Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Developing self managed learners

Sometimes it's easy to get frustrated with kids. It seems like you're constantly nagging them to put things away, stop teasing each other, keep track of worksheets and so on. I've felt like my mum hat is on at home and at school at the moment as the end of year lethargy begins to seep in and take hold.

Sometimes you feel like a big nag, but in so many other ways, the constant discussions we have with the children about their learning has an effect without you even realising it.

My colleagues and I who teach year 3/4 are having a big focus on the children being accountable and responsible for their learning. We do this by giving them a list of Must Do tasks that they need to complete along with dates that they are due. At the end of the week, the children take their list home to be signed by their parents, making them accountable at school and at home for meeting their deadlines.

What we are finding is that as the past couple of weeks have progressed, the children are quite happy to manage more of their own time, freeing us (the grown ups) up to do some really targeted teaching at a level that the children have identified along with us.

Case in point this week:

One of the tasks we have given the children is a Maths Medley (a colleague came up with the idea) where the children had a series of challenges to complete which enabled them to practice and apply Subtraction, measurement and division/fractions.

Before giving the sheets out to the children we asked them to read it, think about what they could do on their own and what they would need help with. We told the children that we could offer workshops and focus groups on any of the topics or tasks related to the medley, and that they had a choice of signing up for any one of them. We also let them know that if the Learning Advisors thought they needed a workshop and they didn't sign up for it, that they would be put into it anyway.

So off the kids went to look at the task and identify their needs. Without even needing to be prompted, one group of friends got together, figured out their strengths and weaknesses and figured out how to support each other to get the task done. Other kids came over to sign up for workshops as I was getting organised and nominated specific needs for workshops that we hadn't thought of yet. To our suprise, the children didn't need as many workshop topics as we'd anticipated. The main demmand was related to Fractions, Making a Ruler, Subtraction with Borrowing and Perimeter.

The kids set to work on the task and my colleague and I went around collecting kids for workshops on the topics listed above. Today when a parent came in to help, they were able to run a workshop with the children who needed help with perimeter and ended up modelling how to count by multiples of ten.

It looks like they are all going to make it through all of the tasks before the end of the week - and the best bit is that they all were engaged and on task because all needs were being met at once (even the kids who find it hard to focus). There were no social issues to sort out and everyone had a chance to share their achievments at the end.

Some things that the kids said that struck me:

"When I started out, I thought that I could do this, but now I realise I need a bit of help - is it too late to join your workshop?"

"I did the workshop yesterday but I still need a bit of help - can I do the workshop again?"

"When I work, I like to see if I can solve the problems independently first, then go and ask for help if I need it. Is it ok if I have a go first before I figure out if I need a workshop on anything?"

"Look! I did the workshop yesterday and today I could do it by myself!"

Despite having to spend time modelling and explaining how to keep track of belongings and put things away properly, it was so refreshing to see that as far as their learning is concerned, that they are becoming more effective at managing themselves and more aware of their strengths and weaknesses as learners.