Session 3 Reflection

I want to focus on 3 aspects of today's session.
1) Debriefing camp: Think/Pair/Share
2) Science Curriculum (Deb's presentation)
3) Group work

1) Think Pair Share is a strategy that is designed to encourage a progressively wider discussion about an issue/question/problem. Beginning with your personal views, you can build to a group view, and at the same time everyone has the potential to contribute since everyone gets to have a think first individually. Obviously this is better suited to some kinds of content than others. As a teacher, a challenging element of this teaching approach is to keep the first part as an individual task (especially adults tend to talk straight away). Today was quiet during the individual part and I was pleased that people had the chance to do some private work in this way. From reading the body language,it appeared that people were engaging with the task - to be more sure of that, i would have had to ask some people about that.

In a broader sense, my purpose in doing the task, was to encourage students to consider how to take from a specific experience, something that can be applied more broadly to teaching.
I really liked the insights that the groups came up with - these are very valuable - but will they be remembered beyond the session? It will be important to return to the ideas raised and not just take them for granted now, or forget them as we move to the 'next topic'. (eg., how will you build trust, how will you learn about students, how can you look beyond the face value of a situation??)

An aspect of the think-pair-share that i think is important, that i neglected today, was to give people advance warning that after the personal 'think' part that they would be sharing with another. Depending on the nature of the task (and today could have been quite personal) individuals may not wish to share what they have written. It is important to respect that - so fore warning would have helped.


2) Deb's lecture on science curriculum. I felt engaged because the ideas made sense to me and stimulated my thinking further. But that was ME as teacher, what about the learners for whom it was intended?? It appeared that at least for some others that this was the case too, as they spontaneously asked questions - a great signal for a teacher that your students are connecting. However, that does not tell me about all of the students - did it make sense? was it relevant? how did locating the curriculum in a context help you to know what it is that you need to do as a teacher when you are on practicum? Addressing this question makes for a tricky situation - you need both practical information in preparing to teach but also need to move beyond this to start questioning how the bigger picture came about and what agency (power) you have as a teacher. That's tough. But not impossible.
If there are a couple of strong messages to come from the lecture that i hoped people might pick up, it's that every curriculum sits in a context and different people want different things in shaping a curriculum, so it will always be a kind of consensus model.Again, if these ideas matter they will need to be revisited by us, and by learners.


3) Group work on VELS.
In terms of the document itself, my purpose in asking you to look for the big ideas, was to help you see that a curriculum is composed of big ideas and that once you can recognise these then you are more free to work with these, rather than being a 'slave' to the detail. It is challenging to work from a big ideas perspective, but it is important to identify not only HOW to do it but also, WHAT these big ideas are, because science learners in secondary classes ALSO need to have sense of the big ideas and their connections (they could do the same task as you did today around a particular science topic that they have learnt about - map it and identify connections). The more connections you can make, the more meaningful and effective the learning.

I took a deliberate stand on group work today and it was a pity that we did not have an opportunity to discuss what i was doing and your response to it face to face. I deliberately withdrew and only minimally interacted with groups - my purpose was to let you get on with your work without 'close up teacher surveillance'. This does not mean that i did nothing - on the contrary, i listened and watched from a distance, to help me know when i might go to ask a group about their progress, or whether they were on track, or what aspects they were raising for discussion. How did it work for you? What are you used to teachers doing during group work? If the teacher sits with you or stays close by dos this change your behaviour in a group? Does this matter?

