Spiral of Inquiry T4

This term for our spiral of inquiry we have been looking at how to motivate our learners during iExperience, including provocations and team teaching strategies. Our original wonder was...

We wonder if using an open ended provocation questions and planning an iExperience collaboratively with different co-teaching strategies will improve learner engagement.

We had struggled with provocations that grabbed the attention of our learners and wanted to experiment with open ended questions and build it into our iExperience learning time. We had also struggled with feeling like our learners weren't as engaged in iExperience workshops as we would have liked them to be. So we refined what we wanted to explore...

How to create open ended questions that provide plenty of scope for learner choice and how to manage this in an organised but flexible way.  Be open to, and experiment with, different co-teaching strategies.

I felt that this experiment went really well.  The learner voice that we gathered at the very start was really interesting.  Many of the learners felt that they didn't get enough choice and wanted to do more hands on, active stuff like art and P.E.  The market day iExperience has turned out to be something that ticks many the boxes of what they wanted, they've been able to choose their groups and choose what they create, it's been creative, they've been able to collaborate.  I think this project has been super successful!  

I have really enjoyed this experiment.  I found it really confronting to start with because we had a starting point but no other planning however I quickly became comfortable with where we were headed and have enjoyed the process. 

Spiral of Inquiry iExplore doc

What I learned from this inquiry

* Kids are more invested in something when they have had a large part in creating it.  They do still need guidance though as they don't know what they don't know. 

* Even less able, or ELLs, can participate in taking responsibility for learning in a collective way when they have the support of others.

* Mixed groups work really well. 

* I think supportive teaching and team teaching work really well, I don't really think parallel teaching is a worthwhile method based on what we have done in our habitat this year. 

Maths Experiment

My maths focus experiment was to try and guide and support a group of learners through strategy and knowledge workshops.   I chose to do this as they were often self conscious and lacked confidence in their abilities, always relying on using algorithms and they had very little knowledge of other ways to solve problems.  The strategies I used for this group were used with the habitat as a whole and have led to some significant changes in attitude and abilities within our habitat.  

Firstly, we decided to organise our strategy workshops as a series of steps that followed learning progressions.  Each fortnight we have one strategy to focus on and three workshops that work at different levels with different sorts of numbers.  Workshop 1 focuses on the stage 4/5 level of the strategy, workshop 2 is the stage 5/6 level of the strategy and workshop 3 is the stage 6/7 level of the strategy.  During each session the learners are put into the workshop that best suits their learning (determined by a pretest) and half way through the session they have the choice to continue practising their capability in that level of the strategy or move to a different workshop to build on it.  This has given our learns a great deal of ownership over their learning and has made them a lot more self motivated.  The learners who started at workshop 3 are given the opportunity to practise their capability by teaching someone else.  

The other thing we have done is add more materials into our workshops and knowledge sessions.  In all workshops materials have been available, demonstrated and encouraged to support the learners in building new knowledge.  We have stressed the importance of using materials even at stage 6 and 7 of the curriculum and have encouraged different ways of using materials.  

Thirdly, we have used a lot of mixed grouping for problem solving and encouraged learners to teach and learn off each other.  

I'm am super dooper excited about this new way of structuring our maths learning because I can see the buzz it's creating amongst our learners and how much confidence it's giving them.

Teacher vs Learning Coach

I've been thinking lately about the difference between a teacher and a learning coach.  Reflecting on my experiences in education I wonder if it's that a teacher teaches content while a learning coach coaches learning.  Thinking about how our day is split up in LH3 I feel like I'm a learning coach during iExplore and iExperience and a teacher during iDevelop.

During reading, maths and writing (maybe a bit less so in writing) I feel like I'm just going through the motions of teaching content to the kids.  In reading I focus on comprehension skills like summarising and making connections and in maths we focus on teaching specific strategies and knowledge.

So, I've been wondering how to change from being a teacher during iDevelop to being a learning coach.  I think the easiest place for me to start figuring this out is in reading.  I'm not really sure where to begin but I need to figure out what my groups really need to learn about reading and how I can provide that learning opportunity for them.

I have two reading groups, both reading at around 8-9.5 years old which is a bit concerning.  The year 5s and 6s should be reading between 10-12 and the year 7s should be between 12-14.  So my question to myself is - how do I help my learners achieve increased reading comprehension while coaching their learning rather than just teaching them content?  (So far literature circles is the only idea I have but I'm not sure how to run these in a way that achieves my goal).  I have some research to do!

