I think thinking little late a lot lately about what’s the difference between old and new. At St Lukes,  there’s a challenge to do things differently.  That’s really fun in a sense, but the problem is that new is often uncomfortable.

I have these old pair of plastic glasses that I love. Putting them on is like a pair of old tracksuit pants. They are comfortable, worn, and they look okay on my face. It’s the same style I’ve worn for a while and they’re just easy. I can go to sleep in them and not worry about breaking them.

Problem is that I can’t really see in them.

Doing the same thing the same old way is kind of like this. It’s comfortable, worn, but easy. You don’t have to worry about it. Some times it’s hard work. Hard effort, but easy in thinking. Because after a while doing the same thing you become expert.  And expert becomes easy.

And like my glasses, you can fall asleep in it. And you sometimes can’t see in it.

My point: when you’re trying something new and you’re sitting on the cutting edge, it feels uncomfortable, and sometimes like you have no idea what you’re doing.

The problem with this is that you are actually feeling constantly like a novice. You’re pushing yourself beyond your knowledge and having to research things, to search for ideas and to string those ideas together into new ideas and then figure out how to apply them. And then this brings new questions, new ideas.

So, you constantly feel like you’re no longer expert. And that in itself is hard. Every day you feel like a first year teacher scraping together ideas on the bottom of a barrel.

And it’s tiring.

It’s why week 2 feels like week 8.

So, in the words of Apple….Here’s to the crazy ones. The innovators. The rebels. The troublemakers. While some may see them as troublemakers, we see them as genius.  Because those people that are crazy enough to think they can change the world usually do.

Let’s challenge ourselves to go out into the deep…even if it means getting sand in uncomfortable places. 

The last of student led conferences tonight, where students of St Lukes reflect upon the work that they’ve done in their core classes, but relate them to how they work within our pillars. Essentially, how they witness in the way of Christ, relate to others, manage themselves, think, inquire and create. They use evidence of work that they’ve done in class to support their achievement of these pillars.

Having a conversation with some of the staff afterwards, what really struck me is the amount of love that our families have for their kids. Of course they all want to do their kids to do their best, but they’re also proud of the students ability to stand there and present for 20 minutes about their chosen topic. To be honest, I’m proud. And so are our teachers.

I’m proud that a student can stand there and say “I want to improve my focus by sitting away from people that distract me” or “I want to focus on improving my work by adding detail because I’m a tick box person and try and get it done”.

Each year I’ve done this I pick a few student interviews to sit in on. Some of these are students (or parents) that have flagged for some reason (good or bad), some are to make sure that the first year teacher isn’t left to interview for the first time by themselves. And some I actually just enjoy seeing the parents (#favouriteparents). I’ve then, unbeknownst to both student and teacher, keep checking in with this student’s student led over the (“vast”) history of our school. Students are surprised when I turn up (again). As are students that are my new “drop ins” that I will see the next year.

This is what I really love about my job though….the ability to see student growth. And what better time. It’s almost like the joy that you see in airport reunions. The joy and pride that you see in both parents and students…there’s a whole lot of love in those rooms.

Sitting having coffee with our head of mission on the way home (Starbucks is on our side), we chatted about where we’ve seen this before.

For me, major works night where a student who’s not been successful in any schooling in their life suddenly creates a beautifully crafted piece of work, and stands proudly by it while their friends ooo and ahhh, and parents snap photos. For Julie, similarly, seeing kids achieving in practical subjects like cooking….where kids who find their joy in places like this shine.  

For the kid in stage 2, who loves electric cars….he’s an industrial technology student hoping to survive school to make it through to where he can do industrial tech. And the kid in stage 3, that is an amazing artist and loves to draw.

This is what I love seeing. Joy that they’ve done something well. The first principal I ever worked for used to call year 12 kids in and tell them their grandparents wouldn’t care if the band 6 that they got their mention of in the paper for was construction. They care about the fact their grandsons name was in the paper.

This is what makes me makes me a bit sad when we talk about “other klas”.

Yes, literacy and numeracy are foundational and are essentials in learning.

But, to loosely quote Robin Williams, art, music, dance, this is what we live for. This is what we write and read about.

