Classroom Talk Focus

I wanted to see what was going on in my classroom with my inquiry group in terms of the balance of the talking during a lesson.
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.

_________________________

Talk focus

Minutes of lesson			2	5	7	10	12	15	17	20	22	25	27	30	32	35	40	42	45	47
Lecture/Modelling
Instructions
Conferencing/ED
Q&A closed Q
Q&A open Q
Student-led Q
P2P Q
P2P ED
Behaviour talk
Off task talk - Students
Off task talk - Teacher

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.

Inquiry Questions 8 and 9

Explain the hypotheses about teaching that you decided were MOST worth testing, and why.

For each of your hypotheses, explain how you will test it and what evidence would support (or refute) that hypothesis

Talking about their design work to someone else / a group of people. Presenting.

Why After inquiring into written literacy last year with my Year 11 group, I feel that this made a real difference in their achievement. As my inquiry group is Year 13s this year, I thought that encouraging their talking about their work would give them confidence to talk about it in interviews for courses, jobs, apprenticeships etc. Testing and Evidence I have done a baseline presentation with them where they had very little input from me and they had to present to the rest of the class where they were up to with their project work. I will then record them presenting to each other and their client at various stages throughout the year to gauge any improvement. The students can peer assess each other’s videos using a shared rubric as a guide. This will give them the chance to think about what is needed in a presentation but with the focus being on another person and not themselves. I need to have evidence about my current patterns of teaching - I need to find systematic and objective ways you have investigated my own talk practice e.g. asking students how they perceive my patterns of talk, recording myself leading talk and doing some analysis of that. I can also get another colleague to watch me and do an analysis of what they see in terms of talking in the class.

Mindset

Why I feel that working on this aspect throughout the year will have an impact on everything that they do in their design work for Graphics. I have started this with all my classes, not just my inquiry group as I am hoping that it will filter through in following years. Testing and Evidence As for measuring this aspect, I have taken a student voice from my inquiry group about how they are feeling now. Blog post here from inquiry question 4. I also got some sticky note feedback from them after we had done a mindset activity. Having more confidence in themselves and their work will come through in the speed and quality of their work and in how they are talking about it and themselves in relation to it. I feel student voice will tell me the most about how this is going, both in terms of structured feedback and general conversation. I can also add to this with some student voice about how teaching contributes to this e.g. what kinds of teaching do you think are most or least helpful for building your confidence? What could I do as a teacher to support you develop more confidence? The quality of their work so ultimately their NCEA achievement will also show any improvements coming through.

Inquiry Question 7

Describe your process for developing hypotheses (what you read, who you talked with).


Discussions with Marc Millford - literacy leader
Discussions with members of the English department.

When preparing their students for presenting their speeches in the English department, they have a variety of techniques that they use.

The student shave a choice of presenting in front of the whole class or recording their presentation and sending in the file

They look at examples of past presentations so they are comfortable with how it looks and the process

They practice their voice projection

They make sure that the preparation for the speech is different to the formal writing - links to sources etc are removed, it is planned to be more like a conversation

The planning for the presentation starts with the writing and thinking about what they are going to say

They can read straight from the written sheet (the plan) but mostly it is memorised and presented that way

They practice - they can be somewhere alone to do this or can do it in the class with others.


Ongoing Reading

Mindset - Carol Dweck

He’ll be Ok - Celia Lashlie

Teaching College, The Ultimate Guide to Lecturing, Presenting and Engaging Students - Norman Eng

The Growth Mindset Playbook: A Teacher's Guide to Promoting Student Success - Annie Brock, Heather Hundley

To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing and Influencing Others - Daniel H Pink



Patterns of talk in classrooms and 'talk moves' that can be useful for changing balance of student-teacher talk:

https://inquiryproject.terc.edu/shared/pd/TalkScience_Primer.pdf

This links to the talk about text project that Graham, Alby and Jason were involved in a few years back:

http://www.tlri.org.nz/tlri-research/research-completed/school-sector/talking-about-text-changing-patterns-discourse-low

Inquiry Question 6

Develop a set of hypotheses about patterns in your teaching that could be changed to more effectively address the student learning focus.

Talking - very teacher focused with not enough student input. I do a lot of one to one talking with students where they are only talking to me but then they are answering questions and not leading the talk.

Sharing - the students share their work into the class G+ communities and have been doing for a number of years now. They all can see each others’ work but there is not a lot of interaction going on or feedback.

What I am lacking in my practice here is putting aside time during the lesson for students to give feedback to each other.

