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JOHN PURCHASE PS - WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS

11/15/2016

2 Comments

 
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Success Criteria:

  • I can read, synthesise and articulate information from my reading relating to TWPS' POP
  • I can participate actively by contributing ideas
  • I value others’ opinion as much as my own
  • I can move the learning of other team members forward by challenging, questioning and building on their ideas
  • I can move the learning others in the network forward by responding to their blogs

A theme that resonated with our team was the mismatch that occurs between teachers’ beliefs about established cultures of thinking and actual classroom practice. We felt that this mismatch between a teacher’s belief system and their practice may be fairly common and discussed a number of factors that may contribute to this.


Perhaps this mismatch is a result of spending too much time and rhetoric in meetings, conferences and professional learning initiatives over recent years, exploring the importance of students being active participants in their learning (addressing the why), but many practitioners may not know what this actually looks like and may not know HOW to guide students towards this effectively in their classrooms. We felt Dylan Wiliam/s strategies have been a great starting point for many of our teachers (including ourselves) in terms of the what this looks like and how we can achieve this - but as TWPS has identified, there is more work needed around this.

Leadership
A focus on transformational leadership may also contribute to this mismatch as leaders may have been working towards: creating a shared vision, inspiring others towards the vision, etc. Whereas now, Hattie and others tell us that the most effective leaders are instructional. A move in our leadership development toward working collaboratively and shoulder to shoulder with teachers to develop students self efficacy, self regulation and active engagement, may be helpful.

Certainly the planning stage is an important step, with thought given to how we can identify and explore key transferable ideas in a meaningful away, allowing students to be actively involved in co-developing learning paths and success criteria, so that they ‘own’ their learning, know why it’s important and can monitor their progress.

What do we hope to observe for the POP?

(Of course, not all listed characteristics would be evident in all classrooms / lessons.)

QUESTIONING
  • High level questioning, including an overarching transferable question at the unit level, as well as a WALT for lesson level.
  • Questions requiring deeper levels of thought and understanding. This may include debate, justification etc
  • Student responses which are thoughtful, deep and meaningful
  • Use of wait time
  • Teachers response to mistakes, recognised as opportunities for learning 

QUALITY TASKS
  • Constructivist - applying knowledge and understandings to higher levels eg creativity, problem solving (negotiating and craeting new meaning tother, rather than passive and dependent learners)
  • Opportunities for students to demonstrate deep understandings rather than surface learning
  • Formative assessment techniques to gauge where students are in their learning

STUDENT OWNERSHIP
  • Input into setting learning goals and/or success criteria
  • Processes that allow for students to receive and act on feedback eg checkpoints in the middle and end of task.
  • Students can articulate what they are learning, know where they are in their learning and can tell us what the next steps are.
  • Students encouraged to monitor their work rather than teachers monitoring student’s work

STUDENT DIALOGUE
  • More student dialogue than teacher dialogue
  • Opportunities for students to talk to each other about their learning
  • Discussion protocols
  • Opportunities for students to talk to their teacher about their learning
  • Opportunities to articulate their developing understandings – to question, tease out, make corrections etc
  • An emphasis of teacher dialogue around the learning rather than the work
  • Students demonstrate  self efficacy – a belief that they can achieve learning goals – by talking about how they will achieve the goal/ act on the feedback/ utilise success criteria etc
  • All students encouraged to participate and be active learners
2 Comments

