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.