And for some of our kids, this is what they drag their bodies through school for. To once a week learn about torture in medieval Europe (HSIE excursion today), or to work in the makerspace to laser cut or just to even sand timber for an hour.

How can we tap into this excitement for learning in science and music to encourage kids to write?

We can start by figuring out what to call them other than “other klas” because honestly, every time I hear the term, I read the word “unimportant” in the middle of them. “Other unimportant klas”. And for those kids whose love of music, art, science, technology, HSIE or PDHPE, what kind of message are you sending to that student? That where they find their joy is “unimportant”. That it’s less.

And because every time we say “other klas” they are the time that gets interrupted. It’s the time when we put on assemblies and masses, when we have excursions and carnivals.  Because they’re the “other klas”

Remember: this is what we live for. This is what we read and write about. Let’s start bringing that message to our students.

Prodigal:

1. spending money or using resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.”prodigal habits die hard”

1. 5 2.
   having or giving something on a lavish scale.”the dessert was prodigal with whipped cream”

Our staff spirituality day started today with the Lectio Devina of the prodigal son, and a discussion led by the St Lukes Faith Community  Pastoral Director, Tony Hoban.

This was my first experience of the Lectio Devina and it was interesting that this was done with the prodigal son story. For me, as someone with, let’s say “prodigal” sibling/s, I’ve always really empathised with the “good” brother in this parable, and it’s always been something I struggle to understand, to get my head around the parable. Yes, I understand that it’s about Jesus’ forgiveness, but it’s one of the few bible passages that I have always grappled with.

Today, though, Tony said an interesting thing that I flipped my perspective of this parable. He said, some people say that it should be the story of the Prodigal father.  Think of it: he’s overly generous, bountiful in his forgiveness, unstinting in his love for his son.

Wow.  For those of us that are parents…..what wouldn’t you do in generosity for your children. What couldn’t you forgive?  The story changed for me then to be about the generosity of the father rather than being caught up in how much I related to the rejected son.

And this parable is something that I’ve struggled with a long time. This one thing changed my whole perspective of this parable.

This started me thinking about perspective in general. How many people empathise instantly with one side of any discussion. Some great conversation at our table today about this. When students approach you with an issue, how many times are you truly unbiased and listen to both sides of the story. Do you give students the opportunity to? Are you prodigal in your offering of support?  We discussed at our table how difficult it was when there were arguments…do you get caught up in what you’re upset about, like the older son, or do you freely celebrate like the younger.

Or, are you like the father who generously lavishes his son with love.  For me, this is now the story of extravagant love, not extravagant waste.

Thanks Tony for the change in perspective. 

There’s a few questions at the moment as to what we do differently at St Luke’s. Sometimes when you are immersed in change all the time, it’s hard to think about what you do differently, because you don’t see it so much as different…it becomes your frame of reference, and your new norm. I thought I would use this blog post to unpack some of the things that are a little different in stage 4 at St Lukes.

Students at St Luke’s work towards the application of their skills as part of our inquiry process where students are asked to apply their learning to practical experiences that transfer their knowledge into new contexts. All learning within the unit of work leads towards their greater understanding of how to complete this project.

In some subjects, we have flexible integrations across subjects where integration fits. For example, HSIE, English and Religion are timetabled together in year 7 and 8, where those topics that have a natural alignment are connected together, and those that don’t fit together, are conducted as standalone topics. Students completeinquiry units under an inquiry cycle where students engage in units of work that have a product at the end of that unit, and all learning is directed to that product. Students work through the inquiry cycle pictured left, where students work to understand a problem like “How do we change the value of water in the world?”. Students then work through the cycle where teachers assist them to understand the problem, immerse themselves in skills, capabilities and knowledge in order to create an object to demonstrate their learning. In the case of the project above, students construct a documentary, utilising their skills learnt through their study in English, where the study of film, and more specifically, documentaries are the focus. At all stages, students are asked to reflect on their learning in order to understand where they are in the problem solving process and what they can do, and what they can do better. 

Students are then asked at the end of the project to blog about their progress, how they’ve achieved the outcomes, and the appropriate general capabilities, expressed in our pillars, and are asked to provide evidence for this. This then is their method of assessment, and their planning for student led conferences at the end of every six month period, and then built as a portfolio of their work for later years.

