Future Oriented Learning - POGIL - What do they mean for me?

I decided that the long weekend was the perfect time to do a reading (as well as go to the beach and see friends) and so I did some research to find readings that weren't POGIL related but focussed on similar themes!  I came across a report by the NZCER titled 'Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching – A New Zealand perspective' and thought that that sounded interesting.  The following notes are insights that I gained from this reading that also connected with principles behind the POGIL style of teaching and the writing in italics is how this can, or already does, apply to my classroom.

Knowledge

• ·      Need to adopt a much more complex view of knowledge that incorporates knowing, doing and being
• ·      Knowledge – currently our views are underpinned by two different epistemologies of what counts as knowledge.  These are: knowledge as content, concepts and skills from the selected disciplines – and – knowledge as creating and using new knowledge to solve problems and find solutions to challenges as they arise on a “just-in-time” basis
• ·      A new view of knowledge and the implications for schooling – We can no longer predict exactly what content specific knowledge students will need as they move through life in the
• 21^st century.  But we do know that they need: opportunities to build their sense of self, challenges that will develop them into becoming self-reliant, critical and creative thinkers, the ability to use their initiative, the ability to become team players and the drive to engage in ongoing learning throughout their lives
• ·      In order for students to remain engaged in the long term they must be able to actively interact with knowledge rather than just reproduce it – they must be provided with the opportunities and skills to understand, critique, manipulate, create and transform it.
• ·     21^st century learning literature argues that today’s students need to engage in knowledge-generating activities in authentic contexts – we need to move away from formal contemporary learning to the messiness of real world situations in which the answers and outcomes are not known, or predetermined by the teacher, but rather where teacher and student work alongside each other on a learning journey.

In my classroom - knowledge is shifting from knowing to incorporating doing - I have not yet discovered how to get to the being stage with my students yet.  I have found that with the students using POGIL styled activities they are working with activities that are much more engaging, hands on, and higher level thinking.  With the two different epistemologies I think it is important that both play a place within my classroom - and this is evident through the way that I teach - students both understand knowledge in regards to content and skills and create their own knowledge in order to problem solve in a range of situations.  Hugely within my reading and maths sessions students are provided with opportunities to understand, critique, manipulate, create and transform knowledge thanks to the POGIL style of learning.  Within reading at the moment students are completing challenges that at first made me uncomfortable largely due to the fact that they are higher order Blooms creative styled challenges - these children are going to be creating work where their answers cannot be predetermined because what they are doing is authentic knowledge building.

Learning

• ·      Requires that all of those involved in education are involved in continuous learning
• ·      Focus in future oriented learning needs to be on equipping people to do things with knowledge
• ·      What we know about learning:

o   Learning involves thinking

o   Experiences are critical to learning

o   Learners need to be encouraged not to search solely for the right answer but also for the right approach to solving a problem

o   To learn, people need to be actively engaged.  They need to be doing something, thinking something and or saying something that requires them to actively process, interpret, and adapt an experience to a new context or use.

o   Learners have to want to learn the material – both in the short term and in the longer term they need to see a purpose to learning it.

o   Learning has to be personalized – they need to feel that they know what they are doing, and that they can control the pace of their learning

o   Learning often needs some kind of structure

o   Learning involves interaction – testing out and trying ideas with others.

• ·      In order for captivating learning to occur there is the idea that the learner ought to be transformed in some way through their learning and the idea that the world can be transformed by the learner – that what they are learning can impact their world almost immediately.

I like the idea that all of those involved in education are involved in continuous learning.  I know that through my own professional and personal learning I develop as teacher every day and that if I was the same person that I was at the start of the year even, and if I taught in the exact same way then the learning of my students would not be enhanced.  Future oriented learning does indeed need to be focussed on equipping people to do things with knowledge.  With knowledge being so easily accessibly through the internet these days it does not become so much the content of the knowledge that will drive the future of our students so much as what they do with this knowledge - how they manipulate it and use it to enhance the lives of people around them.  Within my current reading programme at the moment students are experiencing a variety of experiences that involve them relating what they are reading about directly to the world that they live in - with this, the activities that they are doing do not have a single right answer, but rather a variety of correct answers and what matters is the way that they get there - I would like to further incorporate this idea within my maths programme also.