Finally, what struck me as a STRONG reminder today about group work was what happens at the end of a group task. The 'normal' routine is for groups to report back about something. In some ways, this creates a kind of incentive to do the task (if you are the kind of learner who is externally motivated in this way - are you?), and can offer a summary of ideas collected.(This will not be the case for everyone!) My purpose today was to help to tune you into the big ideas from other science discipline areas, but actually it didn't work too well....and I'm pretty sure I know why. Some people were done with task, it was hot, end of day, wanted to go home, and listening to thers about their big ideas is perhaps not an effective way to learn about these ideas. Others I suspect, were feeling under pressure to get their group map ready for when it came time to report, so they couldn't listen being busy with their own stuff. To stop and discuss this with the class and what are the alternatives here was running through my head; but at 4.50 I felt it was not time to act.
Mostly people reported back to me rather than the class - which was not the point - but can serve a checking function.
So, taking some learning from this into other group work situations, that i am reminded of. It is not always necessary for groups to report back - sometimes just doing the task in the group is sufficient.

Session 2 Reflection

This week was camp week. Most people were able to attend but for many reasons there are a number who are unable to go. This poses dilemmas for me in terms of pre preparation, the experience itself and post camp work. How can I help all students to think about the issues that are being highlighted through the camp? How can i help students feel a sense of inclusion if they don't attend? These are the same kinds of issues that teachers always grapple with when some students have had an experience that others have not shared. One strategy I use is to try to draw on similar experiences that students may have had to compare with camp experiences, also to look to what can be learned from published material (theories of learning science from outdoor experiences)so that students can make a contribution from that angle; still another way is to give students a role in post camp reflection that helps them to clarify the learning of their peers through acting as a scribe or group leader. Paying attention to the experiences of all learners matters, in order that some learners do not feel marginalised. This is a much easier thing to write than to 'live' as a teacher, since it happens in all sorts of subtle ways in classrooms all the time.

I want to think about a couple of experiences from camp as a way of better understanding my teaching and your learning. On Thursday afternoon, we asked each group to get together with another group to explain the activities they had chosen to do and to choose one of the activities (the one they felt least confident about)and run it through with the other group. I thought this would be a good way of trouble shooting some of the kinds of issues that don't arise when simply telling others about the intended teaching activities. After that time, everyone came back into the main dining area and I asked for volunteers from each of the paired groups to share some insight, challenge or question that had been raised from this activity of sharing. On the whole, the contributions were few and i had to work pretty hard to get them. What people did identify was excellent (I will discuss this more below) but i felt very uncomfortable with the process of gleaning these ideas. Now, lots of reasons spring to mind about why there weren't more contributions but something I recognised as a teacher was in the structuring of that activity that could have helped my purpose to be more fully realised. In bringing everyone back to the room, it would have been helpful to give each group 5 mins to talk together about what came up for them - to name something they felt happy about, something they learned that surprised/helped them, and a question or issue. Then appoint someone who who talk (briefly) to these issues. This more structured approach i believe would have helped focus the learning and create more conversation.

Contrast that experience with the Dinosaur Dig in the evening.In that situation, each group was asked to appoint a spokesperson and the group had a brief to name the dinosaur-thing created and to talk about its lifestyle/habitat. Now, it could have been because of having a few drinks, or other factors, but to me that structure helped the flow and organisation far better than in the afternoon.

Here is something about teaching that I am reminded about through this reflection. Even when you are seeking a 'free flowing' discussion, the teacher still needs to create a framework or structure for the discussion to 'free flow'. This is kind of opposite to what you might expect - be mindful of structure if you want something to flow easily.

The final thing i want to talk about here is the great insights that were brought up by people in the group debrief in the afternoon. Here is a selection of what was said:
* When you're working with peers/colleagues, you need to make some compromises (not everyone thinks like you do)
*Working with peers/colleagues can enhance teaching ideas, since they can make suggestions for modifications that you might not have otherwise thought of
*How you think about an experience may not be how others think about it (what may be interesting for you may be uninteresting to others; what seems easy/strightorward for you may be quite difficult for others)
*What looks good on paper in terms of an activity may not work so well in 'real life' of doing it
*Instructions that you think are clear might be quite unclear to another.

These are wonderful insights into the teaching/learning relationship. However, as comments themselves while lovely to read are not so useful unless they become acted upon in teaching. I will look out for some instances of these this week from my own and others teaching. Perhaps you can too.

Mandi
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