Comparison - traditional versus collaborative teaching

From: alisiaecameron.wix.com labelled for resuse

Here’s a scenario that my 14 year old son and myself made up to illustrate the difference between a traditional teaching model and a collaborative teaching model.  The difference that we were discussing between traditional and modern teaching is the traditional is based on the “one to many” model and the collaborative is based on “many to many” teaching, where the students themselves are teachers.

There are many shades of difference that we could have put in between the models and probably ones that go way beyond the “many to many” we’ve described.

This could be a level 4 social studies achievement objective: Understand how people participate individually and collectively in response to community challenges

Teaching Activity	Traditional – “one to many” model	Modern  - “many to many” model
Setting up the learning intention	We are learning Kate Shepphard’s role in shaping New Zealand culture through campaigning for women’s suffrage.	WALT identify effective responses to challenge and apply them in our own lives
Pre-lesson preparation	Teacher finds out about Kate Sheppherd.  Prepares work activities that help students learn about her life.  All the information will come from the teacher in the form of oral instruction, projected digital displays*, bookwork or worksheets. *The teacher may actually be a digital whizz and make fabulous digital learning displays but this does not necessariy make them a teacher who supports collaborative learning.	The teacher will spend time teaching the students how to: Do effective Google searches, Identify useful information etc according to my previous blog post: how to find information Then establish with the students some criteria for what useful information will look like in this context.  This will include some discussion on characters who have shaped history through responding to challenge. Students will be encouraged to follow characters they personally find interesting.
Seating plan	The students will need to get their information from the teacher so they will have to sit in rows or desks groups, or in a mat area where they can all clearly see and hear the teacher ie. traditional class structure.	It won’t matter where or how the children sit as they will be accessing their information from their devices. Their environment may well look like a café.
Where will the teacher be?	At the front	With the students.
Who will the teacher interact with mainly?	The whole class Individuals on an ad hoc basis	Individually as once the students start gathering the information via their devices the teacher will have access to their thinking processes beyond “real time.” In groups as students will be grouped to learn the skills (linked above) according to their needs.
Once the information is gathered/learned what will happen next?	There could be a test to find out how much the students remember about Kate Sheppherd. Or the students could make a presentation to share their learning.  This will be the re-sharing of information in a different format.  The most likely choices would be a poster, or a Powerpoint. There is some element of many-to-many learning if the students share their information back with their peers.  But not much because they all had the same information.	The teacher will move the children into “relational” thinking. This could be by identifying some challenging circumstances that people identified as shaping history have faced and comparing them with circumstances they have faced or could face in their own lives. The teacher could initiate this by modelling the process with a challenge from their lives. The children would need to be given tools to do this sort of comparison e.g. a venn diagram in digital format, or a Popplet where they can brainstorm and reorgnise information. They would need to be able to categorise aspects of a challenge – eg. People, conflict, physical hardship etc. At this point students would be accessing each other’s learning online and giving constructive feedback to each other according to co-constructed criteria.
And after that….	Summative achievement data is entered – students know x amount of information about Kate Sheppherd. The next unit is being planned.	Students will identify an area of challenge in their life.  If they can’t come up with one, their challenge could be about self knowledge – they don’t recognise challenge, or avoid it – the teacher might have to be a bit creative when helping these students. They can make a resolution to change one aspect of their behaviour based on what they’ve learnt and see how it affects their challenge. Extended abstract: They could then set up a challenge helpline or coaching service for younger students.  They could publish guidelines for identifying the aspects of challenge and giving strategic advice on behaviours which will help to meet different challenges.  This could be run through a blog.  Or it could be run in person on the playground like a peer mediation program. Or they could set up a challenge counselling program for their own class. Or they could identify a problem in their own school or community, analyse and categorise its components and use what they have learnt about people who shape history to apply positive action to the problem. OR they could write an app where people can enter information about their challenge.  The app will categorise aspects of the challenge and then analyse how historical heroic characters have met similar types of challenge and give feedback on strategies they can apply to their problems.  They could make a game app along similar lines. They could then sell their apps to Google and retire before they even finish school.  :)

What will school look like when this generation are the teachers?

