OER4Schools/Introduction to whole class dialogue and effective questioning ADE Sample
|title=ADE Sample Chapter |session=7.7
This is a sample chapter for one of the ADE's that we are developing. Notes and guidance for the ADE are included in this "guidance notes". You can view a version of this chapter without guidances notes here.
Principles (as developed in the workshop):
- Focus on learning not teaching
- shifting the balance from telling to listening and doing;
- improving feedback (including by peers)
- Assessment: ongoing informal, formative, peer and self (individual/team) assessment incl. do-talk-record, supportive feedback....
- Dialogue
- Improving peer interaction (practical application by students, working with colleagues in school or online peers)
- improving questioning (including thinking time, pupil Qs) - appropriate Qs to move on learning
- dialogue with self and resources
- Exploration before presentation (giving wider context / big picture)
- new learning connects to prior personal and shared knowledge & experience of learners;
- setting pedagogical LOs that focus on how learning takes place
- Learning proceeds from shared experience in the present.
- authentic learning
- Enquiry-based learning / investigation
- Inclusion
- Diversity of class as a resource (including pedagogy for large and diverse classes)
- Connect learning with emotion (relates to feedback, motivation)
- attend to interdependence of people with each other (as well as with animals and plants, and the environment)
- support active democratic local/global citizenship
- make links between the activities of the school and wider society
Overall structure of a "unit of learning":
- Part 1: Explore and plan
- Exploration (teacher explores their own practice)
- Stimulus (eg. video or text)
- Reflection
- Subject-pedagogy
- Development of a classroom activity (written down in “activity plan”)
- subject curriculum-content as examples and concrete teaching ideas.
- technology-applications and ideas
- Part 2: Teach using the classroom activity plan
- Part 3: Reflection
- includes assessment based on experience (rather than repeating/summarising theory)
- e.g. annotate your classroom activity plan: What worked? What will you change? What did the students say / ask … ?
Note that:
- Part 1 would be done mostly in front of your desk, it's a section where your work consists of reading, reflecting (on your own), perhaps doing some exercises and explorations (on your own), maybe some web research or book research.
- Part 2 has to be done with others, and needs to include classroom activities (i.e. in the context of formal teaching in class). It is not desk based!
- Part 3 is like part 1: Desk based, focussing on consolidating learning from parts 1 and 2, with little further input from texts.
Exploration and planning: Creating a supportive environment for dialogue
As mentioned above, each unit of learning proceeds in three sections:
- Explore and plan
- Classroom trialling
- Reflection
In section 1, we explore and plan. This includes:
- Exploration (teacher explores their own practice)
- Stimulus (eg. video or text)
- Reflection
- Subject-pedagogy
- Development of a classroom activity (written down in “activity plan”)
This is time which the student spends on their own, reading, reflecting, and developing materials on their own.
Each ADE "chapter" or "unit of learning" starts with a statement of the learning objectives and success criteria.
Learning intentions and objectives.
In this session you will learn about:
- creating a supportive learning environment for dialogue through body language, emotional support and enthusiasm for pupil learning
- one aspect of whole class dialogue cumulative talk
- classroom management techniques for whole class dialogue such as forming classroom rules in consultation with pupils
- the idea of an assessment portfolio
Success criteria.
To meet the learning intentions you will:
- plan a cumulative talk activity for use with family and friends
- plan a cumulative talk activity for use in the classroom and consider using a horseshoe seating arrangement to encourage peer co-operativity
- identify features that illustrate 'a supportive classroom environment' whilst watching videos of whole class dialogue in action
ICT components.
The ICT components you will focus on are
- continuation of Geogebra practice
- planning another slideshow with OpenOffice Impress
Classroom based activities (with your students, after this session):
- another image sequencing activity
- typing practice in the classroom
A key principle is proceeding from your own experience, both for classroom teaching as well as in teacher education ("modelling"). At the beginning of each unit of learning, we thus start by teachers reflection about their current experience and practice.
Reading (30 min): An introduction to this chapter We are now moving on to the topic of this unit, and we start with introducing whole class dialogue. We initially focus on
- Creating a supportive environment for dialogue, and
- Cumulative talk - creating a story together.
