Qu 8: How another lockdown period may impact the learners in your focus group?

How another lockdown period may impact the learners in your focus group? 

Will you need to make any changes to your Inquiry?

How might your intervention look different if you continue through this period?

• Do any of your intervention plans work via distance learning?
• Is there any information about implementation of your changed practices/intervention you could collect during this time?

As mentioned in an earlier post Alert Level 4 has pretty much seen my 2021 teacher inquiry come to a grinding halt. I do not have the authentic opportunities a face to face learning environment provides so I have needed to adapt what I am doing to encourage my students to keep the 'talk' going in Maths. 

Building on the 'familiar' by strengthening the language and vocabulary foundations already in place was how I thought we would move forward, but this has not happened in the ways I thought it would. With only my target students in mind, Google Meet attendance is an ever changing picture, making it quite challenging to get a whole group snapshot of where these students are at now. I have tried a variety of ways to try and organise a whole group Meet, but this hasn't panned out, with low level engagement being the barrier for two of these students.

Adapt and Try #5 asked my learners to write 3 maths questions linked to the topic of online gaming each using a different skill (eg: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, decimals, algebra…). Solve them incorrectly, then share the questions with a friend and challenge them to find, explain and fix the error.

The examples in the DLO show varied levels of understanding and I can see that these students are falling back on the known in their choice of number operation. Follow up conversations identified that these students chose to buddy up and collaborate for each part of this task, so my original idea did not work. Unfortunately, hindsight tells me that the real and rich conversations that took place were not captured. However in saying this, the interactions that evolved from my feedback in the comments tool showed me the depth of the thinking behind the co-construction of these responses.

Keeping the talk going in a distance learning environment is really challenging. This is an inquiry focus that is definitely best suited to a face to face environment. From the tasks I have set over the last few weeks I can see that 50% my target students are able to use maths language effectively to explain their thinking, 25% understand what it is they need to do but have not yet developed the vocabulary and language to allow them to do this, and 25% did not engage in this task. 

What has worked over the last few weeks, is that all my target group have engaged in the 'skill drill' type activities we have set. I have no idea why the buy-in for this type of learning is so high, but I'm taking this as a win. These students may not be physically talking about the strategies they are using, but they are using this time to strengthen their connections to the number knowledge foundations they need to have in place before connections to new learning can be built.

Being back in a face to face environment isn't going to automatically make my inquiry a success. I need to continue to reflect on my teaching and explore ways I can adapt and change my practice if I want to effect change and keep the 'talk' going in maths.

Distance learning: The dilemma of keeping our Year 7/8 learners engaged...

One of the most challenging aspects of Distance Learning is keeping out tamariki engaged. Having experienced lockdowns previously with a shared class, Dianne and I know the importance of having systems in place that have been revisited regularly so that should another lockdown occur, everyone in our class knows what it is they need to do to keep their learning going from home. Our students know to check their email every morning and know to look at the Distance Learning page on our class site to access their work. We have practised signing into and participating in a Google Meet, and know that all our students are able to do this.

Each day we were asking our learners to join in a Google Meet to make sure they stay connected with us, and with their classmates. Unlike previous lockdowns, this one seems to be the hardest to keep our learners engaged. Initially, a large number of our students saw the break from the classroom as a bonus holiday, which meant we had just over half the class taking part. During our time at Level 4 we have made a number of changes that have helped us to establish connections with a much larger number of our students, however each day who we are connecting with has become an ever changing picture.

Some students have attended every Google Meet and have completed all work set, some have opted in and out of the Google Meets but have continued to share completed work, whilst others have attended no Google Meets but regularly share completed work. On the other side of the coin there are those who have not been able to establish an online learning routine. These are the students who have attended one or two Google Meets but have completed none of the work set. In reality for some of our learners participating in a Google Meet is a step too far out of their comfort zone. What I have appreciated is getting one or two emails from our learners who find many aspects of learning a challenge in class. For many of these students online engagement has been a struggle, but they want to say hi and let us know they're ok. Finally, we have the students who appear to have completely dropped off our radar. The students who have not responded to any emails, participated in any Google Meets or completed any work.

This is not a time time for us to judge or put pressure on anyone. In reality we do not know or understand what their home situation looks like. There are many other factors that contribute here but the main one for all of us being that lockdowns are challenging and that it is incredibly hard to stay motivated. 

