Sharing the pedagogical purpose- student discussions

These excerpts are from a lesson where the students were introduced to a couple of new learning tools. I make a point of introducing each tool we use with a brief overview of what the tool is and then how to use it, modelling how to do it and thinking out loud about the decisions i make while using it.

http://audioboo.fm/boos/225372-students-talking-about-whole-part-maps

http://audioboo.fm/boos/225531-students-describe-using-a-moving-on-map

Just like any content learning, some students struggle with learning the tools and think associated with them,. This is why discussions like these are so important. My voice is fairly sparse throughout as I tend use lots of wait time after a student has stopped talking, which prompts further discussion from them or their colleagues. It is evident in these Audioboos, that other students jump in at these points and share their knowledge of the tool. so, the resulting discussions are full of the difficulties and benefits of using these tools. The main thing though is that these tools become their tools as opposed to tasks the teacher has asked them to do. This is a key way in which we can increase the independence of students. It is essential that teachers hear these discussion's as it will frame, future differentiation and support for these students.

The tools themselves are the thinking tool- the whole part or brace map, for connecting important information and the PEEL strategy of a moving on map. The moving on map is entirely constructed by the ideas of the students, who are incidentally eleven years old. A colleague happened to be passing through my classroom as we constructed this and remarked on the sophistication of the student ideas. The other thing that struck my colleague was the usefulness of "boxing" in each step which added to the clarity of what the students had to do.

Metacognitive Wrappers

Metacognitive wrappers on Prezi

All a metacognitive wrapper is a task that is completed at the beginning and at the end of an activity or lesson, that is designed to help students plan or at the very least consider their thinking over a lesson. The positioning of these tasks is importan, firstly the integration of teaching thinking skills in real content is well documented in John Hattie's Visible Learning. He also highlights a couple of studies that back up the wrapper nature. Lavery states that strategies aimed at forethought and that encourage evaluation have the biggest impacts on learning. While Huang when studying the metacognitive behaviour of self questioning measured the biggest effect before the lesson, and slightly lower after the lesson. It was much lower during the lesson. Common sense would suggest that trying to be self questioning during a lesson could be distracting to all but the most able learners.

I always field a few responses and record them on the board, and thereby make their thinking visisble. There is no need to sanction any responses as right or wrong at this point. I stumbled across these a while back, and instantly saw their use in engagement and in the development of true metacognition. It is essential that student metacognition goes beyond just thinking about their thinking and actually facilitates them being able to control their thinking.

So what prompts or questions are useful, through trial and error I arrived at the kinds of things to ask, and have recently began to discover the research that explains why this strategy works. I always make a point of making it absolutely clear what they are about to learn. This gives the gives the scope to ask something about what they might already know? I purposefully leave it as might as this makes all ideas to be valid, at least at the beginning of a session. I think it is important not to close any thinking avenues in the first five minutes of a lesson! It also gives students the chance to come back to their original ideas at the end and see if it has changed, have they added new knowledge, modified an existing idea or become more confident about what they knew. (Although becoming less confident in their knowledge is just as valid a response, as they could either be unlearning a misconception, which is a difficult process or be questioning why they believe something rather just accepting something is right.)

The phrasing of the questions is vital, it must embody the kind of thinking you require of them and phrased in such away that its sounds mutable or learnable. So adding phrases like at this point in time or today, are useful signals.

The next element is a target setting one that could be the visualisation of a success criteria, the setting of a self reward for success (could this be a way of tapping into the intrinsic learner motivation? Findlay and Cooper demonstrated that those students who are internally motivated perform better than those who delegate this responsibility). This element could equally be determined by the usefulness of what is being is learned.

Strategic thinking is an essential part, helping students structure not only their thinking but their work too. So getting students to plan out a step by step method on how to solve a problem or planning out an assignment are two of the top four in Hattie's list of most effective metacognitive strategies. In fact a properly planned wrapper will hit all four.

The final element to a wrapper is to focus on a learner attribute such as motivation or being resourceful in their learning is probably the quickest win for the students and for the teacher . Even if at the begin if they say "I'm not motivated today " they have already engaged in the type of thinking you require. I have been surprised by the consistency of improvement at the end of each session when returning to this question. By indicating these attributes within a specific learning activity adds importance to them and makes them visible. It makes them metacognitive.

So to conclude, learners must return to the task, I change the tense to things like Was the knowledge you had useful, or did your plan help you structure your work etc and I again discuss their responses, looking for and praising them controlling their thinking or changing their mind. As change is learning.

LIE to apply - a strategy for demonstrating learning

This is a simple strategy that I came up with ages ago and don't think I have fully explored it's potential. It's a task design to get students to demonstrate their learning. I must emphasise that this is not regurgitation of the knowledge i'm looking for here but an opportunity to apply their knowledge in a new scenario.
L.I.E stands for Label, Identify and Explain. I think this is flexible enough to be applicable to a range of contents. My original outing involved students studying some diagrammatic pictures of diseased lungs. They then had to label the part of the lung infected, Identify which disease they thought it was and Explain they thinking behind this decision.
Today with my year 7's we were looking at puberty. The students drew a "stenciloid" person assigning it male or female. Then Label the parts where the change would take place. Identify what the changes would be and finally Explain why the change would happen. It was obvious who had struggled with the abstract concepts today such as hormones. The feedback from my students about this lesson was they had added to the previous knowledge by now being able to say why the changes during puberty happened. I don't necessarily think that was due to this activity, but , this activity certainly made that learning visible to them.
After the success today I think I'm going to try this one with my Year 13 when we look at antibiotic action on bacteria. I think this could be a useful strategy As it could allow me to assess unistructural ,multistructural and relational thinking a la SOLO. I'll post on that one when I get something concrete.

Hinge Questions

For a better description of hinge questions please read this post

I love the simplicity of Hinge questions. My students can have a go of these in the first ten minutes of next lesson. But, behind this simplicity there is a little thought, each question is testing a key learning intention from the past two lessons. I have intentionally sought to mislead or place red herrings in their way. I want their mistakes manifest.

This will give me a chance to respond, either through some differentiate activities or a targeted teacher input for the next part of the lesson. I have also differentiated these by SAT level so that certain questions will hint at student progress.

To get these right, I have rewrote them and deleted others. I've probably spent too long on writing what is essentially four questions, but my next lesson depends upon them