We can hear what you are saying....

Now that we have these students talking (particularly in small group discussions), we can hear what they are saying. While in part we learn to appreciate the great leadership skills demonstrated by some as discussion facilitators, other aspects of this have become more disturbing. As the affective filter is lowered and students are prompted with controversial and intriguing subjects, some have also begun to speak more freely than they would regularly in front of the entire class. We don't know how to address the dis-respectfulness, stereotyping, and racists attitudes that have been demonstrated by some students in the small group discussion. While comments appear to be made without malice, they show the joking repetition of stereotypes. We think spending some time on the history of the countries that aren't represented in our class will help them. Their worlds are very small. We acknowledge that this is a result of ignorance and needs to be addressed in some manner. Additionally, we discussed the importance of the teacher listening to the recorded discussions and providing constructive feedback. So we are excited that academic conversations are flourishing as well as critical thinking. We just need to have conversations about being respectful.

PLC Showcase

At the end of our semester of work, all PLCs will be showcasing their work at the Wyandotte High School PLC Showcase on Wednesday, December 12th in the Social Hall.  The showcase will be a public demonstration of our learning, collaboration, and results.  Each PLC will showcase work that reflects how your learning and collaboration has impacted student learning.  Each PLC is encouraged to be creative and innovative in their demonstration (student examples would be highly encouraged); however, please be sure the following are addressed through your presentation -
    PLC Focus

Collaborative Actions   

Summary of PLC Learning

Impact on Student Learning

Connections to Future Teaching and Learning

In addition, all staff will have an opportunity to visit each demonstration during the Showcase.  Many outside guests will also be in attendance.  

If your PLC requires any kind of additional resources, please submit any requests for those materials via the comment section to this blog entry by NOVEMBER 9th. You will receive these materials by or before your November 28th meeting, so you will have AT LEAST two weeks to work on organizing your demonstration.

Coninuation of success and talking

We have students talking in class. We do make them talk intentionally, but we love having small group discussions and recording them. We still struggle to have our students to turn in (anything on time) their recordings. We need to keep our group accountable for continued support and new recordings. Organization-wise we need to create a way to store these videos. We need to create a system to listen to later. We need to create a system to save and organize them like dropbox. We also need to develop higher order question to get them engaged in these conversations. Maybe rearranging our classrooms into smaller pods of three, or tables? We think this might facilitate MORE discussion. There is not a lot of new to report, but with more practice, the computer will become part of conversations. AND conversations become part of the classroom.

THEY CAN TALK!

Progress! We have been working with tons of strategies, and we have learned a lot! We first need practice, and continued modeling of what we want from our students. Letting students choose their groups and record their conversations lowers the affective filter and produces better conversations. Using topics that are polemic. Give them things that they may or may not know already so that there has to be a discussion of meaning. No right or wrong answer conversations are awesome. People that are not talkers are talking more in class. There are some serious cultural questions we need to address to understand why our other students are not producing even at the most basic level. We are also getting the student homework atrophy. We also have students who we think have the ideas but the "spitting it out part" of language (in a sensible manner)has them sending us mixed messages. Something that is in our classes that needs to be addressed is cultural sensitivity among the nations represented in our school. Not every Hispanic is from Mexico, and not all people from Asia are "Chinos". We are keeping documentation (recordings, and classroom discussion topics) to track our progress. Maybe the students would like to use them in their portfolios.

How did it go? Conversations in our classroom that worked

We have identified flaws in ways the writing and then responding has been carried out in the past. We have found some ways to change the system to make it work in our classrooms. More waiting time provides for more complete sentences. For our struggling speakers, we created sentence starters or cloze statements that encouraged speaking in complete sentences. Offering options for responses is helpful. We think that giving other students who are more secure/self assured in their speaking abilities an opportunity to speak first, that could give others examples and time to listen. Some of our kids are in silent periods, some of it is cultural... speaking is hard to do in front of people. Option: Recording responses to questions, record reading, everything they do they are going to record. Power Point/recording through out the year: look at the progression= what do you notice about your recording? what has changed? What has stayed the same?