Raising teacher expectations, changing beliefs and enhancing student achievement

1. Raising teacher expectations, changing beliefs and enhancing student achievement Workshop 2

2. Workshop 2: Grouping and learning experiences • Welcome • Questions/ queries • Feedback from surveys • Outline of the day’s programme

3. Plan for the day • 9.15: Teacher behaviours: grouping • 10.00: Discussion • 10.30: Morning tea • 11.00: Teacher behaviours: learning experiences • 12.00: Discussion • 12.30: Lunch • 1.30: Planning: implementing changed/renewed practices

4. Grouping • Traditional New Zealand model • So, what about low and average expectation teachers? • So, what about high expectation teachers?

5. Hayley • Instruction within groups • Class activities: murals, shared reading activities, class library

6. Hannah and Heidi • Individualised programmes • Learning experiences: • Heidi: “Like if we are making a booklet, they are all making a book. Some of them are making it for themselves. Some of them are making it to teach others with and things like that. I try to get them all to do roughly the same sort of activity but try not to make it obvious that they’re doing – well trying to differ the parts within that activity for each group rather than them all doing totally different work.”

7. Hannah, Holly and Heather • Instruction within groups • Choice of activities • Holly: “The children can choose the activities they do, so they are not grouped for actual activities.” • Heather: First and third quartile pairs and second and fourth • Helen: Task board activities and social grouping

8. Other contexts • Mrs Kay: “I mix them because they can learn from each other and help each other.” • Mrs Iver: “Your slower students needs to be regurgitating day after day after day the same thing for it to set in...”

9. Group changes • Frequent monitoring • Frequent changes

10. Why group? • Management of children • Hannah: “Just to make it easier for planning. You know you have got a whole group at the same level, working on the same thing, rather than sort of bits all over the place. It’s really just ease of planning.” • More effective learning • Pace and level of instruction can be adapted • Preserves student self-esteem • Heather: “I think everybody has to be exposed to it [more advanced reading activity] or else I am differentiating and I think the effect will be difficult on the [low ability] children...”

11. Why does grouping matter? • Children know and this can affect self-esteem • “And so you know they’re smart because they’re in the highest group.” • “ I know my level, I know what I’m doing and I know the level in my book...usually the teacher might tell you, or your book has a certain colour, and colours mean which is high and which is low.” • “Because I know there are ten All-stars and there are two people in my group that read and do maths better than me...”

12. Discussion • Do you ability group? Why? Why not? • Have your beliefs about grouping been challenged? Discuss • How might you change your grouping structure in reading? • Would you alter the structure in other curriculum areas? Why? Why not?

13. Learning experiences/ experiencing learning • Luke: “A lot of repetition, every day…until they can start recalling their basic number facts.” • Lisa : “The low ability children require more activities using concrete materials.” • Angela: “There is a big difference between the activities for my high group and my low group. The work that my high group is doing is more advanced but my low group is reinforcing and practising the work that they are doing from day to day. My high group doesn’t do that.” • Hannah: “They need activities that are challenging so they are motivated. If I don’t make them independent as well [as the high ability students] they won’t learn to run by themselves. They’ll always need the teacher.”

14. Children’s voices • “Who isn’t past Unit 12 stand up...All you people are way behind.” • “They give them [high ability students] harder things than the other people.” • “Mr J usually gives them extra work to do.” • “The teacher gives them special work for just them [high ability students] to do...some work that other people don’t get to do.” • “When people do badly, they don’t get to go out to certain places like to PE or playtime and you do.”

15. Challenging children • Hannah: “For the high ability…to develop independence in their learning the children can go to the learning centre and do the problem solution chart and really think about what they have read and things like that.” • Alice: “I would be looking at more independent type activities for my high ability children compared to the low ability children. Yes, I think just for my high ability group I would be looking at more complex tasks, tasks that they would have to work on in a more independent way.”

16. Providing choices • Helen: “There are activities that they can go to by choice. There are computer activities, the challenge corner, theme box…” • Holly: “I basically give them a choice to a point and as long as they are going in the right direction that I want them to be going in…So often I try and let them decide on their own learning experiences.” • Hannah: “I might give them a range and say we could work on this, or we could work on that, what would you like to work on? So that they have got to take ownership of it.”

17. Introducing new concepts

18. Feedback

19. Questioning

20. Meta-analysis winners: Hattie

21. Meta-analysis losers

22. Student learning • Learning intentions • Success criteria • Next steps • Confidence to take risks

23. Student feedback • Alignment of feedback • Clarity of learning intentions • Stick to the learning intentions

24. One day annansi met hare and they went to a tree fooll of food annansi had to singing a little soing to get the rpe and the rope did Not come dawn by its self his mother dropt it dawn and he clib up it towld harea rope and he clib up it he towld hare not to tell but at ferst he did not tall but in a little wille he did. He towlld eliphont and the tottos and the popuqin and the caml and they sain the little soing and dawn came the rop and they all clambd on it and the rope swuing rawnd and rawnd. And they all screemd and thir screemds wock Anasi up and he shawtdid to his mother it is not Anasi but robbers cut the rope. And she cut the rpoe and annis fell and the elphent flatnd his fas and the totos crct his shell and the caml broka bon in his humpe and prcupin brock all his pricls.

25. Student Questioning • Two main uses • An assessment strategy • A teaching strategy

26. Types of Questions • Literal / closed questions • Application questions • Analytical questions • Synthesis questions • Evaluation questions

27. Discussion • Have you learnt or been reminded of anything about your teaching in this section of the workshop? • What (if any) changes will you make to your teaching? • How will you achieve these changes? • Where are you going? How are you going? Where to next?

28. Planning for change • How will you set up your classroom for reading? When will you do this? • What learning experiences will you include? • Will you work on ideas related to presentation of concepts, feedback, questioning? • If so, what will you do? When? • Plan, plan, plan