THornleigh West PS

11/15/2016

1 Comment

 
​The TWPS Instructional Rounds team have been active in the learning process when preparing for IR. Through sustained substantive communication and narrative we came up with key concepts. This involved questioning, reflecting and synthesising information. We believe our “deep” thinking has enabled us to create a better understanding of the problem of practice.
Dilemmas
Planning from the big idea and concepts (top down) assists in deciding what is important in the learning.  Having a clear understanding of the purpose of learning allows focus on the deep understanding and deep knowledge embedded in the task. Deep understanding is facilitated by examining the topic from many angles, making connections and challenging assumptions and application. It depends on richly integrated and connected knowledge (Ritchhart). Quality teaching elements need to be addressed consistently, especially deep knowledge and understanding, substantive communication, higher order thinking and problematic knowledge. This is to ensure teachers are questioning themselves as to why the learning matters, how content is presented, the learning that students demonstrate and how they create meaning and understanding.  The key to building deep understanding is the level of processing students are asked to do with information and knowledge. Understanding is built up of many small performances of ever-increasing complexity brought together (Ritchhart). http://mrsnurmi.wixsite.com/intellectualrigour  
The importance of increased classroom talk by students and allowing students the time to discuss and question is important because of how it deepens student learning. Developing teacher skills with ‘simple’ procedures like wait time that takes the teacher out of every single interaction has the benefit of giving the students time to think (wait time 1 – after asking the question) and to elaborate (wait time 2 – after they think they have finished their answer). It also allows higher order questioning by the teacher as teachers listen interpretatively rather than evaluatively (Dylan Wiliam) which increases the level of processing and deepens the understanding in the task.  This can have major effects on student thinking, student-student talking, questions being asked by students and speculative and inferential thinking by students. The aim of teacher questioning is to stimulate thought, to provoke inquiry and to spark more questions, including thoughtful student questions, not just pat answers. However, why the teacher asks the question and whether it is essential depends on the purpose, audience, context and impact. Is the question more open-ended inviting multiple responses and stimulates students to ask their own questions or do we wish to lead the students to knowledge and answers. Questions that lead allow the teacher to check learners can recall specific knowledge. Guiding questions lead students to answers by combining and using inference about knowledge and skills. Questions that hook are used to grab student attention and capture interest and imagination. However, using classroom discussion positively allows the teacher to focus on asking ‘essential questions’ – the questions that point to the big ideas of a subject and are aimed at advancing knowledge to the next level of understanding for students. (Table of question levels?)
What is an essential question? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDfVOIZ2tU8 
Challenging teacher beliefs and expectations is important to the problem of bringing about sustained change in practice.  Teachers need to believe in learning-orientated classrooms and this is not achieved by merely giving teachers a new set of practices to use. Thinking about our expectations for students, ourselves and the learning process itself form the foundation for the culture experienced in the classroom (Ritchard). Teachers focused on learning are listening for learning from their students and responding with descriptive feedback to inform learning, questioning and looking for learning opportunities. Reflection by teachers and students is an important process for organising learning and being able to “go beyond” the information and knowledge given or already acquired, to know more than you ‘ought’ to know – is “one of the untarnishable joys of life”. The enemy of reflection is the breakneck pace. (Bruner)
Big Questions
Reports don’t reflect these big ideas
What does a good teacher look like?
How do we know students are learning?
Big Ideas
  • Wait time – time to think is vital
  • Learning is about the process not the product
  • Questions point to the big ideas
  • Questions are driven by internet  - formative use of what we find out
  • Questions hook, lead and guide
 
Hoping to observe
A classroom with positive interactions. A belief that learning is important and that everyone is there to help each other.  Talk is focused on learning and using descriptive feedback and reflection around the big idea by teachers and students.
Student – student interaction-  talk time with think pair share; co-operative and collaborative learning opportunities enabling students to work together , share ideas and question and assist/challenge each other’s thinking.
Teacher – student interactions which involves modelling and guiding;  wait time and thinking time; responsive to student answers, follow up questions, using descriptive feedback during interactions whilst working with students as well as afterwards.  A learning focus to refer to whilst engaged in tasks.  
Self and peer assessment opportunities. A classroom where students are used to giving and receiving feedback. They have an understanding of how learning is helped with glowing and growing comments – and like this to happen.
  • differentiated learning experiences
  • teacher believes that all children can and do participate in the learning activity, ie all students are engaged in a task that goes towards the LI, some children are not sidelined with busy work.
  • children know what they are learning rather than knowing just what the task is
  • children are more concerned with what they are learning rather than the procedure of the task - setting out standards, length of piece of writing, teacher expectations
  • children not concerned about having a go knowing that it's ok to make a mistake, teacher uses a 'mistake' a child makes and helps to grow it into a learning experience
  • Use of metalanguage
  • Success criteria that guides towards learning rather than teacher criteria for success completion of a task. This is where we can look at growing from last year. Last year it was about whether we had SC now we need to look at what is the content and ramifications of having SC. Is the criteria encouraging children to think deeply or simply tick a list to say they have completed the task. Does having a success criteria list, inhibit creativity, do students come to rely on a list rather than thinking for themselves about how to show their learning? Does SC start to be interpreted as "the right/only/school acceptable way of doing something" How can SC encourage deep learning v's surface learning (I guess this could go in the dilemma part)
  • The task involves some form of higher order thinking eg problem solving, hypothesising, interpreting etc
  • talk focuses on the learning/big ideas/concepts rather than the procedure expected for task completion 
  • questions that have multiple possibilities or that open up discussion
  • discussions that build on each others comments
  • content that is relevant and accessible to all (scaffolded support for those who need to build field knowledge to even out the playing field)
  • student management - either not necessary or students re-directed through re-engagement with the topic? Not sure how to express this
  • learning that allows for different points of entry
  • tasks that allow for a range of learning opportunities
  • the whole 'learning experience' ' task' 'class work' is of interest to the children, relevant to their lives, relevant to their development abilities and within the ZPD
  • children have an ease about them when speaking in class due to - normal practice/understanding routine/talk procedures, lack of fear of mistakes, control of learning space, not fearing power issues with the teacher, atmosphere of respect between S-S and S-T in accepting what is being said.
  • Assessment built into learning
  • Time to talk
  • Questioning – recast and wait time
  • Open ended questioning
  • Teacher thinking aloud
  • Multiple opportunities for students to talk about their learning
  • Focus on learning not the work
  • Tasks that allow opportunities for students to collaborate and think deeply
  • Student talk reflect the purpose and intention of the lesson
  • Students articulating their thinking either independently through learning time or prompted from student or teacher
  • Students commenting or questioning on others learning or  talk. Substantive communication around learning.
  • Engaged ‘in’ task
  • Links to prior knowledge
  • Exemplar of success criteria
  • Cooperative / collaborative learning
  • Self and peer assessment
  • Substantive communication
  • Feedback teacher to student and student/students
  • Reflective learners
  • Background knowledge recognised
  • Focussed on learning intention?
Challenged Thinking
Implementing a focus on big ideas – collaborative planning and developing the big ideas for topics that will foster deep discussions in the classroom. Is this going further than Learning Intentions or is it similar?
Thinking and planning about what are the essential questions that check for understanding of the concepts (and misconceptions) to move learning forward in topics.
What does good teaching look and sound like? What are the expectations?
What are ‘good’ tasks that are manageable and sustainable?
Are the big ideas clear in the curriculum?
How to develop skills in and understanding of how questions are used by teachers.
Develop student questioning.
How do the levels and cluster statements children are using in some classes engage students in this deep thinking/learning process. When the first criteria is how many sentences they should write. What messages we are giving them ?
These clusters are numbered and are hierarchical do they fit into the big idea of learning verse work?
How are we using the concept of a 'bump it up wall' to encourage deep thinking over superficial upwards growth. The concept of where to next is not always a vertical, measurable, pre-recorded leap judged by teacher (or pinterest) prepared criteria. By having us labelling what the next step is are we limiting the way and what children may do, are we maintaining the sausage factory idea of school and knowledge creation but in a new form with new terms?
How are questions used?
The disengaging messages that some teachers can give students.
Is the formative use of evidence having an immediate impact on the direction of the lesson?
 