Sharing - when I was at university we had to put our work up on the wall and talk about it to the whole class on a very regular basis. This made us think about what we had done, why we did it and the effect it had. It also gave us a little more confidence about talking about our work. I have not given my classes the chance to talk about their work in that kind of way in a more public setting.

Peer assessment and feedback - we have looked at each other's work in the class communities but not really given feedback that would give any direction for further design development. The feedback has mostly come from the teacher and from the client if they are working with one.

Mindset - the students come into Graphics with a very negative mindset about what they think they are not able to do. They talk themselves out of achieving a lot of the time. This is something that I have not been addressing very successfully up to now.
Feedback - While talking to Mrs Anderson and her students from Panmure Bridge while they were here for Technology, they told me that they don't really feel comfortable going onto someone else's work to give feedback unless they have "permission". They like to know the person or have that person be aware that they will be writing feedback.
Mrs Anderson also added that she sets aside very specific time for them to give feedback to each other. It is part of her planning.
This was really interesting to find out. In my teaching, I do not set aside time for peer to peer feedback in the lesson, so I really need to address this and i need to structure it so they feel comfortable doing it.

Year 13 Client Presentation

My Year 13 class have been working on their concept ideas and it is time for them to show them to their client for feedback. They can then move onto design developments.
We had a preparation session the day before where I spoke with them then gave them time to do some planning on a piece of paper so they could be clearer with their thoughts.


The students took turns in presenting to their client, which I videoed, and then their client spoke to them individually about what she liked and wanted them to develop.









The day after the presentations, I gave the students this rubric to work with. They were given a random student to give feedback to and they had to follow the guidelines on the rubric. Emphasis was on supportive feedback and writing that made sense (sentences, not single word grunt Their videos were put up onto the class Google Plus community and the feedback had to be given in the comment sections under the videos.
Link here to document
Check the community to see everyone's feedback. They did really well with the feedback even though they were nervous about doing that before hand about giving feedback to their peers.

Cluster Create Staff Meeting

This week we had the Manaiakalani Cluster Create staff meeting. All the teachers from our cluster came to Tamaki College for a massive staff meeting where there was activities on offer to go and participate in. These activities all had to involve making something - a dance, a song, some food,  anything...
This is the introduction session presented by Dorothy Burt.

In session one, I went to Greg's activity, which was Cubic papercraft - Creating paper models.

I made a Tardis model!!!

Great skills can be learned from this type of activity :-

• Patience
• Accuracy
• Spacial awareness of how a flat shape can make a 3D form
• Cutting
• Assembling
• Following instructions
• Putting what you have learned into different situations and product design.

Then for session two, I was co leading a session with Russel Dunn about rocket making.
The whole team managed to get their rockets made and launched in our 45 minute time slot. We had all the rockets pre-cut and scored thanks to the laser cutter.

What do students want from your course?

I am currently reading :-


TEACHING COLLEGE: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO LECTURING, PRESENTING, AND ENGAGING STUDENTS

by Norman Eng
"To figure out their mindset, ask yourself these seven questions posed by presentation expert Nancy Duarte (2008)

What is your audience like? Why are they here? What keeps them up at night? How can you solve their problem? What do you want them to do? How might they resist? How can you best reach them?"
He also talks about knowing what your students reasons are for choosing your course and what they are wanting to gain from it.

I asked my Y11, 12 and 13 students 3 questions.

What they were doing in the Design and Visual Communication room.

What are their short term goals from the course - this year.

What are their ling term goals for the course - after this year.

I gave them a small piece of paper to write their answers on and they were to keep them anonymous.

Key highlights for me :-
Knowing they can use the skills they learn in DVC in their chosen job choices like building. They like learning skills. Enjoying the subject even if they have no plans to use it in any future job ideas. Students wanting a change from academic style courses. Wanting to improve their drawing skills. Wanting to use their graphics skills in future design courses after school.

Key worries for me :-
Focusing on getting credits and achieving NCEA, not learning. It was the only thing in the option line they fancied trying.

Year 13 teaching Year 7 and 8

My Year 13 class have visited one of our local primary / intermediate schools this week. Two of them visited Glen Taylor school at the end of last term to talk about effective logo design. Blog post here.

This week the whole class went so they could start to redesign their logos with them.
We had a talk the day before about what we would focus on and how they would do it.
We decided to all work in circles, focus on using guide lines for lettering, simplifying the image of the mountains used and simple font choice.

The Year 13 students did really well. They presented to the whole group of Year 7 and 8 students to start with, asking them questions about what they did during the last visit and reminding them what they talked about.
The Y7 and Y8 students then sat in groups and my senior students worked with groups. They moved around the groups so they could help lots of different students.

