Developing Authorship in a Co-teaching Partnership - Part 3

 WHAT?

This year the school has decided to use a vertical structure to move away from silos that happen with - Senior, Middle and Junior school. The names of these Whare Ako are Hinemoa, Ihenga and Kupe. Part of the learning for the children in their Whare Ako is to learn about the respective names and stories that make them special to our school and our local curriculum.

We had been working mostly on building routines and classroom culture for the first term. Also in this Term, we had George from the Rotorua Museum coming to share the story of Kupe and his journeys as an early explorer. Kupe is the chief who is said to be the founder of Aotearoa. After the session with George, the children were able to read the retelling of the story in one of the School Journals and listen to the audio.

To start our writing the children were given a graphic organiser called  a ‘Bare Bones’, this helps the children to order the events and help them to have a place of reference as they write. I had listed the main points into the planner, for the first session of writing the children wrote sentences that helped them plan their story. They were encouraged to use precise word choice and vocabulary that was essential to the story.

The teaching of this writing project was broken down into 4 parts over 2 weeks. We used the whole class teaching to start each day and used the 4 parts but most of the teaching was after we had looked at the books and identified the needs of the children. Some of the strugglers were buddied up and some children were encouraged to come to the workshop. 

The Kupe writing used the whole writing process - planning, writing, rewriting, editing and proofreading. It was the first time for many of the children to use red pen to improve the message of their writing and using a buddy to read aloud to. This enabled the children to work through and write an informative piece of writing that was also entertaining.

SO WHAT?

Being a larger piece of writing than the children had tackled before, it was important that we did it in smaller pieces and that the children could see how paragraphs worked. There was a good ‘buy-in’ from our children, especially those who find writing a struggle. It also helped that the children had been exposed to the story of Kupe a number of times as well. It gave them the knowledge to draw on to help their writing. Having an audio file also helped the strugglers to go back and listen so they could organise their ideas again.

I have no doubt that through this period, the children learnt the story of Kupe and can now retell the story whenever asked. We illustrated the story, enacted the story (parts of it), read the story and wrote our own versions. One child even typed up her story and sent it away to the Toitoi publication to be published. She has been successful as well, pretty impressive for a 7 year old!

NOW WHAT?

I have seen the value of breaking the task into smaller parts so that the children achieve success. Working and looking through the books has enabled us to target specific children so that they get the help they need, be it through buddies or workshops. We need to be mindful of this as we plan.

Using a variety of media to build knowledge helps the children to believe in their ability to write as they know and have the experience, they aren’t pulling the story out of thin air.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”

- Aristotle

Developing Authorship in a Co-teaching Partnership - Part 2

 WHAT?

When planning for the start of Term 2, My colleague and I decided to start off with a ‘Mother’s Day’ poem. I had used the structure and format with her child a couple of years previously and she still really loved it. 

The poem is one that uses metaphors to describe their mum. The structure is very precise and has a format that the children can easily adhere to. The first stanza starts with ‘My Mum is..’ followed by the next 3 lines using ‘She is..’

The lesson started with the children gluing in and reading the exemplar. The children had used metaphors before so we only needed to prompt them. My colleague read her son’s poem out to the class as a way to show them how much the poem meant to her. As part of the lesson, we also used ‘knee to knee’ talking so the children could share their ideas.

Before the children wrote, we co-constructed some metaphoric sentences together - My mum is a teddy bear, squeezing my fears away. She is a blanket warming us all to the core. By this time the children were eager to write, some had started. The children were given the task of writing the first stanza - using the correct structure.

After the lesson the books were collected and the children who needed more help were highlighted in our planning to work with the next day. Over the next couple of lessons the children were required to write a stanza each lesson using the same structure. The whole class lesson to start, worked on class prompting and modelling what a good metaphor was, asking some children to share what they had written so others would have some ideas.

By the last session, the children had published their poem using Google docs and decorated them with a border and then they had been laminated.

SO WHAT?

This poem is very achievable at this level and the children feel very successful when it is completed. By the end of the week, all the children had completed their poem as a gift for Mother’s Day. One child even wrote two, as she is part of a two-mum family. It also helped that my colleague shared her feelings about how special her son’s poem is to her. 

As part of the next week’s planning, we decided to use the same planning to write a poem about another special person in their lives. The format was the same and my colleague and I wrote our own metaphor poems as exemplars for the children.