We start this process by exploring cumulative talk(a). Start by reading the learning objectives above, and then continue to the reflection.
Reflection (30 min): Your classroom environment. Reflection on:
- What is your classroom environment like?
- Do children talk to each other?
- Are allowed to get up to help others?
- Do you have a ground rule about "no unnecessary movements"?
Make some notes, or draw a mind-map.
Introducing cumulative talk - creating a story together
The text given, needs to be explicit and solid enough, for students to be able to this activity with little outside support.
DEFINTION: Cumulative talk is talk in which all participants agree and add to the previous talk (or sentence).
Reading about cumulative talk (30 min): Creating a story together with your family, friends or colleagues Before you try this activity in the classroom, we suggest that you try this with family, friends or colleagues, because this will give you a more controlled environment, and allow for a few false starts. If you have children, you could also try this with your children, as they may find it fun to do!
Seating: Consider the seating. Arrange the group in a horseshoe seating arrangement(a) if there is room. If not choose another arrangement allowing participants to see each other. Facilitator starts a story by saying one sentence. All participants then contribute to the story by adding sentences.
A good story would:
- be contextually appropriate: for example, use common names of characters and a setting familiar to participants.
- have a theme relevant for participants such as education (girl-child receiving schooling later supports family), importance of forests and wild-life (saving a snake later becomes useful for invention of new medicine), treatment of diseases (steps taken by a family to treat an ill person) etc.,
- be short and have few characters, and
- have a problem which is collectively resolved in the end.
For instance, you could create a story about welcoming a new child to the school, perhaps a child with an impairment or some kind. Tthe facilitator starts by saying: "The other day, I heard my neighbours talking about whether their child should be starting school, because their child has difficulty walking, and they were not sure whether children like that should go to school." (Relates to Index for Inclusion, A1.1 Everyone is welcomed.)
Facilitator can introduce the notion of Talk Rules during this activity if needed. Some examples are: “everybody listens when one person talks” because they have to add to that sentence, “respect others’ ideas” by adding to rather than changing their idea, “make sure everyone in the group understands”, “try to reach consensus in the end” – participants don’t need to actually come to agreement but the process of trying gets people to listen to each other. You may want to ask participants to generate their own examples of Talk Rules.
The activity an example of “cumulative talk” where participants build on what the previous person has said (“cumulative talk” is one example of whole class dialogue).
Planning cumulative talk (30 min): Creating a story together with your family, friends or colleagues Now think of a number of topics you could use, and note these down on the 'activity template' (and add this to your assessment portfolio). You will do this activity as part of your 'follow up activities'.
Creating a supportive environment
Observing, thinking, reflecting (15 min) Video on classification of vertebrates. Locate the following videos in your resources:
- Eness vertebrates 10 ("Is a boy a mammal?") and
- Eness vertebrates 11 ("Is a whale a fish or a mammal?").
The videos show some lively class discussion about classifying these animals, and we have selected these to hopefully stimulate some controversy, as well as to show a teacher challenging their students.
VIDEO
Is a boy a mammal?
Eness leads a discussion on 'Is a boy a mammal?'
Video/19 Eness 3 vertebrates 10.mp4, https://oer.opendeved.net/wiki/Video/19_Eness_3_vertebrates_10.mp4,This video is available on your memory stick in the video/Eness Vertebrates folder. Duration: 3:51 watch on YouTube, local play / download options / download from dropbox)(Series: Eness Vertebrates, episode 10)
VIDEO
Fish or mammal?
Class explores the question 'Is a whale a fish or a mammal?'
Video/19 Eness 3 vertebrates 11.mp4, https://oer.opendeved.net/wiki/Video/19_Eness_3_vertebrates_11.mp4,This video is available on your memory stick in the video/Eness Vertebrates folder. Duration: 4:31 watch on YouTube, local play / download options / download from dropbox)(Series: Eness Vertebrates, episode 11)
Reflection (15 min) on the learning environment and classroom management. Read these questions in advance of the video, and reflect on them:
- Was there a supportive environment for pupil participation and dialogue in this lesson?(Relates to: LfL, 2) If so, how did the teacher achieve this?
