End of Term 3 Reflection

Successes / New ideas and learning 

What have we been doing differently to support collaborative knowledge building in our classroom?

This term, we have continued using the online claims board. We found that the online claims board is more engaging and is a better visual for students. We are also using the vocabulary across other areas of the curriculum, for example in Mathematics children are beginning to 'refute' or 'build on' others ideas. This shows that the vocabulary is becoming consolidated.

What have we created to support collaborative knowledge building? 

This term Georgia created a document that will track her mandatory and non mandatory learners. After each collaborative knowledge session, she records any anecdotal notes about these learners, for example if they contributed, whether their claim was chosen or how they interacted with their peers.

How have you been developing practices that support divergent thinking? What has and hasn’t worked?

Within our classrooms everybody's claims are listened to even if they are not selected for the conference. Students are beginning to understand the purpose of Knowledge Building so are beginning to move away from one off ideas and further explore their provocations.

How are you using questioning to help students become more aware of their own reasoning / the thinking behind their ideas?

Continuation of TALK MOVES are being used for Term 3

• Revoicing - so are you saying
• Repeating - can you repeat what was just said
• Reasoning - do you agree or disagree
• Adding on - would you like to add something more
• Wait time - take your time, we will wait
• Examples - can anyone support this with an example or counter example

How are students becoming more aware of their own thinking? 

Through the student voice survey children are reflecting on their contributions to the knowledge building session and are giving ideas on ways they can improve their collaborative knowledge building as an individual and as a class. At the end of each session we also discuss a class summary of what we agreed / disagreed on and listen to ways we could further explore this.

How are students becoming more aware of their own thinking? 

Children are more aware of who they are working with across different areas of the curriculum. From working in these collaborative knowledge groups students are more open to working with a wider variety of students in other areas of learning.

Next steps / Questions for Reflection

We do feel some of our questions from last term are still relevant: 

• How can can we create an associated task that would compliment the knowledge building provocations?
• How can teachers be clear about the objectives behind the provocations? What will students learn from building knowledge related to the provocation - how will they articulate the learning?
• How can progress from one off lessons? What opportunities can we provide for students to inquire more deeply into the different claims made in order to seek supporting / refuting evidence and to build on ideas.
• Where to next with our Knowledge Building Sessions - what other provocations could we create or explore? 

End of Term 2 Reflection

Successes / New ideas and learning 

What have we been doing differently to support collaborative knowledge building in our classroom?

We have been trialling an online canvas where each group has access to the same Google Doc. At the top of the document the students all entered their initial claims with their names clearly visible in the left hand column. Each group chose a different colour font so it was easy to distinguish the different groups. In the right hand box we then label the different clusters. From there a cluster gets selected and pasted into the online claims board (this is the same as the physical board but they are typing their responses using their same font/colour for their group). Once this is completed, we paste the numbers from the line of trust down the right hand side. 

What have we created to support collaborative knowledge building? 

We have created a visual poster for the line of trust. This has cartoon pictures which help students make a visual judgement. This is also represented in the online canvas. We also have continued to use the sentence stems to help students structure their claims so that they are easier to cluster and discuss. We have also created a student voice survey for students to complete after each knowledge building session. These seem to be manageable and accessible for all level of learners.

How have you been developing practices that support divergent thinking? What has and hasn’t worked?

We are firstly ensuring that everybody's claims are listened to, even if they are not selected for the conference. Students have also been given opportunities to explore their ideas further. For example while completing the session ‘What would happen if all humans disappeared in an instant’, we had an in depth discussion around pollution and the different gases that affect the earth. One student went home to research whether humans produced the same amount of Methane as cows. However we question below how we can move away from these one off sessions and provide opportunities for students to inquire more deeply into the different claims made.

How are you using questioning to help students become more aware of their own reasoning / the thinking behind their ideas?

We are using TALK Moves extensively when questioning students. This is an effective questioning technique as all students need to engage in the task, as they may be called upon.

Examples of TALK Moves are: 

• Revoicing - So are you saying ..
• Repeating - Can you repeat what was just said? 
• Reasoning - Do you agree or disagree? 
• Adding on - Would you like to add something more? 
• Wait time - Take your time, we will wait. 
• Examples - Can anyone support this with an example of counter example? 

How are students becoming more aware of their own thinking? 

