TLIF observation Term 2 2020

Sam and I had our TLIF observation this week. My lesson was successful as the students managed to answer the big question after a dialogue on whether a tomato is a fruit or vegetable.

What I managed to do:
- Introduced Talanoa at the start of the lesson.
- Provide cue cards for student talk moves.
- Used wait time to give students the opportunity to share their thoughts.
- Used non-verbal cues to remind students to use Talanoa.
- Also asked students to respond in non-verbal ways (thumbs up or down) to determine their stand on a question.

What the students did:
- Some students spoke up by saying, " Can you say that a bit louder as I can't hear, please".
- More dialogue between students. The most interactions before I had to speak were between 3 students.
- Students used the talk moves a few times (but lots of room for improvement).

What next:
- Increase wait time even more.
- Extend dialogue by deepening their thinking. (Refer to page 91 of the Classroom Talk textbook).
- Use more pedagogy strategies so that students can practice talking to each other.
- Bump up the context to make room for deeper conversations.

TLIF Planning Day

This week I had the opportunity to spend a day playing for my term 1 science lessons. It was good to do it with Sam that is new to TLIF, as I was explaining things to him, I felt like I was gaining a better understanding as well.

Up until now, I have done short quick lessons using Explorify, but focussing on Talanaoa, especially listening part to each. Some students are great at sharing their ideas, but they are not so great at listening to others ideas. My concern is my ESOL students that are finding this really hard. What I need to remember is to say to them that they are allowed to speak in their mother tongue.

The first few times I tried Think, Pair, Share where my students had to share what their buddy said. I noticed that they struggled to remember what their buddy said or talked about. So then I tried the Think, Write Share strategy and that went a lot better. It seems that having to write things down made them listen better and ask their buddies to repeat if they could not remember what to write.

So I wanted to build on that. I am still keeping the content of the lessons low and fun, but trying to gradually increase the dialogue strategies. This term I would like to continue with my teacher goal being Time to think and also introduce Say more. I ensured that I wrote my talk moves in my planning so that I can look at it during my lessons.
My Lesson Plan

I am looking forward to next week when I will teach these lessons.

TLIF Reflecting/Contributions on our checkpoints

Here are my thoughts on how we are progressing towards our goal:
The release day with specific outcomes was really helpful. It gave me a chance to sit down and focus on my reflection on my progress.
The online session I had with Susan was extremely helpful, I had the opportunity to speak about my class and the challenges that I have. She gave such good and specific advice.

After interviewing Karli's students, I realised once again how valuable students voice is. They came up with solutions on how to encourage talking in the groups/class. One was that they should get the choice to sit with their friends, and the other was that they should have like a talking stick to pass around. Then everybody gets a chance to talk, and they could pass if they want to.

Although I felt a bit disheartened after my first science lesson in room 2, I realised what an important learning pit this is for me, not only for me but for the school. I will be able to share what I struggled with, with my pears, should they have the same barriers.

I am looking forward to next year, where I will have a class from the start of the year and where we can instil good dialogue habits from the start of the year. By then, I will have a better understanding of how to implement dialogue in my class, and won't get hung up with the technicality of what to do. At the moment my lesson plans are taking a bit of time to do, as I really have to think about teacher and student talk moves. This will hopefully get easier, and I will get faster at planning.

TLIF Reflection on teaching

Looking at the data as collected by Natalie, the students knew what the strategies were that does not support their learning, i.e. loud noises, annoying students, students walking around etc. At that point, the students did not have any idea of what talking rules were.

When I introduced Talanoa, I initially went through it and assumed that they knew what each word meant i.e. participation, speaking clearly, connect ideas etc. The second day I went through the questions, and asked them what it meant and look like, they had no idea. This leads me to realise that I was trying to move too fast and that I had to try and introduce each 'finger' of Talanoa individually.

I took my focus group separate, focussing on using Talanoa again, although it went a little better, it was still very unorganised and students just talking out of their turn and not listening to each other.
I asked for advice from my colleagues and then tried doing group work with the whole class. My focus students were then divided into each group and took the lead by asking the questions that I provided, but the rest of the class were still clueless. So then I had a chat with Susan. And we came up with the following strategy:

Do whole class short sharp lessons. Focus on Think, pair, share. I do the writing focussing on getting their feedback.

E.g.
I introduce the WALT.
Add that we are focussing on Talk(We are getting better at listening and talking - we know we learn through that).
Ask a question, the student thinks, pair and share.
After talking to a partner, you share what your partner said, not what you said. Reminding them constantly of Talanoa rules.
When they talk, they should look at each other. Build up the expectation of how to behave (knee to knee, eye to eye).
At this stage, less is more.
Reinforce the expectations at the end of the lesson (What did we learn today, what did we get better at today in terms of our talk, and what do we still have to work on).
Be explicit about choosing partners, if it goes well, we can continue where students choose the groups, if not, I will choose them.

