodbyes to all the wonderful friends we had made, before finally flying out to a new adventure in Qatar, where we arrived two days ago. In the middle of all this, I have been offered the opportunity to Project Manage one of Julie Lindsay's Flat Connection projects, Global Youth Debate (formerly Eracism). This exciting project joins schools across the globe and provides essential skills of research, collabora...

Punctuation seems to cause a lot of problems for learners. I am not sure why, but many learners have failed to grasp even basic rules, such as capitalisation . Others though, are ready to learn the more sophisticated marks such as semi-colons. Creating a Punctuation Mark Pop-Up Correcting their writing and asking them to read constantly to see effective use of punctuation is one way to tackle these issues. However, I wanted to address this area in a more direct way - but experience means I know that 'teaching' grammar explicitly, does not work. Being a fan of inquiry-based learning, I wanted to find a way that put the onus on them to learn, not me to teach. Creating the pop-up To address the differing needs of my learners, and to approach the learning from a constructivist route, I designed a mini project around punctuation marks that required learners to research different marks and teach each other about them. I created and shared a Google Doc outlining the pro...