PST 06

Teachers do not need fixing

Sonya Van Schaijik ACCoS, PST 06, Teaching

Poipoia te kakano kia puawai:

Nurture the seed and it will blossom.

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Our #NPSFab Team in our new meeting room.

Teachers do not need fixing and our students will achieve just by breathing. There is not much we as teacher can do to learners that harm them.

Hattie States: “All you need to enhance achievement is a pulse.”

 

I stumbled on and rewatched John Hattie’s Ted Talk from 2013. ‘Why are so many teachers and schools successful?’

As I watched the clip I noticed all the questions John asked which is currently relevant in my situation of leading the Mathematics Initiative in our Auckland Central Community of Schools (ACCoS) Kāhui Ako. Mind you all that Hattie talks about is relevant for all teaching and learning. Below are some of the questions that resonated with me.

Hattie asks

  • So what is impact?
  • How do we know our impact?
  • How do we build the expertise around us?
  • How do we build the coalition of the willing and of the successful to have a major say in our schools?
  • How do we get a ladder of excellence in our business of teaching?
  • How do we get away from the common notion that all teachers are equal?
  • How do we demonstrate the impact we are having on our students?
  • How do we give back to our teaching profession?
  • How do we get our teachers involved in helping each other up the ladder of excellence?

Some of the statements I regularly use with our teachers include:

  • How do you know that your students are achieving?
  • Have you scrutinised their data? Can I see their extrapolated data from our student management system?
  • If you are not prepared to be a learner then why are you still teaching?
  • If I cannot see what you do then it does not exist.
  • How are you sharing your learning with your colleagues?

Hattie has been extremely visible in my recent learning. I have just completed my Hapara Champion Scholar certification and I was delighted to find out that the system designers had created a Student Learning System based around the research of Hattie about what works in education with the greatest impact. This is particularly noticeable in the tool Hapara workspace.

Then I shared at one of our Cluster Schools about using SOLO Taxonomy which Hattie has stated is a sound learning structure because SOLO highlights the gaps in learning.

On Thursday I pressed submit for our Ulearn 2018 abstract. This abstract involves the work we have been carrying out in our three schools with a focus on the learning strategies that have the greatest impact.

Yesterday I took three of my colleagues to Mindlab to share their learning around gaining their Digital Passports in preparation for the Digital Technologies Curriculum that will be taught in schools by 2020.

Then to stumble on Hatties Ted Talk allows me a chance to reflect on my current situation. I continually struggle at his class size data and have often wondered about some of my class sizes. For example as a young teacher one of my first classes had 38 children. I recently uncovered information about my current school where teachers at the beginning of this century had class sizes of just over one hundred students. I am reminded of my own class in Samoa when I was in standard 2 (Year 4) where my teacher had 48 of us in class.

Below  are some of the effect sizes that Hattie highlighted in his 2013 video. This is not all of them but I wanted to highlight the ones that caught my eye. Currently these are the ones that we discuss regularly at our school and within our Kāhui Ako. However Hattie points out that these do not have enough of an effect size to make an impact on teaching and learning.  Remember that .40 is a years effect so anything below that number makes very little difference.

Structural effects

  • Class size .21
  • Ability groupings 0.12
  • Cultural diversity .05 effect

Attributes of the students

  • Diversity of students in the class .11

Deep programmes

  • Inquiry Based Learning .31
  • Problem based learning .15

Technology in Education

  • Computers and mathematics .30
  • Web based learning .18

Basically the distractions we put out there as teachers that affect learning are a big no and have little effect on what we do.

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Interestingly as a Kāhui Ako initiative we have recently created a student survey that focuses on student attitude to maths and their learning in maths. We had high numbers that stated they love learning online with a device and loved learning with their friends. One clear high number showed us that students loved their teachers telling them that they are doing well in maths and that they loved their teachers playing maths games with them. They also love being tested by their teachers. I am still evaluating the data with our In School Leaders.

So Hattie states that the greatest variance that has the greatest impact on student achievement is teachers who work together collectively who evaluate and understand their impact.

teacher.jpg

The teacher’s job is to understand their impact. He talked about expert teachers and reinforced that  teacher expertise is not highly correlated with years of experience.

