Sally Avern's Professional Journey

What did I do: To gauge the effectiveness of Dialogic Pedagogy PD we have been doing I did a quick discussion on a topic completely unrelated to Science.   (Change the context and the set up of the class to see if the skills are transferred). I introduced the idea of evidence and said we will be talking about our ideas. I didn't refer to the Talanoa norms, use the word discussion or refer to any markers that could possibly hint at the things I was looking for.  We had to talk to 'some' people about our ideas and then I said, share the ideas with the whole group: What did the students do: They sat in small groups and shares their ideas, taking turns and using eye contact, listening etc.  I hid in the corner and recorded some of the conversation that stood out to me. they demonstrated the ability to ask for clarification and use examples to prove their point. (Explaining the idea of using evidence as something you might do if there was a crime)...

What is your goal ? What prompts am I using? What strategies can I use to help achieve my goal? Then.... think about this.... Concentrate on structure and function to make it easy to focus on dialogic thinking.  Explorify: Odd one eye: Discuss first--> then introduce focus.  "How are these the same? What structure do they all have.  remember to refer this back to themselves, perspective..... ooooooo!  Don't lead the students first,    Refer back to the learning from before. Give them something to fiddle with, give them lots of opportunities to talk.  Remembering that critique is to improve what I have done, I can think about how to get better.  (Not just decide who has done a good job. Do a gallery walk, look at others now go back and decide what you want to change?) NS: Find out where me practices are lacking from the NZCER data. Look at explorify and decide on structure and functions things to do...

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 ...

Capabilitties of successful learners and science thinking. You need capabilitites to be critical, informed and reflective. science thinking with evidence --> The thinking scale is a key element of this program. questions are placed on the scale so that they align with the students level and not age. students a full curriculum level below they can do the yr 4 text instead. Use the scale to measure with progress also. Looking for trends in data. What are the kids improving in? Is it linked to the work the teachers are doing? What are we doing to shift kids? How can we take this into Pd further. Good for comparing the individual report compared to the sort of capabilities etc, by looking at the item report. Why are we doing this? What are our hunches? What is our specific intended outcome. What are our assumptions before we go into the data. Are we looking at this with confirmation bias? Good Links: https://scienceonline.tki.org.nz/