1 Comment

West pennant Hills PS

11/15/2016

1 Comment

 
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Towards Deeper Engagement
Geoff Munns

CHAPTER 2
EXPECTIONS
Recognizing How Our Beliefs Shape Our Behaviour
The power of these expectational belief sets helps explain why changing teaching is much more than giving teachers a new set of practices to deploy.  In fact, teachers may employ a new method of instructions, only to find that it falls flat and doesn’t achieve the kind of lift its proponents had promised.  They then discount the method, ignoring completely how their expectational beliefs may have undermined the new instructional practices.
If we return to the cartoon and interrogate its punch line from both teacher and student positions, what questions about classroom discourse might be asked?Is thinking not valued in this classroom?
Is important classroom work mainly signified by students just doing ‘stuff’?
 
What messages are both being given by the teacher and received by the students?How will students respond to these messages in their current and future educational lives? 

The central argument of this article is that these and similar questions are critical to the project ofstudent engagement. All classrooms are characterised by a complex set of teacher-student interactions(Cazden, 2001). Research in the Fair Go Program (Munns, Sawyer & Cole, 2013) has shown that skilled teachers, who are committed to engaging all their learners, interpret and adjust these interactions to create environments that give students the capacity to fit in, believe in themselves and succeed as learners. These teachers understand that every classroom interaction has the potential to deliver a message that will orientate students towards, or away from, engagement and learning success. They stack their classrooms with messages that engage and deliver student connection to school
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1 Comment

The OAKHILL DRIVE TEAM: IF THE PROBLEM OF PRACTICE WERE MET

11/14/2016

2 Comments

 
Such a deep topic with so many aspects to look for in the classroom! It is amazing to see how far we have all come as schools along this journey. The mapped POP from TW PS showed this so well.

This round we will be hoping to see:
A balance between student and teacher talk with plenty of opportunities for student to student discussions without fear of judgement. – ‘Regular student engagement in sustained conversations about the concept and ideas they are encountering. Sustained, focused, and reciprocal interaction about the substance of the lesson.’
Higher level questions that require students to apply higher-order thinking skills (e.g. evaluate) *Intent Trumps Form – 'Why you ask a question, matters more than how you phrase it.'
Think time (Wait time 1 and 2) allowing students time to consider richer responses and elaborate on their answers.
High levels of talk about language / Metalanguage – what it means and how it is used
Teaching for understanding vs knowledge - where a sequence of performance tasks with increasing complexity that require students to use their skills and knowledge in new contexts
Constant feedback and individual goal setting (especially goals for understanding, not just a list of things to know) and assessment information to improve student performance.
Positive messages that allow every student to have success and feel good in their ability in a task, as well as be challenged.
  • 4:1 balance between acknowledgement of achievement and correction of behaviour.
  • Making connections between the learning and their lives.
  • Building assessment into each lesson
  • Flexible approaches to how tasks are completed.

The Task may require higher level thinking. Is there intellectual rigour in the tasks set? Are our students required to think?
We may see the students grasping ideas ( the learning) by exploring relationships, synthesising, generalising, solving problems, constructing explanations and drawing conclusions.

If many of these aspects are used successfully in the classroom the belief is that the students will become: self-driven, understand where they are heading with their learning and how to get there, be focussed on the skills of problem solving and not just the final answer, work collaboratively, be better problem solvers, be more confident to take risks /make mistakes and ask classmates for assistance, become 21C learners.


2 Comments

November 13th, 2016

11/14/2016

 

    Author

    Barbara Reynolds
    ​Critical Friend

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