Encouraging the 'Talanoa' - Home group/Expert groups in Level 2 Social Studies

In my level 2 Social Studies, I have been looking at ways to engage students in their learning through encouraging the use of the 'Talanoa', or discussions about the context, as another means of knowledge building and understanding.  Dr Jannie Van Hees recently shared that we need to be 'developing conversationalists' and how students oral literacy skills would improve if they could 'chainlink' what they had to say to each other.  I wanted the kids to work in smaller groups to discuss and engage in conversations about perspectives that were relevant to their learning.  

The topic we have been studying is the conflict between Israel and Palestine and in a recent exercise (that I'd blogged about earlier) we split the class into two different groups with opposing perspectives, to allow for students to verbalise their learnings.  Although there were some good debates going on, realistically it was 2 or 3 students with the confidence to speak who did so.

To get more students to engage in a 'talanoa', my co-teacher CC and I, tried out a home group/expert group exercise.  We asked students to get into an expert group of their choice, making 5 groups in total.  A leader from each group came up and pulled out one of the perspectives from a box - Hamas, IDF, PLO, U.N and the Zionists.  Students were given a brief about what they needed to write and got to the task of researching their assigned perspectives.

Most of the groups worked well together, but I noticed one or two students who would not contribute or did not engage.  I had a quiet word with them to remind them that soon, they will need to split up and have to be able to tell others from outside their group, who they were and what they believed in.  This gave them a 'boost' with the expectation that others will need their input.

After about 30 minutes, we asked the expert groups to split up and move in to 'home' groups, where they shared the beliefs and perspectives of the group they had studied  Each group was then given a scenario, whereby they had to attempt to reach a resolution .  Near the end of the session, I put the final statement on the board 'Whose owns the land' and gave everyone the chance to go for it!

On reflection, I found this activity was really engaging for the students, even the ones who had little to say.  Some students spoke with confidence and encouraged each other, where as others listened, then gave input where they saw fit.  Although there were one or two stragglers, the others in the group pulled them in to the conversation.

When I asked the students what they thought about the exercise, one student said how she felt 'brainy' because she could say what she'd learnt and reply back to other people who had opposite beliefs.  One of the boys said he felt surprised that he could say what he did because he was usually shy but felt safe enough in the smaller group environment to speak up.

For next time, I would like students to write a reflection of the exercise to gage how successful (or not) it was in helping them in their learning.  I may also use conversation cue cards or question cards on each table once their in their home groups, to get more kids to share and get used to discussions in these smaller, more manageable groups.

Year 10 presentations

I have recently inherited a year 10 class for one period a week and although it is hard to gather momentum when you are teaching something, I've made it my goal to make sure that they are challenged and excited about learning in Social Studies.

For our lesson, the kids had been working in human rights groups, on a Universal Declaration of Human Right.  They had to present their work on a google presentation as a class with their other teacher, but didn't do this so I was eager to see how much work they'd put in.

When asking for volunteers, I got a varied response.  There were the super confident students like Leo, who jumped at the chance to present and then there were the shy, withdrawn students who refused to get up.  I didn't want to pressure or force every student to present and from what I could gage, the culture wasn't quite right or comfortable enough for each group to present.  In the end, 5 of the 7 groups in some form or other presented and I let the class know, that my goal was to support them in their confidence to get up and share their learnings with each other.

Leo is super confident to present

Jolise offered to share her learnings

Fana and Tevita started well but became shy

T.C as Connected Learners: Knowing why we 'Share'

At our staff PLD this week, Lenva Shearing from Manaiakalani, discussed the aspect of Share from our cluster wide kaupapa of 'Learn, Create, Share'.

Humans have been sharing since the beginning of time from the time of cave man paintings and it is not a new thing.  Although the mode has changed, our human instinct hasn't. 

"Creating and sustaining relationships is the key to sharing".  In the past, sharing was limited to the people in the classroom and around the learners but today there are no limits - sharing can happen anytime, anywhere with anyone.

When our staff were asked what our favoured medium of sharing was, the majority of our staff who used social media said facebook.  Some of the reasons people used social media was to share stories, keep in touch with family and friends and stay connected with the outside world.  When asked what our boundaries were, one staff member said 'if it's something you wouldn't show your grandma, don't post it'. 

A challenge was put to our staff and we were asked to blog about it.  The statement was that 'All this technology is making us anti-social'.

Staff really got into it and I could hear from staff around me some good debates going on.   I personally could see both points of view as I understand that different generations see social media in different ways and I guess it depends on how you define being 'social'.