In 8 years my oldest son's cohort will be qualified teachers.  They are the first cohort who had BYOD,  Google docs, flipped learning, ubiquitous wireless, personal blogging etc.    Not just that, they have a type of innate wisdom.  They've been raised on circle time and treaties and restorative justice.  They've been asked to think, challenge, debate with their teachers, and to investigate the world as if they have a right to change it.  What will school look like when these people are the teachers?

adapted from Staathof, 1999, p132,  L Frances-Rees, 2004

A quick overview of what effective internet use looks like and some of the background teaching needed

This link is to support my presentation at the SC RE cluster meeting.

Using the Internet - for every subject - this process is needed for high school, higher education, and life in general - year 7 & 8 children can do this effectively and consistently - then work backwards putting the skills in place back to year 1

• Safety stuff in place - understanding of digital citizenship - lots of resources available to help with this.  At a school level - need to develop community understanding of digital citizenship.
• Teaching in identifying keywords and finding synonyms for them 
• Putting those words into a search term 
• Scanning the search findings to find ones that might work 
• Quickly dumping anything not useful 
• Specific guided reading teaching in identifying bias 
• Scanning - contents, headers, key words 
• Skim reading - quick reading to locate key words and get an “overall” feel - taught through guided reading. 
• Find a selection of possible sources (5 or 6) - reference them, one sentence summary of the gist. Choose the best three and read in detail - taught through guided reading. 
• Take notes - key words and phrases - taught through guided writing. 
• Construct sentences from keywords and phrases - guided writing 
• Plan effectively with main ideas and supporting detail - guided writing etc through the writing process. 

Developing this capacity through the primary years:
Years 1-3 - learning how to read and write - apps to support that learning - e.g. handwriting app on the ipad with a stylus - immediate feedback for errors in constructing letters.
Years 4-5 - guided - laying the groundwork to be an effective independent researcher. Breaking down the list above and guiding through the process.
Years 6-8 - Integrating the process and becoming independent (by mid year 7).

 From years 4-8 - RE can be included as a subject for investigation - as part of an inquiry curriculum.

Action Research

Action Research into Digital Learning

Action research was carried out during 2013 at St Joseph's School Oamaru. These conclusions are based on: Digital Action Research 1 - using online videos to support maths teaching and SOLO  for thinking development Action Research 2 - does the motivation of choosing own project and pathway help inconsistent writers  produce more consistent writing Digital Action Research 3 - does the teacher as "guide on the side" help to improve learning outcomes in children's own choice projects?

Action Research 1, 2013

THE LESSON SEQUENCE

YouTube Video
YouTube Video		Practice
YouTube Video		Practice
YouTube Video		Practice

	Manuka students sharing their understandings - private content
	Create two different word problems involving mixed numbers and improper fractions.  The answer to both problems must be:             6 4/5You can write the two problems on your wikipage

Action Research 3, 2013

Initial observations:

Children were allowed to take breaks during the project when they needed them - instead of asking for more breaks, many chose to stay in at their playtimes to work - this indicates they were engaged and interested in their projects.

All children negotiated useful learning goals which covered the core curriculum.

They were using technology to support their learning in a variety of areas and some chose not to use digital technology.  Some children listened to music as they worked and were reluctant to stop working.  Eating was happening but not getting in the way.  At this stage there was high productivity and engagement.
Lots was happening at this stage: researching, practising, investigating and progress seemed very positive.  Incidental reading and writing was of a good standard.
Interpretation:
The children were engaged in their projects and performing well in the mode of gathering information / doing the project.  They are very comfortable with this mode of operation and in a more teacher-directed environment they are usually scaffolded to take more steps to add depth and "so what?" to their learning.
Further observations:
The children did not seem to realise when they had reached the end of this cycle and at this stage they began to become aimless.  They needed direction to begin to synthesis, analyse or evaluate their progress.  Most children barely responded to feedback, only doing a minimal amount so they could move on to "presenting."  In a normal class situation I would have brought this back for some whole class teaching and guided them in specific process but I was still wanting to see how the motivation of their own interest would help them push for achievement.
Many children used their time very unwisely at the end and did not finish their projects to a high standard.
RESULTS:
The project was divided into sections and achievement points awarded per level.

ACHIEVEMENT 
The total possible points was 12.  I made an OTJ on each child as to whether they were in general above, at, below or well below the overall year 7 level.

