Revisiting Extended Discussions

After a really busy term, we have finally gotten back into extended discussions. What I have noticed is that the students needed quite a lot of prompting and scaffolding. It appears they have forgotten some of the strategies we were using.

I think what would be best is to go back to revisit what extended discussions and reciprocal teaching are, to remind the students in hopes to get it happening again. We need it to become a naturally occurring strategy in order for them to benefit the most with their reading comprehension and higher-order thinking. Using these strategies will in turn support them in making connections by applying their knowledge to real-world scenarios.

"Teachers who plan to teach and extend students' higher order thinking skills promote growth for their high-ability students. Higher order thinking is often used to refer to 'transfer', 'critical thinking' and 'problem solving.' These can be defined as:

transfer - the student's ability to apply knowledge and skills to new contexts (for example, a student in year 5 learning about fractions applied her knowledge to a real world scenario)
critical thinking - the ability to reason, reflect, and decide what to believe or do next
problem solving - meeting a goal that cannot be met with a memorised solution (Brookhart, 2010, 2011)."

(https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/high-ability-toolkit/Pages/higher-order-thinking.aspx)

Needing to refocus

For the past 8 weeks, I have had a student teacher in my room. This has been an interesting experience and has made it difficult to maintain any type of routine for myself and my students. Therefore I haven't been able to focus on my target cohort as much as I had anticipated. I do not have any Extended Discussion documentation for this time frame. Although I have been able to observe their reading habits, I have noticed they have reverted back to working independently of each other and in the cases where there are discussions they are not using the strategies we had been working on. 

I look forward to getting routines back and a reinvigorated reading group time with documentation and data collection for my inquiry.

Extended discussion: Student Led Learning the ropes

This recorded session was set up to see how well the students coped with their roles within a discussion if not being monitored constantly by the teacher. It was a way for me to observe from afar but still be able to give guidance if needed.

We are working towards the group's ability to work more independently whilst still following the discussion protocols.

Below is the most recent data gathered for this cohort of students. All students involved have made significant progress by at least 2 reading year levels.

  

Introducing Reciprocal Teaching to my cohort

First attempt at Reciprocal Teaching

Set the rules: 

• Everyone will have a turn to talk. 
• Everyone will be an active listener.

The 4 Strategies: Predict, Question, Clarify and Summarise.

Introduce and explain what Reciprocal Teaching is. Model how to use the Train Your Brain To Read bookmarks.

Practice using the stems as sentence starters.

What I noticed:

The students are keen to talk about the text. I noticed they are hesitant to discuss as, I believe, they are unsure how to go about having a proper rich discussion.

We used the Train Your Brain To Read bookmarks from Reading Rockets. The stems were helpful for the tamariki to initiate their line of questioning. It seems to help them to organise their thoughts, which leaves them free to concentrate on thinking and answering.

Reflection on how it went: 

I gathered feedback from the students to see how they felt about the session.

They liked asking people how they felt about the text and having the time to ask questions and be heard by their peers. 

They enjoyed having time to connect with their peers and connect with the text. They liked being able to learn from, and teach, each other. All agreed that once they get used to it, it will be easier and easier.

Overall I think it was a successful session. My personal short-term focus is to resist initiating the discussions and allowing time for the students to think and respond.

Baseline Data

All but one of this cohort of students has excellent school attendance. This data was gathered from their most recent PAT Reading Comprehension assessment and Running Records. Student TeAu was absent for the PAT assessment.

Growth Cycle: Inquiry Focus 2022

To incorporate extended discussions within reading through Reciprocal Teaching, to accelerate students' overall comprehension of multimodal texts, therefore building students' communication skills. My focus is on developing their ability to explain and justify their thinking, as this is an area of weakness for my students.

Target students

My target cohort is a small group of 5 tamariki who are just at the expected level for reading. I chose these students as I feel they lack some of the communication skills required to progress more and that it is holding back their ability to confidently move ahead. 

I believe these particular students will pick up the reciprocal teaching strategies quickly and we should soon see positive results. Then these students will be able to become mentors within the class to help establish reciprocal teaching and extended discussions with their peers.

Film Editing workshop

I took part in a film editing workshop run by Harley Alexander for the Te Hiku Cluster. Harley is an award-winning filmmaker based in Northland, New Zealand, who has worked for major broadcasters and video production agencies in London, Auckland, Sydney and Hong Kong for over 25 years.
The workshop was a great way to pick up some skills around movie making and editing.
The workshop covered setting up albums, iMovies, manipulating audio separate from video, and other editing aspects.
Now I just need to find some time to play around and experiment with using iMovies.