I am thinking carefully about my blogpost.

Lenva reminding us the importance of blogging for our students

We were reminded of the benefits for our students to continue to write and share blog posts, most of whom have been blogging since primary school.  Lenva shared the amazing results of the summer blogging journey - that if students blogged at least twice a week, they could potentially go up at least two asttle scores.   This was evident in the results shown by the 5 students from our school who took part in the blogging journey and all made good gains in their asttle writing scores - blogging was their golden recipe for success and could be for the majority of our kids too!.

A few of our summer bloggers who made good gains in their February asttle scores.

All this technology is making us antisocial - Dot's view

I believe yes and no.

Yes if you are a baby boomer, generation X trying to talk to a generation Y.  You communicate differently and being 'social' means a different thing to different people.

 

No, if you want to reach out to people who you want to stay in touch with.   It helps to keep relationships going and people socialise differently these days.

This is my two-cents.  Please leave some change.

My Hui presentation

The Manaiakalani Hui is an opportunity for our CoL teachers to share our inquiries with lots of different people who are invested in some way or form in or Kahui Ako.  This year, we made one minute introductory videos to our inquiries, which provided a taster for anyone who wanted to find out more.   Once our videos were played, we held a round table session for 10 minutes which allowed us to discuss our inquiries further.   Below is my video:

At my round table sessions, I spent much of my time talking about what I had found with my inquiry and I there was a lady who was also a social science teacher who asked some really interesting questions and comments.  I shared that a group of us teachers have met to look at using and teaching sentence structures that was adopted from the 'Write that essay' programme and how much students learnt from the strategies.  One question was whether I saw the benefits of using the writing strategies in a 'Tuakana Teina' aspect, where the senior boys could support the junior boys in their writing.  I said that was an interesting way to use the skills they'd learnt and I would look into how they could work.  It was refreshing to share our inquiries with like minded people who cared about the learnings of the kids in our Kahui Ako.

Encouraging the Talanoa - giving our kids the confidence to speak

When I ask my students to stand up and discuss or debate an issue that they care about or know a lot about,  there are a few kids who nail it. They are often the confident ones who enjoy the attention but in my level 2 class, most lack the confidence or the skill to stand in front of their peers and share their opinion for a number of different reasons.  

At our Power-up homework centre recently, DJ Tuaru, who runs the sessions, took the students who attended through the power of 'Talanoa', which looked at encouraging students to voice their informed opinions on an issue that interests them.  We discussed the meaning of 'Talanoa' and I found it empowering to be reminded that our Pasifika people were an oral people and that generations of our elders passed on their knowledge through song, music and storytelling. I asked DJ to come to my level 2 class, to share his presentation and help run a debate around what my kids had been learning about.  I wanted to see how the students would respond with the lesson.

Orators from around the Pacific

My students had just learnt about 2 different perspectives from the same religion in Israel who wanted different outcomes - the Israeli Defence Force and the Orthodox Jews.  We wanted to see if they could argue the perspectives from those viewpoints and respond to each other.  My recording of the lesson is below.   
(Please note: When debating, the students perspectives where in role play).

Reflection:  On reflection, I could see how hard it was for the majority of the class to speak up.  I wonder if it was the environment or their lack of knowledge of the context or other reasons.  I will have a follow up discussion this week and feedback from the class to see how they felt about it.  My next steps will be to organise smaller conversational groups, to support those who would not speak or were less confident and to allow them practice to hold conversations through different prompts and to mind map their responses.  I will also look at other strategies to encourage our students with the 'Talanoa' and ask Dr Jannie about ways to support our kids with conversations.

Acknowledgements:  Thank you Mr Tuaru for your inspiring lesson.

Shared 'sentence' success - Level 2 Health and Social Studies

This term we have been focussing on teaching different types of sentences that can help formulate effective paragraphs in preparation for our external exam.  During our social studies lesson this week, one of my year 12 boys was struggling with how to write a power sentence.  He pulled out a little red notebook, that his health teacher, Whaea Kata had given him and looked carefully at his definition of what a power sentence was.   He tells me that they are doing the same thing in health and he just wanted to double check the meaning.

I have had discussions with Whaea Kata on how she is using sentences structures in her teaching and her brilliant idea of getting kids to write down in their own notebooks the definitions so that they can carry them around to refer to, is paying off.  As I introduced sentence structures at the beginning of the term, the health kids were like 'we're doing this in health too' and it will be interesting to see if the 10 students, who take both subjects,  show better outcomes with their writing then those students who don't.