Austin

My grandson is a firecracker waiting to be lit,

He is a bundle of energy, running in every direction,

He is the Joker playing tricks on his Dad,

He is a performer showing off his dancing skills.

My grandson is a loudspeaker across the paddocks,

He is the co-pilot giving directions,

He is the sous-chef helping his Mum in the kitchen,

He is a farmer who cares for his animals.

My grandson is a fish who jumps in and out of the water,

He is a miniature of his father,

He is the sweetest lolly that melts in our hearts.

My Grandma

My Grandma was a floral garden, always adorned in bright colours.

She was ocean blue eyes, twinkling at me when we spoke.

She was crisp snow, dressed in her tennis whites.

She was a giant pohutukawa - beautiful, knobbly, wrinkled and strong. 

My Grandma was an Encyclopedia, a Dictionary and an Atlas.

She was a master Gardener, always sharing the fresh veggies she’d grown.

She was a Baker making our favourite cheese scones every time we’d visit.

She was the Teacher helping us to learn more about our world.

My Grandma was bubble wrap, protecting us when we needed it.

She was an Explorer, teaching us how to find joy in the little things.  

She was a rally car driver of the sand cars we made at the beach.

She was the Rainbow in my sun shower. 

My Grandma is a taonga, and is always in my heart.

These poems were just as successful as their Mother’s Day poems although not all the children complete these, but not the same pressure as for Mother’s Day. 

NOW WHAT?

I have come to realise that the benefits for ideas comes with sharing with my co-teaching colleague. We build on the strengths of each other, this enables us to get the best from the students in our class. She is such a great wordsmith, often she writes the class story with some much more than I can. I have been teaching using the authorship platform for longer.

 

We need to continue to make these connections for authentic writing from the children. By finding these, the children feel empowered to write and their writing has purpose. But I know that we can use these skills across the curriculum as well.

“You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own.”

Ben Sweetland

Improving my understanding of Collaboration and Co-Teaching Part 5

 WHAT?

I made time to gather some data on the different co-teaching strategies that we have used in our class. It took longer than I expected to go through the Weekly Plan, Literacy/Reading and Maths plans and collate the hours that we have used in Term 1. I used the different strategies to align the time we used. 

Once I had recorded the when and what - I calculated the approximate hours that were used in the different strategies. I’m not totally convinced that I have used the correct formula to calculate this but there isn’t one that I could easily use without destroying our planning templates. Once I had put the percentages of time to the strategies, I could see the definite trends towards our all one-cell practices - small groups or splitting the larger class into 2 groups. 

Data

Using the Data Driven Dialogue template that Michael gave us for the work Britt and I were working with our team. This template asks questions, headings and sets up the facts to create next steps.

Analyse

SO WHAT?

 

Using the Data Driven Dialogue template, I could easily analyse my data and forge some next steps for my co teachers. We need to use the combination of larger group teaching to benefit all our learners and I don’t believe are optimizing its potential. The research for co-teaching is to make the most of all teaching strategies not just using small groups instead of the larger group.

I would like to see the breakdown of the other collaborative spaces and how they are sharing out the different teaching strategies. It would be interesting to see if there are trends for the older children as compared to our Year 3s and 4s.

NOW WHAT?

 

I would like to see more deliberate planning for the different strategies, what this looks like I am not too sure. Possibly our planning needs to have the symbols eg LGTT - Large Group Team Teaching. Something to discuss with my other teachers when we meet.

Also I need to investigate the different ratios that the other collaborative teams have, using LG verse SG. I wonder what the trends are. The Data Driven Dialogue template may help define this somewhat.

“Strong co-teachers solve problems together. In fact, that is the best part of co-teaching; you're never in it alone!”

• Marisa Kaplan

Developing Authorship in a Co-teaching Partnership - Part 1

 WHAT?

This year I am working on developing my pedagogy through Authorship and alongside the co-teaching practice. I am excited this year to be working in a collaborative partnership and I know that there is an expectation that I will be guiding the teachers I am working with, to develop their practice around Authorship.

Due to the fact that I have worked with Verity for most of last year, and have changed my pedagogy for the teaching of writing although there are aspects of this learning I have used in other areas of the curriculum. I have a couple discussions with Verity on how to make this work in our new space and when working with another teacher(s).

