TLIF 2019- Shifts in Teaching and Learning

Shifts in own practice and student practice:

Comments from my lesson plan attached:

It has become easier for my to go back and think about what skills they used in the investigation/ experience after the unit. I can plan for lots of things, but sometimes it changes based on what the students know/are interested etc. Updating this reflectively lets me see where we tend to go naturally, as well as what we are often missing. This way I can go and do a one off for that. Or refer back to something we have done in a different way.

This lesson worked well using the small groups. The students were encouraged to use the sentence frames when talking with a small group and then we fed back to the large group without the pressure of talking frames.The one that worked the best was, I have seen that when...
I think that the language of the frame was just easier.

We did this part in largish groups, but I did it a little differently this time. Showed them all the steps myself- without anything to play with yet. Then let them go and do all of the steps themselves.
This worked well so they could pace themselves and also they were also not bored waiting for the next instruction. I wish I had have though about what we would be looking for later, so that I could have fed in some more vocab and thinking for later.

Here, the talk moves were easy to say, we have used the sentence frames and the students knew how to do it - in theory. The thing I found out by doing the lesson though was they were using 'evidence' from their thinking stills. The students were struggling to actually refer to the notes they had written down as their evidence. I am not sure how I can go about making sure they make the connection form this activity. But the next one I will perhaps request they be able to show something to their group.

Here I think maybe to combat the issue I had last time, we may add post it notes to our evidence. Things that help back up our arguement? Perhaps highlight it or make it a diffferent colour for what would be evidence for and against. Maybe I need to lower the contextual load for them to understand the concept. Could we do a murder mystery or something that is fun and have them argue their evidence? 

The students have shifted in that they are more able to use the talk moves. They can now see use for the taking frames and how they are used at different times. They don't fully understand when each one is used, but they are being more selective. The 'evidence' they use has been very basic and so we are now moving forward to gathering new information to use as evidence.

Shifts in own practice and student practice:
From the discussion it is easy to see that the students don't just 'do' the talk moves they are able to understand the use. They are becoming metacognitive about what we are doing and why.