Raising teacher expectations, changing beliefs and enhancing

student achievementWorkshop 2

Welcome

Questions/ queries

Feedback from surveys

Outline of the day’s programme

Workshop 2: Grouping and learning experiences

9.15: Teacher behaviours: grouping 10.00: Discussion 10.30: Morning tea 11.00: Teacher behaviours: learning

experiences 12.00: Discussion 12.30: Lunch 1.30: Planning: implementing

changed/renewed practices

Plan for the day

Traditional New Zealand model

So, what about low and average expectation teachers?

So, what about high expectation teachers?

Grouping

Instruction within groups

Class activities: murals, shared reading activities, class library

Hayley

Individualised programmes Learning experiences:

◦ Heidi: “Like if we are making a booklet, they are all making a book. Some of them are making it for themselves. Some of them are making it to teach others with and things like that. I try to get them all to do roughly the same sort of activity but try not to make it obvious that they’re doing – well trying to differ the parts within that activity for each group rather than them all doing totally different work.”

Hannah and Heidi

Instruction within groups Choice of activities

◦ Holly: “The children can choose the activities they do, so they are not grouped for actual activities.”

◦ Heather: First and third quartile pairs and second and fourth

◦ Helen: Task board activities and social grouping

Hannah, Holly and Heather

Mrs Kay: “I mix them because they can learn from each other and help each other.”

Mrs Iver: “Your slower students needs to be regurgitating day after day after day the same thing for it to set in...”

Other contexts

Frequent monitoring

Frequent changes

Group changes

Management of children◦ Hannah: “Just to make it easier for planning. You

know you have got a whole group at the same level, working on the same thing, rather than sort of bits all over the place. It’s really just ease of planning.”

More effective learning Pace and level of instruction can be adapted Preserves student self-esteem

◦ Heather: “I think everybody has to be exposed to it [more advanced reading activity] or else I am differentiating and I think the effect will be difficult on the [low ability] children...”

Why group?

Children know and this can affect self-esteem “And so you know they’re smart because

they’re in the highest group.” “ I know my level, I know what I’m doing and I

know the level in my book...usually the teacher might tell you, or your book has a certain colour, and colours mean which is high and which is low.”

“Because I know there are ten All-stars and there are two people in my group that read and do maths better than me...”

Why does grouping matter?

Do you ability group? Why? Why not?

Have your beliefs about grouping been challenged? Discuss

How might you change your grouping structure in reading?

Would you alter the structure in other curriculum areas? Why? Why not?

Discussion

Luke: “A lot of repetition, every day…until they can start recalling their basic number facts.”

Lisa : “The low ability children require more activities using concrete materials.”

Angela: “There is a big difference between the activities for my high group and my low group. The work that my high group is doing is more advanced but my low group is reinforcing and practising the work that they are doing from day to day. My high group doesn’t do that.”

Hannah: “They need activities that are challenging so they are motivated. If I don’t make them independent as well [as the high ability students] they won’t learn to run by themselves. They’ll always need the teacher.”

Learning experiences/ experiencing learning

“Who isn’t past Unit 12 stand up...All you people are way behind.”

“They give them [high ability students] harder things than the other people.”

“Mr J usually gives them extra work to do.” “The teacher gives them special work for just

them [high ability students] to do...some work that other people don’t get to do.”

“When people do badly, they don’t get to go out to certain places like to PE or playtime and you do.”

Children’s voices

Hannah: “For the high ability…to develop independence in their learning the children can go to the learning centre and do the problem solution chart and really think about what they have read and things like that.”

Alice: “I would be looking at more independent type activities for my high ability children compared to the low ability children. Yes, I think just for my high ability group I would be looking at more complex tasks, tasks that they would have to work on in a more independent way.”

Challenging children

Helen: “There are activities that they can go to by choice. There are computer activities, the challenge corner, theme box…”

Holly: “I basically give them a choice to a point and as long as they are going in the right direction that I want them to be going in…So often I try and let them decide on their own learning experiences.”

Hannah: “I might give them a range and say we could work on this, or we could work on that, what would you like to work on? So that they have got to take ownership of it.”

Providing choices

Classification Representative Statement

Orientation/focus This story is called Homespun. With that title what do

you think it is going to be about?

Prior knowledge Remember we were talking about symmetry the other

day and learning about rotation.

Explanation They use bamboo in some countries to make

furniture.

Instruction Balancing the ball on your left hand like that, close

your fist up, palm up, like that and toss the ball up.

Modification Oh, didn’t we count in twos on the calculator before?

Okay we’ll do that first then.

Introducing new concepts

Feedback

Praise Gosh you guys are amazing

Criticism Look, he hasn’t got his ears in the

right place

Feedback Go, Hannah. Nice speed. Good jump.

The faster you sprint when you jump

the further you will get in your jump.

Feedback

Questioning

Closed question What’s the Milky Way?

Open question What do you think a noodle head

might be?

Questioning

Formative evaluation of teaching d = .90Teacher clarity d = .75Reciprocal teaching d = .74Feedback d = .73Teacher-student relationships d = .72Direct instruction d = .59Mastery learning d = .58Goals d = .56Questioning d = .46

Meta-analysis winners: Hattie

Inquiry-based teaching d = .33Individualised instruction d = .23Auditory learning style d = .18Kinaesthetic learning style d = .18Within class grouping d = .16Problem-based learning d = .15Visual learning style d = .09Whole language programmes d = .06

Meta-analysis losers

Learning intentions

Success criteria

Next steps

Confidence to take risks

Student learning

Alignment of feedback

Clarity of learning intentions

Stick to the learning intentions

Student feedback

One day annansi met hare and they went to a tree fooll of food annansi had to singing a little soing to get the rpe and the rope did Not come dawn by its self his mother dropt it dawn and he clib up it towld harea rope and he clib up it he towld hare not to tell but at ferst he did not tall but in a little wille he did. He towlld eliphont and the tottos and the popuqin and the caml and they sain the little soing and dawn came the rop and they all clambd on it and the rope swuing rawnd and rawnd. And they all screemd and thir screemds wock Anasi up and he shawtdid to his mother it is not Anasi but robbers cut the rope. And she cut the rpoe and annis fell and the elphent flatnd his fas and the totos crct his shell and the caml broka bon in his humpe and prcupin brock all his pricls.

Two main uses

◦ An assessment strategy

◦ A teaching strategy

Student Questioning

Types of Questions Literal / closed questions Application questions

Analytical questions

Synthesis questions

Evaluation questions

Have you learnt or been reminded of anything about your teaching in this section of the workshop?

What (if any) changes will you make to your teaching?

How will you achieve these changes? Where are you going? How are you going?

Where to next?

Discussion

How will you set up your classroom for reading? When will you do this?

What learning experiences will you include? Will you work on ideas related to

presentation of concepts, feedback, questioning?

If so, what will you do? When? Plan, plan, plan

Planning for change