Co-teaching With Three

Richard's co-teaching session was a bit different than his team member's.  The reason for that was that Richard has a student teacher with him, Cindy, and we pulled her into our lesson as well.  She took a real risk as she was not able to plan the lesson with us, but jumped right in and co-taught with Richard and myself.

The strand that Richard's Grade 2's are working on right now is measurement.  Richard and Cindy wanted to see what the students knew about time, and if there were any gaps that they needed to fill in prior to teaching the expectation for the grade.  The lesson was in the three - part lesson format:  Minds on:  Compare the times on a digital and analogue clock; Action: answer a problem based on one of the students in his class:  M started watching a TV show at 5:30pm (time shown in an analogue clock) when the show was over he looked at the time on the VCR and it said 6:00.  M said the show was a half an hour long.  Is he correct?  Explain your answer.  Then to Consolidate, we brought up two students who used two different strategies to share their work.

When the lesson was over Richard, Cindy and myself had the rest of the morning to moderate mark, give each student descriptive feedback on their work, and then do some planning for the remainder of the unit.

What was great about this debrief was not only did Cindy get to see all that is involved in planning and marking, but her and Richard got to have a really focused and professional discussion on strengths and needs of the students in the class.  This is especially important because it allows Cindy the chance to make real-time decisions about the students she is teaching, and plan for the remainder of the unit that she is teaching for her teaching block. 

After all of the descriptive feedback was done, and the feedback given to the marker students recorded on the template, they then sorted the next steps into areas of need.

These areas were:
a) use information from the question to help them;
b) make sure that all parts of the question are answered; and
c) add more specific details into the answer.

As Cindy plans the remainder of the unit, she's got some things to think about and make sure that she is incorporating into the unit.

Co-teaching, Co-learning, Co-growing

As part of Dorset Park's pathway, the teachers and admin have decided to take a more focused approach to their math pathway.  Since the division is small (3 teachers, 2 with split grades) they have opted to do co-teaching as a way to learn more about math, and to focus in on key ideas and strategies to help students in their classrooms.

Cathy teaches a 2/3 class.  Herself and the other 2/3 teacher each "swap" to have a grade in math.  Cathy teaches the straight Grade 3 class.  For our co-teaching session, we decided to do a pre-assessment task in graphing to see what the students could remember from previous years and help give Cathy some data on what the needs of her students were.  The lesson was structured in a three-part lesson format: Minds On:  Create a Line plot on eye colour in our classroom;

 Action: Compare our data to that from another class (we modified a task in the text to help us accomplish this) and discuss similarities and differences,

and then to Consolidate we made a Venn Diagram with the similarities and differences listed.

Our blackboard after our lesson.

When the lesson was done, Cathy and I had the rest of the morning available to do some moderated marking, and give descriptive feedback to each of the students.  Using the A 4 L tool during the lesson was also helpful as it gave us a starting point for discussion.  We recorded the feedback we gave her marker students on a specific "Marker Student Feedback" sheet that was shared by George, a current Teaching and Learning Coach who was a SWST teacher last year.  This helps us to have specific information about her marker students, and allows her to easily track their progress over the course of the year. 

When we were done giving descriptive feedback, we then sorted the steps for improvement into different categories. 

What we noticed was that there were four main areas that the students needed help with:
a) Organizing their answer;
b) Answering all parts of the question;
c) Using numbers to help justify their answers; and
d) Incorporating appropriate math vocabulary into their answer.

From these areas, Cathy is now able to begin teaching her unit with the needs of her students in mind.  She is able to plan her lessons around these ideas, and help the students become successful in meeting the expectations for this grade.

Success Criteria - Part Two

This week, Melissa did a follow up lesson with her Grade 1/2 class to help them consolidate their learning on what makes a good answer.  She started with the class chart that she co-created with them last week.  You can see that they have made some additions to their original chart.  She wrote these additions in a different colour.

