Our Term 3 Collaborative Knowledge Building Journey

What does our data show? 

Shifts in academic data: 

When looking at our end of Term 3 academic data we have noticed a massive shift from the beginning of the year, especially in our Maths results. 

After seeing how successful our knowledge building sessions were for developing idea diversity, a safe place to learn from our mistakes and to take risks we felt like we wanted to explore how to utilise knowledge building within other curriculum areas. Coincidentally at that time we also had some Professional Learning as a staff on DMIC (Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities). We immediately recognised the value of it as it was very similar to what we were doing in Technology with Collaborative Knowledge Building. So towards the end of Term 2 and all of Term 3 we adapted our Maths programme. During Maths sessions the students worked in mixed ability groups (much like our collaborative knowledge building sessions) and collaboratively worked to solve rich problems. They then shared with a larger group their different strategies and had to answer questions and justify their thinking. We feel this approach to our Maths programme was successful as the students were so used to this collaborative approach to learning together (not competing against each other to get the answer first). We have also observed this collaboration across other learning areas and would like to explore how to bring it more into our Literacy programme in Term 4. 

Maths Data: 

Below are our Maths results showing shifts from Term 1 to Term 3 when we changed our approach to teaching Maths. 

Term 1 to Term 2 Data: 

• From Term 1 to Term 2 we had 16% (8 students) of our class move at least one Global Stage for Maths (according to GLOSS testing which tests addition/subtraction, multiplication/division and ratios/proportions)
• Only 2 of our mandatory learners (4% of the total class) moved Global Stages from Term 1 to Term 2 (7 students - 14% of the total class) 
• During this time we also had Alert Level Lockdown for 7 weeks of the school year. This could account for the low movement of students' academic levels. 

Term 2 to Term 3 Data: 

• From Term 2 to Term 3 we had 48% (24 students) of our class move at least one Global Stage for Maths. This is a significant shift from the 16% in Term 1 to Term 2 data. We’ve contributed this to the change in our programme with the introduction of collaborative sessions, mixed ability grouping and the use of Talk Moves as a tool for them to use within their collaborative groups with each other. 
• Another 22% of our class made shifts within one or two of the three areas making up a Global Stage. 
• 4 of our mandatory learners (8% of the total class) moved at least one Global Stage from Term 2 to Term 3. Another one of our mandatory learners moved one stage for two parts of the GLOSS Test but not for Ratios/Proportions which we have not taught yet this year. 

Shift in Practical Skills Development:

With our Year 7 and 8s remaining onsite for Technology this year (as opposed to it being outsourced to a Technology centre catering for several small schools), we’ve had a purposefully scheduled time built into the timetable specifically for Technology.  

This has meant we’ve also been able to see a shift in practical skill development across the sessions throughout the year too. Kim started with the lego rubber-band powered cars, in which it was earlier noted in our blog:

“What became immediately apparent, was the varied (and limited) experience of the students in building and creating with lego.  Very few students had experience with the principles of building ‘freestyle’ with lego, many telling me they usually built from the instructions, then either put the set on display, or would pull it apart to build it again.  Or, if they were more open to creative experiments, as opposed to reading and following instructions, they usually limited themselves to buildings, landscapes, static forms - not working mechanisms.”

With the motorised fan-powered cars, students had difficulty again with the actual construction of a working model before they could even begin innovating their designs. This was after a skinny demo of how to create a straw sleeve for their skewer axles, put on the wheels, then attach them to the chassis, and finally how to assemble the battery operated fan with its motor. 

The students struggled with managing proportions, making sure components were free to move without resistance/friction, attaching different components to the chassis, even just making the fans work (putting the batteries in the right way or wiring the motor).

So it was quite surprising that when we moved on to the land yachts in Term 3, after giving the students the skinniest of demos, (essentially a simple ice block stick raft, with a skewer mast attached and a square sail), the students quickly adapted AND constructed their designs through the innovation cycle, experimenting with different hull types, mast and sail configurations, and attaching wheels, with little trouble at all, and more freedom to investigate and innovate on their designs, some groups collaboratively to building several different models to try out their ideas.

A lot more idea diversity was evident as well, due to increased confidence in practical building skills as well as our collaborative knowledge building skills.

Shifts in how we build our collaborative knowledge:

We also innovated on how we made claims, by experimenting with the use of an investigative team (instead of groups making their own claims), where one student from each group of 3-4 students was selected to go to the other groups, observe and record the claims of that group as to what makes a land yacht go faster and to report back during the conference.  