OTJ	Average score

Above	6.4
At	6
Below	8.4
Well Below	10

Possibly the sample was too small to make generalisations.  However there was a similar pattern for the "above" children in their science fair work.  
The children "well below" showed the highest levels of concentration, commitment, self management and willingness to accommodate feedback ie qualities of 21 century learners.
The children "above" on the whole did not make meaningful learning intentions and only superficially engaged with the negotiated intentions.  Similarly they only superficially engaged with cues towards deeper thinking. 
THE PROCESS

Part of the process	Average score out of 3
Beginning -	2
Middle -	3
Ending	1
Product	1

The higher average score for the middle part correlates to the observed enthusiasm and success at this stage of the project.

The difficult parts were: 

• children owning the negotiated learning intentions - some felt this detracted from their project,
• children doing something meaningful with their gathered resources/experiments/information,
• quality of the product.

Many of the children saw no value in working on their projects to put in their own creativity or critical thinking.  When left to their own devices there was a very prevalent Powerpoint mentality (gather and regurgitate).  It is clear that moving beyond this, at this stage, for these children, needs to be teacher-directed.

To become more active learners these children need to see achievement in terms of their learning agency and cognitive engagement.  E.g. an active learner considers and responds to feedback and shows how they have integrated this into their work.

I believe we could look at this as a whole school and see what sort of progressions we can put in place to grow more active learners.  For my own class this project has shown me that the children are comfortable with the researching/gathering phase and a lot of reading learning has taken place to make this happen.  In their next project, I am going to provide these children with information and scaffold two relational thinking processes to help them handle the information.

This video shows the students' self-evaluations and some of their reflections on the project.  It is a private video and St Joseph's staff can view it by emailing me for a link.

First and Second Order Change

We seem to be undergoing a lot of change at St Joseph's in Oamaru.

Actually, we are not changing at all.

Underlying everything at St Joseph's is relationships.  Prior to the time I was in the school, Jenny Jackson and the team, helped by our RTLB teacher Linda Schofield, underwent focused development on positive relationships for learning.  This was before PB4L but essentially, it was the same thing.  Since my time, we've consistently focused on our vision for learning - lifelong learners in the Catholic Faith and also on our Charter Goal which reads:
in 2012: Every child engaged in learning
in 2013: Every child engaged in learning for success
in 2014: Every child engaged in deep learning for success.

As each year went on we focused more and more deeply on what we actually wanted for our learners.

There's no way anyone decided - "Hey let's do digital learning or team teaching or buy some bean bags (only 4 per class) or whatever, just because everyone's doing it and its so, so modern!"

What we DID look for was examples either through research and theory, or through experience in other schools - good examples of ways teachers were engaging students in deep learning.  Plus we used our teaching as inquiry process - our own processes of teacher action research to investigate what actually did make a difference to student achievement in our school.  For myself I have found that systematic teaching of the key competencies of the New Zealand curriculum, combined with learning to learn strategies, makes a huge difference to student achievement and that has been going on for quite some time now, since at least 2008 - so nothing new there.  Combining these with digital technologies and flexible working and teaching spaces - has not, in my investigations, improved achievement which is already high but it has improved depth of achievement.  Children are more able to take the next step into making the learning their own and applying it in new situations.  To my mind, this is the most elusive aspect of teaching and learning.

In about mid 2013 we had sufficient information to make some decisions.  We decided we wanted our senior years, at that time we thought year 5+, now after listening to parents we think year 6+, to have the benefit of one to one devices - or as close to it as we can make it, from the beginning of 2015.

To the degree that individuals and/or stakeholder groups in the school or school system hold conflicting values, seek different norms, have different knowledge, or operate with varying mental models of schooling, a proposed change might represent a first-order change for some and a second-order change for others.

Waters, Marzano, and McNulty, 2003, page 7 from: http://instep.net.nz/Change-for-improvement/Sustainable-change/Four-views-of-change/First-order-vs-second-order

“First-order” change is change that is consistent with prevailing values and norms, meets with general agreement, and can be implemented using people’s existing knowledge and skills. A change becomes “second-order” when it is not obvious how it will make things better, it requires people to learn new approaches, or it conflicts with prevailing values and norms. Second-order changes require leaders to work far more deeply with staff and the community. 