In some cases, connections occur when subjects are not timetabled together. In visual arts, music and technology, subjects are working to complete an animation where the media skills are taught in technology, soundtrack in music and drawing and art skills in visual arts. This project occurs across multiple subjects that are not run at the same time, but where consistant teaching staff allow the bridge between subejcts.

 In English and HSIE, students are studying survival, what makes a livable environment, while doing a text study of a number of novels that utilise the same theme. Within a classroom then, you can see a rich in depth study of content that enables teachers to reduce the amount of repetition across subjects, and increase the depth. In this case, students are constructing a map of a livable space, and writing a short story that is set in that livable space. This involves explicit teaching around what makes a livable space, how to write an interesting narrative, feedback, drafting and refinement processes around their writing. Throughout this unit of work, all content and skills are directed towards an understanding of the end product. Throughout the unit, a pathway for students might look like:

Traditionally, there is a lot of repeated content across KLA’s. The food pyramid, for example, is studied in technology, PDHPE and science in stage 4. However, there’s not much more to learn than the food pyramid and the positions of various food groups. Where connections exist between subjects explicit links are made by those teachers, simply by constructing a single scope and sequence rather than 9 different ones. This allows teachers to make connections to other subjects, simply by doing them at the same time. For example, below, students study the value of water in HSIE, while testing water quality in science with a social justice theme that is enhancing catholic values taught in RE. Science and HSIE having the consistent theme of water is also emphasised by a data collection and analysis focus that is explicitly taught in maths, then applied across engineering units in technology, science and HSIE. This allows students multiple access to the same content, but in a way that is applied, so that they are able to use the content and skills, not just learn about them.

At St Luke’s stage based self paced approach to maths and science allows us to differentiate for students across the stage more effectively. Having two or sometimes three teachers in the class with 60 students means that students can throughout the classroom students will work independently, self pacing appropriate content, with consistent formative assessment allowing teachers to target specific needs throughout the unit of work. This may be addressing student misconception, accelerating student learning, or targeting elements of work where students do not understand. This means that students can go forward with their learning and follow areas of interest in depth.
Students work independently on computer systems that allow us to formatively assess and then address specific needs throughout a unit of work. These AI based systems allow us to have a detailed vision, in the form of a curriculum grid of each students ability across domains and target work towards a students zone of proximal development. This means that students work towards specific personal goals, which are measured every two weeks against effort, accuracy and improvement.

In Languages, students are offered a chance to select their language at the beginning of the year, and then, within the same classroom, workshops are offered by teachers within the focus area, with the teaching of inquiry based units within languages.

In the NSW Curriculum, students are required to study a single language over a continuous 12 month period. At St Lukes, we study languages in year 7, in the 100 hours required by the syllabus. It is expected that students build knowledge and understanding of sound and writing systems, and vocabulary, and analyse and develop understanding of grammatical structures and features. They reflect on the interrelationship between language, culture and identity while experiencing other cultures and diversity. 
Most schools allocate a language based on teacher expertise, as opposed to student interest, however students develop their language skills by participating in a range of activities that involve:

• interacting with the teacher and peers in the classroom, and with known adults in a range of situations
• accessing and responding to a range of texts, including authentic materials
• composing a range of spoken, written, digital and multimodal texts.

With this in mind, at St Lukes’ Catholic College in 2019, with a focus on integrating choice within the classroom, we offered students the choice of language that they would like to study in year 7. Due to requirements from NESA, that we must study a single language within a 100 hour continuous block, so students are unable to change the language once they have started. However, students across year 7 have chosen from Italian, French, Spanish, Aboriginal Languages and Mandarin Chinese. All students were able to study their first choice of these languages, so all languages offered aside from Aboriginal Languages are being currently studied by Year 7 at St Luke’s, within the same classroom with common assessments and teaching and learning processes. In addition to this, AI platforms were explored to assist with students self pacing through the curriculum, as well as providing diagnostic support, were real time response to students needs can be used to support student learning.