On the planning day and as we were travelling there, they were very nervous and two of my students didn't turn up that morning so they could avoid going. The 6 students who went did really really well. Their confidence grew as the students listened to them and followed their instructions as they were demonstrating.

At the end of the session, they didn't want to leave.

Māori Perspective - Student Interview 1

I have started going to visit the classrooms of all the Māori teachers at school to observe how they approach teaching. First visit link here, and I have a few more to do over this week.

To start to get a student perspective, I had a great conversation with a couple of my Year 12 Māori students today. I explained to them how teachers are expected to do an inquiry and how gearing your teaching towards Māori students was an expectation in the teaching standards.

So far they have been taught by three seperate Māori teachers and all of them have been female.
They have recently discovered they are related to one of the newer Māori members of staff. They feel this will not affect how they interact as they do not know each other and they are not taught by this teacher. So far they have compared Pepehas.

When they have these staff members, there is a general use of more Te Reo Māori in the classroom and they feel more confident about using it in general conversation.

When I asked them if the Māori staff members had different / higher / seperate expectations of them, their behaviour or their achievement and they said that they had not noticed a real difference and it was more personal to the teacher rather than the ethnicity.

I told them how as teachers we are advised to work on a good relationship with students. They totally agreed with this and told me they generally enjoyed the talk and stories that their teachers give them. They also advised teachers to "read the room" at times and not force the relationship path if it is sometimes not wanted.

These two students today are also very active out of school and are taught by Maori teachers in these activities too. They feel these teachers motivate them really well as they are really enthusiastic about what they are doing. These teachers speak Te Reo Māori a lot to the whole group they are teaching, encouraging the non Māori students to join in.

They came to Auckland about 5 years ago from a smaller town in New Zealand and have noticed a definite difference in the expectations from the teachers.
More information was given to me about this part of our talk and I was shocked.

What do they want more of?
They want teachers and students to support Māori activities more, like the Kapa Haka.
They want the Māori students to acknowledge their culture more as they feel like some students hide from it.

I loved my talk with these two students today. They were really open and helpful with all of my questions and appreciated when I told them what I was doing and why.

I absolutely have plans to talk to more of my Māori students to get their insights too.

Classroom Observation 1 - Ms George

Ms George

Year 8 English p

Observed actions in the class

Lines up outside.

Talks to them about what they think happens in English.

Asks for input and students call out their answers.

She tells them all the kinds of things they do in English and they seem surprised at all the different things they get to do.

Shout out examples.

Gets them to work in pairs but also gives them a choice to work by themselves if they would prefer.

Does an example on the board - makes them feel confident by not caring about the quality of her drawing on the board.

Allows them to talk together before they start the task so they can plan together.

The talk is productive and they start to plan who is doing what in the teams.

Some time given to work, then more input, walking round, individual inout, answering questions.

Encouragement for individuals and tables.

Sitting with them discussing their day quietly with individual and pairs.

Time limits given for work to be completed.

Class working in groups, stalking and working. Talk is about the work and what is on the walls of the classroom as this is the first time they have seen it.

Everyone looks at everyone else’s work.

Everyone guesses what the nursery rhyme is from all the other groups.

Getting them to remember what they have learned in other sessions today.




Questions after the class

Do you think that the Maori students in the class behave differently for you being a Maori female teacher?

Yes. It is not something that I can put my finger on and they probably couldn’t either. It is an inbuilt thing in them that they just do and they respond to me in a certain way,

I say their names correctly from the start.

I relate to them in a way that non Maori teachers can’t do.

I have positive relationships with students who are more troublesome for other staff members.

This does not mean I get more work out of them sometimes but I do not have the behavioural issues at all.


What differences do you see in how you teach to how you see other non Maori staff teach.

I give them time in the lesson to settle in, especially after interval and lunch time, instead of launching straight into class work.

I interact with them a lot. We talk and chat while the lesson is going on. I am approachable to them so they feel like they can talk to me.

There are set routines that they settle into and just get on with it without much nagging.

Blogging Exemplars

The way I teach is to do all the things that I expect my classes to do, whether that is drawing, rendering, making 3D models or working online.
This gives me insight into the tasks I am expecting them to do in terms of timescale, quality, difficulty level etc.  This also gives me an example for them to see before they start the task.

While I was explaining to my new Year 9 group about the two blog posts that I wanted them to do about the tasks they had been doing, it occurred to me that I should approach blogging with the students like this too.

With this in mind, I started a new blog today.
Link here

I have put on here the two tasks for my Year 9 class up to now. I have included what I asked them to complete and the labels I asked them to add.

