Keeping my learners engaged through talk...

Adrienne Dines' phrase 'talk is the action of learning' really resonated with me as I saw this as another way I could encourage my learners to keep talking about their learning. So as we start the term two of my groups (this includes my target students), are going to self manage their own learning conversations. To do this they will be working with revolving ‘Book Buddies’ so that they can talk about the texts they are reading. What I mean by 'revolving,' is that each text change comes with a buddy change to allow for different perspectives to be shared and heard.

The thinking behind this is that my learners will feel empowered as they continue to learn how to explain their thinking about event and character development in longer texts. The reason I have put the ownership of the learning back on these students is because they are all at the reading to learn stage, whilst one of my groups needs more guided attention as they are still moving towards the reading to learn stage. This does not mean I will be sitting back and leaving them to it; just that they will not have as much guided teacher time as the other group.

After asking my learners what content they wanted to see in our reading program at the end of last term, I created our Navigating Narratives challenges. Our texts were selected together and there is no set order the follow up tasks need to be done in as I have found learner choice leads to a stronger buy-in. The idea is that these tasks will be done in pairs. This means each pair can choose their own text, and after reading for 30 minutes (our reading blocks are 90 minutes), will decide what they want to explore at a deeper level. The follow up frameworks are consistent with the work we have done throughout the year to help to maintain and build on the connections to the learning that are already in place. The challenges have guiding questions to get the talk going and plenty of opportunities for peer led feedback to be given and listened to.

I didn't begin by introducing the site page in detail, instead I simply shared the link and asked them to explore. This strategy generated a lot of talk as each person was able to make their own connections. When I asked my learners to choose their buddy I found that this had already happened. My target group have opted to pair up with each other, but completely unexpected was who chose to work with who. I assumed the boys would work with the boys and the girls with the girls as that has been the norm so far, however this time it appears skill set with skill set have paired up.

I am excited to see where this takes us as we head into the assessments this term.

I have included the link to the site page above for anyone who would like to use any of these ideas.

Making my learners accountable...

Today during Reading I asked my learners how I would know they were actively participating in the learning. The unified response was, "Make sure we are talking about our thinking!"  To make sure this actually happened, I challenged each person to write down one question they asked that contributed to the collaborative task. Our prompts were: 'What question could you ask? Will it tell you the information you want?' I knew this could be easily overlooked then hurriedly made up so I scaffolded the challenge by handing each person one brightly coloured post it note. My thinking was that if they could see a small space to record their question it wouldn't seem to onerous.

The image above reflects success! Everyone recorded a question and only two students felt too shy to share their question during our reflection time. This is a huge shift in confidence so I took a step back and asked myself why this might have happened, and thought about what I might have done/said differently. With my learners working in collaborative groups I was able to roam around the room having deep learning conversations. Upon reflection the most common message I shared was Did it tell you the information you want?

The questions below are our evidence of how each person participated actively in today's learning. The highlighted questions are from my target students.

• What did you do for the summary?
• Can you share your summary please?
• Was Kate Sheppard part of the suffrage or did she make it?
• What was the suffrage movement?
• What is the meaning of suffrage?
• What is a petition?
• Does Women’s suffrage have capital letters?
• How effective was the suffrage movement towards the men that wouldn’t allow women votes?
• Why were some women against the women’s suffrage issues?
• Why did they change their minds about women’s suffragettes?
• Did Kate Sheppard’s personality influence the men’s decisions?
• What were Kate Sheppard’s major achievements that convinced the law to allow women to vote?
• Why was the law so specific with some people not allowed to vote?
• At any point did Kate Sheppard feel like giving up on her main goal?
• How was Kate Sheppard able to keep going knowing there was hate and conflict against her?
• Were all cultures of women allowed to vote?
• Did Kate Sheppard fear that she was going to lose the fight?
• What made Kate Sheppard want to fight for women’s rights?
• Did Kate Sheppard feel like giving up?
• How did Kate Sheppard become the leader of the suffragettes?
• Is the big circle building the NZ parliament building?
• When did Kate Sheppard find out that women couldn’t vote?
• Why did Kate Sheppard decide to start campaigning to get women the right to vote?
• What convinced the men to let the women vote?
• What made Kate Sheppard keep going even though people didn’t like what she had to say? 
• Why did Kate Sheppard join the suffrage movement? 
• What did Kate Sheppard do to become the leader of the women’s suffrage movement?

These questions reflect strong connections are continuing to be made. The difference is my learners have a purpose for asking their questions and today they were accountable for their learning. My next step is to actively plan ways to sustain this accountability.

Engaging and Empowering...

Photo via Good Free Photos

Today we began our journey into this terms reading challenges and I needed to get those cogs turning! I have chosen to explore the suffragette movement to help my learners make deeper connections to the upcoming elections. Understand the importance of having the right to vote, and why people in the past fought for this right underpins the texts chosen to explore this topic.

I know my learners and I knew that I needed to engage them by selling this topic in the right way. I thought that it was important to use my blog as a platform for reminding people about the importance of finding a way to bring a difficult topic back to the world of our learners to allow them to make strong personal connections.

What I did to build connections together:

I began by asking my learners to find an learning buddy and by asking the questions:

• Who is in charge of New Zealand?
• Who makes the laws and rules?
• Who is NZ's Prime Minister?
• How did he/she get this job?

Initial responses were interesting and varied, but none were correct. We then used our smart searching skills to find this information. To bring it back to our immediate world we looked at our own school. I knew I need to build vocabulary knowledge so we use our devices to define the words: vote, parliament and government.

I borrowed an idea from Adrienne Dines at St Patricks School and introduced the notion that ‘talk is the action born from thinking’. We unpacked this statement together by me asking why I was sharing this.

"So we talk about our thinking..."

"So you know we are thinking..."

"Because if we talk it kind of goes in our brain and help us understand more..."

I shared our 'Votes for Women' site and shared the fact that a long time ago it was only men who were allowed to make decisions about how we lived. Women, alcoholics, criminals, men under 18 and those classified as insane were not allowed to make any of these decisions. To say the girls in this group were shocked is an understatement! The result of this statement was a buzz of talk as I was immediately bombarded with questions as to why women weren't allowed an opinion. No answers were given as I pointed out this was what we were going to find out.

We used the learning buddy partnerships to then explore the amazing interactive timeline on the NZ parliament site. Their task was to use their skimming and scanning skills to find and briefly summarise information they found interesting. While this was happening I worked my way around each group having rich conversations about their identified points of interest. It is important to mention here that I had previously looked through this information so I was able to recall and discuss it without referring to my computer.

To capitalise on today's engagement I asked each pair to record something on the white board that they wanted to find out more about. These questions excite me as I can see that deep and critical thinking is emerging.

• Did the Queen have anything to do with the law that only men could vote?
• What convinced the men to allow women to vote?
• Why didn't men let women vote at first?
• What convinced the men to allow women to allow women to stand for parliament?
• Why were men from other countries not allowed to vote?
• Why was Wellington chosen to be the place of parliament?
• Which men agreed with Kate Sheppard and made women's rights possible?

My learners felt engaged and empowered, and I was reminded of how important it is to know your learners, know your topic and know how to make connections to your learner's immediate world.

The images used do not reflect my target students