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.
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We are a group of Kindergarten educators in Ontario, Canada. Archives
May 2017
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