Learning Through Listening

Do your students look at you blankly?
Do they speak to you during group sessions and not to each other?
Are they in tune with what you say and don't take each other's ideas seriously? 

These are some of the challenges that I believed needed addressing in the classroom and wanted to create something that would teach children how to engage with each others ideas.

What skills do we expect children to do naturally that could be explicitly taught?

I have created a site that breaks down the individual skills to listening and engagement. This includes the resources and assessments I am developing along with some modelling videos.

You can access the site through the link below:

Learning Through Listening

I would very much appreciate your feedback using the link found at the bottom of each page as I am still developing this resource and would like to make it as helpful and applicable to your classrooms as possible.

Nga mihi nui!

Next Steps

Kia ora readers and colleagues,

I am writing to you from the seat of AirNZ A320 happily masked up and brain buzzing with next steps for my MIT 2020 project. 

I was happy enough to hop on a plane for the first time since our Level 4 lockdown and head over to Auckland for an elongated weekend. 

  

Our small collection of teachers which had been restricted to meeting via google since the beginning of the year were delighted to reunite on the Auckland waterfront. We enjoyed a day of sharing and feedback along with wonderful hospitality from the team at KPMG.

This was just the incentive and reboost that I needed and am very grateful for the ideas and feedback shared by the team.

Learning Through Listening: A Website for Teachers

So I have some next steps which I am currently working through to achieve.:

Create Google Forms for Assessment and Feedback

Sonali shared an assessment which she had transferred into google form. This was a brilliant idea from a teacher perspective because it would be easy to replicate. I or any other teacher could fill it in quite simply once it was created. This could also be easily duplicated and adapted as a student self- assessment. So I am currently creating two google forms using the criteria from the orginal rubric which I designed earlier.

I have also created a feedback form for the site which is accessible at the bottom of each page of the site and can be filled in here.

Set up Google Analytics and Video Group Sessions

I have yet to set up google analytics on the site and video group sessions during reading and maths. These are the current top priorities.

Get the Site out there!

The second major priorty is to promote the site and get it out to teachers in order to gain feedback and to see if it is something that others find useful.

Data and Evidence

Data will be very important for backing this idea. Once the forms are created I need to get the students to self assess. I will also need to scale them on the rubric and compare the data to term 2s data from this year. Data from listening PATs is unlikely to be available until term 4.

 

Keep your eyes peeled for the next post promoting the new site! It may even pop up on your facebook feed! I look forward to your comments and feedback! 

Nga mihi nui,

Alethea

MIT2020: Mission in the Making

What a mission.

Lately, I have been thinking about the missions I have been tasked with or tasked myself with. And missions that others have been tasked with too.

On the weekend, my partner, his brother and I tasked ourselves with the mission of tackling a ridge for the sunrise, up a valley on the West Coast of the South Island.

There are so many parts to a mission, from waking up early, braving pre-dawn swamp darkness, to navigating rain slicked boulder fields and false summits.

I think about Dorothy Burt, the instigator to this MIT journey and her mission to achieve equity for students through connection, devices and ubiquitous learning.

And I think about the mission I chose: to teach listening. 

Kia ora and welcome to my blog where I am journeying through the design process to develop a project on a challenge based idea.  I am one of a team of MIT team (Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) You may have visited some of these posts before. If you are interested use the MIT2020 label to follow the progress of this project on my blog.

It's great to have you here!

Since the last post, my next steps were to record some student voice, create video models of each listening skill ( broken down) and pull all this information together onto a site for teachers to access.

I was grateful for two days of release time to connect with a great bunch of students who gave of their time and energy to help record and share their ideas.

This was the first time I had deliberately recorded students for a teaching video.

It was a pleasure to work with them and to figure out what it really was that I wanted to capture.

Some of the learning gleaned:

• Multiple camera angles make a difference.
• Many takes are required.
• Scripting is important.
• Always plan for more time than required.

This is what I have managed to create so far:

These are the skills that the children and I put together. 

What I need to accomplish for my next steps:

First I need to gather evidence for Analysing and Identifying behaviours.

I plan to video reading sessions and maths session. Then choose a target group of children, take a sample of each video and analyse it to identify when positive listening behaviours occurs. This should complete

the resource in the following section by providing a rubric and data to show trends and hopefully, improvement.

What I need now is to organise my time and prioritise teaching these skills specifically.

I look forward to having some data to share with you soon.

Prototyping #1

Hola y comostas!

Thank you for popping in and being here with me today!
For this post I need you! Yes, you my dear reader...

