(Re)Establishing collaboration through maths

During the first part of the year (August to December) I had been putting a lot of groundwork into our maths lessons for my Grade 3’s. Instilling in the class that we are all mathematicians, we can all have success in maths and that maths is full of possibilities. We have focused on the language of maths, the different ways we see and solve maths problems and working together to complete tasks and challenges. For this I have been grateful to Jo Boaler and www.youcubed.org , using number talks and opening out my own tasks to be more open-ended.

It has been pleasing to see some of the strategies and routines in place for maths now creeping into other areas such as students using the same hand signals in reading groups or group sharing time when focusing on our units of inquiry (IBPYP) or hearing students asking ‘is there another way’ or ‘how else can we do that?  But what I want to build on in all of these is collaboration.

While most of my class can tell me collaboration is teamwork, sharing, working together, helping etc. the application of this knowledge is not really evident. Upon returning to work from the Christmas break, I was really happy to see an email from one of our Learning Support teachers, with an article about this topic. As she has spent several maths lesson in my room and had seen the development of confidence, maths language, engagement and deeper thinking when it came to the tasks she like me saw the students work together but could also see the need to further develop the concept and practice of collaboration. The article she sent from Sara Van Der Werf was exactly what I was looking for to use as a way for my class to see and discuss collaboration.

‘1 – 100 Group Task’ (adapted from Sara Vanderwerf)

I introduced the lesson by stating they will be telling me what the maths goals and learning focus was when we come back together to share. I then outlined the task and grouped the students randomly into groups of 4. I had students restate

to me what the tasks steps were before moving off to their desks to begin. I gave one handout per group face down, set the timer and then… GO.

As the class began crossing off numbers and completing the task I walked around pausing to listen to groups, taking photos and videos (something they are very accustomed to). Ms Anu, L.S teacher, moved around the groups taking note of what she saw and heard for feedback later. We regularly used body language to each other indicating we had noticed something of interest. This was valuable for me to share the experiences and cross-check noticings too.

Click image to see video

At 3 minutes, it was ‘hands up’ time.  I record what number each team got to on the board and said we will repeat the task but first, they had a few minutes to talk in their team about what they noticed and what strategies or changes they would make before doing the task again.  At the conclusion of round 2, I collected the results again. Immediately this sparked discussions from the students; working out by how much they had improved and were making suggestions as to why. Back on the mat, I asked members of each group to let me know a strategy they used or change they made and WHY. I took note of these on the board and did the same protocol for the noticings and wonderings Ms Anu and I had. We discussed and clarified any of these as a class as needed.

I asked the students to return to their desk to complete a post-it each about ‘what helped me to be successful in this team task’, clean up their work-spaces and return to the mat. The post-its were collected for use the next day.

Finally, we returned to the beginning of the lesson and my question: What were the maths goals and learning focus today? The responses I was given included numbers, counting, ordering, fractions, patterns, team working, sharing, communicating, competition: to get better. This led to me explaining what was I doing during the lesson and why – recording the ways the team were collaborating or not so they could see what they looked like when they were working.

As we looked at the photos and videos I took, I asked them to notice what they saw and heard and similarities and differences between the groups. We returned to our groups to fill in 3 team post-its – what collaboration looks like, sounds like and is not (doesn’t look like or sound like). These were also collected for use the next day.

Day 2: I explained we were trying to come up with agreements and examples of how we will collaborate better this year. That yes they had the idea of what collaboration is on the most part but we need to move from knowing it to doing it more.

Click image to see video

The class was broken up into the same groups and given one of the post-it note piles. They read through them, sorted them, recorded their findings and adding any other ideas they had come up with as a team. They were asked to make those big ideas more specific by adding some details, something we have been working on in our writing genres. First-round sharing of the agreements took place with some clarifications and ideas from other teams. I took notes to be added to the final document.

 

A point that came up as a result of the discussions was what if people in the team are doing more of the ‘it is not collaboration’?  Before answering this I asked them what does being responsible and principled mean and look like? We have looked at these in some depth through our #IBPYP units of inquiry, profile and ATLs understandings. It was decided that each student is responsible for the group working and it is ok to let someone know they are not doing their ‘job’ and ask them to. The agreements we are creating should help with this. However, if this doesn’t help the situation is then to seek help from an adult.