Students at St Luke’s study future focussed technology education where students, rather than creating a traditional pencil box and dust pan and broom, boxer shorts and nachos, are using computer aided design technologies to design and develop electronic cars. These projects focusing on designing 2D and 3D drawings, undertaking a process of continual improvement through prototyping processes, where students work in teams to iterate and test their prototypes in order to develop the best solutions. Students are using CAD and CAM technologies such as laser cutters, CNC mills, 3D printers and vinyl cutters, with a focus on collecting, analysing and displaying data. In this way, students are learning to follow a design process, iterate design solutions, and then gives them the technology skills to construct, package, present and market solutions to problems.

Comment from parent on open night tonight “so what I love about this is that you’re asking them to apply their learning”

Comment from student in a student evaluation about what they’d learnt from a recent project: “never give up”

These are the things that we need to think about when challenged that doing something different is somehow bad.  We need to remember:

Question everything is one of those instructions that you get when you come into a school open to learning. The opposite of that is “that’s just the way we do things here”.

“That’s just the way we do things here” is a frustrating epitaph that I’ve heard over and over again in previous settings. It’s the death to innovation. You want to do that differently? My two least favourite sayings “that’s just the way we do that here” teamed with “you don’t understand”. Generally at the beginning. “You don’t understand that’s just the way we do things here”

I hear the opposite of that at St Lukes almost  every day. “Can I try this?” Almost like a “Absolutely….that’s just the way we try new things here”.  Our “yes is the default” attitude to suggestions of doing new things isn’t a carte blanche to do whatever you want but is guided by leaders that question, probe, allow to run, pull back, guide, let run again and redirect. Its our job to both make sure that teachers don’t stop doing the same.

Data seems to be a never ending story as a teacher now a days. Naplan and PAT-R, diagnostics, tests, assessments and MAIs. So many acronyms, so many numbers. But what’s the point really?

We collect an array of data on kids, look at it, go “ooo, this kid is good at that and needs help here…” then we leave it.

Why?

Because as a secondary teacher, you teach generally between 200 and 300 students a year.

Well, actually in a fortnight.

In fact, I remember one year a teacher (in a previous setting) having 13 classes. That’s about 415 students. A friend of mine had 390 students in her first year of teaching. It’s hard to keep the names straight from lesson to lesson. Then, tracking student achievement so that you know where students are up to in your subject matter, assessing against 15 odd outcomes for each child for each class,  catering for diverse needs, or even remembering them in class…it’s hard work.

For my teacher friend with 390 students, on average 15 outcomes a course, that’s 5,850 outcomes to report against. Wow.

Add to that the marking…and for those 5850 outcomes….consider this…a dear friend of mine currently teaching Engineering just collected engineering reports from students in year 11….the length of student responses ranged from 17 pages to 56. 12 point Times New Roman. For a 20% task. A general Industrial Technology or Design and Technology folio is 80 pages long.

The life of a teacher is hard.

While marking these 80 odd page portfolios, you are also sometimes working with students who can’t read at above a primary school level, who are expected to construct an 80 page response, along with a four page essay response, timed, within the HSC…and expected excellence within this, because in the HSC, one mark can make a difference.

So, what’s the point?

The point is that it helps us to know the student. Looking at data can help us to understand at a base level, what students will possibly have difficulty with, things that they are strong at, and things that we can support and focus on across a grade level. When you look at the data that we collect from our Maths Pathways system, that is utilised across stage 3 and 4 at St Luke’s, you can see the power of this data collection.

Let’s look at this student below, who is currently sitting in year 5 at St Luke’s. The light yellow shows maths that he has already achieved in the first 8 weeks of stage 3. He has most of the elements of maths from year 1 through to year 8, with some elements of advanced maths in year 10 already achieved. Would we have been able to see this if we didn’t have this system? Does this data come up on an MAI? And now that we have this data, what do we do with it?  We now have a moral imperative to act on this data. Does this student even like maths? Yes, he tells me, his reason for coming to school in the morning. Do you find it difficult? No, sometimes it’s a bit boring because it’s too easy.  Would you be interested in doing something a bit more difficult? Oh yes.

On the other hand we have students who are having difficulty in single strands of maths…that are up to the level that they need to be in every area except, say, geometric reasoning. Why are we making them sit through algebra at a level below what they understand when they are missing particular elements that we can then address individually, or within group workshops.