In the past months I have been working through a project with the incredible MIT ( Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) team to investigate how to actively teach the 'act of deliberate listening' in the classroom. 

This first starts with data. 

To begin my prototype and understand the data I needed to gather I started to break down what listening looked like for me. What had I seen others do? What did people do when they showed they were listening? What did the research have to say?

I categorised the physical 'symptoms' of listening into three categories, physical, verbal and social and emotional.

When considering the minute interactions of a listener and a speaker, I observed that the listener.  If the listener was fully engaged in the idea presented by the speaker, he/she would initiate a continued interaction.

This lead to grouping all the symptoms into responses ( of acknowledgement) and responses that involved an initiation of extending an idea or conversation further.

Here are the 'symptoms' which I gleaned:

Responses of Acknowledgement

Physical

• Looks at person who is speaking.

• Follows different speakers with eyes.

• Facial response present.

• Leans forward or moves to attend.

Verbal

• Responds with talking stems

• Repeats ideas spoken by someone else

• Asks for clarification

• Extends someones idea

• Questions someones idea

Responses with Initiation

Physical

• Uses facial expression to indicate a response or statement.

• Uses a hand or body motion to indicate an idea.

• Follows different speakers and waits for a pause before motioning to speak.

• Pauses after presenting an idea in order for others to respond.

• Pauses when other speakers initiate simultaneously.

• Uses body language or manners to encourage others to speak first.

• Notices when others initiate a response or initiation with body language.

Verbal

• Responds to questions with a full sentence answers.

• Uses talking stems to present an idea or response to a question.

• Speaks in full sentences presenting one idea at a time.

• Speaks to the group.

• Responds to a current idea before presenting a new idea.

• Extends own and others ideas with justification.

• Invites others to respond to the idea they have presented.

Social and Emotional

• Shows patience, includes and recognises those who haven't presented and makes space for them to participate.

The rubric prototype is HERE and is the basis on which I hope to gather data along with using the FORM from the previous post to gather student and teacher voice.

And yes, this is where you come in!
Your experiences and understanding are valuable. Are these symptoms correct? Is this what you notice in conversations? Is this a fair assessment of behaviours? If you were using this as a teacher, colleague or researcher, what would you question or change?

I look forward to your feedback and the exciting challenge of adapting this prototype to your responses.

I hope to see you here again soon!

Updating my Thinking

Kia ora and thank you so much for visiting!

In this post I am sharing some post COVID updates on the adaptions to my thinking and subsequent teaching. I also have the incredible privilege of working with the MIT team (Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) to develop a project on a challenge based idea. ( You may have visited some of these posts before. If you are interested use the MIT2020 label to follow the progress of this project on my blog).

It's great to have you here along for the ride.

This post finds me back at school with a nearly full single cell class of eager learners hungry for engagement, ideas and resources to sink their creative teeth into. But is this learning the same?

No. Needs and human nature remain the same but we as learners and teachers can never be static or we are no longer learners.

In reflection here is my 'meat and potatoes' of the lockdown learning meal:

• Visible teaching and learning is utterly essential
• A learner without the ability to blog is equal to a learner without the ability to use a pencil. 
• Children can accomplish so much without the teacher taking up their valuable time with talking
• Without the means to be self-directed and self motivated a learner accomplishes little.

The subsequent changes I have made to my teaching are in creating more rewindable videos for tasks, acknowledging the self-directed learners and providing a platform ( similar to the lockdown learning lessons) with which they can continue to drive their own learning. And... to try to talk less.

Talk Less, Speak Better, Listen More

Listening, now more than ever, is vital for human connection wether online or in person.

This validates the challenge: Children do not listen to what another child says in an independent group.

Re-iterated, how do we teach children the skills of deliberate listening?

Some interesting thoughts have arisen from looking through online articles and videos. What is most interesting is what is not there, unless I am looking in the wrong place. There are many articles, posts and videos about extended learning conversations, oral language and classroom discussion but little about listening. Julian Treasure, at the end of his TED talk puts forward the pleas for such a skill to be taught in schools.

Julian Treasure in his TED talk shares his acronym R.A.S.A (Receive, Appreciate, Summarise, Ask) a snazzy and easy to remember catch phrase.

The next steps for this project will be to collect the thoughts and views of my students and of others too. If you would like to participate in this survey your anonymous data would be very much appreciated.

                                                                       SURVEY LINK

The survey addresses the questions relating to how we listen and how we know that others are listening to us.

