Class on Air - Demonstrating Ako

In one of my previous posts I shared a survey from my students where I asked my students if they felt confident about sharing their ideas with others. Click here to view their responses.
Most students said that they were shy to contribute, from the fear of saying something incorrect

In te ao Māori, the concept of ako means both to teach and to learn. It recognises the knowledge that both teachers and learners bring to learning interactions, and it acknowledges the way that new knowledge and understandings can grow out of shared learning experiences. This powerful concept has been supported by educational research showing that when teachers facilitate reciprocal teaching and learning roles in their classrooms, students’ achievement improves (Alton-Lee, 2003).

Making this principle as the core of my teaching, I decided to train a group of students as experts who would then be teaching fractions to another student. I wanted to build a caring and inclusive learning environment where each student’s contribution is valued. I wanted them to participate and build productive relationships where every student is empowered to learn with and from each other.

  

So what difference will it be, with me, not teaching and the peers teaching instead?

• Students will become comfortable asking questions of each other about their learning.
• They will be involved in more metacognitive discussions.
• They will become more confident about sharing their learning with others.
• Eventually, there will be a change in the classroom culture where they will become self regulated learners.

Click here to watch my students teach their buddies

My Reflection

Did the lesson achieve it’s purpose?

This was a very different lesson to other lessons. It is based on the principle of Ako. As mentioned earlier, I wanted to empower every student by learning with and from each other. It also aligns with my inquiry where I want students to participate in learning discourses.

 Considering that it was our first attempt, I think we have achieved some success. In the beginning, students were shy to ask questions of each other, but overall it helped in shaping a positive collaborative culture in class.

How did it help the tutors?

The idea of having a tutor students working with another peer worked well as the tutors got motivated to share their understanding with their peers. It took them a bit of a practice to go through each step but in the end they did themselves proud as they were able to teach the concept well. The confidence that the tutors gained through these lessons was tremendous because they felt valued.

How did it help the tutees?

On the other hand, the students who were not so sure about their learning felt more comfortable asking questions of their peers. I gave them sentence prompts to ask questions. ( These are provided in the detailed plan) Once the ice  was broken, students became more comfortable with each other and eagerly helped one another with what they knew.

Next step

My next step is to keep encouraging students to work collegially and collaboratively in the pursuit to learn new things. For this to happen successfully, I will continue to emphasise the principle of Ako.

Promoting Ako in class

At the beginning of the Term I asked my students what they needed to do to be smart confident learners. Most of the students were very hesitant to answer this questions in front of everyone. So I made a google form to find out their honest answers.

Their answers matched my hunch as most students were very shy to ask questions about their learning.

Have a look at what they had to say...

Write your name	Am I a confident learner?	What is it that stops me from learning?	How can I overcome my shortcomings?	What will I practice doing this term
LU	Yes	sometimes I am scared to ask question	by not be shy when I ask question	to ask more questions
MF	no	scared to share my work because i think its always wrong and not learning from my mistakes	I will try to share my work and don't be shy to talk about my learning	share my work and get feedback on my work
HM	sometimes yes	Scared to share my work in front of the class.	Share my opinion and ignore people who laugh at me	Be confident and get feedback from my Teacher or my buddies
DR	Sometimes yes	I am shy when I read my story in front of the hole class	By doing my best and not being shy in front of thew hole class	becoming a good writer and read heaps of books and spell words and share my stories
DP	sometimes yes	I am shy to tell my answers sometimes	By learning from my mistakes	share my work to others and get feedback from them
LF	sometimes Yes	I am scared to ask questions in front of the class	I will ask questions to Clarify my understanding	I will ask more questions if I get stuck
KA	No	scared to ask Question	if something comes to my head I will try and share it	get feedback from my teacher and my mates on my work
LLP	No	getting distracted and not focussing on learning	by people laughing at me when I show my work i will ignore people laughing at and i will carry on with my learning	Share my work with my friend and I will ask for help when I get stuck
ML	no.	I am shy	I will try getting feedback from others	get feedback to my teacher and from my classmates
SL	no	when i am shy	I will try and shore my work	showing my work
RB	No	I am scared to talk in front of people	By getting feedback and learning my mistakes.	ask question when I get stuck
JW	Sometimes	sometimes i'm scared to share my work	By learning my mistacks	Share my work with others and get feedback
HT	No	Sometimes	By learning from my mistake	By asking questions when I get stuck
MV	Yes	scared to ask questions
TD	I am not sure	I play up when other people play up	by not being scared	I will do what ever I learned at from school and learn from others
MM	Yes	spelling	I will try to learn my spelling	I will practice my spelling and ask my mates to test me on my spelling words
MT	NO	scared to ask questions	By asking questions my friends when I get stuck	I will not be scared to ask questions
MT	No	I do not ask questions when I do my work	I am scared to share my opinions but will try	To ask more questions
MR	sometimes	i am scared when i share my work	I will try to share my ideas	I will share my work
GN	nop	i dont no i jast like to play game	reding	No sure