Key Competencies

• ·      Learning that is future oriented is closely linked and connected with the Key Competencies.  This article states that ‘deep learning’ involves self managing, being creative and critical thinkers and learning with others.
• ·      The Key Competencies are so important to how we teach – when we have developed the understanding and application of these effectively in students is when students are able to transfer the knowledge and skills that they are learning about to whatever context they find themselves in.

Whilst my WALTs may not match directly with the key competencies the students are required to fill out an evaluation at the end of each task that is directly related to their key competencies - there is a focus on each of the key competencies but these are written in student speak.  When the students arrive to teacher time with me we discuss what they need to work on next time and through this discussion we focus on what is important for allowing them to learn and grow effectively.  It would possibly be effective for me to discuss these evaluations in the terminology of the Key Competencies and this is something I may explore doing.

Diversity/Authentic Learning

• ·      Diversity is key for learning that supports children in the world that they will be a part of tomorrow – this calls for greater engagement of learners in co-shaping their education to address their needs, strengths, interests and aspirations
• ·      Diversity encapsulates the current focus on developing strategies to ensure learners from all backgrounds can achieve success in ways that are meaningful to them.
• ·      The goal with education today is not simply to find better ways to raise every person’s achievement to an identical view or standard – which is a tricky concept with national standards saying the opposite – but rather to support each individual to reach their full potential.
• ·      Deep expressions of the practice of personalizing learning occur as listed below:

o   Learners have genuine input into shaping what happens in their learning, not only how they learn but also what sorts of learning activities occur within their class.

o   Learners (not just their teachers) believe that students have input into how things happen in their classroom or school.

o   Learners can link their schooling to other aspects of their lives, or see connections with their goals or aspirations for their lives beyond school

• ·      In regards to authentic learning opportunities – it is not enough for the learning to seem as though it is relevant, engaging and connected to student interests. Rather, we as educators, need to provide opportunities and strategies that support students themselves to feel engaged with, connected to and invested in the work that they are doing.

I believe that developing authentic learning within a classroom is an ongoing thing that changes continually with what you are teaching and how you are teaching it.  Developing an attitude and practice that allows students to engage quickly with authentic learning is a different thing.  This is something that I am working on in both my reading and maths programmes at the moment.  In writing we have set genres that we have to cover at certain times, however students get input into what they write about.  In reading - on a Friday afternoon, students are provided with journals that have articles in them that may capture their interest about the current topic of study.  Each group usually has about three or four choices each week.  From here, the students are able to decide what they want to learn about within this topic and choose a verb from the three higher levels of BLOOMs taxonomy that relate to what they are wanting to learn.  Within Maths the students sit a eAsttle test that provides them with next steps within their current subtopic and from their they direct where they want their learning to go based on both needs and interests.

Roles of teacher and student

• ·      The idea of personalizing learning call for reversing the logic of education systems so that the system is built around the learner rather than the learner being required to fit in with the system
• ·      We need to rethink the role of the teacher and students – as it is no longer the teacher’s job simply to transmit knowledge and the student no longer has the main purpose of absorbing and storing up knowledge to use in the future.  We need to consider about how we are structuring roles and relationships in way that draw on the knowledge and strengths of both teacher and student in order to best support learning.
• ·      Classrooms need to not be labeled as student centered or teacher driven whilst these terms are still being loosely thrown around but rather should involve teachers and students working together in a knowledge building environment,
• ·      Students are most engaged with, and get the most out of, learning that allows them a degree of choice, flexibility, motivation and self direction in their learning.

PD - Applying learning in my classroom

Towards the end of last term I spent half a day at a local school that work primarily with Maori and Pacifica families.  My school does not have a huge proportion of these students however nearly a third of my class have Maori backgrounds and so it is a need of mine to be able to teach these students in a way that they best learn.  I have attached a photo of notes that I took whilst observing a number of teachers in this school in action.

\

Based on these observations and further reading on POGIL work I have begun to adapt my reading lessons.  

Applying POGIL to my programme, my reading lessons naturally took on a more self directed format - however these students were given a must do and a can do list - as well as evaluation sheets that they filled out every week.  The sheets look like this but usually included a can do sheet also.  

