How can we best capture and build a picture of where learners are in their knowledge, skills and conceptual understandings? How do we capture thinking? At a time where learning experiences have been so diverse, I have been wondering how to best capture our student’s thinking and develop an understanding of where students are in their individual understanding of a concept. There are a host of tools that help us be able to document and capture thinking moments from our students such as using Visible Thinking Routines, Seesaw and learning portfolios, students recording whiteboard explanations or teaching a strategy. Recording audio responses provide a wonderful way to engage and enable all students to share their ideas. These are all methods through which we can capture the student thinking process.
This podcast below was shared with me recently and so much of it resonated in thinking about student ‘thinking’ in mathematics and literacy.
The importance of listening, really listening, to be able to understand where students are in their thinking and therefore be able to guide them in their next steps. At my current school we have a process of conferring with students individually about their learning in different domains. This enables us to form a picture of where students are as learners, as thinkers – not just what can be checked off as ‘can do’ and ‘can’t do’ but understanding how students come to form their responses creates the opportunity to meaningfully inform next steps in their learning.
“…correct answers can mask confusion, just like incorrect answers can hide understanding. The answer is just the starting place. It’s really how you got to the answer and how you reason that is just as important.”
Marilyn Burns
The question of how time consuming this process is often comes up. Listening to the podcast above just reinforced for me that really being able to support learners to grow must be all about taking the time to get to know them as thinkers, to understand how they are constructing their responses, their thought process. Of course conferring is a process that requires focus, time and space but what could be more important than listening with focus and purpose to understand our students better? Surely this is what impacts learning growth – even better, building strong relationships along the way!
I recently wrote about missing the sense of, ‘a learning buzz‘, during these times where many of us have moved to virtual learning spaces. It made me wonder, how can you generate a ‘learning buzz’ in this virtual space? It of course would be fruitless and frustrating to try to copy and paste the same approaches into an online space – context matters and what works in one will not necessarily work in the other. However, whilst the ‘learning buzz’ may not look and feel the same, how would we define this in an online space I wondered? What opportunities might there be? How do we adapt our learning environments?
Learning, teaching and leading in an inquiry based, PYP School, one of our challenges has most definitely been honouring the values of our learning and teaching principles. Despite pressures faced, focusing on our beliefs and values to foster curiosity and inquiry at the heart of our daily approach to learning.
This prompted me to refer to the PYP guidance on creating learning environments and think about the different elements that are defined as going into cultivating these and intentionally exploring how these evolve.
‘PYP learning spaces affect and reflect values and beliefs about learning. They play a role in shaping the culture of the learning community by facilitating certain ways of acting and interacting. They support a constructivist and social-constructivist (Vygotsky 1978) approach to learning and teaching. They are multifunctional, emphasizing personalization of learning, promoting independence and engagement.’
My IB – Connecting pedagogy and design
So how do we nurture that magical ‘learning buzz’ in whatever context we are in?
This diagram shows the elements I believe contribute to enabling a ‘learning buzz’ to flourish and as a way to illustrate what this could look like in a classroom or school community. I use the word ‘enable’ intentionally as this learning buzz is not something any one person can create but from my perspective is about letting this have space to flourish and blossom. Below are some examples I made connections to from experiences during Distance Learning at my School. I would love to know of others that you may have to get further inspiration!
Sense of being ‘me’
Finding space for individuality to be celebrated and to bring community together in an inclusive way is so important. During lockdown we could not run our Home Language Program as usual so we made this into a community event. We created an interactive map of where we feel at home for everyone to anonymously share, shared our languages through poems and sayings and students (and adults if they wanted!) created Language Portraits. This was all done virtually through a live stream assembly and recorded activities and video calls.
Shared Values & Understandings
Making sure to share beliefs and values with community ensures learning is effective, and it can be done in a fun, informative way! We made a series of video clips to remind everyone about online meeting etiquette and created Community fact sheets with our rules and essential agreements reflecting our Community Values in the virtual learning space.
