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.

 

Inquiry Question 6 - Teaching Observation

1. Plan and conduct detailed inquiry into specific aspects of your current teaching that are relevant to the hypotheses you identified in the literature. Inquiring into your teaching should give you:

• Formative information about your current strengths and areas for development
• Baseline information that you can use at the end of the year to provide evidence of shifts in teaching

Use multiple tools such as self- or peer-observations, analysis of your class site, student voice.

2. Present findings from this inquiry about your teaching. Ensure qualitative data includes rich descriptions of your teaching and quantitative data is clearly presented.

3. Write a reflection in which you summarise your main learning about your teaching and next steps. This will prepare you to design an intervention next time.

I asked Mrs Anderson, the HOD of Technology to observe my lesson. We decided that if she was in the room taking notes then I would change how I interacted with the students without meaning to, so we decided to record a section of a lesson with my inquiry group.

This is the rubric that we are using ...

Mindset Lesson Observation

Item	Seen / Not seen	Notes
Listening to the students talking about their work.
Does not use negative language with the students while talking about their work.
Inquires into / Encourages / helps students when they are stuck or need help.
Has help available for the students to use in their own time when they need it without them having to ask all the time. Building self resiliency.
Uses growth mindset language - you can, effort, try, fail, learn, mistakes. Etc… to model mindset talk.
Encourages self reliance and self management in project work.
References to work?

Anything else to add …

I recorded one period of a double lesson and we reviewed about 25 minutes of it.

Here is the whole video.

Here is the rubric with the notes on it ...

Mindset Lesson Observation

Up to 24:08 in the video

Item	Seen / Not seen	Notes
Listening to the students talking about their work.	IIII	Is it important to get the students to talk more? The only listening time was when they were responding to questions asked.
Does not use negative language with the students while talking about their work.		There was no negative talk directed towards the students personally or their work. Comment about them being slow in finishing work.
Inquires into / Encourages / helps students when they are stuck or need help.	IIIIIIIII	Inquiring a lot into student progress, “what are you doing?”
Has help available for the students to use in their own time when they need it without them having to ask all the time. Building self resiliency.	II	Students were drawing and making in 3D. They all needed individual help.
Uses growth mindset language - you can, effort, try, fail, learn, mistakes. Etc… to model mindset talk.	I	Not enough of this type of language used throughout the lesson. A little seen in the whole class talk at the start of the session.
Encourages self reliance and self management in project work.		Students are seen getting on with their work. It is when they need a “next step” that they sit and wait for the teacher.
References to work?

Anything else to add …

Teacher Self-talk IIIII

Notes:

Identify what is turning over work output by the students to know how to expend teacher time effectively

Student Voice and Observation Reflection - figure out what is positively impacting student output, to know what items could be focussed to improve student output even more

The main talking points and analysis for Mrs Anderson and I after reviewing the video were

1. What are the main things that the students feel help them to get on with their work confidently? I can do a very quick Google Form for this to get some student voice about it. I can then plan what the main focus of attention needs to be in terms of changes to put in place from the rubric.
2. What can I, as the teacher, do to stop the negative self talk that is coming out of me all the time? I had not noticed this was a problem until we watched and analysed the video together. If Mrs Anderson had done an observation in the class and we had not recorded it, I would not have believed her. To see me doing that so often was embarrassing. How can I expect the students to improve on their mindset if I am constantly putting myself down? This is going to be a tricky one to work on and I am going to need time to think of strategies. I may involve the students in this too and explain to them what I am trying to change and why.

Inquiry Question 5 - Hypothesis

1. Share your findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge. Make sure it is clear what evidence from your inquiry supports each finding.
2. Explain how some of the data you have used to build a profile of the students’ learning will be used as baseline data at the end of the year.

Learning Issue	Reflective Questions
The students start their project work and don’t finish it at all or to a standard that does not achieve at NCEA Level 3. Blog post here with analysis of results. The NA results are nearly all because the work is incomplete. The class is very mixed in terms of experience in DVC and in motivation.	What can I do to encourage my students to finish their design projects and achieve at NCEA Level 3 DVC? Can I teach the whole class to the same high level as the 4 potential scholarship students in the class? How can I support my students in feeling positive about what they can achieve?

If ... Then thoughts...

• If I let all of my class work at a higher level then they will be motivated to complete their work and achieve.
• If I focus on improving the mindset of the whole class, they will be able to think more positively about their ability to complete all of their work to a high standard.