As each member of the investigative team came back with each of their three different claims they were mandated to collect, the teacher would just check they made sense, and at times send the investigative team member back to a group to seek further clarification.  As an investigative team, the students then organised similar ideas into clusters, and chose ones that best stated what others said as well.  The students then reported back to the class group in the conference.  It was great to have the students taking ownership of collecting claims, clustering ideas and sharing them back to the class.

We continued the critique stage as we usually did, except mandating groups to make at least 3 critiques.  We also removed the use of the online knowledge claims board, and went back to using post-its on a large board.  This stopped students from being influenced by the initial critiques of others, as well as distancing them from who made what claims, and forcing the students to focus on the actual content of the claim instead.

As the teacher shared back the critiques for each claim, we transferred the claim to the ladder of inference.  This is where we discovered the use of the line of trust was invaluable, as it gave a chance for the whole class group to voice where they wanted to place certain claims on the ladder of inference, with visible evidence of why from the critiques board (our questions, support and refutes of the claim, etc).

We then moved on to each group choosing what claim they’d investigate further, with the explicit purpose of us discovering as a class group what our combined ideas would produce in an ‘ultimate model’ - using our knowledge to build a land yacht that had all the possible features we knew would make it faster.

Where possible we tried to include our school community and experts.  We were fortunate to have a parent bring in their Blo-Kart (which interestingly was designed and patented locally in Papamoa).  The students were able to help build the Blo-Kart and then ride it out on our back field.

Please click on this link to read an article about the Blo-Kart

How do we maintain momentum? 

Initially in our Technology programme we started off with one-off sessions that were 3 hours and 15 minutes each. We then wanted to develop our curriculum further so we moved to double sessions to allow students to cycle through the innovation cycle multiple times in order to refine ideas and build more collaborative knowledge. With the first group we struggled to extend the sessions because they pretty much thought once they had made a land yacht that worked they no longer needed to improve their design (“It works, I’m done!”). Even with some land yacht racing it didn’t motivate them to want to change their designs. With the second group the double session was needed as this group worked extremely slowly through the first open exploration phase, which meant we did not really progress further than one cycle. 

After these sessions we had a few questions that we would like to look into further: 

• How do we maintain the momentum with the students over longer provocations? 
• How do we overcome the ‘I’m done’ idea? 
• How do we ensure our task design is ambiguous enough to make sure it generates idea diversity? 
• What do we do when the group comes to a natural finish of the innovation cycle - so what? now what? 

Over the next term we will attempt to answer some of our reflective questions during our Collaborative Knowledge Building Sessions. 

Watch this space….

Term 1 and 2 Reflections and Next Steps

Our Collaborative Knowledge Building Sessions for Term 1 and 2:

Lego Rubber-band Cars (Term 1 and 2): 

Starting in Term 1, and finishing in Term 2 (due to the lockdown), we ran three separate rotations of a one-off Collaborative Knowledge Building session with a third of our entire class each time (approx. 18 students).  Students were asked to power a lego car using a rubber band with the provocation - What makes a difference to the distance a car travels?  As I (Kim) was a new addition to the project, I structured it around what I read from the library of experiences, and used an online claims board and critique that previous teachers had designed and trialled with success.

The constraints included identical bags of lego pieces provided for each group (with an inventory to check against), that the students were restricted to using in the first phase of open exploration; separate skinny demos of how to build a simple frame with the lego pieces (ensuring holes for the back axle), how the basic rubber band mechanism works, and pointing out how to work the different wheel attachment options provided (modified 2x2 plates with a pin holder underneath vs modified 2x2 plates with small wheel holders on both sides).

What became immediately apparent, was the varied (and limited) experience of the students in building and creating with lego. Very few students had experience with the principles of building ‘freestyle’ with lego, many telling me they usually built from the instructions, then either put the set on display, or would pull it apart to build it again.  Or, if they were more open to creative experiments, as opposed to reading and following instructions, they usually limited themselves to buildings, landscapes, static forms - not working mechanisms.

With this in mind, a few claims in both the first and second sessions in response to the provocation, were about making the car stronger:

• We claim that if you build a strong base and put the strongest wheels on the back it will go fast and further. We think this is true because when we tested it it went further and faster than it went last time. (71,100,116 cm) 

• We claim that you need more support on it so it doesn't collapse… We think this claim is true because when we tried the first time it didn't have enough support so it collapsed.

On realisation that this was indeed the case, my response in the third session was to trial giving a little more guidance in the skinny demo, so they’d at least have the basic concepts of how to build a sturdy frame to then innovate on that in response to the provocation.  

Consequently, as success breeds success, more groups achieved collaborative success in the third session (all groups building cars that traveled distances 3-4 metres by the end of the session), than in the first and second sessions where only 1-2 groups were (although all groups were able to make their cars improve in distance over the course of the session).  There was more evidence of open exploration, innovation and willingness to trial and error in the third session, as kids ‘caught the bug’ of modifying their cars to make them travel further and further, then sharing and comparing their knowledge with other groups.