So if this is a moral imperative, how can we do this when we’re trying to “focus” on 300 odd students (5,870 outcomes), when we’re in class, and we have so many different data sets, how do we quickly figure out where a student is “at”?  How can we put faces on this data? How can we make student data more accessible so that not only do we bring up a student’s mathematics data from Maths Pathway, their NAPLAN data and their PAT-R data at the same time, because we know that a students ability to demonstrate achievement in mathematics is often  affected by their ability to read and understand the question?  How do we track data so that we can make improvement in students over time, so that we can look at student reading, writing and numeracy data at the same time, while also reading data about their abilities within capabilities. And how can we make this accessible for teachers not only in their breaks, but while they are doing the work? In a way that doesn’t require too much work from a teacher, as they’re marking their 1000 odd pages of work (like my Engineering teacher friend).

I’ve thought about this a lot over the past 7 weeks, and have spent some time exploring some different solutions. What I really wanted was something accessible for teachers, where they could take notes on each student within their classes, which could then be shared across multiple teachers. So, when a teacher discovers a strategy with student X, that works with that student when it comes to say, reading, they could add it to the note and instantly have this available to the teacher on the next period class. So, when you are sitting in a class and you notice that a particular student is lost, you can search this online system and have it display data instantly on the student…a card for their reading, one for writing, one for numeracy….one for their ability to create, one to think critically, to witness, to manage self, relate to others, and to inquire.

Utilising Google Keep, we’ve been able to do this and have this double as a digital, portable, instantaneously accessible data wall, that can also sit as a data wall in the staff room, continuously projected on a screen so that teachers can have discussions and constantly have student levels “in their face”.

So, a teacher can tag a student for case management, for diverse needs, for a particular level of ability, for a class, and for a subject. So we can then filter instantaneously for these students. We can also search for an individual student and see all their cards. More importantly, we can see students moving up, down, or getting stuck. We can attach notes about students, or in the case above, samples of their work for close examination.

It’s all about working smarter, not harder. How can we know our students better, when you have the faces of hundreds of students going past you in a fortnight. We all know that knowing our students and how they learn is an essential part of being able to be the best teacher you can be.

Let’s figure out how we can do this without being overloaded with numbers, acronyms and spreadsheets.

If you’ve been in teaching for the last four or five years and you don’t know that feedback has a significant effect on learning, then you’ve had your head under a rock. My “ideal” of feedback would be when I see a good PE teacher teach practical….the constant calls of both encouragement and critique from the sidelines of the game while students play. Every student gets something…the students like me as a kid get encouragement to move, those more athletic get the feedback that they need to finesse their skills and become experts. Everything that PE teachers do in terms of feedback is formative. Everything is given feedback to improve the students skills for the future.

So, how can we make this constant feedback happen in every classroom without teachers taking home suitcases full of marking every day? And then how can we ensure that students are utilising the feedback that we give them?

For the past 6 months or so, we’ve been trialling software at our school to improve student writing. Scribo allows students to get instantaneous feedback on their writing through analysis of those things that software does really well and allows teachers to focus on things that they do really well. Scribo will allow students to self check their writing against 6 elements: Topic sentences, cohesive, paragraphs, vocabulary, sentences and spelling and grammar. The self check module allows students to highlight and change those things that combine to make good writing. For example, in the cohesive section, it will highlight that a student has used the word “and” 32 times in a paragraph, and then the student can use the connective explorer to determine whether there are some better word choices, or to decide whether sentences have become “run ons”. Students can then modify their work to include better punctuation and separate these into different sentences. All of this can be done without the assistance of the teacher, just with the software.

The real power from this software though, comes from the ability to give collective feedback. Once students write their responses, the system then analyses and gives feedback for the collective, and for the individual. This gives extensive feedback around different elements of writing, which students can check themselves, or the teacher can check. Previously, when I was teaching year 12, I would get everyone to write out a response in an essay which I would then take home, mark, then photograph on my iPad the best responses, and also some middle range responses, project these on the screen and as a class, annotate and discuss where the marks came from. With Scribo, it does the analysis and selection of those paragraphs, without the use of the teacher. Here’s then where the learning comes in. A group of students can write a response, and within 5 minutes the teacher can have feedback and can discuss what was good about the good work, without having to mark them, and within five minutes of them responding, while the feedback is still timely enough to be relevant.