Initial Data

Overall results analysis over time

Inquiry Group - Know your Learners - Statistics

Sharing the why

Preliminary findings

Mindset check in

Inquiry Question 6 - Readings

"Share three pieces of academic or professional reading and explain how they and other sources helped your form hypotheses about aspects of teaching that might contribute to current patterns of learning."

This is my academic reading.

I will be updating this list and the notes that go with it as the year progresses. The notes will be links to appropriate blog posts that relate to work done in response to the readings.

Link to presentation

Blog Posts
Using games for critical thinking and mindsetMindset Check In

Inquiry Question 4 - Preliminary Findings

"Begin to collect evidence and data and share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence"

I have some initial findings, basic data in the Inquiry Question 3 - Tools, Measure and Approaches - link to post here

Copy of information from that post is below.

Analysis of results from previous years

Internals

Externals

This is to try and give me an idea where the weaknesses are in my own planning.

Analysis and breakdowns of ethnicity, achievements in previous years, in both DVC and other courses, literacy and numeracy abilities.

Know your learners blog post here

This is to get a general overview of who I have in the class.

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I have some initial information from the mindset questionnaire that I asked my inquiry group to fill in.

The questionnaire is shown below here. I intend to use this information to compare against the same questionnaire at the end of term 3.

Here is the link to the results so far (9 responses out of a class of  15 - 2 of who have not returned to school yet after lockdown)

Inquiry Question 3 - Tools, Measures and Approaches

Question 3


"Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools."

Analysis of results from previous years

Internals

Externals

This is to try and give me an idea where the weaknesses are in my own planning.

Analysis and breakdowns of ethnicity, achievements in previous years, in both DVC and other courses, literacy and numeracy abilities.

Know your learners blog post here

This is to get a general overview of who I have in the class.

Mindset questionnaire

Link to form here

This is to assess where the students think they are at with how they think about themselves and their work.

Last year I did an activity with my group - What do they want from my course

Blog post here

I want to do this again as it gave me a really good insight as to why they were in DVC in Year 13 and what they wanted to get out of being there.

To support all of this, I have already had a session with my group about why we are doing what we are doing in DVC and why it is changing.

Blog post here

I did this to keep the students in the loop about what was happening in the course. This was especially important to those students who have been in Level 1 and Level 2 DVC wiuth me as they will notice the changes more than the others.

Online support

I had started putting together online support videos for my group during COVID19 lockdown, especially for those who couldn't come online for classes with me. I really like these and have decided to continue doing them for the rest of the course.

Blog post here.

This is to give the students support when I am unable to sit with them one to one. It is a very busy class (Year 12 and Year13) and they are all at different points in their work.

Inquiry Question 2 - Collaborate and Identify

Question 2

"Collaborate with your school’s leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals."

My Inquiry Idea

Will working at scholarship level for 4 students in my senior class lift the achievement of the rest of the class?

Feedback :-

Teacher from another department

• This will make a contribution as University Entrance is one of the school goals. 
• For the more able students it gives a better idea of the level of work they will need if they are wanting to go to university.
• This will possibly scare the less able students but it may build resiliency if they choose to meet the challenge.

Teacher who taught a scholarship class last year

• That was also their hope last year, that the overall level would be lifted.
• The outcome was not quite what was expected but the learning and the skills were all heightened.
• This did not come through in the final results.
• They want to focus less on the NCEA number crunching and more on the fun of learning and the experience - the experience of going through the scholarship process brought this home to them in a big way.
• They also had external help with the process.
• It has changed how they are approaching the Level 3 literacy programme this year and the focus is now on the learning and the wanting to read.
• They want the students to want to learn, to be curious and not tick boxes.

Teacher in the same department

• They think that this idea will raise the achievement of the rest of the class.
• They think the students will reach for the bar that is set for them.
• They think the students will have an advantage as they are profiting from the teaching to the four target students.
• The other students could step up and achieve where otherwise they might not (this was in reference to those students who are in the class because of the timetable structure, not through any deep love of the subject. These kinds of students at Level 3 DVC have not done very well in the past)

Head of Department for Technology

• Will this prove to be too big and too full on to be a whole class approach?
• They think it will fit into school goal number 1 as my class has some Year 12 students in it too who are going to be included.