Together Verity and I talked about the setting out of the children for the main part of the teaching and how to deliberately make sure that there is flow and explicitly teaching happening. She shared some what she has seen with her guru, Gail Loane - How she captivated the students and the way she engaged with her audience through deliberate prompting, questioning, modelling and helping the children to dig deeper. Verity also remarked that she witnessed Year 7 & 8 children writing with intent.

As part of this discussion, I asked about positioning the children to optimise the learning space and time. We talked about a ‘rainbow’ formation and how this could work. I discussed this idea with my teaching partner(s) and we thought that we could give it a go. 

Another idea that Verity wanted me to try was to use her new planning template that uses - I do, we do, you do. The lesson is structured in such a way that first off - the teacher is modelling and prompting the children to NOTICE the text (language features used). Once the children have buy-in, the children are encouraged to share (with a buddy) a story/idea/ time that resonates with them and together with the teacher they write a piece together with the teacher scribing ideas (shared writing). Again when the children are ready - they write their own piece.

At this time, I was thinking about our new class and what we had noticed about their self management skills and how many of those who had come from PBL (Play-Based Learning) were struggling to work for longer or concentrated periods of time. Verity said that we needed to work on saying things like “..Good writers need time and space to think so being quiet is essential in order for you to get all those fabulous ideas down.” She also said that we need to make sure this is happening regularly and with purpose. If they can’t write, make sure that they have a buddy who knows what to do. I expressed my concern for those we have discovered that can’t actually record their ideas. Verity assured me that they are on the continuum but will need to either draw a picture, plan or copy what you have shared with the class.

SO WHAT?

 

Using a ‘rainbow’ formation is something for me to try that’s for sure. I like the idea of the children being able to see and focus on the board at one time. 53 children certainly is quite a number of children to deliver an explicit lesson to when they are so young.

I really liked what Verity said about pressing the children to write for longer periods of time to get more out of them. Verity is currently working with a Year 2 class and she is working with them to write for 40 minutes, actually writing not the lesson beforehand and after. I am struggling to see how this is possible when these children are in the thick of PBL. I will need to check in one day when she is taking a lesson at the lower end of the school. For our class this may work for smaller amounts of time and then over time extending them so that they can write for 40 minutes.

Verity has shared her planning that she would like me to try and is coming to observe how the lesson goes. This could be very interesting as it will be our first time doing an authorship lesson. I’m sure there will be a number of points that I will take away from her observation and where to go next.

NOW WHAT?

 

I need to make sure that I am sharing Verity’s planning with the other teachers and that they know what I am trying to achieve. I will need to break down the different aspects and the questions so that I understand the point I am trying to convey to the children. The plan is using a poem to describe and there are parts I can see working with our learning goals of following routines and understanding what to do in our classroom. I’m excited to use this plan but a little nervous because Verity is coming to observe and it’s the first time for authorship.

The rainbow formation is something I will introduce earlier so the children have some idea of what this is before we start authorship. Maybe writing our goals is a good place to start.

 

 “Every child deserves a champion—an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.”

- Rita Pierson

Improving my understanding of Collaboration and Co-Teaching Part 4

 WHAT?

The final webinar session was all about troubleshooting co-teaching - when things go wrong and review the previous learning from the other webinars. Mark Osborne also shared tools that we could use during the bumps and humps along the collaborative journey.

The troubleshooting information was split into 2 separate categories - removing barriers and taking action

Removing Barriers 

The infrastructure is important and the image below illustrates what needs to be inplace to give co-teaching the best chance of succeeding.

There are a number of challenges that we will face together.

To manage each of these challenges we need to be mindful of the key skills needed to work through these challenges. Level 1 and 2 are the teachers in a co-teaching situation. 

Another aspect that as co-teacher we need to be aware of what builds relational trust.

Taking Action 

Approaching conflict depends on the reason for making changes if there needs to be any, or understanding of what happened before, or the person’s passion - a number of factors can come into play before you tackle the problem. 

The Conflict Resolution Instrument is a way to deal with conflict and understanding. It is a powerful tool for dealing with conflict as it gives you a framework, giving you a variety of ways and how you should think about approaching conflict. Remembering that conflict can be good for learning.

SO WHAT?

 

The infrastructure needs to be in place for us, the five pillars are essential to making this work. There is some real unpacking for each other, and making sure that we set up the foundations.

There are constraints within the common timetable that needs to have flexibility so that we all have the opportunity to share our creative ideas. To do this we will need to use the co-teaching cycle to guide us on our approaches.

