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.

Multimodal Literacy - Digital age

Multimodal Literacy focusses on the task designing of the discourse by investigating and contributing to various resources like - visual, aural or written. Mainaiakalani research says that it is important too use strategies that will motivate students to think critically and to use wide and deep teaching to raise the achievement levels of the students. For this purpose I deliberately chose a topic which was recently in news as it was bound to raise student interest

Click here to get an idea of the news item that I shared with my students.

Multimodal and multimedia texts - videos, short films and news articles helped students to make evidence based interpretations and the systematic task designing and teaching allowed a balance of explicit teaching of parts and developing critical thinking.

Reflection

As most of my students have learnt to decode text, an attempt was made to help them construct meaning and think critically about the topic of their study. The multimedia texts that were made available to students through their chrome books played a big role. I could share videos, short films, news items etc. at the click of a button. They could research about the questions that raised their curiosity, discuss it with their mates and then share their new learning with the rest of the world through their blogs.

Having said that I feIt that some of the texts were too hard for my students and I had to create some easy to read texts for them. This involved simplifying the texts that I found on the net.

Students were engaged right till the end of our inquiry and were connected to their audience in a more meaningful way as they received correspondences from people like the Mayor of Nelson. Opportunities were provided for extended student conversations so that they could clarify meaning and understanding of what they were reading. As we used multiple sites and resources, it helped in bringing the ideas together. Students shared their presentations and google drawings which in turn provided opportunities for creativity and sharing their knowledge. It took me a longer time than usual as it was the first time that I had introduced the multimodal approach to this group of students. I will try this again as the learning that happened at the end of the inquiry was very satisfying and rewarding.

Click here for an extended Plan

Click here to see my students in action.

Click here for the student voice

Scaffolding Language Learning into content areas

Prior experience becomes a context for interpreting 
the new experience ...prior experience serves as the contexts 
within which the language being used is to be understood.
Lily Wong- Fillmore

Before I began teaching this year, I set certain rules for classroom talk. One of the most important rule is to listen to everyone's ideas respectfully because everyone perceives things differently and  everyone's opinion is important.

To clarify this idea a bit more I started with one of the lessons from Jo Boaler's week of inspirational Maths. In this lesson the teacher shows a pattern ( as given below) for a few seconds and then questions students on how many dots they could see in the pattern. 

All students gave me the same answer. There are seven dots in the pattern. Then I asked them how they saw it and below is a picture of the different ways they saw the dots. The discussion became very interesting when they realised that everyone's answer was the same though each one saw the dots differently. 

This mini lesson engaged students in lots of talk and confirmed the idea that people see things differently and so it is important to respect everyone's ideas. I noticed that some of the students were struggling to explain their thinking so the more proficient ones encouraged, helped and supported them. 

The above lesson served as an awesome warm up activity for my next lesson where I introduced the tens frames. When I showed the Tens frames, most students made connections with their previous lesson and said that they were dots. I acknowledged what they knew and what they had recently learnt... and then moved them on to simple problems. It was interesting to hear them say things like -

  " There are only 10 dots on it, five on one side and five on the other... This one has just two dots..." The foundation work that had led to this lesson paid off. Students were able to make quick connections and this helped them to learn their basic facts. They quickly translated their mathematical thinking into equations. The golden moment was when they tried to form equations for both addition and subtraction problems.

We kept practicing till we became fluent!

By this time my students were completely drowned in their study of exploring patterns around them. They showed me patterns everywhere they found in their environment. I encouraged them to take pictures of patterns and they saw symmetrical patterns, stripes, crisscross patterns and many more...

When I asked them to explain their pattern, it became very challenging for them as they did not have the specific vocabulary. So we explored words like alternate, overlapping, symmetrical etc. below is a presentation made by one of the students in which he uses the new words learnt to explain the patterns in his environment.