3TS Collaboration Agreements

Collaboration HELPS:

• Working together can be faster because you have help to know how, what, or why to do the task.
• You understand through communication. Talking can be useful so others can better understand what or how to do something
• Thinking: giving people time to think before helping the person gives them a chance to try to get an answer
• Strategy: Collaboration can give you or let you think about different strategies that you could use next time.

Collaboration LOOKS like:

• Communicating with each other
• People working together and sharing ideas
• Helping each other by giving clues
• People are looking at each other and focused on the same thing
• People are close together

Collaboration SOUNDS like:

• Talking nicely in a way everyone can understand
• using low voices- whispering
• No one being bossy
• Discussions and explaining different ways
• Everyone has a turn talking or showing

Collaboration is NOT:

• Being silent and not sharing ideas
• Being bossy to others
• Leaving people out of the group
• Being distracting and not on topic
• Taking advantage (credit) of other people’s work

We then moved onto today’s task allowing them to put into practice what they had looked at and decided on for collaborations agreements.  In new teams of 3, we began our task from www.youcubed week of inspirational maths, week4,  lesson 4 Crossing the Rectangle…. and used our ideas for effective collaboration.

Click image to see video

For this lesson, our grade ESL teacher was in for support and commented of how well they were collaborating and really listening to each other’s ideas and solutions and different people having turns rather than being in a group and one or 2 taking over.

Next step is to look at HOW to ensure collaboration is happening in teams: what do we need to do to start with collaboration?

 

 

Launching into blogging in 3TS

So our class blogs are up and running (there was a slight hiccup at the beginning of the year), so its time to ask the questions What is a blog? Why do we blog? and How do we write a comment? of my grade 3 class.

The week of learning about (or reconfirming) blogging and commenting began with me asking the class to fill in a few survey questions as they entered the room.

 

It was interesting to see the number of students who didn’t know or have a clear idea of:

• what a blog was, or a misconception about them
• didn’t understand the purpose of them
• hadn’t created one (co-constructed one) or commented on one as I only have 3 new students and a large number have been at the school for a few years. (this actually reconfirmed my plan to break it down and look at the topic closely was a good one)

I was also glad to see that across the class there was some ideas and thoughts connected with the concept of blogging and why we have them.

Following on from this data collecting over the next day or so I asked the students to fill a post-it note as an entry-in or exit-slip with a different question prompt.

It was also great to see those who did have some knowledge, understanding and skills about blogging and commenting. I found out one of my students had her own cooking blog she keeps, but sadly she thought it didn’t count because it was in Korean. She now knows better.

So after these few days gathering thinking and knowledge what next?

• We needed to come up with a clear definition we all understood a blog was, and our class purpose for one.
• Have a talk about ‘online’, digital footprints and safety. We had previously discussed password work safety when issuing our Raz-kids accounts (something they had all had but had not discussed  ‘password safety’ before), and our new typing passwords.
• Look at what makes a good piece of writing for a blog post- comparing this to our writing cycle
• What is a comment, why they are important and how do we write a good comment
• Design a class poster/ guidelines for blogging and commenting that will help us throughout the year.

We discussed our free-write journal books and what they are for and how they are shared. These are for ourselves and only those who we want to share it with. These are our thoughts, wonderings, fun stories and have-go-pages. We compared this with “…a kind of on-line diary’ (part of Daniel’s definition). We realised that anybody could read this diary/journal pieces so the writing and pictures need to be edited, finished, connected and personal information or silly words should be left out.

As a class blog, it needs to remain on topic of school. We can only talk about our side of school things if it is connected to our learning.

We then watched and made notes from How to write a quality comment by Linda Yollis. We combined these with what we know about the writing cycle and had learnt about digital footprints and online privacy to make out guidelines.  At first these were all in the negative so I took the opportunity to help change them to the positive. ‘Like our class aggreements’ as one student reminded us/ remembered.

Here are our full agreements that will be displayed and referred to in our class (and as suggested by a student, will be posted on our blog). Much of this has also been covered and worked on during the creation of our writing cycle poster, so while it looks like a lot much of it is not new to the students.

Blogging in 3TS

Blogs are pieces of writing, pictures or videos you share on the internet that everyone can see. We will be blogging about, sharing, reflecting and commenting on our learning, thinking and challenges in grade 3.

We all leave footprints where ever we have been, and this happens online (on the internet) too.

We are all responsible for writing and posting, commenting and replying. So how do we do this well?

