Micro-Lessons

 

Staying connected: sustaining relationships during the shift to online learning

How do you engage learners in a digital platform? Human learning is not a detached, purely cognitive process but is also social and emotional; and the relationships between teacher and students and among students play a significant role in learning.

In the classroom, interaction provides opportunities to build positive relationships through face-to-face, shared teaching and learning experiences. But how can we sustain these relationships in an online environment? In this webinar, Dr Kate McLay and Professor Robyn Gillies explore practical strategies that classroom teachers can use to foster important learning relationships – to stay connected to their students and help students to stay connected to one another.

 

Childhood Anxiety: Closing the treatment gap

All too often anxious and depressed children in school settings do not ask for help and thus go undetected, exacerbating the long term negative consequences associated with mental health problems. Dr Elizabeth Edwards, a Teacher, Psychologist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, talks about how her research supports the notion that difficulties with maintaining concentration play a critical role in the development and maintenance of anxiety and depression. Her latest work uses cognitive neuroscience methods to investigate whether a novel cognitive training intervention, implemented as part of the daily school routine, can prevent childhood mental health problems.

 

Early Number Sense: Highlights you can do at home

Early number sense is an important foundation of arithmetic and algebra. In this video,  Dr Stephen Tucker provides a practical introduction to two key components of early number sense: subitising and composition. Most of the applications shared are immediately relevant for children 3-7 years old, but the ideas can be adapted for younger and older children... and adults.

 

Roles of the writer: A strategy for approaching extended writing

Extended writing can be challenging. How do we get started? How do we tame our thoughts into cogent sentences and paragraphs? And how can we get ‘unstuck’? Dr Kate McLay's microlesson offers one approach to tackling extended written tasks that is useful in virtually any context and for any purpose, whether at school, university or professional life. Dividing the various tasks of writing into stages or roles gives us a place to start, a set of goals and strategies to approach each stage, and rewards us with a sense of accomplishment as we make identifiable progress.

HigherEd Heroes Podcast

In this episode, Dr Sebastian Kaempf and Dr Alastair Stark talk to Dr Simone Smala, Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education at The University of Queensland, about how taking her students out of the classroom and into different institutions and museums helps them understand different forms of learning. 

 

Top tips from UQ School of Education

Deputy Head of the School of Education, Associate Professor Rhonda Faragher, shares her top 10 tips for parents who are feeling anxious about teaching their children from home as the COVID-19 crisis forces schools to close their doors.
First, breathe. Relax. You know how to do maths. Head of the School of Education, Professor Patricia Morrell shares her top tips to get you through.