What is Teacher Impact?

Teacher impact is the importance of knowing where each student is in order to challenge them. With the ongoing debate around National Standards, just be cautious about chucking out all assessments. Because National Standards has a lot to do with assessment. Yet it is really important to know where the students are at with their learning and the only way of doing this is with assessments and understanding our curriculum levels and what this looks like for our students. Personally I know assessments are challenging to complete and have up to date. But if I do not know where my learners are at, then how can I help them? Yes I can provide lots of creative learning experiences yet I must keep my eye on the prize. Keep developing the love of learning and keep moving my learners forward.

Reinvesting in learning for our students.

The starting point is for us to understanding very clearly what the students know already and we do this via assessment or by asking our students about their prior achievement either through a portfolio of learning or what their last score was.Then we need to know what success looks like and we do this via the learning progression framework. We show our learners up front what success looks like and the more we can show what success looks like the more engaged our learners are and the more they love learning.  We can use SOLO Taxonomy to support us in framing what success looks like because SOLO helps us structure feedback and identify next steps information. We provide multiple opportunities for ‘just right’ learning using deliberate feedback to reduce the gap of where they are to where they want to be by using the Goldilock principle of not to hard and not too soft, but just right. Therefore our students are continually targeting or goal setting as they move forwards.

Outcome is increasing the success.

So often the learner does not know what success looks like in the series of lessons of lessons we plan for. So often the learner does not know what the goal of the lesson is. Remember the olden days of stating the learning intention and sharing the success criteria? I often thought that this was more for the teachers than for the students and it was. However we must not lose sight of its relevance. If you don’t know what the goal and outcomes for the lessons are then how the heck will your students?

In my school where we have a sense of urgency for our second language learners aiming to catch a moving target. I believe it is even more important to know where my learners currently are and to identify the target cohort they are catching.

If you are new to all this then my advice to you is you will have some failures. But fail well, reflect and use this information to move forward. As schools we must create a climate of trust that it is OK to make mistakes and errors as professional. However we must provide feedback to our teachers about their impact. Again the best way of gauging our impact is via data. The point of gathering assessment data is for teachers to understand their impact.

NSD

A second language learners reading data over a year.

If we keep failing in shifting our learners forward then we are failing our learners and their families who have placed their utmost trust in us as professionals. At my school this is even more important because of the sense of urgency for our learners. I continually look at data and I love data that stands straight up heading to where it should be. Data that stands like a line is accelerated learning. I especially pay attention to historic data because I know that data gathered over one year is not clear enough to predict learning outcomes.

SOLO Taxonomy

SOLO Taxonomy helps us understand that the students must know the surface details before the shift happens to making connections within their learning to authentic everyday situations. Those of us who love SOLO remember those students who state, “I believe I am good at maths because my teacher says so.” My response is “What is Maths? Show me the strategies you know to tell me that you are good at Maths? Can you show me your result from……..? How have you taught a friend this strategy?”

We must teach our students the effective learning strategies so that they can deliberately practice with us and coaching to reduce the gap from where they are to where they want to be. That is how using SOLO helps us. If you read Pam Hooks site of how to teach with SOLO Taxonomy you will see these three simple statements.

  • What am I learning?
  • How is it going?
  • What am I doing next?

Sharing learning as professionals

Our third code of professional responsibility is to the teaching profession. So how do we encourage our expert teachers who understand their impact to give back to their profession? How do we structure this into their learning and get them involved in helping others up that ladder?

For us involved in the ACCoS Kāhui Ako Mathematics initiative I have encouraged our In School Leaders to join me in sharing their impact at Ulearn 2018. By involving them in the process of sharing in such a public way I believe they will help others within their school share their learning. I also encourage our Across School Leaders to continue their sharing via our ACCoS blog.  

For our In School Leaders at Newmarket School we have created a Hapara Workspace to curate and share our learning from our professional learning groups with a focus on maths. This is visible to everyone and you can check it out here. http://j.mp/2FyK0xU.