What we did...

Google Meets: 

• We changed from whole class meetings everyday, with Fridays set aside for Tech, to whole class meetings only on Mondays and Wednesdays. Tuesdays and Thursdays are now opt in meetings for anyone who would like to ask questions, have something explained in more detail or simply just say hi, and Fridays remain set aside for Tech. By doing this we noticed that some students sign in every day, some on Mondays and Wednesdays and others only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We are not only reaching a wider range of students by doing this but also finding that the amount of work completed has increased significantly.

Student Voice: 

• One of the most powerful tools we have is the ability to listen. Our students simply do not see working from home as an opportunity to continue doing the work we do at school. I have seen many posts on social media from other teachers sharing how their learners simply adapt, but in our case ours don't, so we have needed to be really creative. We asked our learners what topics they would like us to cover and made our purpose for learning fit those themes. For us this has meant saying goodbye to our term focus of Hauora and hello to Anime/Manga, Online Gaming, Events in History and Famous People. By doing this we have been able to keep our learning going by keeping learner engagement in place. 

• The one that stands out the most to me is our theme from last week of 'Online Gaming'. Not playing the games (we had disclaimers in place on the very first teaching slide), but instead creating characters, graphing character emotions, justifying reasoning, writing character descriptions, describing settings, exploring vocabulary and using these words to summarise main ideas, writing paragraphs, creating and solving theme based written maths questions, taking a deep dive into coordinates in maths, reading maps, exploring direction and most of all having fun. The engagement and effort that went into the detail in the tasks completed was amazing, with a high percentage of our students completing all the work that was set. 

• Our students prefer tasks where the finish line is in sight and can be completed in any order. We very quickly adapted to this style of learning and find that the elements of choice we provide keeps more people motivated. It is a real challenge to cater for the huge variety of learning styles during distance learning, so developing learning challenges where students have the option to choose to collaborate, or complete independently, has been one of the keys to our success in helping our learners keep their learning going from home.

Purpose:

• Having a real purpose behind the learning has been one of the important messages we have shared with our students. As with anything you do, knowing why you're doing it, is what motivates you to participate actively. 

Feedback: 

• Dianne and I have made a point of giving feedback on every piece of work that has been shared with us. The comments tool in G Suite has allowed us to give affirmations and identify where tweaks (or if needed, specific guidance) can be made to increase the detail and accuracy of responses. This has proven to be a really valuable way to connect with our students on an individual level as the protocol in our class is to reply to any comment received. They can see by acknowledging their work we are valuing the efforts they are putting in.

• Linda (our amazing TA) is a highly valued member of our LS2 distance learning journey team. She actively takes part in all our Google Meets and comments on every blog post. By doing this Linda has not only maintained the extremely important connections she makes in class every day, but has used her online presence to provide our class with an authentic online audience.

As I said at the start of this post, this lockdown seems so much harder than previous ones to firstly capture, and secondly keep, our students engaged online. Our purpose in general has been to keep our learning going from home. Many of our students have been able to do this, but for some, the face to face learning opportunities that come with a move to Alert Level 2 will be their time to revisit and strengthen the connections they had made to their learning before Alert Level 4 restrictions were announced. It will once again be our time to tweak, change and adapt our program again to make sure we all end our 2021 learning journey positively with everyone having found an opportunity to celebrate the learning successes they have had this year.

Adapt and Try Alert Level 4 version...

With the move to Alert Level 4 last week my teacher inquiry pretty much came to an immediate standstill. The hardest part being for me to get my head around is that I now know all the momentum we have built so far this year will take a giant step backwards, however having been in this position once before I realised quite quickly that adapt and try was the only option available to me. So with that in mind earlier this week I set my learners the familiar maths challenge to 'find the error, explain the error and fix the error', something I unpacked earlier in this post.

Unfortunately I don't have online engagement with all my focus group at this stage. However for those who are engaging this was the challenge set ( - refer to DLO below). I noticed some students preferred to work collaboratively and others independently. I have no problem with the option they choose. There are a number of ways forward for me including a small group Google Meet and making use of applications like Screencastify, but for now this allows me to once again widen my focus to my whole maths group. 