Motorised Fan-Powered Cars (Term 2): 

Continuing on with the car theme in Term 2, we again ran three separate rotations of a one-off Collaborative Knowledge Building session with a third of our entire class each time (approx. 18 students).  This time the students were asked to build a motorised fan-powered car using the materials provided to explore the provocation - What makes a difference to the speed a car travels?  This was taken directly from the library of experiences.

The constraints again included being restricted to using the materials provided, and a skinny demo of how to build a basic model (in which mine didn’t work because the fan kept hitting the ground at the back).

With more variables for this (compared to the rigidity of the lego cars), therefore requiring further refinement of basic construction skills  to build a basic model that worked, technical difficulties were inherent. This is evident in the teacher’s end of session reflections:

What happened as a result of the teaching in relation to the outcomes?

KIM (Session 4/Term 2) - Students were working better at modifying to make their models work, but not great at focusing on the original question - what makes a difference to the speed a car travels?  Even their claims weren’t really answering the question, discussing technical difficulties with trying to make it go at all instead.

Is there something I need to change? 

KIM (Session 4/Term 2) - All of the students chose the smaller A5 car templates today.  Not sure if it was due to my model being that size or not.  A little less imaginative in their ideas with the smaller cars, as they didn’t have to modify it as much to make it work.  Also, need to have the question on a whiteboard, and keep bringing their discussion back to it.

What have we discovered using the Line of Trust? 

A few impressions I had when conducting the line of trust during the 6 different conferences were:

• Some students were voting, or not voting, for a claim based on who had made it, and whether they trusted them personally.  Below is a perfect example, where two different groups in the same session made the same claim:

From this, I made the decision to remove names from the critiquing part of the online canvas and reporting time, keeping colours only to monitor all groups had contributed to the critique.

• Establishing consensus on the line of trust as a whole group didn’t always reflect differences in opinion.  Below is an example of two very similar claims within the same session, one even with three other groups supporting the claim and still it came out as a ‘one’ on the line of trust (meaning no trust at all), whereas, paradoxically, the second group came out with a ‘four’ on the line of trust (meaning all trust it) , yet with no supporting critique/claims.

This is where I can see where the ladder of inference would be far more accurate in reflecting the overall opinions of the whole group.  Unanswered questions, provisos, data could all be posted at the same time, validating everyone’s experiences and the data.

• Ranking of a claim on the line of trust didn’t necessarily feed into the next phase of open exploration - students would disregard claims with absolute trust rankings (4), and go with exploring the rankings that sparked the most interest, even if it got a 1 or 2 on the line of trust (little to no trust).  Examples of this were most evident with the motorised fan-powered cars.  Despite the questions, minimal supporting critique, refutation of the claim and a lower overall rank on the line of trust, nearly every group in the second phase of open exploration in this session tried adding more motors/fans to their models.

We think the Line of Trust might still have a place in the Claims and Critique phase of the Innovation Cycle, in that we could have students think, then physically move to a position with the expectation they will be called upon to justify their choice.  Throughout sharing and discussion time, we thought it would be powerful, and authentic, if we also created space for students to also change position when faced with more convincing arguments, and to share their justifications for doing so.  And for us to really examine as a group what it means to ‘trust’ or ‘distrust’ a claim, and what implications that has for us and further investigations.

How have our claims changed over time? 

In my first initial session (Lego Rubber-band Cars), I forgot to remind the students of the sentence stems to ensure there was some quality control.

• We claim that smaller is better because bigger is heavier and if you make a smaller body then the car will be lighter and faster
• We claim the bigger the body of the car the more stable it will be. We think that two rubber bands are more efficient.

In the second session, I remembered to remind the students to use the sentence stems, but their statements were quite simple and self-referencing.

• We claim that if you wind the rubber band back more it will go further. We think this is true because when we tried pulling it back it went further for us.
• We claim that  making the car longer helps the car go faster and longer. We think this is true because first we made the car short and then ‘L’ came up with the idea of making it longer so we did. It went faster and longer. 

In the third session, I prompted them to start including results from their own records, or their understanding of the scientific ‘why’ to support their claims. 

• We claim that if you pull back the wheels of the car back further, the further it will travel. We think this is true because our car managed to travel 3.9 meters by the force that ‘T’ pulled the wheels back.
• We claim that the lighter the car the further it will go. We think this is true because if the car is heavy it will take longer to travel a long distance and it will probably use all of the elastic energy.

