Three Part Lesson as Bansho

In Melissa's combined Grade 3/4 class her students are pretty comfortable in being mathematicians.  They are very aware of what the learning goals of their lessons are, how to use success criteria to improve their answers, and how to reflect on what their strengths and weakness are (mathematically speaking).

She attended a Grade 3 PD session with the program department the other day and loved the idea of seeing her three-part lesson as a Bansho.  So she grabbed some long kraft paper and got to work taking her three-part lesson from paper to wall and got the students thinking.

Her "Minds on" was having the students (in partners) decide what the data could represent.  After they had done this, she recorded some of their thoughts along each side of the specific graphs.  The students then came up with a prediction:  They thought all the data in the pictures was of the same thing, but represented in different ways. 

As her "Action" she asked the students to think of something that might be true of most of the students in the class, then conduct a survey to see if they were correct or not. 

For her "consolidation" she choose to do a congress where two different students shared their work with the class.  She photocopied this work and then put it up on the kraft paper where Melissa recorded the "Stars" (things that the group felt they did well on) and "Wishes" (things that the group felt they needed to improve upon).    They also created a highlights sheet to highlight what they learned (as a class) from the lesson.

Seeing their lesson as a Bansho allows the students to not only see the progression of their learning, but also refer to it when they are participating in the consolidation of the lesson.  Plus, in doing it on the kraft paper it allows you a chance to leave it up for a bit, then roll it up when you are done.  Only to bring it out again to help consolidate previous learning into new learning.

Learning Goals for a Rotary Teacher

Antonia teaches math on rotary.  She has a combined Grade 6/7 math class and also a Grade 8 math class.  She was a little unsure of how she was going to be able to display her learning goals for all three grades.  She knew that due to lack of space chart paper was not going to work in her classroom.  So she decided to use technology to help her.  Her school had previously done some planning so that both of her division (junior and intermediate) are doing the same expectations at the same time.  This really helps in working within two divisions.

She typed up all of her learning goals for the strand that she is teaching for each grade.  She used the specific expectations to help her create these learning goals.  She then posted them on the wall in her classroom for the students to see.  At the start of the lesson each day she now refers to the learning goals that they will be working on that day.  The students are aware of what they are learning, and are able to articulate specific things that they are struggling with.  A pro in having them up for the whole unit is that the students are able to see (in a nut shell) where they are going over the next few weeks.  (It is up to you how you want to display the learning goals - you can also do them a few at a time if that works better for your teaching style)

Here is what her wall looks like:

At the bottom of her learning goals she also has her success criteria.  This helps give the students one place to turn to when they are done their work and want to make sure that they not only understand what the goal of the lesson is, but also what is expected in their work.

Graphing In Kindergarten - YOU BET!

Casey teaches in a full day kindergarten class.  She had been at her daughter's school and saw a great idea for a bulletin board and decided to give it a try with her kindergarten class.  (I like to call that "educational shoplifting" :)

She asked her students the question of "How Many People Are in Your Family?"  Instead of having them complete the graph on chart paper, she gave each student a small paper plate.  On the plate they drew the people in their family.  By using the paper plate it allowed her the opportunity to keep the drawings all the same size.  This really made it easy for the students to compare the different sizes of their families as they were able to count the plates to help determine how many people are in each type of family.  (e.g, More students have 5 people in their family.  9 friends have 4 people in their family)  With 29 students it makes for a full bulletin board!

Moving Forward With Success Criteria

Kristen's combined Grade 5/6 has been working on graphing.  They have been looking at graphs and creating graphs on a variety of topics.  Kristen found that her students were struggling when physically creating a graph.  They are able to read a graph, and make assumptions and interpretations about the graph, but don't always pick the most appropriate graph for the data set they are working with.

To help them overcome this difficulty she created success criteria with all of the things she is looking for in a good graph.  On her success criteria you can see how she covers some of the "basics" of graphing (e.g., my graph has a title and labels) but also covers some of the application / communication aspects of graphing (e.g., I can explain why the graph I chose is the most appropriate, My scale is appropriate for the data I'm using because....)

Here is her success criteria for the unit:

It now makes things so much more clearer for the students, because they know what is expected in their work, and it also gives Kristen an anchor to draw some of her descriptive feedback from (e.g., The graph that you chose to represent the data works well as it makes the comparison between the two choices very clear.  How could you have used a different title to match your survey question a little bit better?)  Both of these things (the success criteria and the descriptive feedback) are going to really have a positive impact on student achievement.

Asking Questions About Graphs

Haroula's Grade 1 math class is near the end of their unit on graphing.  She wanted to give them a culminating task that would not only have them create a graph, but also create questions about the data in front of them.

Each student choose a question to ask their peers.  They then went around and surveyed each student in the class and recorded the answer in a tally.  She kept things pretty simple by suggesting that there be no more than four options (answers) to choose from.  The students then created a graph based on the data they collected.

Haroula then had the students exchange completed graphs.  The students then had to ask two questions based on the new graph in front of them. (On the yellow paper) The author of the graph then had to answer the question that was asked of them. (On the orange paper).  When the questions were asked and answered, she put the graphs and the questions on display for everyone to see.  She included a description of the activity (procedure) as well as the curriculum expectations that were covered in doing the activity.  It's great to see not only the completed graphs but also the questions that were asked about each graph.

The Finished Product

Close Up Of The Description Of The Activity.

 

Marker Students

We have all had to identify two marker students in our classroom.  One of our schools is taking the work of those marker students out of the binder and onto the walls.  They have turned a conference room into a living data wall.  Each teacher has posted the work of their marker students in all three area of reading, writing and math.  They have written down what they notice about the students strengths on the task, their needs and also the "next steps."  The "next steps" however are for next steps in the teaching of the topic, not the next steps for the student.  At every staff meeting they are going to be spending 10 minutes talking about what they notice about the work of the marker students, and what strategies they can share with each other to help not only the marker students improve, but all of the students in their class improve.

One side of the Room.  Each cartoon person represents a student.

The other side of the room.  You can see how each teacher has their two students and the 3 subjects.

A sample of a math problem from a student.  (The work is taken from The Process Standard Series by Susan O'Connell)

Here are the notes the teacher made about the student's work.  They can easily turn the strenghts and needs into effective Descriptive Feedback to the Student.