They can find their examples on this blog bu clicking on the Year level in the labels.

I intend to use this same blog for Years 7, 8, 9 and 10 and possibly Year 11 so they will have to be able to find the examples done for them.

Seeing as I have only just started this today, I have no idea if this is going to make any difference at all with the student understanding of the blogging of the tasks in Graphics or if it will support them at all. I will get some student feedback in a couple of weeks to see what they think.

Breaking the Labels

I told my students :-
"Don't label people"
We then did the exact opposite.

I wrote these labels up on the board ...

Detail - focussed on the smallest details and spend an hour on a tiny part of a design

Final Product - focussed on the finish, the end of the task / project etc, not caring about the process and journey to get there

Perfectionist - everything must be perfect and if it is not it gets ripped out of the sketchbook or rubbed out.

Slow pants - everything takes forever to complete

I can't draw - their negative self talk makes them unable to move forward.

After explaining what each of these meant, I gave the students a couple of sticky notes to label themselves.

"but you told us not to label people!!"

Exactly!, but you label yourselves every day and these labels stop you from making any progress with your design projects.

Don't Label Yourself!

Mindset - Loosening Up

I have a mixed NCEA Level 1 and Level 2 class. Within that class are students who have done Graphics before and students who haven't. This causes a lot of self doubt in a lot of the students who come in the room thinking they can't do it. They say to me "miss I can't draw", so they talk themselves out of achieving before they even start.
This shows even more now that we are past the research stage and are onto design ideas. They sit and stare at their sketchbooks for lesson after lesson, not feeling able to do anything. I try and sit with them and do some designing with them on loose pieces of paper so they can see me do it and copy. As soon as I walk away, they stop again, and obviously get off task really easily.
I always feel such a failure about this as I struggle to support them over these self made barriers in their mind.

Over the last two days I have tried something different with this class. We came back to school for term two this week and I saw them for the first time yesterday for a single period.
We played warm up games yesterday in the single period.
30 seconds to draw 5 things ... shapes, insects, animals, things that start with the letter A .....
They were slow and too fussy to start with. They soon loosened up and got into it, while not always hitting 5 for various reasons (putting too much detail in, thinking for too long ..)
As you can see, the quality of the drawing was not great but that was not the point. Quickly getting ideas down on paper was the point and beating that "blank page curse".

Today in the double period, we started with that for a few rounds to warm them up again and because not all the students were there yesterday.
Then they got their sketch books out and had to draw in there. They had to draw 10 different designs based on their project in 5 minutes.
They had to remember what they had learned in the 30 second warm ups - draw quickly, don't get lost in details, don't stress about the quality of the drawings.
They launched into this really well. They were nearly completely silent (very unusual with this lot ) and very focussed.

They then had to look at everyone else's work. they walked round the room looking at all the sketchbooks open on the desks. They had post it notes with them and they had to write one word feedback and stick it onto each other's books.

We equated that to getting a like on Facebook or a heart like on Instagram. That warm fuzzy you get when you see that what you have put online has been seen and liked.

Then they had to go round again and write a sticky saying what they liked and why.

After reading the warm fuzzies and the feedback from the rest of the class, they had to look at their own work and write a list of 5 things that they can do to improve one of their designs. I got them to write it as a list first so they could think about it separately to drawing.

Then they had to draw 3 design changes for that chosen design based on their list.

All of these activities had very limited time allowances (5 minutes, 2 minutes, 3 minutes .. ) and I was calling out the countdown as they went.

On these 3 design improvements they had to label what the improvements were that they had done.

They then had to look at each others work again and give marks out of 5 for the design changes work.

The last thing that they had to do was to look at all the work that had been done today and choose one from someone else's work. They then had to draw a design development for someone else and give it back to them personally so they knew who had drawn what.

They were very respectful when doing this and were careful to explain the changes they had done to someone's work and why when they gave it back.

At the end of the session today I asked them for some quick feedback by answering 4 questions for me.

What I noticed the most today was the level of engagement and being on task for the full double period and the amount of work produced in the time.  I used :-

• Timed activities for the whole lesson
• Small times on activities all the way through
• Peer to peer feedback and marking
• Giving warm fuzzies before the more detailed feedback so they felt good about their work
• Giving help and support to each other in the form of designing improvements for some one else.
• Not focussing on the quality or standard of their drawings but the ideas that they were coming up with.

Three students who absolutely hated today are my three perfectionists. I spoke to them after the lesson and told them I was proud of the way they approached the work and to let them know that I knew they were struggling. They tried really hard and did well.

My boys at the back who struggle with the whole designing process did well today. They produced more work today than they have since we started designing work and finished the research.