 

Our roles and responsibilities will need to be discussed early on so we each know where we stand. We need to ask each other what is needed of ourselves - Level 2 - Contributing Team Member. Are these the skills we are using?

We will need to build relational trust with each other by sharing the praise and taking blame (mirror and window), visibly work to get better at your job, be direct with people on issues, seek to understand why people do what they do, be open to being wrong and provide opportunities to share their strengths.

As part of the team, we will need to think about how we deal with conflict so that we don’t destroy relational trust. There are pros and cons depending on the situation and hopefully we stay in the collaborating space most of the time so that everyone wins. Time can be a factor if a decision needs to be made quickly.

NOW WHAT?

 

I have so many questions for my colleagues and I am wondering how to meet the challenges that we will face when they have missed out on this PD. It is becoming more important that they really need to check out the first 3 webinars before we met to discuss where to begin.

What will we see in our environment? In the children’s books? that says that we are on the same page?

Where to from here? Getting my colleagues on the same page. Maybe make a time to watch the first couple of webinars together, giving them the opportunity to check it out beforehand. I will do this next week - give them the heads up (front loading) and make time for a chat (informal). Then create a time to watch together and make some plans for where to next.

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is a success.” – Henry Ford

Improving my understanding of Collaboration and Co-Teaching Part 3

 WHAT?

The third session with Mark Osborne, again started with a review of the culture of co-teaching and the positives and negatives of setting up the culture so that you have a way forward. 

In this next session, we learnt about the specific approaches of co-teaching. The tree metaphor was used again to help cement our understanding. 

Being in a co-teaching situation, it is important to complement each other’s teaching and to make the most of the fact there are 2 teachers in the space. So if one teacher is leading a direct instructional sequence, the other could be taking notes on the whiteboard, making a mind map, asking questions, refocusing, working with a student who is struggling to follow. If one teacher is giving out a set of instructions, the other teacher is writing out the instructions on the white board, sitting with students who need extra help writing the instructions in their book, organising materials and resources needed for the activity. We were then given the opportunity to work collaboratively using a google doc on the specific co-teaching actions to add to possible ideas on what we could do while one teacher is teaching the main group.

We were introduced to 8 teaching approaches for co-teaching.

There are 4 large (L) and 4 small (S) group approaches -

LG#1 - One teach; one observe (1T,1O). One teacher leads the learning while the other observes. The observer could be learning by observation, providing feedback to a co-teaching partner, or gathering data about the teaching or the class. This is a time sensitive approach - 20 minutes review of learning.

LG#2 - One teach; one drift (1T,1D). One teacher leads, while another drifts to support the learners. The drifter could be clarifying and answering questions, refocusing and supporting positive behaviour, extending and/ or checking understanding.

LG#3 - One teach; one support (1T1S). One teacher leads while another supports or assists. The supporter could be taking notes, writing vocabulary, capturing questions, mind mapping, summarising, holding the equipment or operating the technology.

LG#4 - Team teaching (TT). When both teachers take equal responsibility for the teaching of the group. They could both be demonstrating together, role modelling a conversation or Q&A, hot seating, or checking each other’s work (role modelling tukana teina).

SG#1 - Parallel teaching. Teachers are doing the same activity with the same text to ensure the whole group has consistency of experience, working with groups of mixed ability rather than differentiated or targeted groups.

SG#2 - Station Teaching. Teachers are teaching in a small group setting. The children are offered a variety of activities, manages limited resources efficiently, it utilises teacher strengths to facilitate different activities. The children will rotate through the activities.

SG#3 - Targeted teaching. The teachers are running clinics and workshops targeted at the learning they need. It is a way maximise engagement by ensuring students are working on a skill that is appropriate and tied to their next learning step. It is also a way to keep a tight loop between student goals and learning activities.

SG#4 - Alternative teaching. The teachers are offering targeting support for a smaller group or individual. One teacher could be teaching a larger group, while the other is teaching a smaller more specialised group, supporting those children with specific learning needs.

Mark also gave us a number of scenarios of co-teaching and possible actions of the other teachers. He shared his code for the different approaches e.g. 1T/1S/Alt - One teach/ one support/ one takes an alternative (asessment / clinic).

 

Mark also stressed that here are not prizes for using all these approaches. At best 2 -3 for each learning experience.

SO WHAT?

 

By filling in the specific co-teaching actions with my partners, it will help with our expectations of each other and won’t leave too much to chance.

 

There are strengths and cautions of all of these approaches. 