The responses on slides 2 and 3 (above) are varied in detail and use of content specific vocabulary but as with everything we do, it is about knowing your learners and understanding how they think and speak/write. What I take from these examples is that these students understand how to add decimals and understand the concept of BEDMAS, with the part that I'm get the most information from, being the explanations of the errors. In the example above I mentioned that any errors or misunderstandings can be easily ironed out in a Google Meet or through the comments tool using Mote or by written feedback. 

I need to find ways to keep the 'talk' going in Maths. However, at this stage my priority is to maintain and build on my student's maths vocabulary and strategy knowledge by continuing to provide authentic and purposeful opportunities for my students to use and apply this knowledge. Going forward we will use this time to build on the 'familiar' by strengthening the foundations already in place. 

Motivating my Learners... A Distance Learning Challenge

Yesterday morning, five learning days since Auckland moved back into to Level 3, I opened up our 'Finished Work sheet' to find a lot of blank cells staring back at me. I am aware there are many external factors that challenge our tamariki with distance learning which is why our program runs the way it does. However for some reason this time around I found myself, unlike last time, in the unfamiliar territory of limited buy-in from my learners, despite having approximately 70% attendance at our Google Meets. 

The work set is not 'busy' work. It is an adaptation of the learning I had already planned for the classroom. Which means we are using this time to build onto the foundations of knowledge already in place. My learner's feedback in Term 2 about our distance learning program post lockdown, was listened to and has been implemented, however the work output disparity between times is very noticeable. I realised my motivating strategies just weren't working so I decided to get creative and painted a picture with the numbers. 

Often a challenge we face is that if we can't see something, we don't really connect to it. Many times in situations where a big message is being shared orally, heads nod but the message isn't always internalised and acted upon. This is why I painted a clear picture using the data I had. At no point was this a negative message but rather an honest one shared as 'What I See..'. I knew by looking at Teacher Dashboard a lot more work had been completed but this hadn't been shared or filed correctly so it wasn't counted in this data. 

After sharing the slide above I simply said 'Have you made time to keep your learning going?'. I didn't want anyone to answer this, just to think about it. I then shared two further slides to remind my learners what distance learning is and what they need to do to become a successful distance learner. The point of this message wasn't to focus on the amount of DLOs created or blog posts published (as not all work is published), but rather on the fact the work needed to be done so that we can continue to move forward in our learning.

                                   

This morning I shared this picture and as a class we celebrated our ongoing success as a class who know how to 'keep their learning going'!  

 

When I swapped from presenting to being on camera I noticed lots of smiles in each grid on my screen. This strategy worked because I know my learners and I have an established rapport with these students both in the classroom and in our online environment. In return my learners know me, and know my expectations for their learning regardless of the physical place we are learning in. 

Sharing a snapshot of this week's Distance Learning in LS2...

Today I want to share some of the amazing distance learning work my students have been doing this week to keep their learning going. Last week I started to include a sharing time during our Google Meets to celebrate hard work. I didn't only choose the 'best' work, I chose work that showed me a huge effort had been put into the task. What I didn't expect was daily emails from my learners asking if they could share work they felt they had done well. The next step was easy... we extended the sharing time each day. 

Student engagement in distance learning in LS2 has been huge. We meet each morning to set ourselves up for success and have a catch up. I have learnt over the weeks what type of work gets buy-in and what doesn't. To keep the motivation going this I asked my learners what type of learning tasks did they wanted me to set. Apparently 'Reading' and 'Writing' is not 'fun' at home so I very quickly adapted my thinking and disguised both of these curriculum areas within the very popular request of 'Research'. A direct result of that has been that I have been kept very busy giving feedback and feed forward. The rich conversations in the comments tool in g-suite paint a very clear picture of the learning journey we have all been on as we try hard to keep our learning going.

All the work shared below is being shared with permission from my awesome class:

Chris' blog

Liletina's blog         Juel's blog

Fau's blog              Liletina's blog

Sulia's blog

    Florence's blog        Victoria's blog

Matthew's blog.     Ong's blog.      

