Parent Communication

At a recent meeting of the Hanoi Technology Group, one of my colleagues brought up the theme of parent communication. My belief is that teachers are not the primary educators students have in their lives. Teachers spend a large portion of time with students, but the majority of time and teaching should be spent with family. As the primary caregivers, parents are the main teachers in the lives of our students. I would like to use this space to suggest ways to empower parents to teach their children, our students.

At my school, one of the ways we empower parents is by providing as much information and training to them as possible. Some of the ways we communicate with parents include:

• Sending class timetables home at the start of each week.
• Using communication books and email for teachers and parents to write messages to each other. It is important to find the means of communication that best suits the individual parent. Some parents are more technologically comfortable and prefer emails to their phone while others will prefer more traditional means of communication.
• Holding exam information evenings when exams are approaching. These evenings give parents detailed information on the exam process as well as strategies to support their children as they study at home. 
• Holding coffee mornings where parents may come in to meet with school leaders. These are usually structured around a curriculum theme. 
• Having a parent/teacher information evening each term. This is a form of communication I personally like to employ and I am currently planning one to explain our reading program in the early weeks of Term 3. 
• Holding parent/teacher conferences to keep parents up to date with student progress.

The above list takes a lot of time and effort on the part of the teacher. However, keeping parents informed on what is happening and giving them strategies on how to teach their child is well worth the effort. In my opinion, teaching is not a nine-to-five job. I give my email and telephone number to my students and their parents so they can get in touch with me should they have any issues. This has always helped me to build trusting relationships with my students and their parents. 

Reading Levels

Reading A-Z

My school has been using Reading A-Z for a number of years. It is a useful way of tracking students' reading and comprehension as they progress through the different classes. The lower level books begin at A and are suitable for students in the first grade. Each level becomes increasingly more difficult all the way up to Z, which would be around fifth grade, depending on your school system. Reading A-Z provides this correlation chart for parents, teachers and students in order to keep track of the individual's progress. It is important to note that this system is designed for students whose first language is English. The chart also contains the Lexile index range for each book. This is a scale educators use to determine the appropriate reading age of a book for a child. It is particularly useful when buying books as gifts!

Running Records

Running records serve two main purposes:

• They are used to match students to books that are written at their instructional reading level.
• They are used to determine whether or not students are ready to exit their current levels and move to the next ones.

Reading Groups

Perhaps the most useful teaching tool I have gained from the Reading A-Z program has been reading groups. During these times, I will divide my class up into groups of four to five students. I will then assign the same book to each student in the group. The books are as near to the child's reading level as possible. I then have the students read a page of the book each until the book is finished. After they have read the book, I will have a retell activity or a discussion on the story. 

I hope this is useful to somebody out there!

High School Youth Retreat

High School Youth Retreat

Last weekend, my wife Kirsten and I took twenty-two high school students on weekend retreat. We went to the beautiful countryside of Hoa Binh, about two hours southwest of Hanoi. We left Hanoi on Friday evening after school and travelled by bus to Hoa Binh. Our friend, Michael Ong from Tea Talk, came along and taught the group on Friday night. Michael spoke about community and the need to work together. He also had us play a fun game where we were required to work together to solve a problem.

Saturday was a lot of fun with some more teaching in the morning before games of frisbee, a walk through the nearby creek, a buffet and a bonfire. The students then led a worship session for two hours that night. It was excellent; under the stars, away from the city, connecting with the LORD, surrounded by his creation. 

The highlight of working with this group for me has been seeing the students learn to lead Bible studies and develop into leaders. I am always so proud when I see them lead studies and step out in faith in order to help others. This trip was very much an inreach event where we grew stronger as a group. The next step will be another outreach event where we can go out and serve our community. 

Symposium Towards a Learning Society

Symposium: Towards a Learning Society

On August 22nd and 23rd of this year, I had the honor of attending a learning symposium organised by VVOB and the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). The aim of the symposium was to bring educators from all over Vietnam together to share best practices. The topics ranged from development, community and family to special needs. All the presentations are available here. Each presenter had to submit a paper and, when these are available, I will share them also. 

The symposium was divided into four themes:

1. Students
2. Teachers
3. Managers
4. Parents & Communities

I presented in Session 2 on Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). I have been researching into this topic for a couple of years now and wrote my thesis on it. There will be a blog post coming on the findings of that research. My presentation was intended to encourage educators to develop PLCs in their schools. They are an area for teachers to come together to share their knowledge. When implemented correctly, PLCs impact school culture in a positive way. 