As a teacher too, collectively, I can look at the analysis and pull out features, for example, vocabulary collectively. So, lets’ look at the vocabulary we’ve used as a class. You are presented with a word cloud of high-frequency words across all responses…you can then target your teaching specifically around vocabulary, which is an identified need based on that analysis, brainstorm further vocabulary that can be used, reflect on this as a class, and ask them to go back and refine their work prior to it being processed and analysed again. This could be done a number of times before you attempt to go in and grade the work based on content. In this way, the students are doing the work to refine their work, not the teacher. In the vein of “those that are doing the work are doing the learning” this refinement teaches students better about features of writing than receiving a response a week (or 6) later that is filled with feedback form the teacher.

I’ve been told that I have a few idiosyncrasies. There are some things that I’m very passionate about. One might say obsessive. The outlawing of comic sans, magenta fonts, underline headings, the use of Microsoft paint, wiz and Weebly for projects, salted caramel (really….this is a thing?), sweet and savoury combined, soggy bread (should have discussed this before I got married), the use of the terminology “a” PBL (aside from grammatically incorrect, implies that there’s just a project, not a pedagogy) and lastly…okay, let’s be honest it’s not going to be lastly….the distinction between a workshop and a masterclass.

My point being here, is that there should not be one. When I run workshops in my classes, it’s to learn something. For every student that should be extending their learning. So, for a student who doesn’t know how to spell, that workshop is appropriate. For students who need to structure sentences better…they workshop this. The workshop, then should become a norm in the classroom…every student attending workshops at their level, for their need at their needed time.  This is when open pedagogy  with multiple teachers teaching more than one to thirty becomes very powerful. This differentiation should now become the normal happening in the class. No longer is there a master class for a smart kids, and workshops for others. Every student participates in a range of workshops catered for their need. And, in our classroom, students should see them as opportunities to learn new things, which is constantly happening in targeted groups…no matter what level that skill is at. 

This is where we then see shift…whee we can support and extend students in workshops where they’re not seen as pullout programs, as extra hits or as extra support….but all kids learning with a teacher or students at their level, where they might attend some workshops designed to extend, and some to support, but in the end, it’s all just “learning” 

Students need to work in groups. This is something that adults have to do all the time within their work, and a skill that employers are telling us that is both necessary and absent from the current generation of students coming out of schools.  The problem is that throwing students into groups and letting them learn through failure, while ultimately (with appropriate analysis and reflection) is teaching them how to facilitate group work, it is a very slow and heartbreaking process. In addition, this is the quickest way to get student complaints about how the group is functioning. And, by the time that you have gotten through the process of working through and adjusting and negotiating for students, you are tired, and you have decided that you will never ever do group work again.

 Dr Bruce Tuckman published his model of group dynamics in 1965 and this is still relevant today. Think of a group that you have ever worked in while looking at the Tuckman model.  Firstly, a group forms. This is the initial process, where groups are created, introductions made and ice breakers (either formal or informal) are conducted. This is the happy family stage, where everyone is being nice to each other, as, essentially the group are strangers, and generally, as a human race, we are polite to strangers. This is the time to set goals and overall vision.  

Next, is the storming process. This is the component where people resist, some quietly and passively, some vocally and publicly. This is the time when people are starting to test each other, get to know each other better, and can sometimes be defensive, take sides and resist ideas, sometimes, just for the sake of it.

The third process is the norming stage, where people start to “settle in” and work together for common goals. Finally, the point to the group work is the performing stage, where everybody gets together and is a functional and productive team.  Ideally, this is where most of the time is spent within the team, as this is obviously the most productive way to work. Ideally, a group project should look like this:

However, sometimes our groups look more like this, where the performing component is the smallest part of the group project. This is what many of our group projects look like, and what ideally we want to avoid.

Even the following has its disadvantages, though. If you are in a group that doesn’t have a storming process, you will find that there is no innovative ideas happening, or people are just accepting the status quo in order to move on to the work. This can be counter-productive to good ideas.

As teachers we want to make students learn the most from their experiences, and ensure that everyone is getting their ideas across, that there’s a high performance percentage and that everyone is doing the work. So, what can we learn from Tuckman?