This week, we have completed two immersion lessons where the students have had the opportunity to become fully engaged with this task.  This provided opportunities to do hands on work where they were exploring the school to try and locate living and non living things within their own environment and using MRS GREN to help them determine whether or not they are living.  Armed with this knowledge the students today looked at different native animals and identified which MRS GREN life processes they had adapted to best suit their environment.  As habitats tie in closely with adaptations the students spent an hour today identifying their own habitats which they thoroughly enjoyed and which allowed them to link their lives directly to their learning.  Over the next week they will be choosing four of the six activities on the following sheet that interest them most - as well as completing activities on the blog in order to allow them to self direct their learning to their own interests but yet stay within the learning focus.  In addition to this they will also be pulled out for guided reading sessions with me about specific animals that are native to New Zealand and have had to make appropriate adaptations.

I look forward to seeing how this will engage my Maori - and non Maori learners and whether it will be more effective than the current practices that are underway in my room.

Linking my learning with that of my students

As a class we use weebly instead of Blogspot to record and share our learning.  As this is becoming a more and more interactive website that students are using to both learn and share their learning I believe it is important that this is recorded on my PRT blog and so have attached the link here - Sarah's Superheroes

Getting back into Term 2

The last week of Term 1 was a stressful one for me for reasons far outside my control and the first week of holidays provided far too much time for me to think.  What should have been a relaxing holiday at the beach was filled with stress.  As a result of this, the work that I was going to do in Week 2 got pushed back right until the end of the holidays so that I was able to enjoy at least part of my holiday.  Thankfully in the second week holidays did seem to happen and I was able to enjoy some time in Auckland and Mount Maunganui with good friends providing me with the exact brain break that I needed before starting back at school.  Friday, Saturday and Sunday were all spent in at school but I am definitely feeling relaxed and ready to start this term clear headed again which is key.

It was so nice being back with my students today - we enjoyed a day of exploring the MRS GREN characteristics of living and non living things in our school environment, brainstorming all of the things we loved about our school that we could write about in a report and developing a piece of ANZAC art that we thought appropriately captured the enormity of 100 years since landing at Gallipoli.  The children can't wait to do our 'thinkers keys' activities and make their own ANZAC book!

The challenge for me this term will be staying on top of everything with the huge amount of things that we need to have handed in.  Within the first 12 days of this term we have IKAN testing to do, running records to have begun, four daily sessions on cycle safety and a road ride with the local policeman, a trip to Lake Rotomahana and a videoed reading observation and interview of our students - all alongside our normal teaching programme.  I think working closely with colleagues will be a huge aspect of staying on top of everything this term and so am very grateful for the sharing of resources and knowledge that have already occurred on day one!

I am looking forward to getting back on top of my blog after the holidays also and sharing what I have learnt about working in MLE's and with Maori learners that I can implement into my own classroom - but for now planning for the next crazy couple of weeks awaits!

The Learning Pit

Recently I have been doing observations in other schools - I will delve further into this in another post.  One of the schools that I visited was a MLE and was said to be an outstanding school.  As a result of having been at that school and having viewed their learning in practice I was doing some research around MLE when I came across the article Modern Learning Environments – the underlying philosophy to success. On this webpage there was a mention of the 'Learning Pit' - something that all learners must go through in order to achieve success.  I was interested in this concept as it seemed to align with the 4E's that my students now assess themselves on at the end of every lesson.  When researching this further I found both a presentation by the person who created the concept of the 'Learning Pit' and a research article written on it.

Attached are the presentation and the research article:
Presentation
Research article

Within the research article there was a diagram that helped me understand the four stages of the learning pit and begin to understand how these linked in with the 4Es that I ask my students to work with each day.

I will be going through this with my students on Monday and looking at how this works and ties in with the style of learning that they are doing currently.

The Four Stages of the Learning Pit

Stage 1: CONCEPT
The Learning Pit begins with a concept. The concept can come from the media, conversation, observations or deliberate study. So long as most pupils have a basic understanding of the concept, then the Learning Pit can work. Examples of the sorts of concepts that might be suitable can be found later in this article, as well as in Challenging Learning. 