Integrating with Language

Integrating with Maths Strand - Geometry

During their exploration of patterns some students clicked pictures of geometrical shapes and so this was a great opportunity to learn about 2D and 3D shapes. We talked about the differences between the two also identified the characteristics of various shapes. Students learnt the vocabulary related to shapes e.g. what corners, edges, faces and sides were? How a side was different to an edge and what was a difference between a surface and a face?

 As a follow up they had to make a presentation on shapes.




Some of my students struggled to verbalise their thinking, I made a barrier game for shapes and gave them sentence structures to talk about their shape.

Integrating with Reading

Now was the time to know that it is important to learn about patterns because they help us in our daily lives. So I gave them a text on Braille. This developed heaps of discussion - Students said that patterns are important to build something... like a house... or a table... they were important for blind people... Important to them to learn their basic facts...etc. I was very excited to see how my students could make these connections readily and could talk about the topic without being shy.

Integrating with Art

Lastly, Students made a shape collage. They chose the shapes and used their imagination to design a cat or a dinosaur or a mouse. They further explained their what shapes they had used to make their art. Most exciting bit during this lesson was when a one student who is usually not so social, showed most of the students how to put commas when listing things in writing. Students wrote stories like " I have used 3 triangles, 4 squares, 5 rectangles and 2 semi-circles in my picture.
It was just Perfect!

At the end of this whole week long lesson I felt very satisfied as I had been able to engage my students meaningfully into different tasks. Language learning is not a simple linear process. It involves and revolves around the content - in this case patterns and basic facts. By focussing on ways to scaffold my students could not only attain the subject knowledge but also learnt the language. 

Reflection It was delightful to see how the sequence of lessons rolled on from one learning to another. By linking tasks to other curriculum areas, it was easier for students to make connections to what they already knew and hang on their new learning to their previous knowledge. During the course of task designing, I have deliberately created tasks where students would get the opportunity to formulate ideas, set and evaluate and reach tentative decisions in a set up that is informal. The aim is to to develop an interactive classroom where students are proficient in explaining their ideas and their thinking. I want them to face challenges, make mistakes and then learn from them so that each student in my class grabs learning opportunities to improve their learning. My next step would be to continue to link my topics to other curriculum areas so that students have lots of before hand experience to think deeply and critically about the topic of their study. This is just the beginning...

Multimodal Literacy - Manaiakalani Leaders PLG

Last week I attended the Manaiakalani Lead Teacher's PLG.  Dr. Aaron Wilson is one of the researchers at the University of Auckland and he was sharing his views about the importance of multimodal reading. It is different to reading a story in a journal over the week. Multimodal texts show the interrelationship between reading and writing and develop deeper understanding of the texts by making meaning of different modes of communication. 

We talked about

• Why it is important to talk about the text and how it benefits children's learning?
• What are some of the key indicators of quality talk about texts?

We shared our ideas on a padlet. Click on the link below to view the ideas.

Share your ideas - Padlet

Aaron emphasised and we all agreed that IRE ( Initiation, response and evaluation) way of teaching can be useful if it helps the teacher to check understanding of students. But it has it's limitations. It is one sided as it is teacher centred. Students do not get involved into deeper understanding of the topic as they do not get a chance to explore about the topic.

Texts should be talked about and students should be given opportunities to share their opinions about the ideas in the text. This would enhance deeper understanding of the text. Ideas in the text develop into rich discussions between the teacher and the students and within groups as everyone questions, agrees and disagrees. Most discussions are supported by reasons and so everyone contributes to the learning.

Teachers need to very careful about the level of the students and multimodal reading can become very disengaging if texts are not chosen strategically. Click the link below to see what Aaron had to say about what makes rich talks harder and easier.

What factors make rich talk about text in classrooms harder and easier

Aaron has been working with teachers at Tamaki College and showed us how there was a change between the teacher and student utterances as teachers shifted form IRE to more meaningful and authentic discussions.

Observations in the beginning of the year

Observations - mid year

Observations towards the End of the year

Aaron discussed that it could be valuable to re- negotiate the norms in the class about talk. I personally believe that it is very important to keep visiting the norms in the class as they develop a culture where everyone feels supported and comfortable to participate in discussions.