 

 

It would be great to use the code for these approaches in our planning so we can evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches and create deliberate acts of teaching. Also being mindful of the effective use of time to use with the large and small groups to gain engagement for our learners.

 

NOW WHAT?

 

I need to work with my co-teachers and share the latest video so that they know what I am going on about. I would like to incorporate the code into our planning or colour code so we each know what is expected and what the deliberate acts are and make changes during our feedback sessions.

Part of me feels that I can do this as this is what I have done with student teachers in the past but this time I need to be mindful that we are on the same footing as far as teaching as co-teachers.

 

 

 “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” ~ Socrates

Improving my understanding of Collaboration and Co-Teaching Part 2

 WHAT?

 

As part of the 2nd webinar, Mark started with a refresher on the tree analogy (preparing for Co-teaching) and how they connected to the team culture of co-teaching – practice, infrastructure and culture. He also asked for some feedback on what resonated with us from the week before webinar.

 

It is important to understand what co- teaching as compared to what it isn’t.

 

 

The 5 Elements of Culture

 

1. Mahitahi (working to a common goal) – the team coordinates their work to achieve a small number of common, publicly agreed-on goals. These goals could relate to WHAT you want to achieve (teaching and/or learning, class culture, behaviour etc.) or HOW you will go about achieving it (team function, collaboration).

 

2. Pukenga (using each other’s strengths) – share a belief system that each of the co-teaching team members has unique and needed expertise.

 

3. Ako (learning from and with each other) - demonstrate parity by alternatively engaging in the dual roles of teacher and learner, expert and novice, giver and recipient of knowledge or skills.

 

4. Whakaroto (employing distributed leadership) – use distributed leadership whereby tasks and functions of the traditional lone teacher are distributed among all co-teaching group members.

 

5. Whanaungatanga (building and maintaining productive relationships) – use  cooperative processes that support collaboration including face to face interaction, interpersonal skills, trust, respect, positive interdependence, performance, monitoring, evaluating and individual accountability.

 

SO WHAT?

 

As part of building a great environment for my partner and myself, we need to work together to create our vision/goal for where we want to aim for – our Mahitahi and how we will use our principles and practices to make this happen for ourselves and for the benefit of our students.

 

 

One of things to do for our Mahitahi – we need to make sure we have understanding of what our/own expectations of what a ‘good’ team member  are. We need to unpack a few scenarios to understand each other’s perspectives and what ‘our’ 6-8 group norms are for meetings, planning, evaluating etc.

 

To establish Pukenga, we need to understand our strengths and each other’s strengths. We have started a ‘user manual’ already, my buddy has put in heaps and I have just scratched the surface. I do have some understanding of how she ticks – we need to do this also with our ‘other’ teacher that will be sharing our class. What grinds each other’s gears? Look at the possibility of doing personality tests – what kinds of people are we? We need to build a foundation of trust.

 

There is an expectation in Ako – there is a sharing of skills expectation where the importance of being a good learner is paramount. At times, I will need to be the lead, the expert in an area and at times I will be the learner in the situation learning from the others in the team. By using the tools such as ‘Spirals of Inquiry’, Inquiry circles and other reflective practice tools where we are looking at data on what we are doing well, what we can improve on ‘our’ problems of practice we are establishing a way forward.

 

To make Whakaroto work, we need to be mindful of how we operate day to day, making sure that we still do what we do in our own classes and not default expectation for sorting out behaviours to one person, teaching the same ‘ curriculum’ content and leaving one person with an uneven amount of work to do – we will need to establish distributed leadership early on and be flexible to make changes to this as the year progresses. We need to think about our skills and adjust what we do according to the competence and commitment of the team members.

 

Whanaungatanga is so important and communication demands increase – some is day to day, business as usual, or there may be time where face to face communication is essential. Infrastructure will be needed – emails, online google sheets etc. We need to use tools and opportunities to share communication. How will we use assessment – collection and data to plan?

 

 

 

 

 

NOW WHAT?

 

Looking forward, I need to establish a relationship with my co-teaching team and create a way forward together without taking over. I need to be mindful of creating goals for myself – holding onto my ideas lightly and being prepared to challenge my own ‘norms’.

 

I am excited to be working with these colleagues and I am aware that we are all at different stages of family life needs, this is where communication will be key to helping us through the ‘trickier’ times and guide us forward.

“There’s always a new challenge to keep you motivated.” ~  Sean Connery