Kahoot challenges linked to our learning

Karlos' blog

Distance learning with LS2... Week 2

This week has been a very busy week for LS2 as far as distance learning is concerned. My amazing students have created a wide variety of DLOs that showcase their understanding of the tasks as they keep their learning going. Each day Linda (TA), myself and the students come together as a class to set ourselves up for the day, celebrate achievements and share work. Having Linda join us has been a real blessing as the students see both their teachers everyday, and whilst I have been kept really busy marking the work she has been kept equally as busy commenting on blogs. Teamwork at it's best!

In these sessions I have been asking my students to present their work as it helps us to continue to learn with and from each other. What's lovely to hear is the feedback they give each other after the presentations. LS2 has always been a collaborative learning environment, but what has impressed me is that despite being in their own family bubbles, many have kept this collaboration going. I'm enjoying reading the conversations taking part in the comments section of DLO's, and on many occasions I've joined in to give feedback. 

Florence presenting her timelapse movie showing the process she went through to make her poppy wreath. 

Have a look at her blogpost here

We have had to iron out a few areas and set very clear expectations as far as avoiding the temptation to simply click 'resolve' when I leave feedback. After talking everyone through this, especially my new learners, there has been some very rich learning conversations taking place and I now have a wealth of evidence to feed forward into my future planning. 

Another area we needed to revisit was the need to make sure all work was filed in the correct folders in our google drives. We also run a 'completed work' spreadsheet where links to completed work are posted. We've had a few hiccups here with work that isn't filed being linked as I can't access it correctly. However, when I think that these have been our only glitches so far, I can honestly say LS2 have been fully engaged in their distance learning.

When I think about my own learning this week I have definitely strengthened my skills when it comes to explaining things, with step by step snapshots of a process and emailing them to the person who needs this support being a great go-to if Google Meets are not an option. I have also noticed that my instructions are definitely a lot clearer and more succinct. My biggest success has been when Linda and I used a Google Meet to guide a student who had prior to lockdown, only been at our school 3 days, with how to post a variety of DLOs on her blog. This student came to us from overseas and had never used Google Docs before so each step of our distance learning has been new for her. What I have loved is that she asks questions and whether these have been answered in our Google Meets, by emails sent to me or to her friends, or by both of us working on her DLO at the same time her initiative has meant she has found a huge amount of success. 

Year 8 working with Mr Grundy

This morning we had our LS2 catch up then went off to Tech with Mr Grundy and Ms Ferguson at Tamaki College. After Tech we tuned in for our first Panmure Bridge School livestream assembly. This was such a great way to end our learning week as Mr Johnston was able to present virtual certificates to students who are making a huge effort to keep their learning going from home. Richard, Kiri and Anna this was a huge success and an extremely awesome way for all our PBS family to stay connected.

Learning from Home with LS2

Over the last few days, like everyone else in NZ, my class and I have been teaching and learning from home. My aim for this week has been to get my class engaged and comfortable with their new 'normal'. 

In place of formal teaching, I challenged my class to collaborate online and create their own version of the Summer Learning Journey which we call our LS2 Blogging Challenges. A few years ago our student leaders created and ran their own 'Winter Learning Journey' so rather than reinventing the wheel we added to these slides. Having exemplars from students that my current class knew has helped this activity become a success as the connections to the tasks were in place. So, rather than focusing on what is all around us, we have instead been focusing on the awesomeness of Aotearoa through our virtual tour. 

75% of my learners were actively learning at home on Day 1. To keep the motivation going I added a new challenge for Day 2. Grant Ogilvie updated our school sports site with fitness challenges that can be done at home so I picked the one that encouraged my learners to complete the name challenge. A lot of us took part in this challenge (including me), with many people turning it into a whanau challenge to make it more fun. Fau and her sisters made this clip to show how they took on our LS2 fitness challenge. 

           

 Fau's blog

The emails I received on Day 2 showed me that my class enjoyed the idea of a daily challenge so I set another one for Day 3. This time I used an idea from I saw shared online from NZ Geographic to create a picture of an animal using leaves. I tweaked this by asking my students to list three facts about the animal they created. Again this was really well received.

     

                                     Sakina's blogpost                     Victoria's blogpost

These challenges have not only kept my learners engaged, but have also kept me extremely busy answering emails, giving feedback and commenting on blogs. In addition to this we have a wide variety of learning opportunities that can be accessed on our class site.

Chris and Victoria have some great examples on their blog to show how this is working.

If you would like to use any of the blogging challenges created by my awesome students, click here and make a copy.