Teacher Impact

Overall teacher impact begins with data to show where the learner is at. Then we use the Learning Progression Framework to identify where they need to be and we use SOLO Taxonomy to show how they can get there. Next we use just right goal setting and just in time feedback to propel them towards where they want to be. After that we have our students talk about the process of learning. Finally as educators we share our own journey with our colleagues and include our mistakes and our achievements and our own next steps as educators. We encourage our colleagues to do the same.   

Part 2- Influences and Effect Sizes on Writing

Sonya Van Schaijik Design for learning, PST 05, PST 06, Teaching

“Without data you are just another person with an opinion.”

W.Edwards Deming

Last term I reflected on the process of teaching writing. I wanted to be really clear of what I did so I stepped through the process of what I do. This piece of writing is a follow on of a reflection I carried out in March.

 

 

Effect Size

My year 4s sat the written asTTle test and I followed through the process of marking and moderating alongside their team. I compared my targeted group’s data with their historic data and could identify that the first term intervention made a difference. Hattie cautions when calculating an effect size and especially when using less that 30 students. He highlights the  usefulness of  ensuring that all students are tested and that scores from the same group of students are compared.

I have studied all the year 4 data. Currently we have 34 students over three classes. Of that number,  25 year year 4 students at our school have data carried over from last year into this year. Therefore we have 9 new year 4 students at our school. Of that 25 original group, 11 made progress of 1 sub level and 5 of that 11 worked with me. The ongoing challenge is sustainability. I believe that the students I worked with will continue to make progress and I know they will maintain what they have learnt with me.

Soon their class teachers will be contacting families as part of three way conversations and I will be part of this.

My learning about data from unpacking the process.

I believe it is really important for teachers to track the historic data and I have taught the team I am working with how to do this. They looked at the same period of testing results and compared them across 12 months. When teachers only look at their interim March data and compare it to their October data, this gives a lulled sense of achievement. I now know that the focus needs to shift from March to March data. Then a clearer picture of learning is formed. Like reading, there is definitely a summer slide happening in writing. I can see this when I look at the October data and compare it with March. The holiday slide can be slowed down and I have achieved this when I targeted a group of older children and gave them a school chromebook to write with over the holidays. I will write about that strategy next.

My other learning is to focus more on the oral language before writing. Sometimes I believe that as teachers we can be so focussed on written output that other literacies are pushed aside.

Just to recap with strategies I used that went well.

  • Start with the data. Show the children their results. Identify the gaps and plan strategies that will support the learner.
  • Provide language based experience and use common school events or shared experiences to write about.
  • Track how many words are written in a session and build a graph of the number over a week’s writing.
  • Craft, craft and recraft. Using SOLO Taxonomy highlight key words that can help lift writing.
  • Help the children reflect on what they have learnt about how to make their writing better.
  • Show the children their progress and celebrate writing milestones with families.

 

Where to next

This term I have reset a goal. By the end of term 2 I will video the process of using a SOLO Taxonomy Describe Map to make a difference to Learner Outcomes so this can be used as a resource to build teacher capability.

Influences and Effect Sizes on Writing

Sonya Van Schaijik Design for learning, Learning-focused culture, PST 04, PST 05, PST 06, Teaching

Hattie highlights that the diversity of our children makes a (d=0.11) difference to outcomes. Well that knocks out the statement ‘Our data is shyte, because we have so many ESOL children.’

Research Based

Hattie’s research stresses that the greater than (d=0.40) is what makes a difference in class programmes. I read this to surmise that our second language learners should make minimal impact on class programmes.  Again it all comes back to the teacher who makes the greatest difference. Teachers trained in second language pedagogies. Teachers who empathise with our second language learners because they themselves have experience of either living in a country other than English or who are learning a second language themselves. An experienced teacher is an experienced teacher. Probably one of my greatest criteria is an empathetic teacher. I know because I am also a language learner.

I remind readers of the research of Collier and Thomas whose longitudinal research provides us with a historical way of viewing our second language learners. Their research looks at how long it takes for second language learners to achieve academic success and they say 1-2 years for Basic Interpersonal Communication and then on top of that between 6-8 years of Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency in their second language for evidence to be strong and again it all depends on class programmes. Ideally there should be an emphasis on first language maintenance too and then we would see even greater accelerated progress.