To keep our digital footprints clean and not having a negative impact and to be safe we need to:

~ only use our or friends first name or nickname

~ keep our passwords to yourself

~ log-out of sites and apps

~ use and share nice words and pictures

Think about the way you sound or look (tone/ word choices/ picture choices):

~ use kind/ nice words

~ instead of !!!! use more words

~ all capital letters = SHOUTING

~ be respectful and polite

~ you can disagree with someone, but don’t say they are wrong, explain your opinion.

What does your work look like? (content):

~ always proofread and edit before publishing- spelling, capitals, punctuation

~ does it make sense? Not sure ask someone else to read it first.

How to write a good comment:

~ introduce your self

~ compliment the writer- say something you liked about their piece

~ tell them some more information or details if you know it

~ share a wondering or ask a question ( get the conversation happening)

~ stay on topic

~ remember to be safe online (privacy)

Ready to publish?

~ conference with Ms Tracy

~ press publish, submit, send or reply

~ Remeber to check back on your post/ comment and see if you have had a reply. If you have, reply using the same guidelines.

Our final lesson of the week was to learn how the students will be blogging for themselves. I told them that there is now an expectation that they will be blogging about their learning, interests, WOW and challenges. They will be using the conferencing stage of the writing cycle to work with me prior to posting so we put our best selves out there online. I will not be taking away student-voice but helping them make smart word, detail and picture choices.

I connected an Ipad to the display screen to demonstrate how to use Easy Blog Jr. I selected a student who a few moments ago had asked a great wondering question about the measurement lesson we had just completed and wrote a post about it as if I was him. After writing it I asked Jacob if I could post it under his name with an added sentence saying it was me who wrote this blog. He said yes and the class constructed this sentence: ‘Miss Tracy wrote this to show the class how to make a blog post. The wondering was really Jacobs.’ I then showed the class the next step to publishing it. If Jacob had said no that would have been ok. I would have shown the next 2 screens but not hit the final publish button.

So what next?

• As I did not have time to look at other types of bogs that are created and read this will be part of next weeks reading lessons.
• Have students begin to blog for the first time and to do this I will build a rotation into lessons to begin with. When they are confident they will be able to self-select blogging times/ opportunities (agency). Also to ensure all students get involved there will be reminders, time built into rotation choices and requests throughout the year (responsibility and learning opportunities).  
• Share our guidelines with the parents on the blog and encourage them to comment using it.
• Build in opportunities to not only blog when they feel the need to (agency), but to go back through and look at and respond to comments or find a post they enjoyed and write a comment on that.
• Later in the year the students will also move beyond our own class blog and look at other classes to read for ideas and to comment on.

3TS are ready to take on the challenge and online world with their knowledge and growing skills as bloggers!

The unset-up classroom: Students co-constructing and having a voice in their learning spaces.

This was something I first tried last year, a big step for an organisational freak, and I was hoping it wasn’t a one-off fluke success for both the students and myself.

So with fingers crossed, changes and lesson learnt from last year we began the start of Grade 3 and the tuning in of our first #PYP unit #STP with our rooms unset-up.

Day one was orientation day, in the morning new families and the afternoon the returning ones. Nothing was asked by any child or family as the dropped in for a visit and not because they were forewarned, but because they believed it would be ready for the next morning.

Day two and the students arrived and as we met them at the door they were faced with their first decision- which cubby they wanted for their bag. This resulted in many looks, unsure what to do next and checking with me that they could really select the one they wanted. This stage of the day became more remarkable as each student entered the ‘unset-up’ room and found one of the 3 activities I had put out and didn’t question the room at all. Call for pack up and ‘let’s meet together’ was the first instigator of wondering and questioning- ‘but where’ and ‘there is no mat’. A few students noticed a mat rolled up and asked if they could unroll it. My response confused them, “If you think we need it”. I got another should we question, I shrugged and a few started to tentatively unroll it continually looking back at me for reassurance. I was eventually asked for help as it was upside down a little heavy. Once the mat was down we introduced ourselves. Still very few comments about the room. I handed out letters written by previous 3TS students.

During this second activity, I was finally asked about the room and when I was going to do. It was made clear to me it wasn’t working and they didn’t know where to work.