In the second round of sessions (Motorised Fan-Powered Cars), the claims in each rotation were a huge improvement on earlier ones, despite many groups losing focus on the provocation asking what makes a difference to the speed a car goes and focus on what would make it work well.  They were more specific about why it would or wouldn’t work well in their claims.

• We claim that if you have three pairs of wheels/six wheels it helps to balance the car so it could go faster. We think this is true because when we only had four wheels it would sag down then wouldn't move.
• We claim that if you have a sturdy base/chassis it makes the car more able to be successful. We think this because we had an unstable base and the weight of the battery pack and fan were weighing down the ends and dragging the fan on the ground.
• We claim that the higher the motor is, the faster it will travel. We think this is true because our motor was too close to the ground and it was skidding on the carpet making it go slow.
• We claim that more motors would help it go faster. We think this is true because it has more fan power.
• We claim that when you put skewers underneath it will support the battery's weight. We think this is true  because when we did not have the structure  it fell through the cardboard. For example it would drag on the ground.

What is our plan moving forward? 

In discussing how the overall visibility of the online canvas seemed to encourage students to change their claims to make them different, just because someone else had ‘taken theirs', the concept of reliability in the Line of Trust dependent on who made the claims, and the delivering teacher’s perception of the format of the conference being very teacher-driven and lacking real engagement from the students in open discussion of ideas, we wanted to explore ideas for encouraging students to lead and do more talking.

Based on the concept of distributed ethnography, and real-time citizen engagement, we decided to explore the use of an investigative team of students (ethnographers) to observe and interview each other, and make claims based on their findings.  Before reporting back to the class, they’d come together to collate and synthesise the claims, facilitated and overseen by the teacher.  

Claim origins would need to be recorded for the purpose of returning for further investigation, to dig ‘deeper’, as well as providing the genealogy of ideas, for further innovation where we plan to create a final collaborative model bearing evidence of all the ideas from the different groups within the class group.

The investigative team will hopefully have the desired effect of removing emphasis on who made what claims, or groups changing claims because ‘someone else already wrote that’, and guide the students towards examining the content of the claims themselves.  In using students themselves to present the conference as well, we hope it’ll also provoke more open discussion amongst them all.  We think this might help move the teacher’s role more towards that of facilitator/ guide/coach, and away from the ‘leader up the front’.

End of Term 4 Reflection

Successes / New ideas and learning 

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

This term we altered the knowledge building cycle. We dove deeper into our provocation and used a ladder of inference to show our level of understanding and trust as a class. We first identified the big idea which was;

"You have travelled to an unknown country what things are you going to need to know/observe in order to understand their cultural practices (non-material and material)". 

This was relevant because of our whole school Culture Inquiry in Term 4. From here, students worked in collaborative groups of three and developed hunches. When grouping students we based this on mixed ability grouping instead of friendship groups. We believe it allows students to share their opinions openly instead of being swayed by friendships. The hunches they came up with were: food and restaurants, modes of transport we see, architecture, landmarks and environmental features, types of clothes, sports and sporting apparel and the types of animals and paw prints we observe.

We then turned these hunches into testable statements. In the same group of three (investigative teams), the students explored these testable statements using a Google Slide. On the slide they had opportunities to prove or disprove the statement they had made.

Students worked on proving and disproving their testable statement over three 30 - 45 minute sessions. Once students felt they had gathered enough evidence they ran a knowledge building conference. We continued using the online claims board. As a class, we found that the online claims board is more engaging and is a better visual for students. Students critiqued the claims made and gave justifications to support their comments. New knowledge was documented and new hunches were made. We referred to the ladder of inference and decided whether we can move any hunches closer to our data pool. We used the line of trust to help us decide.

Below are some images from a Google Slide created by one of the classes: 

What have we created to support collaborative knowledge building? 

A visual ladder of inference so that children can decide on whether their claim is closer to being in the data pool.

We continued to use our Google Document that tracked our mandatory and non mandatory learners. After each collaborative knowledge session, we recorded any anecdotal notes about these learners. For example if they contributed, whether their claim was chosen or how they interacted with their peers.

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

Each term we have used TALK Moves. We find these are incredibly successful as they encourage children to think critically about their own ideas and the ideas of others.

• Re voicing - 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? 

We have continued using the student voice survey. The students 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? 

The competitive element has suppressed in general in all classroom environments. Students are less focussed on winning and are more interested in solving problems as a collective. They 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

• How will they articulate the learning? Is the learning objectives clear? Do students really understand why they are going through this process?
• Still unsure if students are building a deep level of knowledge or just skimming the surface with their responses.
• When the sessions run too long the children disengage. Shorter blocks of time seem to work better.