So our children are at primary school for 6 years. Therefore if they began at 5 years old in their second language we should see catching up with national standard data by intermediate levels and even secondary school. Yes it takes that long. Again when I see the high gains at years 1 and 2 with teachers telling me that the children are at standards, I usually respond with, “Great now let us see if they hold that when Cognitive Academic demands becomes more evident after three years at school and above. You know, that crazy year 3 dip in writing that appears to be common in most New Zealand schools.

In our Community of Learners (ACCoS) I am extremely excited because finally I will get the chance to see if the results from Thomas and Collier pan out. I have had snippets from past second language learners who began with no English and who have gone on to take away their school prizes in literacy at high school. I have often wondered how our other children do. Unfortunately in our CoL we will only be able to see our girls achievement at secondary school but can still make smart guesses about our boys.

A class teacher would find the challenges of having a dominant mix of ethnicities and a vast variety of English Language Proficiencies extremely challenging. However a proficient teacher will search for ways to cater for all their students. Unfortunately there is no quick fix, iPad app, computer programme, ILE or writing strategy to ‘fix’ this. Only time and an unwavering belief that our children will succeed and we all need to be pushing them along.

I have been working with a group of English second language learners in writing.  This is what I do to support them.

Background

Most of the children have English as a second language. However I also target anyone who needs support at the same level. I thought I would write about the process I undertake so that others might find it useful. I stress here that the best support is ideally within the class programme. But sometimes for intervention the spread happens across several classes within a team. I work alongside teachers so that the writing emphasis is similar to what takes place in class and the children remaining in class are also writing. The last thing language learners need is withdrawal and missing out on class programmes. They are already late to the starting line and we do not want to push this starting line back further.

The children I have selected for this piece of reflection are all year 4s. They are mostly boys but Hattie has reminded me that a boys focus only accounts for a (d=0.08) improvement. Most are second language learners but again Hattie has indicated that this makes (d=0.11) difference to what I do. Last year as year 3s, they sat at 1P for writing and so are below. However most were at for writing in year 2. Last year their reading was at for year 3.

Hattie’s Influences that I will focus on

So as an experience Second Language Teacher and one who uses SOLO Taxonomy to frame what I do,   I will use research (meta-analyses) ranking the influence of different strategies on student achievements (Hattie 2009, 2011, 2015) to explain the strategies that I have chosen. Hattie suggests that  the following influences will help make the greatest difference in student achievement.

  • Cognitive Task Analysis (d=0.87) using SOLO Taxonomy to identify where the task sits  on Cummins Task Difficulty.
  • Opportunity for class discussion (d=0.82)  and what we know about privileging opportunities for students to speak.
  • Meta Cognitive Strategies (d=0.53) using SOLO Taxonomy and Second Language Learners because I have coauthored a book with Pam Hook about the process of learning framed with SOLO.
  • Concept Mapping (d=0.64)  using Hooked on thinking Maps because they are research based and framed using SOLO.
  • Small Group Learning d=0.47)  using targeted intervention for writing such as the SOLO Taxonomy list of writing words identified in SOLO Taxonomy and Second Language Learners.
  • Parental Involvement (d=0.49) by making contact with families through a phone call and have one piece of writing each published in the school newsletter this term.
  • Self Questioning (d=0.64) using, ‘What am I learning? How is it going? What do I do next?’ as a daily beginning for each lesson used from Hook.  

The first thing I always do is look at the children’s historic data both in reading and writing. I did this for my targeted learners using our Student Management System, Edge.

results

Here is an example

First I located last years writing data in PDF format and printed this off for the children. I had them look closely at their data and highlight where they sat against National Standards. Then using a different colour they highlighted areas that required improvement. For my current group they all highlighted planning and structure. Often I see planning lagging right across all year levels and structure from about year 4 and older.  Next we scaffolded what planning is, looks like and how to do this.

So together we created a group map using SOLO Taxonomy Hexagons to list our ideas. Together we grouped our ideas and came up with sub titles for the groups. For this purpose I used colour post-it notes.

After that I took a photo of the Concept Map and gave each child a copy to use for their writing. We constructed the success criteria with an emphasis of ticking off any ideas we used in writing.