When we came together again we started a discussion about the concerns and issues with the room. It was quickly decided to ‘fix it’ Some wanted to just move things, other wanted to draw plans. I shared my one requirement- I needed something to put my computer on near when the project cables are. This year I had also put every piece of furniture I the middle of the room and had removed the traditional teacher’s desk that I didn’t like having. Unlike last year no-one wanted to take inventory and the class broke up into groups. 3 groups of overs (not working together) 3 planners also working solo and a sign maker. As there there was lots of big, heavy pieces of furniture I had a safety talk about how to lift and carry furniture and how to ask for help when needed. before setting them of to co-construct their learning spaces and out over all class room.

After observing for some time I paused the work and highlighted what I noticed. 3 groups creating a library in 3 parts of the room. Each group moving each other’s furniture. And that the planners hadn’t shared their ideas to anyone. Some comments ‘ah that’s why we have to keep getting the shelf back’, ‘do we need to share the ideas’ and ‘should we work together?’. To all of these, I responded I was just sharing what I noticed. A few more minutes of working on the room and one of the designers sharing an idea brought the teams together to create 1 library area (without the bookshelf) and a relaxing area (with the bookshelf) in 2 parts of the room. We then broke for a canteen tour, as they now move upstairs with different routines and snack.

 

After snack, we bus stopped around stations to record what we thought a classroom should look like, sound like and feel like, what helps or hinders our learning and what good teachers and students are like to prompt discussions and ideas. A few more minutes were given to room arranging before we played a get-to-know-each-other bingo activity.

After lunch, I had again put out some social activities and took photos of the students to use throughout the year.  We then came together to discuss any concerns, ideas and problems- big and small. We recorded these on the board to use later. Then Grade 3 came together as a grade to brainstorm ways we wanted to get to know each other and go over the bus routines. These ideas for getting to know each other are being used in our Friday afternoon PSPE dedicated time for the next few weeks as we look at our #STP unit and setting a strong foundation for the year ahead.

While these activities along with self-assessments on reading, writing, math and inquiry were happening we were trying out different classroom arrangements. And due to concerns and experiencing what worked and what didn’t the students worked on several room arrangements over a few days.

I was impressed to see several students take a lead in ideas, those that compromised were needed and everyone got involved in setting up our physical and learning spaces. Yes all 4 teachers took slightly different approaches to how the rooms were designed and who had (some) final say for the room arrangements but all students had a voice and help decided the overall look and feel of their classroom for the year.

Next steps for 3TS are for the students to continue to have a voice in finalising our class agreements and making decisions about flexible seating guidelines.

 

Summer PD Instagram Book Club #InnovatorsMindset

Planning on having a low key summer break also involved needing to be prepared to spend as much or little time in and around hospitals waiting with or for my mum so I loaded up my kindle with a variety of books and got myself a fresh new notebook to make notes and doodle in. While waiting for my flight ‘home’ I happened to come across a @gcouros tweet talking about the upcoming Instagram book club he was running/hosting for his book The Innovator’s Mindset Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity. I had put this book on my kindle- thought I should finally get around to reading the whole thing for myself, so decided this would be perfect for what I needed on several levels. So here I am in an airport again and now writing a blog post about the book club experience.

It was great to be able to see other peoples takeaways, aha moments and grab a snapshot of other people’s thinking after each chapter. I really liked the format of a chapter a day and the low pressure of it as things came up and I had to miss a day or 2 here and there and catch up when I could whilst still doing in the book in chapter sequence. The fact that each chapter had its own hashtag made it easy for this too. I enjoyed connecting with people I would never have had the opportunity to and to push myself to try out a few new things. I will be using #booksnaps with my Grade 3s this year! As usual, I spent to much time on doing the tasks but enjoyed the process of doing them too.

Whilst nothing was over the top new or going to revolutionise my teaching this year, that is possibly from a combination of being an international teacher for many years, having had some really inspirational teachers around me and my IB PYP experience but there were so many reaffirmations and areas for me to put back in focus for me. There were definitely some points that made me stop, think, check and ask am I really doing this? or can I improve on that? And the answer a few time was no not really or I could be/ should be doing better here. The last chapter in combination with the others also helped come up with some clear focus goals (less is more) for the year for me personally and with a team I will start leading this year.

Did I enjoy the Innovator’s Mindset and would I recommend it? Most definitely.

So thanks George Couros for the timely book study as it made the book so much more rewarding and thanks for the other Instagram participants for putting your stuff out there too.

Here a few of my takeaways.

 

Student Led Conferences: a change in the process. Part 2

This week has been student planning, selecting and conferring about their SLC.