Deputy Principals

• Students last year were moved up into Merit and Excellence from this approach last year in Maths, so their achievement was great even though they didn't get the Scholarship result.
• The school is looking at more mixed level and mixed year group classes due to numbers choosing options so it will be interesting to see how my practice can affect and support teachers in their planning for this.
• How would I get this across to others teachers at school? A tip of the week in briefing? The Google Plus staff community? Emails? The process is on my blog so this needs to be presented to staff so they can look if they want to.
• We are to present to staff as a CoL group, termly, about where we are up to with our inquiries so when it comes time for Bursts and Bubbles at the end of the year, they are more inclined to come and see the outcome of it all.
• The plan was seen as a good way to collaborate with and support the school with the ongoing differentiation planning, as this will be good for new students to a subject as well as their different abilities.
• Can I explain how I am supporting this? my class site / workspaces / online examples etc.
• How will this affect the following year? The Year 12 students who in the group this year will have a different way of working if they come back to DVC next year.
• How am I up-skilling myself to be able to approach this?

Inquiry Question 1 - An Inquiry Stocktake

Question 1

Use the ‘inquiry stocktake’ doc to reflect on and write about what you aim to learn about inquiry this year.

My main takeouts from doing this activity are :-

• What worked well - using the in-school and in cluster expertise.
• Challenges - finding relevant literature about what I was trying to do
• Additional support - more working together as CoL teachers, giving feedback about what each other is doing

If you want to read the full document, it is listed here below.

An inquiry stocktake

Aspects of inquiry	What worked well	Challenges	Additional support that would be helpful
Identifying valued learning outcomes (VLOs) to focus on	Having subject specific data going back years to see where the gaps are. Getting student voice from previous years. Looking at NZQA exemplars to see where gaps are in what I am preparing for the students.	Aligning want I want to do with the overall goals of the cluster, the school and the department.	Having CoL sessions where we focus on goals and how to approach them.
Profiling students’ learning in those VLOs	Using school data to see where the students are in relation to their achievement so far.  Getting support from “specialists” in order to understand the data coming out of the asTTle and PAT tests.	Not knowing more personal knowledge about students that may be affecting them. (i'm not talking about breaking any privacy here, but just knowing that there are issues that are affecting them would be very helpful)	Health centre, dean and tutor teacher support. Talking to the other teachers of the students.
Generating hypotheses (especially teaching)	Talking to other teachers - especially “experts” in their area. Talking to the students.	Not sure if what you are thinking about is going to make a difference.	More time during CoL PLG to discuss with each other what we are thinking about.
Testing hypotheses (investigating own teaching)	Trying new things and being honest about if they have “worked”	Not being sure if what I am trying is not working just for these students but it might still be a viable idea to try with others.	Have someone else looking over what I have done and giving input on what they think. Is it the idea, the situation, the teaching or the students?
Using research literature and other sources to identify more effective approaches	Reading online and downloaded books and pdf’s.	Finding literature that is relevant - a lot of time is spent searching. Access to academic literature.	A central “bank” that we could all add to so we can see a breadth of reading being done and dip in Access given to academic literature.
Implementing new approaches	The school being very open about trying anything new. I don’t have any worries about changing any part of what I am doing with my teaching.	Worrying about wasting valuable NCEA time on an “idea” that might not work.	Being able to talk over ideas with someone before trying them.
Monitoring (and tweaking) new approaches	The Causal Chain flow charts were really useful to see cause and effect - to look back on to see what the plan was and where changes to the plan happened along the way.	Ideas for changes to make. Ideas for monitoring what is happening and seeing if there is change that aren’t easily measurable.	Having another set of eyes - to coin a phrase from the class of Robyn anderson - a “critical friend”
Evaluate shifts in own teaching	Honesty. I am not shy about admitting something I am doing is not working.		I want to go back to videoing myself again as I did in Class OnAir as it gave me a really good insight.
Evaluate shifts in student learning	Honesty. I am not shy about admitting something I am doing is not working.	I need to do more student voice without boring the pants off them. Trying to get the truth in student voice. They put what they think you want to hear sometimes.	Ideas in different ways to get student voice would be really helpful so I am not shoving Google Forms at them all the time.
Keep a clear and detailed record of all stages of inquiry	Keeping an ongoing record on my blog, and not just at the prescribed points but during lots of other planning and activities. Getting support from Wolf Fisher (Aaron) about how to collect evidence that was not numerical data.	Getting honest feedback as I go from other teachers as to what they think is working or not. Getting any feedback at all sometimes is an issue.	Feedback from other CoL teachers on our blogs, as they are going through the same process as me and understand the challenges and what we are trying to do.