Rituals & Routines
Rituals and routines are part of every learning environment, of every school community; whether it be a morning greeting, check in circle, or roles and responsibilities that are assigned to the class each week. These all form part of a shared classroom culture. In the online space, we saw morning check in circles often replaced with a morning prompt in the chat in MS Teams, a way for everyone to say hello and connect before starting their learning day. Or for the younger grades, a morning video message. I also observed the beauty of new rituals or routines forming – a favourite way to end a call in one of 6th grade classes for example, has now become an embedded ritual for the class to say goodbye!
Teachers found ways to adapt roles of responsibility also in the virtual space, assigning chat moderators in video calls for examples or continuing to use hand signals in video calls to show agreement/disagreement/ connection/questions and so forth. We also tried to keep to our regular school assembly schedule and routines to bring everyone together as part of our regular routine.
Learning Purpose and relevance
Ensuring learning is purposeful, challenging and relevant for all students became ever more complex in a distance learning world where differentiation strategies and the ease of interaction between teachers, students and peers is more challenging. Finding ways to engage in learning with materials and experiences at home, ensuring learning engagements are open ended and encourage further student led inquiry all can help ensure that learning remains purposeful and relevant for the individual. We had great examples with students carrying out science experiments, building machines, testing theories and recording their experiments as learning evidence.
Interaction – Dialogue
Here are some examples of teachers finding ways to promote interaction and dialogue using tools such as Padlet to share in online lessons. We also used Padlet to encourage interaction within our community too, with the song sharing and virtual arts day as some examples!
Bringing community together through shared events and having fun together! We celebrated Earth Day, Sports day and other events together and brought a bit of fun to lockdown life. I feel fortunate to work with such a dedicated, fun team!
What have I missed most over the past months of school life? We have been roller-coasting through school closure – distance learning – hybrid learning – back to school – quarantining – distance learning.
There are many things – but my first reaction was ‘There’s a learning buzz’.
If I asked you to describe what an optimum learning space looked like when students are engaged in learning, what would you envisage? Would it be students sitting diligently at their desks writing in their notebooks? Would it be quiet? Would it have an atmosphere of excitement? Of calm? Of fun? Of concentration? Of questions? Of noise? Perhaps a whole melange of the above and more!
If I had had to answer this question 20 years ago, I would probably have included adjectives such as calm, hard-working, learning-focused, and organized. Now, I feel as though I have a completely different answer. In my experience, the classroom that may appear at times bustling, busy, noisy and ‘out of control’, may indeed be the complete opposite. If you scratch beneath the surface the classroom in which the teacher has most ‘control’ and in which students are the most engaged learners tends to be one where activity is busy, can be chaotic and conversations are fast-paced with questions and ideas flowing.
To clarify – I am not talking about a scene where students are running all over the classroom and the teacher is straining to be heard. No, I am talking about that type of learning buzz that gets noisy, where there is laughter and chatting and everyone is working their own way at their own pace. ‘Classroom management’ and ‘control’ of the classroom are terms that I am not fond of. A classroom space, a learning environment, is not in my opinion one that is best forcibly controlled, but one that is nurtured – a space that allows everyone to stretch their minds, feel safe, and find freedom. This allows students to engage and truly deepen their learning through activity choice, discussion, debate, and reflection of well constructed questions.
Often, when I have visited a physical classroom space just for fifteen minutes, and especially during a time of transition, this provided a wonderful opportunity in just a short space of time to develop an understanding of the particular culture and personality in this classroom. I really do believe that classes form their own distinct personality and develop their unique culture.
In the best cases I observed a hive of activity. So much so that the teacher did not even notice I had joined the classroom. Students were navigating the room focused on routines whilst still chatting about the learning they had just completed. The teacher used a multitude of ways to incorporate reflection, incorporate choice, refocus the students, and all whilst giving students an opportunity to also ‘take a break’. On occasions, when you have the pleasure of visiting a classroom like this, you can feel the cohesiveness of a group and how there truly is a ‘learning buzz’ in the room.
