A Community of Learning
An inquiry in "thinking together" in the classroom
A collaborative inquiry by the Grade One team at Esker Lake P.S., Peel District School Board
Theory Of Action
If we teach students accountable talk strategies across the curriculum then a culture of collaboration will be established that fosters discussion where students will be engaged and metacognitive.
Why Study Accountable Talk?
How Does Collaborative Inquiry Work?
Keeping It Local
Talk Moves
Productive Discussions
- to clarify and share thoughts
- to orient thinking towards thinking of others
- to deepen reasoning
- to engage in other's reasoning
Talk Moves
My Learning Talk
Turn & Talk
#Thinking Takes Time
Value Line
Multiple Perspectives
Social Imagination
Knowledge Construction
Dialogue with Parents
Social Reasoning & Cultural Differences
How Students View the World
Thinking Together During Mathematics
A Learning Dynamic
Selection of Activities
"Why?! You have to tell us why!"
"Selecting activities that 'require' rather than merely encourage sharing of information and joint decision making "(Wolfe, Alexander, 2008) fosters a learning dynamic in the classroom. Students appeared to move away from finding the one right answer and towards learning about the relationships between shapes for example.
In one discussion about patterning, student A disagreed with student P. Student P had described patterning as being something that repeats. Student A disagreed by using a growing pattern as an example of a pattern that did not have repetition. Students had created a climate where they felt safe to discuss these mathematical ideas and attend to each other's thinking. This can be viewed as an example of dialogue where children disagree with each other in order to deepen their conceptual understanding.
Thinking Together During Reading
By using classroom talk to have students share their learning and making their thinking visible, students are constructing their own learning. Teaching in the classroom is magnified as students become teachers (Johnston, 2012). Additionally the emphasis in the classroom is on the causal process for the student...'when I use this reading strategy, this is the result'. Students are thinking together to propel their learning.
Observations and conversations document the learning process which become an integral part of assessment for learning. Learning goals can be shared with the family community through the Remind App.
Key Learnings
Student Learning
Teacher Learning
- Documenting the process through SWS allows for reflection on the process of student and teacher learning.
- Using Talk Moves in the classroom has led to a more democratic classroom with more opportunities for students to speak, rather than having a few students dominate classroom discussion
- Students are sense makers and can self assess their own learning through practices such as a Value Line
- A climate that supports focusing on process instead of determining the right answer leads to risk taking on the part of the students.
- Inquiry yields new knowledge, we learned that students can use classroom discourse to construct knowledge through shared understanding
- Navigating inquiry and construction of knowledge with curricular expectations is a balancing act
Resources
Student Work Study Initiative 2014
Location: Peel District School Board, Brampton, ON, Canada
Twitter: @janetdsilva