I would highly encourage anybody out there who is doing a Master's degree to write your papers in such a way as you can submit them for similar events. It is a great opportunity and, again, a way to kill two birds with one stone. 

Twitter for Teachers

(Image courtesy of Creative Commons)

I love learning! My primary source of professional development over the past ten years has come from university courses. With the going rate for an international student being around 2000 dollars per unit, quality learning can be quite expensive.

Recently at the Vietnam Technology Conference, I was introduced to Twitter. Now, up to this point, I was extremely skeptical about social media. I had noticed how people were wasting hours on Facebook and was determined not to do the same.

At the technology conference, I saw for the first time how Twitter can be used for educational purposes. The key to it all is to create an account strictly for professional use. Identify quality educators to follow and learn from them. It is also important to share your successful lessons too, thus creating a professional learning network.

The same applies to other professions. If you are a manufacturing engineer, follow people in the same field. If you are a doctor, look for other doctors to learn from. For more information on how to set up a Twitter account, check out this guide from Edudemic which includes a video by Erin Klien. They have done a much better job of explaining Twitter than I ever could.

Follow me @brianlalor.

Building Community in Hanoi

My mother was a teacher for forty-two years. Most of that time she taught at a local primary school near my home. Teaching for that length of time at the same school is extremely beneficial for building relationships within the community. As a child, many older boys in my neighborhood looked out for me because I was "Mrs. Lalor's son". The desire to be a part of the community I live in and to help develop it is something I got from my mother, so thank you, Mam!

The Friday night youth group I teach at Hanoi International Fellowship has become involved in building community in Hanoi. They have teamed up with another organisation I volunteer for called the Australian Charity for the Children of Vietnam. 

ACCV works to help young blind people in Hanoi have a better life through English language programs and building social networks. There is a lot more information about ACCV here where Alison has created a beautiful blog post of the same event. We met at the new HIF Center and began with a time of eating and getting to know each other better.

After lunch, we played Connect Four, Dominoes and cards. It was a real learning experience for us to see how well the blind students could play these games. I thought you needed to be able to see to play such games. After this, some of the HIF youth brought a couple of the ACCV students into the auditorium to play musical instruments.

The highlight of the day for me was all the different organisations present. There were not only members of HIF and ACCV, but also of another organisation that works with the blind called Lift You Up. Members of the Young Adults group at HIF also attended, as did other blind friends from Hanoi. Various international schools were represented including Singapore International School, UNIS and Concordia. I believe this was a very successful day of learning and building community. 

Our next project together will be to expand our game playing into the physical realm. One of the HIF members has sourced a football for blind people and we are working on creating the game pictured above, which is called Swish. It is a version of table tennis that blind people can play. Thanks to everyone who came on to this awesome event!

Pathway to PhD

I would like to share some information that has been a big help to me in my learning journey. I have even shared this with my 5th Grade class to motivate them to plan.

Two years ago, the opportunity arose through my school to study for a Master's degree. A colleague of mine pulled me aside and told me that if I were to set up my Master's in a certain way, I would have one third of the work for my future PhD done by the time I finished my Master's. I was not even thinking about a PhD back then, but am very much interested in 'killing two birds with one stone' whenever possible. This is an important skill I believe we need to teach our students too. For example, with different subjects, how by merging them we can do one assessment piece to cover a number of subjects. I hope that made sense  but I mean much like the integrated units of study taught in the Queensland State curriculum cover Technology, English, The Arts, etc. and are all assessed in one project.

I started my Master's of Education in the Leading and Managing stream with the intent to become a principal. My colleague suggested I identify an area of interest and try to steer all my assignments towards this area. I chose the area of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Half way through my course, I decided to switch into what is called a Research Pathway, which is like a mini PhD. At the end of a Research Pathway, you write a short thesis of about 15,000 words. During this time, you are exposed to the ethics process before commencing research, you are introduced to different research methods and choose your own and you write a literature review and begin to identify lots of sources of information  All this information can be used for your PhD. Bang! There goes another bird! The end goal would be to turn your PhD into a book always looking for that area that has not been written about yet.

I hope this saves time and money for somebody out there!