This is what I have missed the most. It leads me to the question – how do we find ways to develop a community culture and ‘learning buzz’ in online virtual classroom communities?
As we approach the beginning of the new school year it got me thinking about ‘small moments’. Our Writer’s Workshop training has focused us all at BMS on how a story can be created from just a simple ‘small moment’. So much of preparing for the welcoming back to school of our students, teachers and parent community is about communicating ‘the big picture’ and ‘big events’, making a good impression and getting everything ‘right’ (whatever that is!) but it is all the ‘small moments’ which truly matter.
The ‘small moment’ taken to have time for a colleague to chat about organising their new classroom or offering to take a new member of the team for coffee. The ‘small moment’ to listen to a new student and hear their story, to show them their way around the school. The ‘small moment’ of sitting down to lunch together with a colleague we don’t yet know. These are the moments that matter when we are all settling in and finding our way. These are the ‘small moments’ taken to learn about each other which woven together begin to tell the story of a community. This is what creates a climate for exponential learning. These are the small moments that I want to participate in as we start our school year, and I trust that our students, teachers and parent community will write many ‘small moment’ stories together.
After a long hiatus from blogging I am ready to jump back into this space to reflect on professional learning and I am excited to be inspired from the benefits of doing so!
Just recently I was pondering over the fact that I have probably read and edited thousands of pieces of work by students, and indeed by teachers over the years, and the unique power that just a small word can contain. It is a constant resonating theme in educational circles – how to provide the best feedback to others? How can we best foster growth and learning, and guide the recipient? Most recently of course the discussion around growth mindset and praising effort rather than achievement has also weighed in heavily in debate and discussion about the words we choose; how we present this; and ultimately refocused us to consider what do we want to achieve with our words.
In my role as a primary school principal it has been fascinating to open and provoke discussion about how we as a primary school team fulfill our mission and aspirations as educators to inspire our students and encourage them to strive as learners. We began this school year with a newly designed set of community values, which are proving to be more powerful than I ever thought to imagine. Four simple questions that ask each individual to consider is a choice they are making, or are observing, fair, safe, respectful and positive have resulted in more natural reflection from us all. This also results in less need to develop endless, and sometimes needless rules, and placed emphasis upon all of us as having power over our decisions. It is a powerful shift to include every individual no matter how young or old in an ‘active’ rather than passive state. A rule can be dismissed as happening to someone, a decision or choice being made is an action being taken and automatically infers ownership. It is indeed early on in our adoption of these Community Values, so of course time will tell, but the subtle shift has already made an impact.
small words, Big Changes…..
Another aspect of how small words have a big impact has been our recent discussion, debate and exploration of reward based classroom management systems. As a primary team we have provoked questioning of how we approach classroom management and really begun to delve deep into the idea that we could and should do things differently. Why? Are practices ‘bad’  that are currently in use. No, this is not the question or assumption at all, but rather how can we do things better? How should we do things better? Ultimately, looking at our mission and educational philosophy statements to critically reflect and align best teaching and learning practices. Following a series of professional learning sessions devoted to this topic we are, I believe, committed as a team to consider all of the small words we use and see what Big Changes might happen. I would love to hear about other schools and teachers engaged in discussion about  these topics!
Interesting reading we collected as part of our discussion can be found here on our shared padlet.
Literature Circles. Of all of the practices I introduced as a teacher in the Primary Classroom, I believe this to have been the most powerful. For me, literature has the power to connect us all beyond age, nationality, language, culture, religion or gender and also has the power to provoke thoughts and opinions that lay the foundations for a much deeper understanding. Stories are the way in which we begin to make sense of the world, and literature circles provide a framework through which we can support our students in discussing and sharing their opinions in order to be able to develop deeper understandings.
