Q2: What is it that we want our students to learn?

As a school we are unified in the fact we want to strengthen our students' oral language skills, for many of us, it is so our students are able to confidently talk about their learning and understanding in maths. This not only deepens their understanding but also strengthens their connections. Strong connections allow for confidence to be increased and with an increased confidence comes the ability to ask questions. By using content specific language in context our students paint a much clearer picture for us of where they are at. These pictures also help us to see where misconceptions and disconnects are hiding. It is this detail that not only informs our practice but shows us when we need to make changes. 

Our data shows that across each class there is a huge disparity between the students who have made the connections they need to allow them to operate at a higher and more challenging level, and those for who the gap widens each year. It must feel incredibly disempowering to keep trying and not reap the rewards of success that mastery of a concept brings. Talk Moves is something every student can do and is something where every student regardless of achievement level will begin to feel success. 

Transferring this learning talk to blog commenting is going to afford our learners a further opportunity to revisit their learning in context. The Covid 19 lockdowns of 2020, and more recently, of 2021 meant all our learning abruptly shifted to the online platform. There was a lot less opportunity to have that 1:1 teacher time that our lower ability learners need in order to help them feel supported when taking risks in new learning. Talk Moves will not only provide a well rehearsed pattern of conversation within a google meet, but in addition will allow our students to continue learning as they maintain the all important connections with their peers via their blogs.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we realised that if we were expecting the comments to be specific, the learning behind the blog post content needed to be equally as specific. By linking the language we want our learners to use to the Talk Moves process, we are providing an authentic opportunity for our learners to practise using the language we are hoping to see within both a blog post and a blog comment. By having the opportunity to practise we are removing the unknown and affording our learners the rich opportunity to learn both from and with each other in context. 

As teachers not all the adaptations we make work but by carrying out continued inquiry we are able to continually reflect, adapt and try. The ideas we try that are not successful are often referred to as mistakes. However it is by sharing these ‘mistakes’ along with our successes that others have the opportunity to learn the most from us. Something that may or may not have worked for one teacher, might just be the key that unlocks the door another teacher is trying to open.