Finally the children used their individual photo of the co-constructed map to write from. Just before they wrote they numbered the subtitles to help with structuring their writing. I gave them a 20 minute timed task and recorded how many words they wrote in 20 minutes.

How did we go?

We looked at what we wrote and identified

  • that not enough writing was generated in the short time.
  • that paragraphs were not happening (structure)
  • in addition very few relational SOLO Taxonomy written words were used.

So that became ‘What do we do next?’

For the second piece of writing, again I used a shared experience and had the children create their own describe map using the previous subtitled words they had identified. They were given 5 minutes to plan and again 20 minutes to write. However for this session I realised I was missing the discussion part. Hattie’s elements identified that classroom discussion accounts for an effect size of (d=0.82) so have added this to elements to focus on. In addition using Cummins continuum I realised that what I was asking from the children was cognitively demanding and was context reduced because I did not provide enough support either visually or with front loading.

When the children finished the writing using a pencil, they transferred their work digitally to their Google Accounts and added more. Immediately I saw a doubling of written words in a very short time.

Now in planning for the third week of writing I will now include.

  • Meta Cognitive Strategies (d=0.53) using SOLO Taxonomy and Second Language Learners because I have coauthored a book with Pam Hook about the process of learning framed with SOLO.
  • Concept Mapping (d=0.64)  using Hooked on thinking Maps because they are research based and framed using SOLO.
  • Opportunity for class discussion (d=0.82)  and what we know about privileging opportunities for students to speak.
  • Ensure that the task is cognitively demanding and content embedded.

For this week I will also include a co-constructed Hooked SOLO rubric because by now the children are developing a sense of the planning process. From previous experience I also know that the rubric contributes to the cognitive strategies by allowing self reflection using evidence base in what the children can see in their writing.

planning

Reflection

I still need to slow down the writing process but not loose sight of accelerated progress. I continually try and speed up the process.

I can continue to give oral feedback and follow up with a written comment.

I want to use digital tools for the total process to see if this makes a difference to the volume. My only challenge is using google draw for planning and the children cannot tick off their plan.

I wonder if I should trial presentations for the writing process because the planning tools can be manipulated better than in draw and docs. Unfortunately presentations does not have the word count feature which I really like to visually motivate the children.

Think aloud.

By stepping through what I do using this think aloud reflection, I can identify my strategy gaps in what I did with my learners. The main was was giving a cognitively demanding task but with little support or the opportunity for discussion.

I cannot emphasise enough the importance of using shared language experiences for writing.

How often do we dismiss these for writing prompts because we do the same activity every year or every term. However by utilising annual or termly school wide activities in writing we develop a resource of snapshots in time and if the children are curating their work digitally we should be able to see a development in their writing using the same prompt.

Where to next

Make a connection with families. I kind of do this anyway but really need to lift my game and make this visual by tracking when I do this. I did this really well two years ago and need to revisit those home connection strategies.

My group will soon carry out their written asTTle test and I like to follow this process with marking and moderating alongside their team. I will compare their data with their historic data and see how much this first term intervention has made a difference. For a couple of the students I also want to follow up with their reading data because I am not as confident that they will sustain the levels they were placed at the end of last year. Using probe will confirm or dispute this assumption.

In addition I really want to dig deeper with our year 6 national standards data. When I track some of our ESOL learners who have been with us for three years I can see they have met after three years at school standard. But against national standards their data is well below. Looking at it a different way. They came with no English and then after three years at our school, they met after three years at school standard. Personally I confirm this as accelerated progress. What do you think? Are they failing? If you want to know more about the process of writing with ESOL children then you cannot go wrong with SOLO Taxonomy and English Language Learners: Making second language learning visible. Personally I cannot recommend this resource enough and not just because my name is also on the cover but because it is applicable for any writing programme.

References

Collier, V. (1987) How long? A synthesis of research on academic achievement in a second language. TESOL Quarterly, 23

Harris, A., & Goodall, J. (2008). Do parents know they matter? Engaging all parents in learning. Educational Research, 50(3), 277-289.  

Hattie Ranking: 195 Influences And Effect Sizes Related To Student Achievement

Hook, P., & Van Schaijik, S. (2016). SOLO taxonomy and English language learners: making second language learning visible. Laughton, United Kingdom: Essential Resources.