Mini Olympics iExperience

This week we have held a mini olympics iExperience for three afternoons.  We have crossed it with measurement because we were finding it really hard to fit strand into our maths sessions so this seemed like a good idea!  Each afternoon the learners were broken into three groups which rotated around three different activities, participating in each for around 25 minutes.  The activities covered area, distance, calendars, time, capacity and mass.  The learners have really loved these short, sharp, hands on activities and have enjoyed experimenting with different 'olympic sports'.  

I found the design process interesting. When we were asked to collaboratively plan I found planning on the spot with no prior thinking time difficult.  I didn't actually get much written in that ELT session, going away to finish writing up my design later in the week after some thinking time. Because I found it so difficult I did appreciate having Lisa and Adele sharing their ideas on my design document, it helped me get started. I think we all found it tricky though as none of us got far in the ELT session!

Teaching all of the sessions with one group had two sides to it for me.  On one side it was great because I got to do a variety of different activities but on the other side it would have been nice to do the same activity three times and have the opportunity to make improvements after each one. I'm not sure if I prefer to work with just one group for three sessions or if I would have liked to have worked with all of the groups over the week. Even though we get to work with most of the learners during iDevelop and iExplore some learners really shine in 'topic' type curriculum areas so it might have been nice to be able to see that. 

iExperience Collaboration Extravaganza

* I've enjoyed having short sessions, 1hr from start to finish.  It keeps things moving and has been motivating for the learners.

* We have found that the key to successful iExperience in LH3 is to keep things interactive and with plenty of moving and group work so we have kept our activities as active as possible.  The learners are a lot more interested when there's moving involved.

* Our learners have enjoyed the artsy/creative aspect of the activities and it's been nice to watch them buzzing and engaged in what they're doing.  Great to see some independence and leadership coming through in some learners.

* I found the planning difficult at the start, possibly because the activity didn't stem from my own idea so I didn't have my head around how it should look.  Collaborating with Lisa and Adele really helped because they gave me some direction and ideas to begin the design process

* Great narrative opportunity!!  We have taken photos of the learners doing the different activities and will organise them so that we can each write some narratives for our groups.  Easy way to get them done!  There's so much to say about their learning!  Having smaller groups for three afternoons has made it really manageable.

Provoking Probe

Name: Lisa and Sarah

Description:

• Agency for independent experiences
• Opportunities to enter ZPD
• Ongoing reflection supported

First idea: What kind of provocation interests or connects the learner?  During weeks 7-9, learners will be focusing on the significance of Matariki.  This will be an opportunity for us to use a variety of provocations each day and notice the connections learners make, e.,g paper craft, images/word prompt, music.

Reimagined idea:  Does a question provoke our learners’ curiosity?

Write a provoking question related to the iExperience topic on a whiteboard and see what happens.

Indications of Success: Learners discuss the questions with each other, justify their ideas, change their thinking, listen to each other, come up with questions, make connections with the iExperience sessions.

Indications of Failure: Learners don’t discuss the question with each other or ask any questions.

Amplification: Use the same strategy of provoking questions to guide learners through their iExplore topics.

Dampening: Stop using questions

Learners Taking the Lead on Design

What?
Yesterday in LH3 we decided to trial having the learners design their own day.  We gave them a sheet of paper that was broken up into three sections, one for each block, then we went over the day's workshops.  The learners then had to schedule in the workshops they needed to attend and then work the weekly must do's around them.  I had tried this last week on Thursday when half of the habitat were out at NYLD and it had worked really well.  The learners who were here did a really good job of planning their time and sticking to it.  I found that they were really on task and motivated.

So What?
The day went with varying success.  Some learners really enjoyed it and followed their plans down to the minute (they had to write their timing on it and make it really specific) while others used the time to talk with their friends and did not achieve anything.
I would really like to persist with this way of planning because I think it will prepare our learners for OJC and OSC well and because I really do believe that if they've had a hand in designing the work that they do they're more likely to do it and enjoy it.  I wonder if the types of activities on the must do's would change things also, are the tasks too specific and could they be broader to allow more space for diversity and creativity?

Now What?
I think for next week it would be a good idea to give more support to those learners who need it.  I think our inner circle (in our circle of independence) will need their day designed for them or with them, we could spend time doing that first thing on Monday morning.  The inbetweeners might need a small amount of guidance, for example the subject that they are doing but they can choose what they do for that subject (e.g. Literacy = read to self).  The outer circle are more than capable of planning their day on their own so they could do that before the day starts on Monday to allow them a greater amount of learning time.

My Thoughts
I'm still excited by this approach and I do think that it went well for the first time we've done it as a whole habitat. I wonder if it worked better on Thursday purely because there were smaller numbers of learners.  I would really love to be able to add Fridays into the mix and by term 4 have most of our learners in the outer circle planning their own day all of the time.  It's a lofty goal but I think it's totally possible!