Reflection on First Science Experience in Room 2

Bridges

Today I would like to reflect on my first science experience in Room 2 (year 3 and 4)

First, I did not manage to get the experience done in week 1 as I intended to. The practical (create) part took much longer than anticipated. Most students were really engaged in it, but there were 3 students that did not want to participate, despite my best efforts to get them involved. (That would be a separate reflection on behaviour).

Secondly, applying Talanoa was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I assumed the students would know what participation and speaking clearly would mean. When we unpacked it, I realised that they had no idea, so I spent some time trying to explain it, but it will need lots of practice and reminding.

Then, I focussed on the wrong aspect of Talanoa first. I chose to focus on questions, and although they understood what that meant, they really struggled to understand how to use the sentence starters, and they really struggle with listening to each other. There is a lot of talking over me as the teacher and their peers.

And lastly, I focussed more on the lesson progression than on the dialogue.

Next steps:
Choose a new focus - listening to each other. Think really carefully about what that looks like.
Create a norm for listening to each other. Display this where everybody can see it.
Work with my focus group first - rather than trying to work with the whole class.
Plan for a shorter lesson.
Look at Colleague's lesson plan examples to ensure I am planning correctly, then share with TLIF team and ask for feedback on my lesson.
Refer back to the textbook on examples of how to introduce the dialogue.

Photos
Just for interest - here are some photos of what the students created. We wrote in our books the criteria of the bridges which was: it had to be 30cm long, had to be strong and had to have one of the structured we learned about.
Then they drew a diagram in the books with labels. After we built the bridge, we took a photo and pasted it in our books to compare what we planned and what we actually did. And then they completed a little reflection sheet to determine if they kept to the criteria and what they would do differently next time.

TLIF PLD Session 1 Creating a culture of talk

This was my first time being included in the TLIF PLD, which I am very excited about. Our focus for today was around "Talk to move". What can we do to encourage dialogue in our lessons? We created a school-wide expectation list of what will be expected to be taking place during dialogue.

What is your current understanding of dialogic teaching?
Less teacher talk and more student talk. Using correct prompts to meet one of the for goals as summarised below. With pre-teaching and correct questioning from me, the students will be able to participate in dialogue while being active participants.

What will be your next steps?
Have my prompts in my hand while doing the lesson.
Practice one goal at a time, until comfortable before giving the next one a go.
Teach Talanoa clearly to my class, reinforcing and revisiting the rules regularly.

Summary:
Talk rules for PES - prompts to encourage dialogue around a science topic. Clear pre-teaching will be needed. Each lesson will have science and dialogue objectives.

Talanoa Norms for PES
Everyone participates
Speak clearly so everyone can hear
Listen and look at the speaker
Connect your ideas to others
Ask questions

How do you include everyone?
Everyone participates is key. Practicing loud enough voice and active listening.

Talk move actions:
Goal 1: 
Wait time (Page 13 of handout)
1: Partner Talk
2: Stop and jot
3: Wait time before talking
4: Wait time after a student talks.

Say more: (page 13 of handout)
Can you say more about that?
Can you expand on that?
What do you mean? Can you say a bit more about that?
Message: I want to understand more. And gives the teacher and other students a bit more time to understand what was said.
It gives students a chance to practice expanding on their ideas.

So, are you saying...? (Page 14 of handout)
Verifying and clarifying
Is that what you are saying?
Revoicing not just repeating, teacher revoice what student said and the student then confirms if it is true.
if the teacher says "interesting idea" leaves it open to more ideas. If the teacher says "that's a good idea" - she closes it for other ideas.

Goal 2:
Getting students to listen to each other.
Who can repeat/rephrase? (Page 15 on the handout)
Students must understand and hear what others are saying.
Is that what are you are trying to say?
Okay, what is another way of saying that?
It gives everybody a chance to hear a complex idea for a second time.
Who can repeat what .... said?

Goal 3: 
Deepen their reasoning
Asking for evidence or reasoning.
Press for reasoning (page 16 of handout) Why, where, what, can you prove that to us? (use vocab such as claim, data, evidence, etc)

Challenging or counterexample or tossing their question back at them.
That's a good question, what do you think?
Can you expand?
But is it almost the same or exactly the same?

Goal 4: 
Help students think with others. (Page 17 )
Do you agree, or disagree...why? Caution - don't ask, do you all agree? Encouraged to agree or disagree. Can play around with the language to be socially acceptable e.g. I respectfully challenge her thought.

Add on. Focus the group on the single idea on the table. Increases student participation, motivation, and active listening.

Explaining what someone else means. What do you mean when he says that...?
Can somebody explain what that really means? Who can explain what .... means?