Implement and Try #3...

During the holiday break I took some time to reflect on my teacher inquiry so far. Wanting to build on the foundations of what I have in place I started looking at ways other teachers get the talk going in maths lessons. One blog I found highlighted the reasons why we talk about maths. The bullet points below are the main takeaway I took from this post.

• Talking about maths allows us to share our thoughts.
• Talking about maths helps us clarify our own thoughts.
• Talking about maths helps us understand what we do and do not understand.
• Talking about maths prepares us for the future.

I know I've talked about this with my students but I now need to check that they understand these reasons. Talking about maths allows us to think about our own understanding of a concept or strategy. It allows us to use our own connections to agree or disagree with an idea. The power here comes from being able to justify our thinking by using maths language and strategies to show others why we think the way we do. Additionally being able to see how someone else's thinking is a more efficient way to find the answer helps to close gaps in knowledge. 

This week I introduced another idea I saw online. Instead of setting a challenge with an unknown answer I gave my students an incorrectly solved addition problem and challenged them to find, explain and fix the error. To help the talk flow I used the prompt 'How can you prove your answer is correct?' After solving the mystery the groups naturally moved around the room, eager to see if the others had found the error. 

I stepped back and listened  through the excited chatter to what was being said and heard that the LS2 Moves prompts we had been using, with absolutely no prompting from me, were being used to guide the conversations. The slide below shows the student voice collected. It was done very quickly but told me this style of facilitating conversation was a success.

I sourced this initial activity from Teachers Pay Teachers. My next steps will be to look at how I can incorporate and adapt some of the ideas in this resource to align with the content of our maths lessons. 

This is early days but I can't wait to see where this type of maths challenge takes us.

How I'm helping our staff as the in-school COL teacher for PBS...

As the in-school COL teacher for PBS part of my role is to guide the teacher inquiries of our staff. I have held this role for a number of years and because of that have had the opportunity to adapt and refine the ways I do this. If you're new to this role this post might be useful to you.

In Term 1 shared an overview of the purpose behind teacher inquiry at a staff meeting. Doing this helps us all get on the same page. Like many schools we have new staff this year so giving a shared message helps get the dialogue going. Graeme Aitken asked, “How can we come together and integrate our expertise and our knowledge to address significant problems?”  At our school we look at our data and use that information to guide our overall shared focus. We have found that by doing this for a number of years we get better traction as we have each other to bounce ideas off.  

From there teachers look at their own practice along with the data from their class, and begin thinking about how they are going to move forward in a way that allows them to grow professionally. It is at this stage that teachers are reminded that an inquiry into teacher practice is about the changes we make to help our students strengthen their connections to the learning. It is our what we do and how we do it that we unpack, reflect on and adapt.

The focus for Term 2 was to form our individual focus questions, choose a focus group, capture time point 1 data, and create a causal map to guide our inquiries. All of this data is then shared in a blog post that teachers can use as a foundation to build their inquiries on. To help ensure everyone is on the same page I created a google presentation (shared below) that aligns with the one the COL teachers use. This is a step by step 'how-to' so that everyone is empowered to begin their spiral of inquiry. I chose to share this DLO with a tern by term focus as that way no one is overloaded and everyone walks the journey together. 

In addition to this I have termly 'check-in' chats with everyone. This helps us stay on track and helps teachers to keep their inquiries alive by talking about what they have done so far and what their next steps will be. It is an opportunity to ask questions and have rich and real conversations that help us work towards our goal of accelerated shifts in student achievement. 

Coding in Blocks and in Python...

Last week I was inspired by the coding challenges Karen Ferguson was teaching my Year 8 students so I jumped online and ordered my own micro:bit.Today I joined in the coding lesson and experimented with coding using Blocks and using Python. 

Blocks is the best place to start if you are a complete novice like me. However with Karen's help and by following the tutorials I was able to use Python successfully. 