So, given my enthusiasm for Literature Circles I was delighted to have an opportunity to share this practice with teachers during our recent professional development days at Berlin Metropolitan School. We ran 17 teacher-led workshops in total, that teachers from ElC, Primary and Secondary could sign up to attend, and also our CCEP ( Co Curricula Education Program) educators joined in to both offer and attend workshops.
The theme for our professional Development Days was ´An Inclusive Culture of Learning´ and focused upon differentiation in the classroom. This was the perfect forum for discussing Literature Circles, as indeed, one of the elements as an international educator in a multilingual classroom that I found most appealing when I was first introduced to the practice of Literature Circles, was that they allowed for natural and authentic differentiation for all learners.
The presentation for this session outlining how Literature Circles can support differentiation can be found  by clicking on the link below.
Sharing Literature Circles with such a diverse group of teachers generated a great deal of interesting discussion and suggestions about how we can implement these at our school. Â Teachers came with a variety of experiences of Literature Circles and from working with students from a range of ages. What struck me most was how this framework can function for our youngest students right the way through to our oldest learners. I love the flexibility they allow, and left the session posing questions about how we could transfer this structure to other disciplines or subject areas perhaps, or even work in a bilingual framework. I am looking forward to seeing what interesting ideas our innovative teaching team develop to support deep learning for our students of all ages and abilities through use of Literature Circles as a framework.
I was first introduced to the concept of a student-led portfolio conference many years ago, and quickly became a strong advocate for their use as part of any effective reporting and assessment practice within a school. For further information about student-led portfolio conferences please have a look at the links below:
The whole process of student-led portfolio conferencing just made complete sense to me from the very beginning, and so I am always taken aback when educators around me require a great deal of convincing into their value and effectiveness as part of the learning process. In the world we live in today, in order to be successful, we must become extremely self-reflective and able to self-regulate and evaluate.
Now, I could list the many valid reasons as to why this type of conferencing has a positive educational impact upon learners, however, following our recent ‘Portfolio Conference Day’ at ISM I was reminded as to the fact there is one over-arching reason to value these:
learner pride = sense of fulfilment
For anyone, at any age, I would argue that pride and feeling valued are crucial in gaining a sense of fulfilment as a learner. Ultimately, isn’t that what we want all learners to feel and achieve? No matter what ‘level’ or ‘grade’ or ‘score’, learning to learn, motivation to learn and gaining fulfilment or feeling proud, is essentially what we should aspire to enable all our students to gain.
Student-led portfolio conferences facilitate young learners in developing crucial life long skills of self-reflecting and communicating effectively. The conference does so in a way in which the learner is encouraged to:
feel valued to have those most important to them take time to sit down and listen
meet in a space where they can be the ‘leader’ and feel confident
exhibit pride in their learning progress
find value in, and be encouraged to learn from their mistakes
share personal goals in their learning.
Some of the comments by students following our conferences, reinforced for me just how valuable these conference are.
“I felt proud of myself and I also felt quite confident.”
“I’m happy looking back at all my old work and seeing how have improved since then.”
“I felt smart, important and proud.”
“I think my parents enjoyed listening to me show them my work.”
(Year 6 student reflections on their conferences.)
For me, learner pride & fulfilment are the true value of student-led portfolio conferences.
I currently teach Literature Circles lessons to two Year 6 classes each week, generally my favourite part of the week, when we can immerse ourselves in reading together! One of the greatest challenges in a multi-lingual, multi-level classroom is managing student groups to ensure everyone is understanding what they are reading and moving beyond this to actually questioning that understanding.
In order to address this, recently I developed some lessons to support students in deepening their understanding and engage them further in the role of Imaginative Illustrator as part of our Literature Circles. This role is often a student favourite, essentially there is a belief that it is the easiest! Draw a picture and talk about it. Seems simple, right? I decided to challenge this assumption and encourage students to reflect and use their critical thinking skills at a much higher level.
