A reflection into student and teacher mindsets during remote learning.

Lock down has brought on many reasons to celebrate and be grateful, it has also presented some challenges and uncertainties. It has been awesome seeing the teaching community share ideas and resources in this difficult time. The Russo Bros and Michael Minas have been a goldmine of content (I’ve been creating Prep lessons!). If you haven’t found them on twitter, do it immediately.

For Erin and I, the intention of this post is to share our story and investigation as both a reflective tool for us, but hopefully will give you some ideas to help in your situation. Possibly you are feeling or thinking some of the same things we are and it might make you feel better knowing that other teachers are in similar situations. Erin and I are in a 5/6 team and are both passionate about maths mindset work. We were debriefing after a busy week and thought a positive way to focus our frustrations was to share our story and plan of action.

Following on from the PMSS Vignette work form Jill and Ian, Erin and I have each created a story sharing our experience of the last couple of weeks.

Context for our Inquiry

Lockdown 2.0. I sit here in my home office (which sadly is a couch in my back room, hiding away so my gorgeous freshly turned five-year-old doesn’t tempt me to drop everything and go collect ants), a pile of inspirational books about problem solving, Mathematical Mindsets and curriculum planners surround me, my headphones are ready for my next conference call, my Apple Pen lays somewhere next to me after adding feedback that may or may not be looked at and I’ve just finished my lessons ready for someone to check over for next week, but I can’t help feeling unsatisfied, like I’m missing a crucial piece in the teacher / learner puzzle. My favourite teaching experiences are when you have a group of students eager for the next challenge and take ownership of the lesson; exploring, collaborating and sharing their thinking. How can we create this in a remote environment where students are dealing with such a challenging experience of isolated learning? Under lockdown I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of an online meeting where nobody wants to share…. Suddenly behind a computer screen my chattiest of students can’t seem to find which bit of their microphone makes their voice louder. Erin and I have had similar experiences with our students who in the classroom are vibrant, persistent, stand up and discuss what they did and how they did it characters, but are struggling to engage with the tasks beyond ‘fill in the answer.’ Through our discussions, Erin said something that made me stop and think, ‘What learning can we take from this moment in time?’

-Pete

Remote learning has definitely been a challenging time. It has really highlighted for me what I find to be the ‘best’ parts of teaching, seeing kids learning and getting excited about learning, conversations with students where they explain, question, wonder, describe and think out loud, group collaboration, teamwork, discussions, discussions, discussions. All of these things have become increasingly difficult with remote teaching and learning. The vocal and questioning students become quiet or conversation over Teams calls are disjointed, stifling conversation. Students that learn best by talking through their ideas or hearing others’ viewpoints are suddenly isolated and struggling to get through tasks. Students that are usually confident problem solvers are feeling helpless or unsure. I like to think of myself as a lifelong learner; I love learning, I love finding things out, I love seeing people get excited about learning, I love that feeling you get when you are challenged or inspired by new information. Remote teaching and learning was also challenging that for me. Suddenly teaching and learning was incredibly different and difficult, student engagement was low and I found my motivation slipping. Thankfully, we have a staff of inquiring, intelligent and interesting people who are keen to discuss these ideas. Pete and I were talking about the difficulties of remote learning and the strange situation that we were now in, we came to the questions of, ‘What can we learn about this?’ ‘What can we change?’, ‘What can we improve?’, ‘What learning can we take from this moment in time?’

-Erin

Quoting the Ed Partnerships team, ‘Why this? Why now? Why this way?’

The ideas for this research and experimenting came up because of some common, re-occurring issues that were happening during remote learning. Many students who previously were quite good problem solvers became disengaged with remote learning. Another issue that was occurring was that students seemed to lose their ability to problem solve and work independently when coming across the ‘zone of confusion’, even with seemingly simple tasks. It seemed the situation of remote learning and the potential associated stress with isolation made students feel less independent and confident to take risks and try different ways to solve the problems they came across. Lastly, have we underestimated the role that we had played in helping students express their thinking? Are we expecting too much from them?

Our plan moving forward

Find out how students are feeling in relation to remote learning as well as how they are responding to maths tasks.

• Maths mindset survey (thanks to Peter Burrows, he gave some advice a few years ago and we reused this style) – CLICK HERE TO VIEW OUR MINDSET SURVEY

• Followup interview for particular students

Our aim is to discover what we can change and adjust in remote learning to empower students and help them find the confidence again to solve problems independently.

• Trialling different structures and lesson prompts. Enabling and extending prompts. More structure to explaining ‘thinking’ and methods.

• Strategies to celebrate mathematical thinking. With the teacher, each other and our community.

What ways can we support and empower our students during remote learning to move from passive learners to confident problem solvers?

• See above strategies.

Implement positive strategies to create meaningful feedback loops.

• Are students valuing feedback?

• Senior team using Matt Sexton’s Talk Moves cards to help with orchestrating discussions via conferences and feedback

• Trialling different approaches

• Teams Assignments

Our next post will share some responses to the Mindset survey and clarifying questions.