Each time we complete a knowledge building session, children are asked to work with other students they have never worked with before. As children are constantly changing groups, they are having to share their ideas and knowledge with a new audience. They are also having to listen respectfully to the knowledge of others. Due to the changes in audience, students are having to be more aware of their own thinking and the thinking of their peers.

Through the student voice survey, students are reflecting on their contributions to the knowledge building sessions and are giving ideas on how they and the class could improve our collaborative knowledge building.

Next steps / Questions for Reflection

• How can we create an associated task that would compliment the knowledge building provocations? 
• How can teachers be clear about the objectives behind the provocations? What will students learn from building knowledge related to the provocation - how will they articulate the learning? 
• How can we progress from one off lessons? What opportunities can we provide for students to inquire more deeply into the different claims made in order to seek supporting / refuting evidence and to build on ideas. 

Reflection of TLIF

Collaborative Knowledge Building - Room 8

Term 1, 2019

Over the course of the Term 1, Room 8 completed 2 Collaborative Knowledge Building (CBK) tasks. These were Rockets, and Guess Who Ninjas. Below, I will compare how I believe Room 8 completed each of the phases.

Part One: Open Exploration

Rockets - The children were set the task, and I did a shoddy demonstration. For this task I set the children's groups. I did this because I wanted to challenge the children to work with people they don't usually work with. I also wanted to avoid the low academic children being in a group; with set groups I was able to mix up abilities. 

Guess Who Ninjas - For this task we first ran through the rules. We played a dummy game first to ensure that the children knew how to play, and what the rules were. For this task the children were able to choose their own partners. 

With both CBK tasks, the children were very engaged. With the Rockets task the children were so engaged they didn't want to leave when the time was up. With the Ninja's task, the children finished at different paces and this sometimes was challenging. 

Part Two: Claims and Critiques

Rockets - This was our first task, and it took a few goes for the children to understand what a claim was and what was expected. Next time, if I was to do this again with this year group, I would cover what a claim was and what was expected in an unrelated lesson previously. Here, the children made claims as a group. This sometimes caused difficulty within the groups as children were upset or frustrated when they disagreed with their groups claim.

Guess Who Ninjas - The children were better at setting claims as they knew what was expected from the Rockets task. There were more claims this time as this time each child was asked to make a claim. This made grouping of ideas more visible, but not always easier. Each child making a claim worked well as I believe every child felt 'heard' to a certain extent. The difficulties with disagreements were a lot fewer this way. 

Part Three: Building Collaborative Knowledge

Rockets - With this task, the children were very stuck around the different fuels. They were unable to think of different claims aside from fuel based claims. They didn't trust each other's claims about what fuels worked and did not work, and others had blind persistence. For some who were initially successful, they repeated the same action every time, producing the same result with no variation.

Guess Who Ninjas - Here the children were better at asking questions and confirming or denying claims compared to that of the Rocket task. The children asked a different range of questions too, which opened the CBK more, in my opinion. 

Successes

• Engagement of children in tasks. 
• Collaboration between children, particularly in the rockets task.
• Claim statement worked well for Guess Who Ninja challenge.
• Having each child make a claim (Guess Who Ninja challenge).
• Time frame for challenges.

Next steps

• Time frame for conference (This was implemented in Rocket activity, but not GWN as I needed to support low level learners as they weren't spread out, and most had low learner buddies who were unable to help).
• Typed sentence beginnings to make conference time shorter.
• Implementing the line of trust sooner.
• Discuss blind persistence with children and the impact it has.
• Discuss the need to change at least one element each time. 
• Discuss the importance of questioning. 
• Where there is potential for time difference in completing activities, discuss clear expectations and potentially starting claim process instead of children waiting around. 

Up and Away - Rockets

Term 1 2019 

Room 12 and Room 14 (60 students) began our journey into Collective Knowledge Building by trying to discover what would make a film canister rocket go the highest.

Part 1: Open Exploration
Students were asked to form groups of 3 and were asked to select their group members using the following criteria; one group member had to be from the other class and one other group member had to be someone you haven't worked with before. We started off by framing the challenge by saying; 'What makes a difference to the height of the rocket?' We had different fuels on offer for the students - these fuels were named after planets (Earth, Mercury, Pluto, Venus, Saturn). Mrs van Dijk gave an extremely shoddy demonstration on how to make a film canister rocket - her rocket didn't even launch. Students were then given an 11 minute time frame to experiment to see how high they could launch their rocket. Throughout this time we roved around the students provoking thinking and encouraging idea development through the use of reflective questioning.