The change we are presently experiencing - from the teacher's and the student's perspectives, is first order change - it does not challenge our beliefs about learning (look at the previous post below  - A Machine for Learning to see what the children think about learning).  An analogy for what is happening is it is like a snake shedding its skin.  The creature is the same in essence but it has grown and it needs to shed its skin in order to take on its new dimensions.

We have worked very hard to bring our parents along with us in this change process.  We have had parent learning huis where we have talked about SOLO and deep learning and why we need to make the practical and organisational changes we are presently going through.  We have also had a lot of discussions along the way and we have listened to our parents.  For example we first thought year 5+ for digital learning but listening to our parent feedback and concerns we have decided in 2015 we will be looking at year 6+.    But I acknowledge for many, outside of the staffroom, this is second order change.  It appears to be a change in values and beliefs.  A change in essence.  It is not.  Our essence is - every student engaged in deep learning for success.  How they get there is a moot point - it will be different from 1957, 1997, 2007, and it will be different again in 2017 and 2027.  Yet I imagine the essence of what we are trying to achieve will not vary so very much.

Minecraft St Joseph's Oamaru

The second part of the children investigating learning environments was for them to accurately map what we already had.  They had a go at doing that in term 3 but it didn't look right.  This time, as part of our maths, they children have accurately measured the school and used a scale for their maps.  Some have done it on paper, some investigated 3D modelling software but most chose to do it with Minecraft and the results are surprisingly accurate.

The next step will be to talk about improvements for learning.

Second day of mainly digital learning

THE AIM AT THE MOMENT IS TO MOVE FROM A BLENDED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT INTO ONE WHICH IS MORE DIGITALLY-DRIVEN - I'M WRITING THIS AS MY OWN ANECDOTAL NOTES AND REFLECTIONS AND TO GIVE OTHERS AN IDEA OF WHAT TO EXPECT.

First morning running learning from a digital platform.

From our slower set up day on Monday I decided not to do any new content learning today.  I cut my expectations in half.  And still achieved less than I would have hoped for.  The children are very capable in the areas they are used to - navigating media and looking up information but there's still a lot to learn.

The main learning is online self management - the answer to "What do we do now?" is online.  So its like teaching a new way of reading a maths or reading taskboard and its going to take a little time to make this the automatic way of looking for what next.  Some of the children began to get this and started reminding each other where they could look.

There were huge issues with getting Google docs going in different environments on different devices.  I could not have aimed at doing any substantial content teaching whilst introducing this.  It would have been counterproductive -  for this week, this IS the teaching.

In maths I only aimed at achieving: everyone doing some Mathletics time; everyone doing basic facts practice; entering their score on a shared Google doc plus a couple of workshop sessions to discuss how to go about doing the geometry project and that was it.  We got through this but it took nearly two hours.  I told them I'd expect all of that to happen within a 30 minute time slot once we're up and running.  The good thing is its easy to keep track of the basic facts information, as it comes up on the Teacher dashboard.  The Mathletics was great too, the reports were easy to read and I could easily see and set the next steps for the children.

I'm impressed that everyone is being very patient.

For our quickwrite, many of the children continued writing in the doc they used on Monday.  It was only the second time they did it and it was way more efficient and competent.  .  Teacher dashboard has helped so I can comment on all the docs either in real time or later.  That's encouraging, to affirm it will get easier.

For the novels - we just sat down and read.  I was going to show them a Quizlet example but decided it was too much new information for one day.

We did good old-fashioned role plays in RE.

In the afternoon we did the "Environments for Learning" work Environments for Learning and they had their first experience of writing in a shared Google doc.  It was hilarious.  I had it up on the projector and they worked in groups of two or three.  They discussed the ways they learn and what sort of environments would suit these ways of learning.  Then when they were writing they tripped over each other's cursors and accidentally deleted work.  Some children took this naturally as accidental, others got cross.  So we discussed protocols and ways of working with Google docs - such as putting in lots of returns at the beginning and putting your cursor away from others which were already writing.  Our first effort at a shared Google doc: https://docs.google.com/a/stjoseph.school.nz/document/d/1tFtGF-KoNJmcO7fLLeojekmAiLDryPKq6xCzdo2nXk0/edit - (this is just shared within St Joseph's as its a work in progress).