Teaching

One way I have helped students is by collaborative teaching. This helps them learn from one another by enabling students to share ideas. One example is within maths groups using the DMIC framework.

In this framework, using a series of ‘talk moves’ students are encouraged to respectfully share and critique each other's ideas and understandings of mathematical concepts. They share ideas, challenge those ideas, reword them and make connections to other concepts explicitly which aids other students by giving them multiple ways of exploring a problem and vocalising misconceptions.

The impact of this strategy is that the students with questions or misconceptions are encouraged to bring them to light instead of keeping quiet and locking all of the knowledge in the minds of a few successful students. Vygotsky describes this sociocultural learning as the key to constructing knowledge. This form of learning raises the understanding of all involved, even the more knowledgable because, in explaining, they expose any of their own knowledge gaps, and must correct them.

As a newer teacher, I am always striving to make progress in helping my students find their voice and develop their bravery to contribute and their compassion to listen to each other.

An example of a student developing this bravery this year was whilst preparing speeches for our class this year, I encouraged any students who were confident to perform their speeches in another language. One of my students not only did this, but went on to develop her speech with other Tongan language speakers in the class and the learning hub. She then took the speech to to wider competition in our school and then interschool.

Another way I have enabled students to learn from one another is to look for opportunities to share teaching with students. One example of this is when I noticed that one of my students was solving addition problems using an advanced technique. I spoke to him and found he had been working with his father on his maths. When the next opportunity arose, the student and I taught the class about this method of addition. This benefitted the student by positioning him as a knowledgable and valued member of the classroom, it benefited the rest of the class by showing that each and everyone had something to offer and could be a leader. It also helped me with classroom management by finding a role for an unruly student that could restore some of the mana that his off-task behaviours had caused. In the past on practicum, I have changed maths tasks from English to Samoan or Maori. This has had similar effects of repositioning students within the classroom hierarchy. I think this is helpful to all students because it allows them to see that all their skills are valuable, not just the commonly measured ones.