Firstly, I think that students can benefit from hearing about Tuckman, as it makes normal for students the process of storming. If students understand that this is a normal part/process of being within a group, this can minimise the stress of the storming process. In any relationship, storming is a normal part of the learning process, as you learn each other’s normal ways of working (your norms).  This brings us to the next thing we can learn from Tuckman, though….what if you could shorten the storming process by sidestepping it and going to the norming process? Essentially, we do this as teachers every time we start a new year. We step into the classroom, and we set expectations (or normal processes that our classroom will run) every year. What if we can teach students to perform this process? What if this process then, changed the way that language was used within the groups? Changed the way that students contacted and related to each other? The way that they encouraged each other to complete work?  

One process of allowing students to set norms is through development of a group contract. Students should create this themselves and discuss those things that are expected norms within their group. Students’ should start by making a list of the dysfunctions they’ve already had in other group work tasks, and then a list of the features of groups that have been functional. This is a great place to start a discussion about what behaviours work, and what don’t work when learning in groups.  These contracts can also then be used by teachers to guide discussions on group expectations when issues arise. Contract writing does take time. The first time that you do this, it may be a whole period of teaching. This seems like a lot of time, but it’s not only the contract that’s being written here, it is the discussion that happens between students as to what they expect within this time working together. This sets the entire tone for the project.

Some things to consider that can be included in the group contract:

• Do they want to make a norm that all students are sitting with the group at all time?

• Do they want students to do their homework all the time?

• How will they make decisions as a group?

• What process will they use if they can’t make those decisions?

• What should be each member’s expected contribution to the team?

• What are consequences of not following the group contract?

While the group contract is paramount in importance in having students set expectations of each other, it is also important for the teacher to set expectations and accountability.  This can be done formally through the use of the rubric, through teacher observation and peer feedback. You as the teacher will not know every moment of every interaction within the group, but you can formalise this with a series of teacher observations throughout the process.  This not only means that you are judging the interactions of each group member, but also gives you the reminder to stop by every group every lesson to see how they are progressing. You could also make this judgement from afar, using a checklist of expected behaviours of group members (both positive and negative). If students know that you are doing this, but not when you are doing it throughout the project, positive group interactions will increase. Another way to assess this is through the use of peer feedback. Intel have an excellent rubric for this. (Which can be used here as a google form) Students are asked to judge on their co-operation, feedback, time management, listening and participation. It is also worthwhile to get students to reflect on their own abilities in this rubric too, as a form of self reflection. Teacher intervention when students have problems is also important. We need to remember, that adults working in the workplace have issues with their teams, and often have intervention in terms of processes or people to go to intervene on issues.  While norming can help the amount of issues, there will still be issues that occur within the group. Having some sort of timeline of the process to follow if there are issues makes it easier for students to initially self manage and to learn processes involved in managing people.

While management procedures are the first thing in every teacher’s mind, task design and group selection are processes that can bypass many issues prior to the group work starting. A good task, that has clear expectations for students, that could not possibly be done by one or two students at the exclusion of others, with all students requiring input, thinking and learning around every element of the task is the holy grail of group tasks. The best way to see if your task does this is to try it, be truly reflective when it doesn’t work, and modify it for the next year. However, in order to bypass this try-fail process, it is best to give your assessment task to as many teachers as possible to get their opinions on how it can improve. Many teachers have tried group work before, and like any method, getting people who have tried and critique your idea is a good way to bypass it not working in the first place. This takes time, and a hard skin, but is for the betterment of the task in general.

Some things to consider in the development of the task:

• Can the project be split into the same number of pieces as the number of students in a group? If so, this may be a group task, but the students are not required to work together in order to achieve the outcome. What generally happens here is that each student knows their own area well, and not any of the others.

• Think of the marking…is there a way to have an individual mark for contribution as well as a mark for the group, so that students marks are reliant on each other, but also so that they have some ownership over the effect of their own mark.

• How can you get students to need to work together to complete the project?

• Are student roles evident? Could students rotate through roles, so that everyone has an opportunity to lead, or do you want to include different types of students together?

