Clarity in the Classroom: Reading Observation No.2

This year, our school is focussing on improving clarity in the classroom.  We recently viewed a clip from John Hattie, who talks about the importance of clear learning intentions and success criteria.  (This clip can be viewed in one of my previous posts).

 

As a part of my own professional development, I was observed teaching reading on the 10-8-15.  The lesson I took in these video clips, are on a follow up reading lesson with a group of Year 5 students. 

We are currently writing our own picture books, so in reading we are looking for the language features that authors use in a narrative text with the intention of applying these techniques to our own writing.  Below are the video recordings of most of the lesson.

 

At the conclusion of the lesson, some members of the group were taken out by the observer and asked questions about the lesson.  The questions and response are below:

Student Responses:

Who decided what you were to learn today? What part did you decide? (Learning Focussed Relationships)

• "The teacher.  Yes we worked shared on the S.C"
• "The teacher.  We helped make the success criteria"
• "Everyone.  We made the S.C. with our group"
• "The teacher.  We helped with the S.C using language features"

What were you learning in Reading today? (Clarity)

• "Identify the mood and how the author creates tension"
• "To identify the language the author used to create mood and tension"
• "To identify the language features that the author uses to create tension"
• "Alien- how the author builds up tension"

Why were you learning that?  How will it help you with your reading? (Clarity - relevance, Assess Lit)

• " So when we are older we can use it in our writing and get better National Standards"
• "So we can use mood in our own writing, and hook the readers in"
• "It will help us to understand the mood of the story.  To get more of an idea to put into our picture books"
• "So we can apply it to our story and our independent writing as well"

How will you know you are successful with your reading? (Clarity)

• "By identifying the WALT and SC"
• "If we follow the SC and correctly do it"
• "We will be identifying ad finding where the author has built up tension"
• "Because we can identify the features as we are reading"

When you find something difficult or hard to do in Reading, what do you do about that?  Do you look anywhere? Do you talk to anyone? (PFL, Active Reflection)

• "Space the word out.  Break the word.  Discuss within.  Re-read the sentence again"
• "You can read on.  You can ask a buddy"
• "Go back and read the text again.  Read on.  Ask the rest of the group"
• "We often tell the teacher.  We go over it together"

After reading through the students interview questions, it was great to see that the students knew the connection between the WALT, the success criteria, and their own learning.  It was also great to see they knew what the relevance of the lesson was to their own learning and futures.  Students were also able to articulate what to do if they get stuck and how to seek advice, enabling them to be independent learners.

 

Video Feedback: 

After viewing the videos, I found myself being very critical of my teaching.  Whilst I thought I was successful in ensuring the students knew their learning intention, why they were learning it, and how they could achieve their learning intention by having a clear success criteria, at times I felt I was talking too much, asking too many questions, and not giving the students enough time to respond or read. 

 

The following day I showed the videos to the whole class because I wanted to find out what the students thought of the lesson, and gather more feedback so I could improve my teaching.

 

The students were asked tell my what they noticed about the lesson.  I also asked them to be critical and give honest feedback as it would help me improve my teaching.  Surprisingly, the student responses were very interesting and enlightening because the students noticed different aspects of the lesson and my teaching which I hadn't thought about.

• The first student who responded said they thought it was a "really successful lesson".  I asked them "how do you know?" and they quickly replied "because the students were able to answer questions quickly and were pretty much right".

The rest of the students who then gave feedback, justified their responses:

• "The kids in the group sounded confident when they spoke"
• "The students were able to identify punctuation used and it's purpose"
• "Their was lots of explaining by the group and detailed answers"
• "Everyone had turns at speaking.  Lots of different views were shared"
• "One person didn't dominate"
•  "If someone didn't know something or wasn't sure, you (teacher) showed it several times or explained it in different ways so they got it"
• "Students understood the teacher language like 'mood' and 'tension' and were able to use it"
•  "The questions and modelling was really helpful"
• "It all related to the WALT"
• "Students were successful in achieving their WALT"  because "they gave detailed answers and were constantly talking about the WALT and success criteria"
•  "The group all knew why they were learning the WALT"
• "The sentence used on the board was a good example and was really helpful"

I then asked the class if they thought that there were too many questions asked or too much teacher talking, as this was my initial thought after viewing the lesson.  The response, which was shared by several students, surprised me because they all said "No".  The students actually viewed the 'talking and questioning' as "really helpful discussion; not too much teacher talking at all". 

 

What concluded the feedback session, and reaffirmed that I am on the right track with my teaching of reading, was the final response from one of my quite students.  She said "The lesson was awesome.  I really liked watching it.  I thought it was really successful and I got a lot of information out of it and learnt stuff".

 

What are my next steps?

The next step in the observation process is to meet with my observer and get their feedback. 

 

Currently they students have the WALT (learning intention) given to them by the teacher.  The group (and teacher) then discuss the WALT in order to determine the 'Why?' we are learning it, and to establish the success criteria.  Because they are becoming familiar with the process, and the language used in establishing each of the parts; my next step is to trail giving the students different components of the lesson setup.  (For example; the teacher gives the students the success criteria.   Teacher then assists the group to establish the WALT and Why).  By doing this, I hope to see the students being able to clearly articulate all aspects of their learning so they become clear in what they are learning, why they are learning it, how they can achieve success in their learning, and how they know they have achieved success.