[MUSIC] Welcome back to Week Three. In this session, we're going to be exploring the four questions in more depth and looking at how a couple of schools are applying these questions, and inviting you to think about the ways in which you might use these questions in your own setting, with your own learners, in your context, to contribute to your thinking about planning for future learning. So, we're going to start with one school's journey. This is a primary school in Australia that has been working with these questions for the last several months. They started off by as a staff group reading the chapter which we're going to be providing to you and discussing the whole notion of the four key questions. And Linda and I had a chance to be involved in a Skype call with the school, which was a lot of fun and really provided some space for us to be seeing each others faces. And then as part of their term one requirements, each teacher on the staff agreed to interview one or two students, on a regular basis, over the term, using the four questions and then providing their responses at a staff meeting, where they got a chance to explore what was it that the learners were saying, and what did that tell them about what was happening in their classrooms. This is the format that they used, so they had a very simple, template that they used to pose the questions and to respond-- or to write down what the learner's responses were. You can also see on this slide how they interpreted the questions, or they reworded the questions, so that it was more age appropriate for the learners. What they were very careful to do was to maintain the intent of the question though. So, if we take a look at this, you can see - can you name two adults in this school, who believe you'll be a success in life? You'll need to work with that question a little bit with your learners so they understand what it is you mean. But what you're not going to do is say, can you name two adults who care about you? Is there somebody at home who cares about you? This is about adults in the school believing you'll be a success in life. And one of the responses from this particular school that we absolutely love, was a boy who said, yes, I know that my teacher Miss X believes I'll be a success in life because I can feel the imprint of her boot on my rear end. Now, that has nothing to do with corporal punishment. It has everything to do with the teacher not giving up and making sure he knew that she knew he was going to be a success. You'll see in the second question, Where are you going with your learning? Or what are you learning? That they've got some additional prompts here. What are the big ideas you're learning? What are you learning and why is it important? How does this connect to your life? So, again, we're providing these just as an example of ways that you can change the language to make it more relevant or more appropriate for your learners. Question number three, how are you going with your learning? It says, what would you like to tell others about how you're doing with your learning? How do you know how you're going? What kind of criteria are you using? And finally, where to next? Tell me what the next piece of learning is for you? So, we provided this template for you to consider, and now lets see what some of the responses were from the students. So, here's term one. So, as you look at this you'll see that the students' responses are, more or less in the zone, but they weren't particularly deep. Where to next? I need to concentrate better and be more focused. I wouldn't say that that's as specific as the teachers might like. It may reflect a comment - try harder, do your best, and the student interpreting in this particular way. Here are the comments from two more teachers-- two more students, rather. Where to next? Not talk when the teacher is giving instructions. Maths, I need to cooperate better. These aren't particular profound responses. And here's what the teachers had to say. They said we had to prompt our students to get the answers. That their answers were superficial, they were at the surface level and they were not about deep understanding about their learning or the importance of their learning. And students couldn't articulate where they needed to go with their learning. So, their first round, they were somewhat disappointed with the responses that they got. And here's some further reflections from their teachers - I need to help them realise their potential in life. He knew some of what, what he was learning, but he couldn't connect it with anything outside of school. After interviewing her, I knew she felt supported in my class and it made me think about the impact I could have on other learners if I took the time with them. Some other reflections from the teachers, this made me realise how important it is to make the learning intentions really clear. If one learner will benefit from this hopefully the others will too. I constantly need to refer to the big picture. It made me realise how important it is and how much I'd like to have the opportunity to talk to all of my students individually. And some further opportunities, including this, the last one in particular - students needs more time and more opportunities to talk about their learning. I'd like to build in one-to-one chats with students regularly. I'm not sure that in every classroom, having a one-to-one chat with every learner, every day is possible or practical or doable. But hopefully once a term, once a month, we can find that two or three minutes for an individual conversation with the learner. Then the school persisted and here are the samples from term two. I'm just going to pause and have you read these and see do you think that these learners are making some progress in their responses? Here's the thoughts from the teachers at this stage in the process. Now, they've done it for the first term, they've done it twice. And their reflections were how important it is and what powerful data just collecting the information from the learners, bringing it back together in a staff group or even with one or two other people and thinking about what the learners have said is changing their practice and it's having an immediate impact. So, our invitation to you is to think for yourselves about how you might use them. Here's another example. This is slightly different, because this is using peer tutors to collect the responses from the learners. This is what we have learned is the power of having students work with older and younger learners in a coaching relationship. So, a very powerful question that the older reading buddy can ask the younger buddy is, what's one thing you've learned about yourself as a reader this week? So, think about the power of that question, where the older coach is working with the younger one. So, that's a really powerful question. And the next one is, what's one thing you've learned about yourself as a reader this week that you can use over and over and over for a lifetime? These two questions are totally in the zone of where are you going with your learning, and they're in student language that students can use with each other. Our invitation to you is to think about how you can use these four questions. And to what extent this thinking connects with your own experience so far as a teacher in your classroom. How does this challenge your thinking and your planning, in terms of what you know about your learners? And how does this extend what you're already doing as a classroom teacher? In the next session, Linda's going to be introducing the importance of a framework of inquiry as you're working together with your colleagues to deepen the experience of your learners. So, we look forward to continuing our conversation very soon. [MUSIC]
