Skip to main content

Future-oriented Learning and Teaching - "Changing the script for my learners."


Description
Throughout my Mindlab journey, I have been excited by many of the innovative practices covered.
The big one for me, as a connected educator who perceives herself as having a future focused disposition, is Changing the Script – rethinking the roles of learners and teachers.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of this, is not changing the script for myself – but how I feed this forward to my students. We, the teachers, are not the fountain of all knowledge anymore, as the ubiquitousness of technology is surpassing this old concept of education.
Many of my students believe in a number of misconceptions.
·      Learning is about them being ‘fed’ information
·      Mathematical learning is about getting the answer right
·      Sharing information, answers, strategies is not okay
·      Research and inquiry is about finding the answers from google as quickly as we can, and regurgitating that information.
I started to change this idea about the learner’s role, by creating and encouraging communities of inquiry in mathematics.

Feelings/Evaluation
At the time, I was somewhat hesitant about how my students would react to the change in our mathematics workshops. They were used to working individually, finding the answers relatively quickly and only just beginning to share their thinking with others.
Looking back now, I am actually quite surprised how keen my students were to work together, learn from each other and be collaborative in their problem solving.  I am heartened by this and see it as a reflection of the classroom community we have created around our shared values.
This aspect is certainly an area to celebrate. In addition, the students are becoming much more adept at explaining their solutions and ensuring that all members of the group have the means to share with the entire group.  Students are acknowledging the strengths their peers have, within mathematics.
Many of the problems I chose, in the beginning were simple and easy to solve, therefore not providing a challenge to all my learners and I need to ensure future problems have more depth and are multi-layered.

 Analysis
One of the key findings for me, right at the beginning of our Mindlab journey was the 21st Century Skills that ITL Research (2012) decided were important. This has really impacted on my teaching over the past two terms and I am continuing to reflect on ways that I can ensure my teaching programme incorporates these.  Creating learning communities in my classroom, certainly requires my students to be collaborative, to self-regulate and to become skilled communicators.

Conclusion/Action Plan
In conclusion I am pleased with how my mathematics programme is evolving. There is still work to do, as mentioned above, I need to think about the problems the students are solving, now that they have developed the skills to work together. I am also looking at giving them choices about how they share their learning with the wider community.
This term, I have rearranged the groups I was using, to try and enhance relationships and communication skills between all my students, and this is having a positive effect.  I have also begun introducing the same idea into my reading programme, using literature circles to improve reading comprehension through discussions on the meaning of text.
My next step is to look at changing the way my students look at inquiry and how they create questions for investigation, research and evaluate the information they find.

Bolstad, R., Gilbert, J., McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., & Hipkins, R. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching — a New Zealand perspective. Report prepared for the Ministry of Education. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306
ITL Research. (2012). 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics. Retrieved from https://education.microsoft.com/GetTrained/ITL-Research

Comments

  1. AnonymousAugust 5, 2018 at 6:53 PM

    Hey Jacalyn what an interesting topic. I agree with you that student agency and them seeing themselves as problem solvers is so important for our maths learners. I am trying to be more mindful about their perceptions of themselves as well. I wonder if you could provide more information about what digital tools you have used that you have found successful to help you with this? Would love to know more!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JacAugust 6, 2018 at 1:21 AM

      Thanks Kate. I used screencastify and show me for student's to record their solutions to problems. Then we posted these on our blogs in order to share with others. We were trying to encourage commenting - that didn't quite happen last term and is a big focus for us this term.
      It is hard to get everything you want to say into 400-600 words isn't it?

      Delete
    2. AnonymousAugust 11, 2018 at 1:04 AM

      Jac, it is interesting that you are finding the encouraging of commenting on others blogs difficult. We have also been focusing on this this term and aside from the many technical difficulties the students seem to be taking their time at having a go at this, despite often being in the same classroom as the person they should be working with.

      We have also sent a letter home to encourage parents to be involved in the blogging feedback process and as a teacher I also comment. It would be a great way to share work with family members near and far and create a great feedback loop between a learner, their peers, their teacher(s) and their (wider) whanau.

      I would also love to hear more about how you run the math programme, or potentially see a video of it in action alongside how you plan for this.

      Delete
    3. AnonymousAugust 11, 2018 at 4:47 PM

      Thanks for sharing Jac that sounds like a great way to show their learning. Alex and Jac we have been using Seesaw for our guys seems to do the trick, especially for parent engagement. Seems to be more popular with juniors as I think my guys would struggle to use screencastify. Might have to come out for a visit sounds really interesting.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousAugust 6, 2018 at 12:10 AM

    Great post Jac. I like your comments about your students mindset around learning and how your innovation is changing this. I can see in my class how the introduction of digital tools and having the students to work together to figure them out has increased their ability to listen to each other's ideas and learn from each other.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nicola HaleAugust 6, 2018 at 1:01 AM

    I completely agree Jac, we are not a fountain of all knowledge anymore! The love the idea of collaborative learning and student's using the strengths of their peers. I really like the way you are thinking about deepening your student's learning by developing more challenge.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JacAugust 6, 2018 at 1:22 AM

      And yet still keeping in mind those that need extra support - a constant challenge! (:

      Delete
  4. UnknownAugust 6, 2018 at 2:36 PM

    Hi Jacalyn

    Isn't it refreshing that we can consider ourselves facilitators of learning rather than the fountain of all knowledge! Have you noticed that your relationships with your learners has enhanced by the introduction of your new teaching strategies? I am interested in the tools you use. Do you use strategies (such as internal/external circles or the donut activity) that allows students to get to get to know and trust each other? Although these activities are not using a digital platform could there be a digital tool that could suffice to develop collaboration. (:

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Key change in Professional Practice

During this year of learning for me, through the Mind Lab course, I have changed a number of elements of my professional practice. I will explore and reflect on one change that encompasses 4 of the key concepts as outlined by Hack Education. What? One of the aspects of my professional practice that I have changed is the move towards real world and authentic contexts for learning, where my students make connections with other learners both in the classroom and on a global scale. Through this learning, their digital toolkit is increasing as they find meaningful purposes for using these tools and applications. So what? Stage 1: Problem Identification I observed many of my learners, on entry into my classroom, mainly focused on the end point of learning tasks. They wanted to complete the task as quickly as they could and many wanted to hold onto their knowledge without sharing their expertise. In terms of inquiry topics, they liked to regurgitate informati...
1 comment
Read more

Professional Online Social Networks

In this week’s blogpost, I will use Jay and Johnson’s model (2002) to critically discuss and reflect on my use of social media within my classroom. How is social media being used in my classroom? Social media is a big part of my classroom and an integral part of my teaching practice already. Our classroom blog is a portal for learning and holds all the important information for students about what their learning tasks for the week are. Each student also has their own blog and they are expected to post regularly. Twitter has, over the last couple of years, also become an important aspect of our literacy programme, as we participate in Chapter Chat each term. During this time, we (read a particular chapter book and complete tasks related to this across the week. At the end of the week, we share our work, look and comment on other students work and answer comprehension texts, along with classrooms across the country. What does the research say about using social media? An...
Post a Comment
Read more