My next problem - How can I get this to influence the day to day designing that we have to do? 

And - I was EXHAUSTED at the end of the double period as I was BAM BAM BAM though the whole thing.

Mindset Presentation - HOD PE

Today my Year 13 class were really lucky as the HOD of PE at Tamaki College (Mr Brenton Moyes), came to talk to them about mindset and how he did Art and Graphics when he was at school.
They started off being really polite when we asked them if they thought the head of PE was good at drawing. They then relaxed and were more honest. They all answered "no!". He brought in his art boards from school and they were really impressed.










Brenton did a great presentation, talking about :-

• failure
• trying again
• practising
• improving
• trying new things
• being outside of your comfort area

They did a warm up exercise to start with where they had to draw a face by not taking their pencil off the page. They then did it again with less time and had to put more detail in. After comparing their first and second efforts, they had to choose which one they liked the best.  This was then linked to trying a new thing, not being sure, having another go - a growth mindset. Brenton then described the process he went through for his art boards and how much trial and error he went through, getting things wrong, improving, trying again. This was linked through to a sports mindset of training and practicing. I spoke to them afterwards about putting people into boxes when we see them. We all do it and it is normal but we have to be able to break the boxes when we find out more about people. They are guilty of putting themselves into boxes which is stopping their progress. The "I can't" mindset related to drawing is killing their creativity in some cases, and the need to be perfect in everything they do is killing it with others. A great presentation from Brenton today and I will have to get him back to do more as a lot of the class was missing today.

Hapara Workspace PD

Today we were very lucky to have Lenva take us through using the Hapara Workspace.
I had a go using the project my Year 12 students are working through at the moment.


Here is the workspace that I started putting together in the session today. As of typing this, it is unfinished. Link here

I also embedded this workspace onto my site so it is easily available for anyone who goes onto my class site.

Link here

To be honest, I feel at the moment that I am doing the presentation of resources and activities to the students twice as it is all on my site. "Double handling".

The good thing about the workspace is that I can track the activities a lot easier as the students have to submit via the application so it keeps it all in one space.

When I am planning new projects and activities, it will be via the workspace, so that will keep the "double handling" to a minimum, I think.

Teacher Only Day

All links on the page take you to content from the day.

Senior students present to Year 7 and 8

Two of my lovely NCEA Level 3 students went to Glen Taylor School today to talk to them about logo design. The Year 7 and 8 students have been designing logos for their school houses and they wanted the advice of some Tamaki College design students about the best way to develop their designs.

Vaifoa and Sella were very brave, standing in front of approximately 80 students in the school auditorium and talking to them about logo design all together. They then worked with smaller groups as the students brainstormed their thoughts.
We looked at famous designs and thought about what made them effective. The students then looked at the designs they have produced already and highlighted all the good parts that can be used in the development stage.
The next step is next term when my whole Level 3 class will visit and help them with their design developments.

Very proud graphics teacher today.

Negative Mindset

This week I made a Towers of Hanoi game on the laser cutter and in the workshop.
It has been sitting on my desk while I build an Intermediate Technology project around it so the students have been seeing it and having a go.

It has proved to be a fascinating insight into the mindset that the students bring to their project work in Design and Visual Communication.

My Year 13 students are a mixed bunch of some who have done NCEA Level 1, Level 2 DVC and those who have not done graphics since they were in year 9 and 10.

My three boys who have not had any NCEA DVC experience were shy of trying the new game. One had a go, one was very reluctant but has a go eventually while hiding behind his sketchbook and one refused to have a go at all.
My two girls with no experience refused to have a go.

To day, student "A" tried again but still his behind his book. Then he hid behind stories of completion and how he made it under the mathematical minimum number of moves. He kept trying. I sat with him and gave him a few nudges, winks and finger points quietly. He made it in the 31 moves with help, then he did it again without hiding, in front of everyone by himself.

I chatted with him afterwards.

How was just now different to yesterday?
"you helped me"
What about when you did it yourself?
"I had practised"
Why were you hiding to start with?
"I didn't want to look stupid in front of everyone"
What about now?
"cos I'm the man miss!"
Yeah, yeah, yeah....

This was a fascinating insight today. This is exactly how they approach their design work.

• They hide their work by facing into the corner while doing it.
• They hide the parts they don't like by rubbing them out of throwing them in the bin.
• They sit and not do the work at all.
• Occasionally avoid the whole situation by organising something else to do during my lesson.

My next step is to try and get them to understand the importance of the "design journey". It is not all about the finished "polished" product / drawing. They expect everything to be perfect and get very disheartened when it is not.