• Do you think that your friends listen to you?
• How do you know?
• Do you think that adults listen to you?
• How do you know?
• How do you feel when someone listens to you?
• When you’re working in a group of children at school, like a reading group or a project do you think that they listen to you?
• Do you think that you listen to others?
• What do you do that shows that you listen to others?

My next goal is to prototype. I feel the pressure of being somewhat behind in this process but also the weight of completing the process well. 

What is it that I am aiming to create?

What is it that is missing from our teaching to enable learners to be confident engaged listeners with each other?

...and...

How do I share this in a way that will be effective?

MIT: Distant Thoughts

Kia ora my lovely readers,

In some strange way I feel so privileged to be riding out a time like this with the affordances I have. With routines out the window and new routines slowly forming, I force myself to avoid rushing into a new agenda flooded with activities to fill space. It's difficult. I already have an agenda filled and I'm looking forward to the weekend!





I know all the right things to do. I know that relationships are vital. I know I have been given this time to love my family. To practice kindness and communication. To 'have the time' to look at someone and listen to them fully. Was it really time that I was lacking? Or is it a lack of discipline and character.

Children know these things too.

They know that they should be kind. They know they should look at someone when they are speaking. They know they should take turns to talk.

Children tell me these things.

However, I wonder how many children will experience this in their own homes over this quarantine period.

So here's the clincher. If they know these things but never practice them. If they know these things but never see them in practice, how will they learn.

Therefore, it is our role as educators to teach them.

Now, how do I do this by distance?

We are always talking about preparing our children for the future. "What will future learning and future careers require?" Suddenly the answer is glaringly obvious: remote offices and distance learning.

So, how does this affect my project?

To recap, since the beginning of the year I have had the privilege to work with a Maniakalani team of teachers given the time and scaffolds to investigate our own challenge or project. This is what I am addressing today. The challenge I am tackling with our students is...

This developed into ...

What I now hope to do is use Google Meet as a platform to practice listening skills with students. Google meet cannot function without turn taking. Social connection is now at a premium.

Next steps:

• Set up google meet with small groups.

• Focus on one goal at a time. This might look like etiquette, turn-taking, watching a persons eyes, making your eyes available by looking at the screen, showing validation, or responding to an idea by repeating it. 

• Re-develop the students listening skills rubric to include online inter and intra personal connections.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below. I look forward to hearing from you. 

Social and Emotional

Kia ora and welcome back to my blog,
If it is the first time you have popped along to check this out it is great to have you here.

What comes to mind when you think about 

social - emotional learning?

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

It is incredible when people come together in groups and give each other the space to share, guided by clear questioning and response. The knowledge and depth of experience that is shared is often rich and usually agreed on. Usually none of this is academic. It may have some relation to the knowledge of the world, shared tacit knowledge but mainly these conversations are highly affected by our emotions. In sharing, these are social. They are brought to the fore by the deepest human need: connection.

When trying to unpack social emotional intelligence it is ridiculously broad. I believe that it is the science of understanding what it is to be human.

How do we feel? Why are we feeling this way? How does this effect how we connect to others? Can I change the way others respond to me by how I act and speak to them?

Social and Emotional intelligence relates to cognitive, physiological and behavioural areas of self.

Some ideas that have been shared by colleagues suggest:

• being able to read the cues, emotions and communication of others both verbal and non-verbal.
• knowing one's self identity that doesn't change and identity that is affected by others.
• Awareness of mindsets and the ability to be open to others
• Ability to present one self in a way that others can relate to 
• Managing our internal dialogue
• compassion vs judgement
• equilibrium: the hauora model - a balance of spiritual, identity etc.

This highlights 'social and emotional learning' as an umbrella term.

What I find interesting is that with most investigation and research someone has come up with the idea before. Similar to ideas I am investigating currently are 'Talk Moves' and ideas related to social and emotional intelligence in 'CASEL' (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) which categorises SEL competencies.

What we strive to instil as educators in our children is pro-social behaviour - understanding others and affecting the behaviours of others in peer to peer relationships. In other words, my behaviours related to others affects how others relate to me.

Learning pro-social behaviours is not necessarily linear. Life isn't either. We learn things in many ways and contexts. We develop facets of ourselves as they are brought to our attention. If we had a linear scale of development of behaviour many people would not be capable of leading adult lives.

Both pro-social behaviour and personal awareness  develops from or within a 'space' of competency or confidence in ones ability to accomplish something. Children need to be given the competency to say, negotiate, talk and listen. This builds their self- awareness and self- management or faith and depth in themselves.

Everything is integrated. 

We are educating children to be humans not just academics.

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash