PP planners CfU with fellow-teachers and students

Visible learning became the point of our discussion and reflection this week.The automatic answer was "yes" and I asked how do we know this happens in our class? How do we know that students and teachers share a common understanding of the purpose and progress for the PP?

AN: Just the fact that you are aware of how you present the information is important. Making sure our starting point was passion, making sure that our initial focus was what the product will look like and provide examples of that product. All the technical details were unpacked slowly and not delved into at the outset. The whole group discussion with other supervisors help - the explanations of AOI – but not everyone can attend them and so there is a gap in information. Do other teachers and students, who are not in our supervisor group, understand everything that is clear to us? Or is it, as the literature says, us teachers getting excited about what we are doing and its changing our view points but not our students (the other teachers) or the third level which is the actual students. 

ED feels that other teachers are starting to understand what is happening so that they can help their students. He described a lesson that he co-taught to help explain something that the other teacher was not comfortable with. As the lesson carried on the other teacher started to take ownership of the lesson herself which links directly to the comment made on the quality of the relationship between teacher and learner. We understand the goal and the process of the PP is clear. We have not interrogated whether the other teachers understand or whether the kids understand. 

We collated a number of questions to check for understanding and that will be carried out in the next lesson with teachers (Tuesday) and learners (Wednesday).  

PP enhances student 'voice' - looking for honest relationships

Although we presented the lesson to other teachers it was still a bit difficult to relay that lesson to the students. We experienced technical difficulties and some of the teachers did not come to the ‘lesson’ and so did not know what to do. 

In our reflection there was no clear evidence that learning was taking place. The nature of our group does not allow for learning but rather understanding of the process to follow in order to complete the pro project. In today’s discussion we decided that the only genuine source they have is each other. They are all experiencing the project and having to complete it. We, as the teachers, are not. It has been very teacher centered in the past couple of weeks. Despite our hooks and CFU’s we were doing all the heavy lifting: student work ratio has been minimal. 

We realised that is time to hear their voice. Therefore, the next couple of weeks are going to be student centered and collaborative. We will observe how much more or less of the required tasks they can understand and complete, without us ‘interfering’ and dictating all of the time. Again it came up that the only way to encourage learners’ thinking, to push themselves beyond themselves, is if there is a positive relationship between Advisors and Advisees. This remains the teacher's responsibility to create. You have to trust yourself and trust them just as much as they have to trust you. This will empower them to ask the challenging questions, to take a leap and know that we are there to break their fall. It will also empower us to know that they will be honest with us about their learning.

PP progress

The past two lessons have been analysed and the way forward discussed. We realized that its very difficult to gauge student learning in the big group of 75 students. Each PP supervisor has been allocated a section to plan using our lesson plan template. Each supervisor will present that lesson to the other PP supervisors, modelling the way it should run with the learners in the smaller groups. We will observe each other in these sessions and provide feedback the next week. This process will run for the next four weeks to ensure that all PP supervisors will be able to effectively launch the PP so that learners can work more independently until their first deadline.

PP questions the over-use of media in lessons

Today we briefly evaluated the lesson presented last week and focused our discussions on the potentially excessive use of media during lessons. We also evaluated the power of the hook to make the learning experience more concrete. We brainstormed the content of the next lesson and have decided to use the lesson plan template of the previous lesson. This will be facilitated by the core group of presenters this week but in the future it is hoped that each member of the PP group will be able to use it independently.