Our class treaty is all about class norms and has worked well for me and my students. It is not just a poster that hangs on the walls. It is very much a living document that is referred by students and teachers regularly so that our class remains a healthy place to discuss, ask, inquire, justify, agreeing and disagreeing. This is what our class treaty looks like-

I have not changed this treaty for the last two years because it works for me. What changed is just the koru patterns.
To involve students in discussions we also practice talk moves. Both me and my co- teacher Ashley use talk moves in all areas of the curriculum.

In the end Aaron left us with some question to ponder over?

• Are we on board with a shared focus on deep and wide learning using text sets and talk about text approaches?
• How many times should we engage students in multimodal literacy?

In my opinion, this is a great way to develop critical thinking amongst students. I have tried this in my class and the results were very satisfying for me as well as for the students. They felt like they had a voice and that their ideas and opinions were valued. 

The topic of my multimodal literacy was Theme parks. Please view the presentation below to check what year 3 and 4 students did for their reading last week.

Manaikalani school leader's PLG - Accelerating Reading

Today I went to the Manaiakalani school leaders PLG.
One of the sessions was by Aaron Wilson on how to accelerate Reading among students.
Some of the ideas that will help were-

• Reading should make meaning. Students should understand how writers construct text to achieve particular purposes and audiences. Reading strategies are not a goal but a vehicle to achieve meaning from texts. 
• Very commonly,  teach students how to describe characters but we need to move on further from this. Students should be taught to deliberately make an effort to analyse relationship between characters and conflict of characters. This will help them to be better readers and writers.
• Analysing patterns of figurative speech like metaphors, similes and how a writer creates mood through emotive language will enhance the understanding of language.
• Choice of the text - Teachers should use engaging texts to get an enjoyable effort from the students.
• Students should get a number of opportunities to read. They should get repeated opportunities to learn to read and read to learn.
• Teachers need to provide opportunities that will allow students to critically analyse texts they read.  A critically literate person is able to examine the power relationships inherent in language use, to recognise that language is not neutral.
• Vocabulary is another barrier in comprehending texts.  Building vocabulary is important, so students should have rich exposure to language. They should be aware of connotations of words. They should understand that emotive language is designed to provoke an emotional response. 
• When reading texts Teachers should draw students' attention to the sensory details and this will help in understanding the text better.
• Use your clines also helps students to comprehend texts better.
• Use of conjunctions will also allow students to have richer language.
• Students should ask questions and share their ideas to clarify their meaning about the text. Talk allows students to peek into the thinking of other students understanding and misunderstandings. Talking about the subject of study supports language development. It supports deeper reasoning and encourages  people to reason with evidence. Therefore it is important for teachers to provide platforms to discuss open ended questions and this will also prevent IRE ( Initiation, Response and Evaluation).
• Teachers need to scaffold students so they learn but too much scaffolding makes them dependent on the teacher. Therefore teachers need to have a balance in their delivery where they refrain from too much support. Instead, opportunities should be provided for students to take ownership of their learning. A quality scaffolding is that fades overtime and increases student responsibility.
• Teachers need to design rich tasks for quality learning to happen.

I have tried to summarise the points through this google drawing...

Reflection: Aaron's talk was very informative. It has encouraged me to use small units to plan for reading in my class. 

This year I have an MTDA in my class which means that both Ashley and myself are teaching in the same class. I wanted Ashley to be seen as a teacher and not as a student as this was reiterated a number to times by Anne Sinclair and Dorothy Burt. It has worked very well as I can see Ashley more relaxed and confident each day as she is interacting with the students. She has very quickly got students to listen and respond to her. We both plan together and teach together taking turns to be a lead teacher. I can see how I will benefit so much by having an MTDA in my class. I am already finding time to do more with the students who need a little push. On many occasions Ashley has mentioned the same that she is liking the 

co-teaching way for she can find some of her friends who are beginning teachers and are giving away their weekends preparing things for class.

So all go for co-teaching  this year!