Her learning goals for this lesson were:  To learn about what makes a good answer and to learn how to make an answer even better by ensuring that all four areas of the achievement chart are included (Knowledge and Understanding, Application, Thinking/Problem Solving, Communication).  Her "minds on" was to have the children talk about the four areas of the achievement chart and what might go under each area.  For the "action" of her lesson, Melissa wrote all of the items from the original anchor chart on "what makes a good answer" and placed them on sentence strips.  She then had the students look at the sentence strip that they were given and put it under the category of the achievement chart where it fit the best.  

She differentiated this activity by including not only sentences, but also pictures for those students who are struggling readers.   The students were given two pieces of work that they did recently.  She gave them a

"Star and a Wish" sheet and a highlighter.  They then went and highlighted something that they thought they did well, or were a "star" on.  They also then filled in their "wish" on what area they need to improve upon or do differently next time.  This is not only great for helping them take control of their learning, it also is a great way for them to show self-regulation - a new learning skill on the report card.

When they were done this, she brought them back to the carpet to consolidate their learning.  She did this by having them share what their "stars" were and then had them place their work under one of the four categories.  After the lesson was done, she then placed the achievement chart, their success criteria and the samples of work and star and wish sheets onto the blackboard.  This now acts as an anchor chart for the students to refer to when solving problems.

If you would like to see this lesson, I do have a video of it.  Please contact me and I'd be happy to share.  As well, Melissa is very welcoming to visitors in her class.  Contact me and I can put you in touch with her and you can go in for a visit or a chat.

Cross Strand Problem Solving

In thinking ahead to Valentines Day, Melissa had her class complete a problem on making valentines.  Her lesson was in a three - part lesson format and was the following:
Minds on - Reading a book to them.  Action - was the following problem: Sierra made valentine cards for her friends.  It took her 5 minutes to make one valentine card.  How long did it take her to make 6 cards? (Adapted from The Math Process Standards Series K-2 by Susan O'Connell) Consolidation - To share answers and develop success criteria from it.

Although telling time to the nearest 5 minutes is not in the Grade 1 or 2 curriculum, Melissa has spent a lot of time getting her students to work on composing and decomposing numbers in different ways.  Her goal for the lesson was to have the students apply a known strategy to a problem in a different strand.  As the students were working, Melissa went around and used the Assessment for Learning tool during her discussions with the students.  This allowed her the opportunity to instantly record their strategy, answer and their errors. 

 Once the students were done, she brought them together to create a list of what made their answer good.  This will now be their success criteria for upcoming problems (photos of that to come later).  Once the students discussed what made their answer good, they then had the opportunity to go back and "edit" their work to put more detail into their answers.  You can see this in the pictures by the different colour that they used.

This pair of  students originally had the incorrect answer.  They then went back and checked their work and noticed the error.

This pair drew too many tally marks originally, they were able to see their error, but simply didn't go back to change the written portion of their answer.

I have made a video of this lesson as it really shows not only what a good three part lesson looks like, but also how you can create success criteria with your class.  If you would like to see the video, or want help in creating success criteria with your class, please let me know.

Combined Grade Planning

Teaching a combined grade is not always the easiest teaching assignment.  Not only do you have two different grades of students, but you also have two different levels of the curriculum to look at.  Planning ahead is the key to help you make the most out of your lessons - and to make sure that you are covering all that needs to be covered.

Heather teaches a combined Grade 2/3 class.  Her numbers are pretty well split down the middle.  Here is a template she used to help her plan her unit for measurement.

She broke down the unit into four main areas:  General, Area & Perimeter, Capacity/Mass and Time/Temperature.  From there she looked at the specific expectations and then summarized them for each grade.  The grades each got their own colour to make it visually easier to read.  Once she was done, she then highlighted all that was similar in the two grades, and then circled what was different or new to the grade.  This then allowed her to look at the similarities and differences between the two grades, and then helped her zone in on what was different when planning.