Organisation of TLLM team

1. TLLM team will be renamed "School Curriculum Innovation" (SCI) team.

2. Terms of Reference:

• Team Leader SCI : Daniel W S Lim
• Research Activist: Yang Ser Yee
• SCI Teams and members

1. Languages: Tan HS, Bernard Kang, Huijun
2. Humanities: Nalini, Ruva
3. Maths: Ng TG
4. Science: Cherlyn

3. The SCI team will eventually have 2 distinct branches

• Curriculum Development and Innovation Wing
• Teaching & Learning Research Wing

Punggol River Project - 2010

Collecting a water sample

Teamwork!

The river water was crystal clear after filtration!

Netbook in hand, our pupils work independently

Gadgets galore! Our little scientists getting on with their work.

Our pupils interviewing Sengkang residents

Testing water quality

"Sir, what do you think?"

Engaging our residents

Our wonderful teachers with their bright smiles with Ronald Macdonald.

TLLM - What next?

Role of TLLM team


1. The challenge in 2011 is to raise awareness and participation of staff in innovation in T & L
2. As team leader, my role is to set the direction for the TLLM team to promote a culture of school wide curriculum innovation as I am doing now.
3. Our SSD supports the TLLM team by offering to us platforms for our research teams to share, offer the teams protected time to do their research and organise training which supports their objectives.
4. Ser Yee, our RA, will offer her expertise to the research teams in areas like research design and methodology, statistical procedures, data collection and research paper writing. Her role is that of both driver and consultant.
5. Each of the original TLLM team members will lead 1 of the 5 research teams.

- Hai Seng/Huijun

- Bernard/Daniel

- Ruvathy

- Tiong Ghee/Ser Yee

- Nalini
Ser Yee and I will join the team whose research may interest us. For instance I am likely to join Bernard to jointly investigate how the use of checklists in Oral Communications improves OC results OR Nalini to study how the use of diagrammatic arrows leads to better quality of expository writing in Humanities.

Activities for Oct to Dec 2010

1. TLLM Team will meet every Thursday afternoon beginning from 14th Oct to do the following:

a. Complete the Fernvale Estate integrated project.
b. Each of the TLLM members has penned down areas in T & L which they would like to investigate and to objectively uncover effectiveness of via AR. They will delve deeper into each area and find a maximum of 2 other non-TLLM team members who may also have found effectiveness in some of these areas. Together they will form a research team.

Proposed targets for 2011

- Formation of 5 research teams led by an original TLLM team member.

- All 5 research teams will present their research at 1 or more platforms.

- The 5 research teams will sub-divide into 15 teams in 2012 and take in new members.

- At least 2 AR papers to be published in a recognised publication at Zone and/or National level.

Starting the cycle of innovation - penning down current good practices.

Our current teachers have many useful practices which they feel yield better educational outcomes. From the teachers in the TLLM group, we have listed some of the practices which we currently use and which we felt will lead to better learning.

These ideas will be shared with the other teachers to find staff who are also using similar practices. Our newly minted RA Ser Yee can help these teachers design an experiment and to offer her input to help these teachers do a piece of research on the respective areas. The outcome will be numerous research papers which can be shared at various platforms.

Task design and assessment for learning

1. Alignment
2. How does completing this task get the pupils to attain the outcomes
3. Assessment milestones
4. Tighten assessment process
5. Methods of alternative assessment:
- checklist
- reflection
- rubrics
- set of criteria
- scaffolded questions
- process checks

Improving thinking skills - Visible thinking

1. Visible thinking
2. Harvard grad school of education
3. Porvide opportunities for people to think
4. Thinking routines
5. Habits of mind
6. Use of prompts and suggestions

Learning from CPDD meeting - curriculum integration

1. Curriculum Map
2. All learner outcomes for each every subject.
3. mapping out and backward design to map SIOs, skills and content for each subject.
4. Easier for TT schools.

Assessment weight for various subjects TLLM 2010

Geography - 15% Map and presentation
EL - 5% SW Letter
Science - Test 15% and Wksheets 10%
Maths - 5% Presentation
CL - 10% Essay

What's next for TLLM?

We can begin looking at both the internal and external community elements to build an integrated curriculum.
Internal areas include:
1. Solar panels
2. Spice gardens
3. Pond

AAR I for TLLM Rivers Project 2010

Please write down:
3 things we did correctly for the project and should continue doing.

3 things we can improve on and how it can be improved.[Areas for improvement]

2 areas of investigation using the concepts of collaborative learning, experential learning and place-based education for future projects:

1 thing you have learnt in being involved in this project that has made you a better educationist.