Stage 2: CONFLICT
As soon as a concept has been agreed, the teacher’s responsibility is to create ‘cognitive conflict’ in pupils’ minds. Cognitive conflict arises when people have at least two opinions in their minds, both of which they agree with but that both of which are in conflict with each other. For example, I agree that stealing is wrong but I also think that Robin Hood was a good man; I agree with both statements even though they are in conflict with each other.

Stage 3: CONSTRUCT
Giving students the opportunity and reason to construct meaning for themselves is the raison d’être of the Learning Pit. After they have struggled in the Pit for a while, some of students will begin to make meaning. Some may even have a ‘Eureka’ moment. This is at the heart of the Learning Pit and is explored later in this article.

Stage 4: CONSIDER
The final stage encourages pupils to reflect on how their thinking has changed, been adapted, assimilated and / or constructed throughout the course of the lesson. Thinking about thinking, or metacognition, is a crucial factor in the learning process. The Learning Pit provides a frame of reference to help structure this metacognitive reflection for pupils. 

Helping the children to help themselves

The whole idea with POGIL is that it is very inquiry centred - students push themselves to learn and question each other to develop higher order thinking.  It is fair to say that I threw my students straight into the deep end with this one - we had looked at questioning each other whilst working with me but their follow up tasks had very nearly all been individual activities.  Last week they were expected to participate in the same level of discussion when they were not with me as when they were with me - looking back I may not have given them the correct level of scaffolding around this and so this week I have aimed to do things slightly differently.

To introduce the tasks, especially in maths, I had them brainstorm their prior knowledge and then research what they were being asked to do - I did not direct them with where to go for the research or how they should undertake this.  I think this was the part that the students found most difficult - not surprising considering for the past five years at school they have been given the content and told exactly where to do and exactly when to do it.  This week I am going to explore using their weebly to help guide their research - put them onto websites that I think are age and stage appropriate that hook their interest in an engaging but meaningful way. I think that for maths this will help them begin the week with more confidence.  During the week and after their first teacher session the students were all feeling much more confident and working well in groups.  One group was multiplying fractions by whole numbers and started off with equation such as 7/5 x 6 and 6/9 x 15.  This group is not known to naturally extend themselves, however after discussion in their group and working out these problems they came to me with more complex problems that they had taken turns to write and solve such as 8/5 x 320 - and asked me to provide them with more challenging tasks along the same line.  It was great to see them pushing themselves and each other to develop success - they were working effectively as a team and not one child was left behind.

I found that reading was a lot easier to get straight into, as we were already following our future learning process of "plan it, find it, sort it, use it, evaluate it" in our reading programme.  The children were up to the use it part of this process and used POGIL as a way to change their thinking on how they could present their information.  All of the students had at first decided that they would make posters - but began to challenge each other to create and share their learning in a way that would influence others also.  As a result of this, and the guidance that the students were provided with they began to discuss a variety of ways that they could share some information.  Groups are doing Pontoons, making videos, slide shows, songs and one group is still making a poster - but have just changed how they are doing this in a way that is visually appealing.  These students can express why they have chosen their method and what it will make people who view it think about - they are engaged with their own learning at a much higher level than simply recalling knowledge.

The student discussion within the reflection period of each session is also much richer.  Within the last five minutes of each subject block I am now hearing discussions about what made them work effectively, what they need to improve on for next time, how they think that they could have made that session more effective - and what level of understanding they have reached about a particular subject. The students begged to continue with this style of learning on Friday - so whilst we may only be beginning to crawl at the moment, the students are engaged, challenging each other and taking ownership for their learning - the building blocks of what I believe to be the most important aspects for POGIL to be applied successfully within a classroom.

With parent pupil discussions coming up this week, the next task is to convince the parents of the benefits of this learning style - and hope that they buy into it as much as myself and their children have.

Children begin POGIL.

This morning in class the students had their first experience of POGIL - as it was an introductory exercise the children completed fun team building activities to introduce them to the concept of working in teams after watching fun animated videos of what team work involved.

The discussions around what team work involved were very interesting as the children came up with ideas such as collaboration and supporting each other, challenging each other and individual responsibility as all being key factors in team work - ideas that were very prominent in the reading about POGIL also.

Here are a few things that the children had to say about what they learnt from this morning - and how they think they could put this to play in their normal classroom.