MAKING IT EASIER TO BE A BETTER TEACHER

NOTEWORTHY NEWS

Here’s our weekly roundup of interesting education stories from around the world. Click each link to learn more:

• Kids don’t like to read unless they have to according to this ground-breaking research.

• What if all marks had to be posted publicly? Here’s why one school did it (and why they regret it).

• It’s official - post-pandemic students are the rudest (at least in Ontario, Canada).

TECH TALK

Keeping Discussions Focused in Big Classes

Managing classroom discussions is challenging in large classes. It’s hard to ensure every voice is heard and to keep conversations on track with limited time. Not to mention the physical headaches that can come with it.

The Solution: Kialo

Kialo is an online debate and discussion platform designed to make conversation manageable and engaging, particularly in large classrooms. 

It uses structured, visually linked debate maps so students can easily see how ideas connect, promoting clear and logical reasoning. 

Teachers can also add prompts and questions, set up discussion guidelines, and track each student’s contributions through analytics features.

For students, Kialo’s self-paced discussion allows them to interact and build on their classmates' ideas outside of class hours, enhancing critical thinking without consuming classroom time. 

This structure also means that teachers spend less time moderating repetitive arguments and more time focusing on meaningful interactions.

Oh, and the best part - it’s 100% free.

How About YOUR Classroom?

Self-paced learning tools like Kialo are perfect for helping students engage with class material outside of a rigid schedule and helps promote independent thinking.

Here are some strategies to help you manage your large classes effectively with it:

Strategies:

• Save Time with Discussion Tracking: Kialo allows you to quickly review each student’s contributions, saving you hours on grading and in-class moderation. The analytics feature lets you easily gauge participation and the quality of engagement.

• Enhance Group Work: Students can collaborate on group assignments using Kialo’s structured debate format, which organizes contributions by argument and counterargument. This prevents a few students from dominating the conversation.

• Promote Critical Thinking with Self-Paced Engagement: Give students a prompt to explore independently or in small groups. The platform’s structure requires students to provide evidence-backed points, helping them build strong arguments. Heck, you can even replace an essay this way!

Using Kialo, you can foster thoughtful, organized discussions even in a large classroom, supporting students’ critical thinking while saving your own time in the process.

Meet your personal digital clone, Proxy

Imagine if you had a digital clone to do your tasks for you. Well, meet Proxy…

Last week, Convergence, the London based AI start-up revealed Proxy to the world, the first general AI Agent.

Users are asking things like “Book my trip to Paris and find a restaurant suitable for an interview” or “Order a grocery delivery for me with a custom weekly meal plan”.

You can train it how you choose, so all Proxy’s are different, and personalised to how you teach it. The more you teach it, the more it learns about your personal work flows and begins to automate them.

Meet your Proxy here

BRAINY BITS

Do emotional teachers teach better?

Teachers experience countless emotions every day, from pride and joy to frustration and exhaustion.

But how do these emotions impact our ability to stay calm, focused, and in control in the classroom? 

This week, we dive into the connection between teacher emotions and self-regulation, giving us insight into why some teachers can keep cool when things get tough.

The Study: Teacher Emotions and Teacher Self-Regulation

This study explored the emotional lives of over 400 elementary teachers, using surveys to measure emotions like pride, love, anger, and fatigue, while examining how these feelings influence their self-regulation abilities. Results of all surveys were then compared.

Additionally, in focus groups, teachers shared how outside factors like workload, relationships, and school conditions impacted their moods and behavior in class.

The Results:

Emotions like pride and love had a modest positive impact on teachers’ self-regulation, suggesting that feeling good about their role helps them manage stress. 

Interestingly, negative emotions like anger and fatigue showed little impact on self-regulation, implying that while these feelings exist (and man do they ever), they don’t always dictate our classroom behavior. 

Overall, teachers found that external factors, from peer relationships to curriculum demands, were more significant in shaping their daily experience than these stressors.

In Your Classroom:

Teaching can be emotionally intense, but understanding how emotions work in real time can support better self-regulation on the job.

Recognizing these dynamics is one step closer to keeping calm and collected, regardless of outside annoyances.

Strategies

• Mindful Emotion Mapping: Regularly jot down your emotional highs and lows. Reflecting on these moments can help pinpoint patterns and identify emotional triggers.

• Collaborative Support Networks: Partner up with a fellow teacher or join a peer group to share and process challenging experiences. These discussions can offer both support and perspective.

• Positive Rituals: Establish quick, energizing routines (like a two-minute breathing exercise) that help shift your focus back to teaching whenever you feel derailed.

By embracing emotion-regulation tools, teachers can create a more balanced classroom experience and help model healthy emotional habits for their students too!

REFERENCES

This week’s issue adapts information from the following sources:

Tech Talk:

Kialo. (2024). The advantages of Kialo for class discussion. Retrieved from https://www.kialo-edu.com/advantages

Brainy Bits:

Yurtseven, N., & Sarac, Seda. (2024). Teacher emotions and teacher self-regulation: insights from teachers’ perspectives. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 16(5), 561-571. 10.26822/iejee.2024.353