I gave 1 period- 40 mins to the initial planning and thinking on Monday. We also needed to consider the proud and challenge piece we would identify in our portfolio to share on the day. This honoured both school and grade agreements of using the portfolio. The portfolio also travels home for a week to look over in more detail.  Students had already been ‘practicing selecting and discussing several pages to different buddies explaining the learning or skill the piece focused on and why they selected it during each filing session so now just needed to narrow it down the 1 focus piece for each area.

  

Over the week the students looked through and adjusted their choices and reasons in small groups for 10-15 mins once or twice. If they wanted to work further on it or look through their work more than that the could use ‘their time’- a rotation choice or early finishing time.

On Friday afternoon there was time to set up and have everything ready for ‘the day’ which included any final collection of the evidence and tabbing pages that show them as a learner to their family that they needed.

  

The day in photos:

  

 

And yes I did read Taryn’s post and am glad I travelled the journey with my students without first reading the article as I would not have been so sure what was mine/ours or Taryn’s. This statement “So often, the “what” of SLCs is pseudo-chosen by the teacher. “You must show something form math, literacy, UOI, art, music, PE etc…”” is exactly where my thinking of was and what I wanted to change at the beginning of my process too.

I also found that  “So instead, we put the decision of “what” entirely in the hands of the students and instead of guiding them to choose the what based on subject, we guided them to choose the “what” based on what they wanted to share about themselves as learners.” is what I truly aimed to do.

I like Taryn’s point of using more of the IB Learner profile, PYP attitudes, ATL skills and a variety of sentence starters to guide and assist the students as part of next years SLC planning and will definitely up the ante on this, but on the whole I think I set the students up for success and they did an amazing job of doing it differently behind the scenes for a successful day.

Student reflection:

 

 

Student Led Conferences and a change in the process to prepare for them- P1

As the Spring break was winding up my thoughts turned to upcoming Student Led Conferences (SLCs). ‘My burning question was How will I prepare the students for them?’

Monday morning arrived and like I have for several years broached the topic of SLCs with the class. Fortunately, most were looking forward to them. Those who were not, were worried about being ready, the parents testing them and being worried they would forget the answer or what to say. The discussion moved on the ‘why’ and ‘when’ of the SLCs and then onto “So what it is it you want to share with your family?” As you can see from the photo below we had quite the brainstorm about his. I ended the session with “ Great start, we will leave this here for a day or 2 and come back to when we have had more time to think.”

I was thinking about this session and the direction we were heading in well before the day ended, but not in the way I first thought I would. It was similar to what I have done for a few years now, but that wasn’t the problem I had with it. While I knew I was going to be giving my students choice I knew it was still really going to be happening on my or the teaching teams terms.

The next morning as I entered my classroom I saw the brainstorm chart and thought these are really just the ‘liked’ activities/ engagements based on curriculum and learning needs,  but what are they showing about each student as a learner? They had already likely to have been discussed and shared when they occurred to.

As I arrive early to school I use this time to check twitter -and to have my coffee- and discovered SLCs were are a current topic for many right now. I follow Taryn BondClegg @makingoodhumans and her current post was intriguing …but I didn’t look- yet!

I was getting notifications about this tweet, being involved in conversations about SLCs and student voice for days, but still resisted opening and reading the blog post as I really wanted to go through this process myself (or with my team) without influence, just yet. I didn’t want blurred lines about was it me and my thinking or was it another person who I copied who got 3TS to the point of more voice in their SLC. When I reflect on my and 3TS’s process and look at Taryn’s post I will make the adjustments that I know are needed and why and be happy to be guided and influenced by a great practitioner.

By Wednesday I had come up with a new plan to help my class get the best out the SLCs, meet my school’s requirements and honour my student’s choices and voices better. But first I needed to share my idea with the class and see if we could try the process together. They were willing – if I helped and gave extra ideas if they didn’t know what to do. This seemed fair to me.

We talked about them showing themselves as a learner – their parents know them their child; a musician as they hear them rehearse and watch their concerts; a soccer player as they either coach or drop them off to training and them watch their games…etc. Here is the opportunity to show themselves as a learner and not just talk about their favourite units, activities or new game.

Here is the planning following a 35 min session (by the way I really didn’t need to give many prompts):

So as I sit here a week later I am ready to post my first professional blog (other than the class one!) and tackle Part 2 of this SLC process – The students deciding on and collecting the evidence that will show them as a learner to their family.

Stayed tuned for P2- finishing the planning and engaging in the SLC Day.