Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda

What a year it has been! 

A year of learning, confusion, change, challenge and hope.

A year of new ideas, adapted ideas and creativity.

Welcome back to another blog post catching up with the 'Learning Through Listening' project that has stimulated so much of the learning and ideas for this year. 

This year I have had the opportunity to work with the incredible MIT ( Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) team to investigate how to actively teach the 'act of deliberate listening' in the classroom... and now we are coming to the end of this journey.

Today we are meeting for the last time as a team for this year but this is not the end.

In a teaching environment children explore literacy especially through so many contexts. Children explore and learn interaction, social skills and oral language everyday through the natural management and context of the class. It is hard to genuinely differentiate how much progress has been made because of the effect of the listening skills taught. I say this to acknowledge the children themselves, their effort and learning, ideas and the implementation of DMIC maths which heavily supports  conversation and discussion in mathematics.

In saying this since the beginning of the year the children have grown in their confidence in speaking, listening and engaging with each other. When I started in term 1 I was looking a head to the skills that I hoped children would be learning by term 4. It is now encouraging to be looking further ahead to the skills that I have not year listed on the rubric that would be beneficial to their talking and engagement with each other.

So what is the difference I have seen in my children?

The norm in my reading groups in term 1 was most of the children would look at the floor. They waited until they were asked a question and then answered the question by speaking to me( the teacher). I struggled with this a lot. But started the journey with the goal being simply to look at each other and greet each other by name when we arrived in our group.

The contrast in term 4 is wonderful. The children in the groups come ready to share and look at each other while they are sharing. I start with a key question sometimes find myself needing to interrupt and ask for a pause in the conversation to redirect or bring the focus to evidence or the original question. Often in reading or maths I now ask a child to summarise and redirect back to what the question was. Often children who are asked to summarise will ask for the original question to be repeated. Children are also challenging each other regularly and are happy to challenge myself as the teacher using phrase like, "I disagree with that because..." or  "Mrs T, I would like to challenge that because before you said... " 

These conversations fill me with delight as it is clear evidence that a child has heard and processed an idea shared by someone else and has  the confidence to voice what they have processed and heard. They are giving feedback on what another child has said.

This is the positive. 

In reflection, there is still so much to do. The educational world is constantly updating and I need to as well. As a team we took some time to share what we would have done at the beginning of the year if we knew what we knew now, what we could have done had lockdown not struck, and what we should have done. 

Woulda

If I could go back to the beginning of the year I would have connected sooner with more experts that I had identified at the first hui. The value in having experts and feedback from the early stages of this journey would have been invaluable. 

Secondly, seeing the world through a different digital lense after distance learning has been implemented has changed the way we connect and added an online aspect I would have liked to have this foresight and understanding to consider how we listen and connect online.

Coulda 

There is always the excuse that I could have done it except that COVID...

so I should leave this space blank. However,  Level 4 Lockdown was both exciting, stressful and stimulating. Designing and updating digital distance learning took most of my attention and passion. This diverted my energy and enthusiasm for developing my Listening Skills Project into a new digital educational age.

Shoulda

There are a million things that I should have done... if only I could boil the ocean and have more time. 

I should have made more videos of our group learning especially during maths and reading to show the progress and group listening skills which the children were practicing in these contexts.

 I should have taught more of these skills during lockdown when we were online and adapted them to an online context. I should have created an online listening page of the site.

So now...

All of those things I should have done, these are now my next steps. Please keep following me and if you haven't already click on the link below to take you to my 'Listening Through Learning Site'.

I would love your feedback and comments so please feel free to comment below or take 10 seconds to click on the feedback form linked to the site.

Nga mihi nui,

Alethea