- How did she help students to work out whether the boy and the whale were mammals? Did this discussion move their thinking forward?(Relates to: LfL, 1)
- What did you think about teacher control and pupil learning in these video clips? How would a horseshoe seating arrangement have impacted on this?
- How would you manage something similar in your classroom? How would you encourage pupil talk without losing too much control?
Make a note of your reflections in your mind map created above!
Did you notice the “wait time” after asking a question before teacher made a further contribution or question? Increasing wait time a little increases thinking time and in turn leads to an improvement in the quality of students' responses.
Reflection on what you have learned
Assignment (30 min): Reflectiong on what you have learnt. Reflection on what you have learned from this session about
- Body language for encouraging dialogue
- Cumulative talk
- Encouraging most pupils to talk
- Withholding feedback sometimes to motivate pupils without fear of “wrong” answers: not evaluating pupil responses, just accepting them
- Forming rules for dialogue
- Managing the tension between control and learners’ freedom to contribute
Add your reflections to your learning portfolio, using template 10012.
Activity planning
Activity planning (30 min): Planning cumulative talk in the classroom. Now think of some ideas for cumulative talk in the classroom. Use the activity template to play this activity.
- Consider that when this activity is done in the classroom with pupils, themes should be chosen from the curriculum.
- Also consider that the seating arrangement can be modified according to teachers’ classrooms such that pupils see each other. Pupils can leave their tables and just move their chairs (or sit outside if the grounds are suitable).
As you are planning this activity, ask youself the following questions:
- Do your students find it easy to talk?
- How can you encourage students to talk?
- Are some students likely to laugh at other students contributions? How can you create safe environments that enable students to take risks?(Relates to: LfL, 2.4)
You will do this activity as part of the 'follow up activities'. Note: You will be asked to do at least two cumulative talk activities in the classroom, but you can do more (and eventually integrate it into your general teaching practice). So make sure you think of a number of different topics.
Optional activities: ICT practice: Different-task group work with ICT and activity planning
If within your ADE, ICT use by the students is feasible, an ICT-based activity could be included. It would need to replace a non-ICT activity of the same duration.
Different-tasks group work (20 min) with ICT on various topics.
You will:
- continue Geogebra practice
- plan a slideshow with OpenOffice Impress using your own images that you have downloaded from the internet this time
You can have a look at the introduction to Geogebra here to refresh your mind. You can also look at the introduction to slideshows with Open Office.
Plan to do the following in the classroom with your students:
- another activity using images in a slideshow, it could be a sequencing activity or using/rearranging images to tell a story
- typing practice, see typing practice with students
Follow-up activities
In this 2nd part of the chapter, teachers are asked to do practical activities, i.e. activities away from the printed chapter materials. These are activities with friends / family / peers, activities in their classroom. Teachers may make notes about their activities, written up in part 3.
Follow up activity A (30 min): Cumulative talk with your family and friends. Try out cumulative talk with your family, friends, etc. Immediately after you have done this, write down some of your thoughts.
Follow up activity B (30 min): Cumulative talk in your classroom. Try out cumulative talk by asking pupils to create a class story, contributing one line each. Use some of the techniques discussed in this session to create a supportive environment, for example: positive body language, enthusiastic tone, listening to each other before speaking and building on what the previous person has said. Encourage any shy children to have a go, and repeat the activity with another topic on other occasion so they get more used to public speaking. Immediately after you have done this, write down some of your thoughts.
Follow up activity C (30 min): Discussion of cumulative talk with another teacher Discuss your activities with another teacher. Immediately after you have done this, write down some of your thoughts.
Follow up activity D (30 min): Repeat of cumulative talk.
Reflection on follow up activites
In this 3nd part of the chapter, teachers are asked to reflect on their practical activities, to elaborate the activities from part 2, and commit them into their learning portfolios.
Portfolio (120 min): For each activity, add notes to your portfolio. You were asked to make notes on each follow up activity. Now consult those, elaborate and add them to your learning portfolios.
