I was very lucky this week as Nicola Wells, our across schools CoL teacher, came into my class to take note of things as they went along.
Nicola came up with a chart to use in the class where types of talk could be ticked off as they happened. I asked that off-task talk from the students and teacher be added on.
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Minutes of lesson
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Behaviour talk
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Off task talk - Students
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Off task talk - Teacher
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ED (extended discussions)
P2P (peer to peer)
Nicola did not find this easy to use as the lesson progressed so she wrote down what happened when.
I then read all of her notes and tallied the instances of talking.
While doing the notes and tallies, Nicola noticed that there was a type of talk we had not included, so it was quickly added onto the bottom. This type of talk was "self talk".
Extra notes from Nicola while she was observing :-
- Approaching one of the students silently led him to speak first. This happened twice.
- Conferencing open ended questions V ideas and options that are close ended.
- Self talk / narration happens often, split between thinking out loud and commenting on own , abilities / efficacy
- One student concentrated the entire time
- Off-task teacher talk not often but built relationships / humour / possibly modelled the self talk they do.
What I found interesting from the results :-
- There is a lot of ticks in "conferencing" - this is when I am talking one to one with the students about their work. I thought I did a lot of this and it is nice to have it confirmed by someone else
- I didn't realise there was so much self talk going on, from both the students and me. I need to key onto some of this and make sure the self talk is positive.
- A lot of the off-task talk involved me - no surprises there for me.
- Nice to see they are talking to each other quite a bit about their work and they are helping and encouraging each other.
- I need to open up my questioning style much more to encourage more open thinking.
Phew I know how much it work it is coding qualitative data - this must have taken you ages to convert the notes to tallies! I think it was probably more accurate and consistent in coding to do it after, based off the raw notes than for me to try and code as we went. Thanks for inviting me in to your room to do this! I really enjoyed myself. Next time I pop back I think I'll do some stage modelling instead of observing :P
ReplyDeleteThanks for coming to the lesson and putting so much effort into noticing and making notes.
DeleteCome back any time to play.
Wow what alot work, great team work.
ReplyDeleteI have done something similar in the past by videoing my lesson or taking an audio clip.
Thanks Donna. I did think of recording myself but I decided I wanted another person's point of view on what was happening.
DeleteAgree Donna, awesome collaborative effort that has provided you with a lot of detail about what is currently happening. Are you planning to repeat post intervention? Thinking too about how the classroom talk you have identified may have implications for your students in relation to presenting their analysis.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this, I am sure it will be helpful and hopefully may provide others with some ideas for collaborating too.
Thanks Fiona. I am definitely interested in repeating this. I didn't realise how much peer to peer talking and self talk was going on. I want to encourage this and try and guide it to a more positive direction.
Delete