When discussing our results, we discovered that our findings were quite varied. We were not able to make general conclusions between classes, as our results were dependent upon so many factors. The different environments of our classrooms, and the unique needs of our learners, added to these variations.
One class noticed significant improvements when they recorded their work outside of the classroom. However, upon further discussion, we wondered if these students performed better because working in a space outside of the classroom was a very rare and special occurrence for the students. We also wondered if it was because the space that was chosen had very limited distractions for the students. The other classes did not find any significant differences, and wondered if this may be because the 'removed' environments that were chosen were not as motivating for students, as they tended to be areas where the students frequently worked in, for various small group lessons or activities. We also wondered if the areas chosen for these classes might have been more distracting as they were both high-traffic hallway and pod areas. Our results were even more varied when it came to timing. One class did not find any significant improvements when students were asked to record at a later time. When discussing this teacher's observations, it was noted that many of the students had moved on to other activities, and did not enjoy being interrupted from their next project in order to make another recording. It was also noted that they did not always share the same amount of details when recording at a later time. We wondered if this might be because students remembered what they had previously said, and didn't understand if or why they should be repeating the ideas they had recorded earlier. Some particular students though, seemed to be much more successful when recording at a later time. However, the unique student needs seemed to be a factor. One of the successful students may have benefitted from further time to process his thoughts and build vocabulary about their work. Another student may have benefitted from the later time due to peer role modelling, as he spent the time between recordings observing some of his peers making recordings about their work as well. Our discussion circled, and left us with a few general questions:
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We began sharing the different approaches we used, to directly instruct our students on how to improve their recordings. One teacher used small group instruction with her selected students. She engaged them in oral discussions about what ideas they could possibly share about their work. When they were ready to record, she reminded them of the things they had previously discussed before they did their recording. Another teacher used large group instruction, as the whole class had already seen and given feedback to some of the students' previous recordings. The class made an anchor chart of the ideas they had (see image). Then, when it was time to record, the teacher reviewed the anchor chart with the students and discussed some of the ideas before they recorded their work. After much discussion, we agreed that the third teacher's approach seemed to be most successful. In her class, she began by showing two recordings, each one describing an airplane made out of Lego. The first example was very basic ("I like my airplane"). In the second recording, the speaker elaborated about their airplane ("I made an airplane. I made it out of Lego. I use two red pieces and three yellow pieces. I made an airplane because I like airplanes."). She encouraged the class to talk about what made the second recording better. With some support, students talked about three important elements, and these became the framework for sharing their work. Students needed to share what they made, how they made it, and why they made it (see image below). We discussed that these simple, yet open-ended prompts gave our youngest students a clear guideline with which to frame their ideas. This educator also paired her instruction with large-group sharing of student work samples. She explained how she used this sharing time to reinforce her ideas. She would show student recordings two times. The first time, the students could listen and watch for enjoyment. The second time, the students were prompted to listen and decide if the student was successful in sharing the three main points. They would then continue their discussion about the finer details of the recording. She may have highlighted a particular sample where a student didn't just name their work, but also labelled many of it's parts. She may have also focused on a work sample that used the 'why' requirement to make a connection to their own lives, sharing, "I made this airplane because I went to an airplane museum and I liked looking at the airplanes there." We discussed how the simple, clear, and open-ended prompts helped these students improve their recordings about their work. We also knew that the way this educator intentionally shared and discussed student work samples was a key element in her improved results.
Now that we were more comfortable using Explain Everything and Draw and Tell, we decided that we needed to provide some direct instruction for the students in order to demonstrate what good oral communication and critical thinking skills looked like. We felt that by documenting student work both pre- and post- direct instruction, we could begin to learn what works best and what may not work for our students. We wanted to be able to measure their growth throughout this journey and not just at the beginning and end. In our last session, we compared student work samples from each of our classes. While comparing with each other, we noticed that the settings where the learning took place (e.g., pod, classroom, hallway) and our time delay (e.g., how much time passed between when the student made their creation and when they sat down and explained it) both varied quite a bit between our classes. This brought up a few questions that we decided to explore:
1) Is a quiet space (e.g., pod or hallway) better than in the busy (and often noisy!) classroom environment? 2) Is it better for a student to have a time delay between when they made their creation and when they explain it (in order to think of more details) or is it better to have students explain their creations right away, when they are excited about them? To give us more insight into these questions, we planned to ask our students to do a recording both in the moment, and after 30 minutes, to see which might produce more detailed explanations. We also planned to take these snapshots of student learning in two different settings: In a quiet space (e.g., pod/hallway) and also in the classroom, where the learning originally occurred. After our pre-direct instruction samples were finished, we planned to teach our students how to explain their creations in detail. But how did we do that? Did the students show progress? Check out our next post to find out! |
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We are a group of Kindergarten educators in Ontario, Canada. Archives
May 2017
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