Part 2: Claims and Critiques 
Twenty minutes after the shoddy demonstration all students were back in ready to start our 'Rocket' conference. Students were given one sticky note to write their claim - they were also given sentence starters help them frame up their claims (“We claim that ...... makes the rocket go higher/stops the rocket going high. We think this is true because.......”). Once students had put their claims up onto the whiteboard we clustered the claims according to similar variables. Our 5 clusters were vinegar, shape of cup, amount of powder, shaking and type/amount of fuel. As this was our first time clustering the claims we do feel we could have split a few of these to make a couple more clusters. We selected the cluster that had the most claims in it to put onto our knowledge building canvas. We went through each of these claims and sought clarification from different groups if their claim was unclear. The students were then given a brief outline on the following four headings on the knowledge building canvas and were then given a sticky note to respond to one of the claims made (either by asking a question, supporting or refuting it with evidence, or building on the initial idea). Many of the groups struggled initially with this and thought they had to make another claim. It took a lot longer as we had to check in with each group and refocus them on the four headings.

Part 3: Building Collective Understanding
During this part of the conference we felt we were running out of time and didn't really understand how to use the line of trust effectively. The students had also been sitting for a long time and were starting to lose focus. During this we noticed that the students tended to trust their own claims the most based on their experiences rather than on the content of the canvas. After a short break we came back to the canvas and used the line of trust to get a collaborative census on what the level of trust was for each claim (see numbers beside each claim for the level of trust). This was an extremely effective discussion as this showed the students which ideas they should pursue when they went out further exploration.

Students were then given another 11 minutes to explore the claims to affirm or build new knowledge about what would make the rocket go higher. There were a lot of great discussions going on within each group and between the different groups.

Reflection: 

Successes: 

• 60 students collaborating (two classes joined together). 
• We were impressed with how the students selected their group based on the criteria we gave them.
• The students were all fully engaged throughout the knowledge building challenge. 
• The first lot of claims the students gave (with very little guidance from us) were well written and quite varied. 
• Giving the students the claim statement to help with the writing of their claims really scaffolded them thought this. 
• Reflective questioning through the open exploration and bringing the students focus back to the initial question (What makes the difference to the height of the rocket?) really helped to keep the groups focussed on the task. 

Next Steps: 

• The timeframe for our claims and critiques so that students are not sitting too long on the mat. 
• Giving them sentence beginnings for the other four headings on the knowledge building canvas (questions, supporting evidence, refuting evidence, building ideas). 
• Moving onto using the line of trust quite quickly so that students can rank each of the claims. This way they can start thinking about what they would like to investigate in their next open exploration phase. 
• Have a discussion with the students about what blind persistence is and why it is not effective when building knowledge. 
• If we were to use the rocket experience again we would be careful what we named the fuels so the students didn't try to use this as a rule/pattern for which fuel would work best. 

Mandatory/Non-mandatory Learners: 

• One of our non-mandatory learners who often struggles to work in a group (he doesn't feel like his is listened to) initially fully participated in the open exploration. At one point he stepped out and said that his group was not listening to his ideas, but quickly came back round and joined in. He struggled with the length of the conference and had checked out towards the end. We will need to be mindful of this in our next knowledge building challenge. 
• Two of our mandatory learners who are extremely low across the curriculum struggled to last the length of the open exploration stage and really not articulate any of their findings or the purpose for the challenge. We will need to find ways to simplify some of the next challenges so that these students can access them along with the others. 
• Another one of our non-mandatory learners was the child who insisted that the fuels went in a particular order - she was looking for a rule (Pluto would work better because it is the furtherest away from the Earth). She also was insistent that her idea was the right one even after other students refuted her claim. In our second round of open exploration she continued to explore her own claim further (blind persistence). Before the next challenge we will need to check in with her group more often and to question their ideas to ensure blind persistence doesn't continue. 
• We noticed one of our non-mandatory students tell his group to be quiet when another group came over to see what they were doing. At this point we were filming this group so reminded them it was about collective knowledge building and that we need to learn from each other.