So how will I support my learners to be confident learners?

I will encourage them to participate more in class discourses to clarify their understanding about their learning. I will focus more on 'Ako' so that students feel encouraged when teaching/helping each other with their learning. I will also model and show them that I am a learner too who learns from them or from my co- teachers.

Finding Fractions of a Region - Language of Maths

After doing two weeks of fractions in my class I felt that most students in the class would be comfortable halving and quartering fractions of a region. So I decided to work with my students who are achieving low in Maths.


To my surprise, none of the five students could show me the different ways we could share a cake into quarters. I felt very disappointed.

The question that I gave them was this:

I also gave them a square piece of paper that they could experiment to work out quarters. But somehow it did not seem to work. None of students seemed confident to ask questions or talk about their thinking.

As I started to explain the problem I realised that my students did not have the language to participate in a discussion. So I stopped teaching to the plan and decided to expose my students to the language that was required to participate in a discussion. I used think boards so that each child could record their understanding.

After remembering, repeating and discussing the question a number of times, the students had the words to explain their understanding.

Tomorrow I will be giving an different problem on quarters to the same group of students and hopefully they will understand and be able to solve the problem.

Today instead of giving another problem to the same group, I made them experts and they had to share their learning in a group.  All the students explained and demonstrated the different ways they could share a cake in quarters. They did it beautifully and that was because they had the language to explain their thinking. It built their confidence and left them motivated towards their learning.

In future I will make sure that each child in the class has the words to explain their thinking. It becomes all the more important when most of my students have english as their second language.

Ako

I had a great day yesterday. I was full of energy even when I reached home after school. I could help my daughter get the tools that she needed and also help her with her engineering project, run around the chores at the same time and still feel fresh and energised. Surely I had a great day at school and this was because I had enjoyed modelling a writing lesson for Ottilie who is a beginningTeacher at our school.

Ottilie was finding it hard to move some of her students in writing. They did not use powerful words for impact and this was the reason they did not score well.
At the end of the lesson I could motivate enough to make a difference to three of her students who are not at the Standard. There was one students in the group who was particularly too shy to participate. She barely lifted her head up to answer simple questions about her writing. She was not very enthusiastic about being in a group as she had very low self esteem.

I knew instantly, I needed to make them believe that they could be successful like all the other students in the group. For the purpose of modelling we chose mixed ability students so that students could learn of each other. so I buddied up my low achieving students with some students who were average in Writing.
We talked about sharing and helping each other in the group and said that their learning was not complete if they had not explained their work to a buddy or had not helped another student to be successful in the tasks that they were working on.

So I set them on a group worthy task where they had to write all powerful words for the word 'big'. At this point I noticed that the higher ability students immediately started talking to the lower ability students. The low ability students felt cherished when they saw their work being valued. They all participated eagerly and contributed to the discussions.

Later they used the powerful words to write descriptions about the sky tower.

They wrote their descriptions about other pictures using powerful words and felt successful.
To built up their confidence further, Ottilie today used them as an expert group to write a narrative about the picture that we had worked on. Ottilie said that all the students in our expert group helped the class out to use powerful words, and most importantly, the ones who had low confidence, were today, teaching other children in the class to use powerful words in their writing!

Intrinsically motivated! I would say.