We discussed visualisation and ‘making a movie in your mind’ as the strategy that most students use to help support them in this role. I then introduced 3 further strategies that might help to develop this further:
1. Envision maps
Essentially this means having some paper handy so that the reader can doodle or note words that are significant for them whilst reading.
2. Post it
The reader uses post-it notes to mark pages in the book or a ‘golden line’ a powerful sentence that inspires the reader.
3. Image pin it
This can be done in a variety of ways, essentially using visual images to make a collage which reflects the reader’s understanding of the text. For example, using magazines and printed images to make a collage or perhaps digitally, using the app Pic Collage.
As a class, we practised applying these strategies by listening to different story extracts in order to practise together. Here are some examples of student application of the strategies.
Students embraced these strategies and continue to experiment with them in order to discover which are the best fit for each of them Individually. Recording what they were actively thinking as they were reading, and preparing ideas before they actually completed their illustrator role students were much more capable in summarising what had happened in the story; demonstrating greater skill in considering character, plot and setting in more detail. Using these tools has enriched their ability to connect with a story and produce more thoughtful and meaningful illustrations.
It was with great excitement and anticipation that the Year 6 Primary School girls gathered after school on a crisp January afternoon. Â The girls had only had a number of football training sessions with ‘Coach Jones’ but were enthusiastic and confident in facing their first match challenge against the Year 7 girls. The final result was a 2:2 draw. A rematch is planned between the Dark Devils and Pink Panthers very soon!
For teachers and children thoughts are turning to getting ready for back to school around this time of year. Students in many countries are buying new backpacks, pencil cases and school supplies, whilst teachers endeavor to get classrooms ready and organised for the arrival of their new students. Bulletin boards are being papered, materials labelled and posters go on display. Of course, all of this is important in order to get the classroom ready for learning, after all the classroom is the ‘hub’ of learning, isn’t it?
But what is ‘The Classroom’? It really got me reflecting on some discussion that Year 6 were engaged in at the ‘deciding’ stage of our collaborative, inquiry-based exhibition project earlier in the year. The students were brainstorming and discussing the idea of ‘ childhood’ and their teachers presented them with a photograph to comment on using a web 2.0 tool, Voicethread. A simple photograph and question sparked a lengthy and engaging discussion, both inside and outside ‘the classroom’, about what the similarities and differences were between classrooms.
Discussion ensued as to whether a classroom is your physical environment or whether what is happening with the people gathered together makes ‘the classroom’. As one student pointed out ‘it’s about the people not the things.’
As happens frequently, I was impressed and inspired by the reflective comments of students and with the subsequent exhibition project that developed. Their comments struck a chord and really started me thinking about the differences between classrooms globally, both historically and today. I recently came across an article titled ‘An Intriguing Glimpse of Classrooms Around the World’ Julian Germain classroom portraits, which showcased the photographic work of Julian Germain, juliangermain.com, who has been traveling the world taking portraits of classrooms. These portraits provide us with insight as to how varying learning environments are for students worldwide. I wonder how much these varying environments shape the student learning taking place in them today?
We are now in a world where learning in a ‘classroom’ isn’t confined to the traditional space but is online, virtual, global and, in many cases, multilingual. The classroom, as the Year 6 students pointed out, isn’t the physical features and materials but the communication between learners and sharing of knowledge. Our students are inspiring us to think outside the traditional; in a digital age learning ‘classrooms’ are everywhere from webinars, to twitter, Showme to The Khan Academy, the traditional image of a classroom has evolved beyond four walls.
What does this mean for our learners? How does our teaching and learning have to adapt as the classroom environment evolves? Recent books such as ‘Are we getting Smarter’ by James R Flynn present research suggesting although IQ scores are rising, this is centered around human adaptation rather than us getting smarter as a society. Adaptation. Evolution. How will we continue to challenge and support our learners as the concept of ‘the classroom’ environment evolves?
After a long hiatus from blogging I am ready to jump back into this space to reflect on professional learning and I am excited to be inspired from the benefits of doing so!