You can use these questions as prompts:
- Did you try creating a story with the pupils? What were the challenges? How did the pupils respond to the activity? Share what you used as a topic for the story, and how the children elaborated it. What would you do differently?
- You have done cumulative talk at least on three occasions: with family/friends (and least once), and then twice in class. How did those trials compare? What worked well, what did not?
- Which features of creating a supportive learning environment did you try during the week? Did you notice any changes in pupils’ responses as a result of the new features? Remember that creating a supportive environment is not a one-off activity. It should be the norm in an interactive classroom.
- Using ICT: How did the search for resources go? Were you able to download images?
Reminder about your assessment portfolios
In Unit 1 we learned about the cycle of plan-teach-reflect and the idea of keeping a reflective journal. We would like to extend the idea of a reflecctive journal further now by asking you to select material from it for submission to an assessment portfolio. We would like you to select material for your assessment portfolio that best illustrates how you have made use of the interactive teaching techniques that you have learned about in the workshop sessions. An ideal submission for your portfolio should include:
- an explanation of why you have chosen to do a particular activity with your students
- a completed activity template showing how the activity fits into the rest of the lesson
- a description of how the students responded to the activity
- a reflection on what you would do differently if you did the activity again
- any other important notes
- samples of students' work if possible e.g. a concept map
- 'snapshots' of the activity to show how it went eg a copy of the results of a brainstorm or a copy of the images you used
Submission of an assessment portfolio containing at least one piece of material (with notes) from each unit is a key part of completing the OER4Schools programme. Further assessment portfolio guidance for use during discussion .
Further details about contributing reflections to your assessment portfolio: Think about how you would show a teacher in another school what you have been learning through the OER4S programme. What concrete examples would you share with them? How would you show them the range of things you have covered? Suppose then this teacher asked you some questions, e.g. What worked well? What didn’t work so well? What would you say to them?
Ideally you would make a link between the workshop session and your classroom trial. Tell us where the idea came from, and how you applied it. We don’t want or need evidence - we just want to know, if your own words, what you have learned.
Here is a short example of the sort of reflection we would like you to record: “I learned about _________ in session ____. I thought that it could be really useful for my pupils during a lesson on _________, I tried it out with my students. The work I have submitted is an example of ________. I have also submitted an example of what the students did. I had initially written this ______ [for the students], and the students then added ________. Students responded differently. Mary had difficulty with it because ___________. (E.g. some computer did not work - why did it not work?!) I concluded the lesson with a plenary, and they told me these answers. If I was to do this again, I would do it like this: ______. I would also apply this tool to another lesson on ________topic, because ______________“.
Activity summary
For one credit, this should add up to 10 hours.
At the end of each session, we provide an overview of the activities in this session, together with their suggested timings. Although this appears at the end of the session (for technical reasons), you should keep an eye on this throughout the session, to make sure that you are pacing the workshop session appropriately!
Total time: 470 (min)
Activities in this session:
- Reading (30 min): An introduction to this chapter
- Reflection (30 min): Your classroom environment.
- Reading about cumulative talk (30 min): Creating a story together with your family, friends or colleagues
- Planning cumulative talk (30 min): Creating a story together with your family, friends or colleagues
- Observing, thinking, reflecting (15 min) Video on classification of vertebrates.
- Reflection (15 min) on the learning environment and classroom management.
- Assignment (30 min): Reflectiong on what you have learnt.
- Activity planning (30 min): Planning cumulative talk in the classroom.
- Different-tasks group work (20 min) with ICT on various topics.
- Follow up activity A (30 min): Cumulative talk with your family and friends.
- Follow up activity B (30 min): Cumulative talk in your classroom.
- Follow up activity C (30 min): Discussion of cumulative talk with another teacher
- Follow up activity D (30 min): Repeat of cumulative talk.
- Portfolio (120 min): For each activity, add notes to your portfolio.
If you have printed this session for offline use, you may also need to download the following assets:
- Video/19 Eness 3 vertebrates 10.mp4 (local play / download options / download from dropbox)
- Video/19 Eness 3 vertebrates 11.mp4 (local play / download options / download from dropbox)