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T-Shaped Literacy for teachers of Year 1 - 3...

On Monday our staff attended Dr Rebecca Jesson's presentation 'T-Shaped Literacy for teachers of Year 1 - 3' at PT England School. Having used the T-shaped literacy approach for a number of years I know the benefits that can be gained from wide and deep reading. Seeing this done through the eyes of a junior school teacher has provided me with a deeper understanding as I know see how I can use this to meet the learning needs of my struggling learners too.

Here are my notes: Link

The video below captures the presentation.

Implement and Try #2...

Today I worked with my focus students to practise using our LS2 oral language framework in context. This is the process we followed:

1. Write a question on the board that linked directly to the strategy of long multiplication that we have been learning this week. 
2. Students then answer the question using the known strategy on whiteboards to give them a visual reference for sharing time.
3. Use the LS2 oral language framework to explain the steps they followed to find their answer.
4. Reflect on which question/s we found most useful and unpack thinking.
5. Share what we found 'hard'.
6. Repeat the process

One student shared that they weren't able to share their strategy confidently because they didn't have the maths words to explain the steps they followed, so after some quick thinking on my part, I wrote a list of the maths words on the board. (Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of this.) The image below is an example of what we did. The focus here was on the strategy, not on identifying the maths in a written question. 

With the vocabulary list visible the students felt their conversations became more detailed. Afterwards we discussed the difference between the information shared without the vocabulary scaffold and with the vocabulary scaffold. 8/8 students felt they were able to make stronger connections to their partner's strategy. 

Student G83 shared that she 'felt more confident when it was my time to share as I had the words that I was missing before. This time I kind of knew what to say.'

The next change to my practice will be to co-construct a strategy specific vocabulary list during my guided teaching sessions. 

Abstract noun senses poem...

This term I have had the amazing opportunity to be a part of a poetry focus group run by Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey. Each week Sheena has worked with a group of students who find writing a challenge, to front load them with the skills needed to find success in a poetry task. I then follow the plans shared by Sheena and Louise with the whole class during our reading and writing lessons. 

I have noticed that the students who Sheena has been working with are empowered and fully engaged in this learning, taking on a leadership role each and every time. The poems below are the end result of a whole class collaborative writing lesson. Our focus here was to use the 5 senses to describe an abstract noun using similes and metaphors.

Implement and Try #1...

After realising neither myself nor my students had made a strong connection to the language used in theTalk Moves framework we changed the speaking frames to incorporate the language we use. I explained why we were making these changes, then embraced the changes my students suggested. 

Today we carried out our usual thinking group challenge, something we have been doing all year. This means that as we move into the latter part of term 2, the students are all familiar with each other and have developed the confidence needed to participate actively within these groups. We began the lesson by unpacking our adapted speaking framework. This meant that anything that needed further explanation was broken down so that connections could be made. I asked each group to choose a leader and that the leader could be anyone who wanted to have a turn to lead the learning conversation. 4/6 groups had a student from my focus group step up as the leader.

The photos in this slideshow capture a snapshot of the whole lesson to preserve the anonymity of the students in my focus group.

The difference today was once the initial independent problem solving challenge had been completed, the academically productive conversation flowed. I think this may be due to the fact I introduced the updated speaking frame as our own. Each group had a least one student who had participated in the process of changing Talk Moves into LS2 Moves so the ownership and connections were in place. The photos above show the level of engagement. 

At the end of the lesson I asked for group feedback linked specifically to the wording of our questions:

• 'Who has a different strategy? let students avoid self doubt if they had no strategy to share'. 
• 'My group feel that Who has a different strategy? and What other strategies could we use? are the same so maybe we could choose the one that helps us share our thinking more confidently.' 
• Can you tell me what you said? and Do you mean… are asking the same information. 

We discussed this feedback and decided that we need to clarify the purpose of the questions in context to help strengthen connections further.

Focus group feedback at the end of the lesson: