Reflection Inquiry 2015

My inquiry this year was based on higher order thinking questions to accelerate learning (in reading). Here is my reflection for the year 2015.

Today's inquiry group discussions - Barriers to student learning

Inquiry - What I have learnt so far.

Inquiry - what I have learnt so far

I've been challenged to change my teaching practise this year.... My inquiry has focussed around questions that further engage my students and it's something I am continuing to work on.

I'm trying to further engage my students in reading through questioning.. I am still learning to provide students with quality questions that challenge their thinking... this will be an ongoing inquiry for me.

My inquiry How do scaffold creative higher order thinking tasks to get cognitive engagement?

"Developing a Dialogic, Orally Expressive Classroom"

Professional Development with Jannie van Hees "Developing a Dialogic, Orally Expressive Classroom"

This term, the team 4 and 5 teachers are participating in Professional Development with Dr. Jannie van Hees. 

Here are notes following what the session covered.

Conversational Teaching and Learning

How do you explicitly grow student expression in the classroom?

-Think/Pair/Share

-Repeat Back what was said

-Backing Up View Point/Answer

-Individual Conferencing

After this discussion, I am very interested in finding out more about and implementing “Talk Moves” into my daily Maths lessons.  

Students need to be pushed to use the “output” more in order recognise more complex language features.  They need to have “gifted” words provided multiple times a day in order to effectively receive a high level model of appropriate language features. The need to be continuously fed in order to lift their language readiness.

When students are acquiring language knowledge there are three major gains that happen for them.  

1. Deeper Knowledge: Structure and Grammatical Language
2. Fullness of Expression: How to deeply engage and talk with others using rich vocabulary
3. Extended Language Growth and Vocabulary  

Students need to use their brains at a higher level of complexity than they are currently.  This will only properly happen if students are able to practice.  Providing students an opportunity to participate in a Think-Aloud that has multiple steps, which potentially puts them on the spot provides an extremely important life skill.  Students need to have orally shaping conversations that will allow them to “hold on” to information.

Our day-to-day priority of conversation enhances the learning of our students, in addition to the actual curriculum covered.  Students are required to participate in a more enriching manner. Students have to contribute, be focused, have meaningful things to provide, etc.

On a daily basis, students should be provided with a chance to have conversation.  Topics could be anything that the teacher suggests or that is student prompted.  This provides a chance for formative assessment, both on the topic and a students language ability.  This allows the teacher a meaningful opportunity to provide gifted words (including definitions) to help expand the vocabulary of their class.

Point to ponder: How many questions do you ask your students on a daily basis? Questions do not provide opportunities for students to expand their thinking and language. They provide a way for students to dig deeper into their own resources instead of expanding their thinking and engaging their understanding.

SOLO Taxonomy activities

This term my inquiry focus has been based around 'How I scaffold creative higher order thinking tasks to get cognitive engagement'?
I decided to focus this question around literacy and have tried to implement this in reading with one of my groups....Here is a presentation I have created, where I have tried to implement the SOLO Taxonomy in my follow up reading tasks.
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Inquiry 2015

Questioning is the basis for my inquiry this year.

I have chosen questioning in regards to reading and the questions that students are posed with whilst in micro teaching groups.

I chose this as my inquiry focus for the reason that a focus for me has been to extend and scaffold higher order thinking.

To get this students needed to be provided with 'quality questions'. This is something I feel there is much improvement for.

SO what am I going to do to begin with?

My first step is to research and look for examples of higher order reading questions. This will be online and from reading a variety of texts, to even watching DVD's and clips online.

LEARN - If there is a common prompt or pattern between questions that require higher order thinking.

CREATE  - Examples of these questions and carefully construct questions that I can pose students with.

SHARE - These questions with one reading group and slowly focus on implementing such question on more than one group.