Group structure and student roles are also an important issue to address within the process of designing a group task. There are many different ways to select groups, and lots of research done on this process that is worthwhile reading. Some ways to select groups include:

• Student selected

• Student selected partner, groups of two then selected to go with another group of two by the teacher

• Putting like personalities together

• Putting like knowledge/skill levels together

• Mixing personalities

• Comprehensive knowledge/skill groups

• Ranking students and selecting from the same “block” of ranks

• Totally random

• Totally random, then move the students that you know will not work together

• Allow students from the top of the previous task to (not in front of students) nominate groups

The main thing with group selection, and indeed, with group work in general is that when you leave school to go to the workforce, you do not get to select the people that you work with, and you are generally not going to be amazing at group work the first time you do it. Neither will your students. The types of skills that we have discussed here are those built up over time. Your first foray into group work may be successful. It may not be. But like every skill, the more you practice, the more that students will learn their own processes that they can use to manage themselves and others. The final key to effective group work then is to just do it. Practice, reflect, and practice some more.

Further Readings that include strategies for group work

https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/design/instructionalstrategies/groupprojects/compose.html

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/group-work-are-student-selected-groups-more-effective/

https://sydney.edu.au/education_social_work/groupwork/docs/BenefitsOfGW.pdf

https://student.unsw.edu.au/groupwork

http://www.uq.edu.au/student-services/learning/problems-associated-group-work

I was so very impressed with my first session at the ACCE conference last week.  Anne Mirshint spoke about video conferencing in the classroom…this is something that I’ve read all the books on years ago, have been to sessions before, and have used things like google hangout in the classroom to access experts. Highlight of my video conferencing was last year skyping a NASA scientist who spoke about the work that was being done on the international space station and why it would be done there and not on earth. It was pretty cool, and kids were really excited about the whole thing. Even just the idea of talking to a (Real) scientist was a great opportunity for students. So, I thought I was all over this video conferencing thing.

I was so impressed with not only the work that Anne had done with this in her classroom K-12, but also the deep understanding that she has as to why this was important. Anne works in a rural area and as we know, as you get more rural in Australia, as you move away from the capital cities, there is less diversity in terms of culture. And she spoke very well about the richness that this provided students in their understanding of other cultures. But, we also have this in the middle of the city.

One of the things that I was very lucky with in my own high school education was that my high school was failing (it was really really bad)….but in doing so, had opened up as an intensive english centre and an adult education centre at the same time (in order to fill a class). This meant that half of my classes were made up of students who were newly arrived into the country and spoke no english, to 60 year olds that had decided to go back to school to do their HSC. So my high school education was very, very diverse. However, even in schools in the middle of Western Sydney, where I’ve spent most of my life (Moved from Greystanes to Greystanes) this isn’t the case all of the time. Sometimes, what looks like diversity is masking a mono or duo-culture that is not anglo-european. And as our filter bubbles provide us continually with information that we expect to see, you could argue that diversity of opinions, cultures and conversations are ways to ensure that we are avoiding self fullfilling ideas.

I was very impressed with Anne’s creating connections to people overseas through the use of video conferencing where even just having a shared breakfast with people allowed them to discuss the differences between the types of food they were having for breakfast…but this exposes them to different cultures, different accents, different writing styles. In quite a serendipitous moment, I just finished reviewing the new NESA syllabus docs for languages, (Yep, I read 8 lots of 180 page language documents….some of them (well one) quite literally in greek, I found myself looking at the opportunities that video conferencing as an opportunity for students to look at difference and diversity, to communicate, access and respond.  When looking at plans for languages for next year as to giving students choice of a language for the year, this gives a good opportunity for students to communicate with native speakers in different accents for different languages. Also, looking how this can be structured, Anne re-introduced me to some long forgotten presentation tools, like Voicethread, where students can interact and discuss verbally over multimedia…video, images, text. I saw this used years ago (in around 2011) in a history project, where students had to grow their discussions and respond to different students in a group based on an original image prompt. It’s one of those great tools that you just forget about over the years.

Anne was also generous enough to provide a plethora of links of ways to connect to people online to allow this to happen. For the short list, check these four out. For more, check out Anne’s list.…and follow her on twitter.

• Skype in the Classroom
• Skypeathon
• Classroom 2.0
• Global Education Conference