Our guest bloggers this week are the H.O.T.T. Team students from Horsham West and Haven Primary School (thanks to Ben Miatke)
At the end of 2011, Horsham West and Haven Primary School moved away from specialised ICT teaching, opting instead for the integration of ICT use in the classroom alongside other learning areas. To assist teachers in this change, a student leadership team, called ‘The H.O.T.T Team’ was created.
What is the H.O.T.T. Team?
The H.O.T.T. Team stands for ‘Helping Others Through Technology.’ The team is designed to help younger students from Years 1-3 further develop skills in using technology and give the teachers more experience for future classes. The members come from the Year 5-6 group and need to apply and prove that have what it takes to be part of the team.
In 2013, the team was quite small with only 10 members and focusing on Years 1-2. This year, there are 17 members and due to the bigger team, we having expanded to Years 1-3, much to the excitement of the Year Three teachers and students.
The Application Process
To get into the H.O.T.T team we have to send our teacher Mr Miatke some reasons why we think we could teach younger people and some of our technology skills and devices we use and feel we could teach. Since Mr. Miatke was the IT teacher, he also knew how good we were with technology as well.
Our Training Process
“We have training weekly, being taught what to do when a child is being naughty, how to plan things, how to give rewards properly and fairly, how to make things fun and to be confident in front of a group of children. This has been great because some of us were a bit nervous about teaching and worried about naughty students.”
What we actually do
The H.O.T.T. Team members work in pairs with one class. They have regular meetings with the teacher from the class, ensuring there is full understanding of what is being taught, plan the sessions, organise days and times to teach and the best way the team members can teach the students, or which students they should work with. For example, all classes have kids with different skills in ICT and the members need to understand what skill level of the students they are to work with. Once they have done this, they teach small groups of around 3-6 students in the focus program for around usually 30mins. The members have to be patient but firm with the students and all the members have different ways to control the behaviours of their students. Some strategies for the H.O.T.T. Team use to control and reward students we teach are ‘Big Bucks,’ group points, mini prizes and lollies. They work well and we haven’t really had any problems so far.
The positives and negatives of the H.O.T.T Team
In the H.O.T.T. Team there are more positives than negatives. One of the positives is that we get to help kids that do not know some things about technology, which is great. One of the things that can get in the way though is that some kids play up and don’t listen, which means that other students have to wait for them to get it right and we have less time to teach the others. Being in the H.O.T.T. Team will be great to put on our résumé and help us get a job in the future. Another positive is that we get an awesome T-Shirt that we get to wear on the days that we teach, it makes us feel special and people ask us about what it is like.
More information: Contact Ben Miatke at Horsham West and Haven Primary School on (03) 5382 1285 or email miatke.benjamin.p@edumail.vic.gov.au
http://hwhpshott.global2.vic.edu.au/
