Bursts and Bubbles 2020

 

Bursts and bubbles: Karen Ferguson

The aspect of student learning my inquiry focused on this year was having all of my class working at scholarship level to try and improve the standard of work of the whole class. This then shifted to be how to support them in terms of mindset and feeling like they can complete the work.

I identified this as my focus when I noticed that I would have four of my target Year 13 students who were capable of trying for a scholarship this year. They would still be in the normal Year 13 class so I started to wonder if the quality of work for the whole class would improve if they all worked at this higher level. It would involve a lot of mindset work to underpin this new standard of working. This became especially important after lockdown.

To build a rich picture of my students’ learning I used their previous NCEA results and student voice through a Google Form. 

The main patterns of student learning I identified in the profiling phase were that even at Year 13, only a couple of them had any confidence in their work. When we did a mindset profiling activity, quite a few of them were not in a growth mindset at all in the way they thought.

My profiling of my own teaching showed that I have strengths in being open to trying new things and not being precious about how we approach anything.My students would likely make more progress if I developed positive self talk for myself. When my teaching was observed it became clear that I am always being negative about myself and I can’t expect my students to have a positive mindset if I am not modelling that in my own behaviour.

The changes I made in my teaching were getting training sessions right at the start of the year for both me and my students. We all worked to the same high standard throughout the year.I also got my students to monitor my self talk and pull me up on it if they heard me saying anything negative. A few of them were really good about doing that and were very supportive about it.We did mindset activities and games throughout the year with games where you lose a lot and team activities.

The literature that helped me decide what changes to make were books about Mindset - Carol Dweck, Mary Cay Ricci, Daniel Willingham.

Expertise that has helped me has come from PD sessions with Pippa Lawler, a Technology teaching expert. I have had help in house at Tamaki College from the head of PE talking about Mindset and from Mele and Gene helping me to let the students analyse their work in their native languages.

The easiest things for me to change were the structure of the course and work. This is easy for me as I am always open to change and trying to make things better. 

The hardest things for me to change were how the students saw themselves and their work. It is really hard to get someone to feel more confident about themselves and it takes more time than just a few months. 

Some changes I made along the way was a totally different way of structuring projects and building in time during the week for mindset.

Overall I would rate the changes in student learning as a good start. 

 The evidence for my rating is that there was a definite change in the quality of the work being produced and if we start earlier, like Year 11, and work like this consistently, there will be a change in outcome at Year 13.

The most important learning I made about getting the whole class to work at the highest level we can was that they really got what we were trying to do and tried hard. 

The most important learning I made about inquiry was letting the students know what we were trying to do and why. They really stepped up to the challenge. 

 Some learnings that would be relevant to other teachers are to aim for high levels for all students and let them know what you are doing and why. Build in time for mindset and support.

Monitoring evidence, Sharing and Interrogation

I do not have specific, measurable data at this point to share about my students. The work that we do at NCEA Level 3 takes sooooo long to complete that I will not know till the end of this year and the beginning of next year when the results come in. My feedback for this check point is qualitative rather than quantitative. 

At the start of the year, the whole class and I had a great training day, with my scholarship group staying for the whole day. Blog post here.

My approach for the whole class after that was to always prepare work that was to the highest standard I could to try and up the quality / standard of the work for the whole class. Blog posts about this preparation here.

What I have observed in the students -

They did not shy away from the challenge. They all responded well to aiming high.

One of my students is now confident in drawing in 3D for his design ideas. He has been with me since Year 10 and has always lacked confidence and got me to draw with him so he could copy. It has always taken him a few tries. This year, he has had a real breakthrough with this and we celebrated with fist bumps when he showed me 3D drawn work that he had done with no input from me at all. I know this one has been a really slow grower but it was so worth the look on his face when he cracked it. This has further underlined for me the importance of not worrying that the effects of an inquiry be seen after that short space of time of less than a year. It takes time for effects to come through and be embedded in how the students work.

When lockdown happened, the focus of my work with the students was on supporting them feel confident about their work and how they were doing. My blog posts about distance learning and how we did it in my subject are here. I felt that this was a more important direction to go in as everything else would come from that.

While we were on lockdown, I started making support videos for my inquiry class (the Year 13 students) to help them work through the design brief activities. I did this so they could work through the design brief activity in small chunks, that had videos and talked through examples at each stage. Blog post about it here.

When we got back to the class in person, I asked the class how they were finding the help videos. Were they helpful at all? Were they using them?. I got a mixed response at the time. 

"I didn't really watch the videos, but the examples are useful"

"I watched the first video. It was ok"

"They were useful. No they weren't too long. Yes I could understand what you were saying"

When we got to the end of this part of the work and there were no more videos, I started getting different comments from the students.

"Is there any more videos miss?

"I've just watched the last video miss, did you make any more?"

So I think that the videos were more useful than we originally thought and they gave them more support than we thought, which is good as that is what I was aiming for.

When I had my lesson observed for patterns of behaviour in myself, blog post here, it became clear that I needed to lead from the front in terms of self talk and thinking positively. I asked my students to monitor me on that and they were good to their word and 2 or 3 of them are really good at picking me up when I do negative self talk - "miss, remember" ... "miss, don't be negative remember" ... "that was a bit harsh miss". It has got to a point where I have received unasked for feedback from my HOD about this where she has noticed that I am a lot less negative about myself when I am talking, which is great. I still need A LOT of work on this but it is a good start. I will get next year's students on board with this straight away and we will monitor each other as the year goes on. I can't expect my student to be positive about themselves if I am not modelling it myself.