Reflection on Teaching and Learning

Teacher Leadership Standard 3

The third Teacher Leadership standard states "Teacher leaders improve teaching and learning through the use of educational research a the classroom and school levels" (Seattle Pacific University-Teacher Leadership Program Standards).  While various classes within SPU's teacher leadership program facilitated opportunities to improve teaching and learning practices, completing an action research project and sharing my findings with administration was a learning experience that best highlighted this standard.  Throughout my reflection you will notice that I was able to take charge of my own learning and growth within my classroom, and then share my findings with others.  Going through the practice of identifying areas of growth, doing my own educational research, and then implementing a plan of action within my classroom was an empowering experience as an educator and helped sharpen my skills as a teacher leader in order to facilitate action research at the building level. 

Prior to starting my action research project, I had not yet fine tuned by practice in self-improvement.  I did learn throughout my action research experience that I was already doing many things involved in action research such as reflecting on teaching practices and using data to make informed decisions.  Implementing action research on my own, however, allowed me to have a clear vision on improving teaching practices from the very beginning of choosing a specific area of teaching to focus on, to using educational research to base my action plan around, to effectively monitoring students with data.  Having this process organized allowed me to be able to better define action research, what it looks like, and how it can help other teachers.  This will help me in future years as a teacher leader when problem solving or reflecting with other teachers.  

Action Research Reflection:

Introduction

My overall focus for this action research project was to increase independence and engagement during math conversations through accountable talk.  Prior to beginning this action research project, I found that many of my students needed constant prompting to explain their thinking and communicate to others.  I also found that since these skills were lacking, we were missing out on a powerful opportunity to explain math concepts and strategies to parents.  Strengthening students’ communication skills in math can help with developing problem solving skills, communicating with families, and strengthening conceptual understanding of math topics. 
            When reviewing literature to dig deeper into resources that could help with these lacking skills, I came across many positive articles about accountable talk in math.  I first reviewed what "accountable talk" was and how it might help with increasing dialogue still in math with an "Accountable Talk Sourcebook" (Michaels, 2013).  Then, I was able to apply what I learned about accountable talk to something called "math talk", which was very similar but focused specifically on math (scholastic blog, n.d).  I also read articles about how to effectively get started with math talks and begin implementing them within the classroom.  The minds in bloom blog post from Lynette, et, al. was the most helpful with gathering information for this.  

My performance target looked at ways to increase student communication to others.  While one trait focused on increasing independence in student conversations during whole group lessons, my other trait looked at students’ individual abilities to explain a concept in video form through digital portfolios.  My process target focused on providing scaffolding and lessons surrounding the use of accountable talk in math.  My traits included tracking independence and participation during whole group lessons, planning small group lessons around student’s needs in this area, and providing targeted feedback and goals to students based on their initial individual videos. 

What Did We Do?

Looking at these performance and process targets now that this current action research is concluded, I was able to complete each trait as planned.  We had at least one whole group mini lesson per week that focused on how students can use accountable talk phrases in their math conversations. I would introduce three sentence stems each week and provide opportunities for students to practice these as a whole class by posing different problems or questions.  I often posed questions where more than one answer or strategy could be used to facilitate meaningful conversations among the class.  Students would use equity sticks to facilitate independent conversations without teacher support.  Data from these lessons come from my plan book, and also from videos that were recorded of these whole group lessons. 

Additionally, I had at least one small group lesson per week during my math workshop time.  These were a bit more informal because I would pull students based on their performance that day on the whole group lesson.  While there aren’t many pre-planned lesson for small group other than marks on my lesson plans saying “pull x for accountable talk review”, I do have conferencing notes using OneNote after pulling students for small groups.  These notes helped with next steps for individual students and planning for the next whole group lesson. 

Finally, all students were able to record videos of themselves explaining a math problem through their digital portfolios.  Prior to beginning the first whole group lesson for action research, I had students record a video on their ClassDojo portfolio explaining how to add 8+7.  This was a concept that had already been taught, so I was focusing more on monitoring students’ communication skills rather than their ability to complete the problem.  I had them record the same video when all action research lessons were completed.  These can be viewed on our class dojo account, and I provided one side by side video within my presentation for comparison.  I was able to conference with individual students in between these two videos to discuss goals and next steps to help them independently explain their thinking.  These goals were also communicated to parents through their portfolios at the beginning of the process. 
                                                  Initial Video Example Link

                                               Final Video Example Link

What Changes Occurred?

There were many positive changes that occurred throughout the implementation of this action research.  One of the most encouraging changes was student independence during whole group conversations in math.  After reviewing the video of the first whole group accountable talk mini lesson, I recorded that 5 students were able to participate using an accountable talk phrase, but I was “jumping in” to help or teaching how to do it 12 times.  Initially, I was talking more than twice for every student comment.  At the end of the video, students were able to participate using 10 accountable talk phrases with me only needing to speak twice.  It was encouraging to see the flip in conversations and also watch my (now independent) first graders be able to hold a math conversation between 5 people without any teacher “jump-ins”! 

I also did see increased engagement and participation during whole group and small group math conversations. Once students had the tools to communicate their thinking, I noticed conversations about math popping up in my classroom when I didn’t even expect it.  When I was purposefully recording for this, I also have data that supports those findings.  My initial lessons were longer, but I only had 5 students participate.  My final video was the shortest one of all, but I still had 10 students use accountable talk phrases with many more students adding to the engagement with “me too” hand symbols, thumbs up, or thumbs down to non-verbally convey their thinking. 

There were also encouraging changes that are visible with individual student thinking and explanations.  After watching the initial videos, I marked 9 out of 17 students as emergent.  This means they either couldn’t solve the problem or explain their thinking, or could tell you the answer with no explanation.  The remainder of my class was approaching.  This means they either got the answer wrong but provided an adequate strategy/explanation; or, they got the answer correct with an insufficient strategy and explanation.  In order to meet the standard that I was expecting, students needed to get the answer correct, name a strategy, and use an accountable talk move to explain their strategy.  To exceed those standards, students needed to add at least one extra strategy and incorporate that into their accountable talk phrase.  After viewing the final videos, I had 10 out of 18 students meeting or exceeding standard.  Only one student remained at emergent.  94% of my class was able to move up at least one level (either emergent to approaching or approaching to meeting/exceeding standard). 

Relationship between Actions and Changes

Based on the data, it is evident that the time spent on the accountable talk lessons helped my students improve in these areas.  Looking at the teacher vs. student ratios for whole group lessons, students were increasing independence each week as the instruction continued.  After the first lesson, the teacher to student ratio went from more than 2:1 to almost 1:1.  By the third week, students were able to increase their independence usage beyond the amount that I needed to help. After the fourth week, the ration was completely flipped from 1:2.   By the final week, the ratio went to one teacher comment for every 5 student comments.   This increased student independence is huge for giving students to take ownership of their own learning and also learn from each other.  It also allows them to gain practice communicating more clearly, because they now know strategies to get help explaining concepts from peers rather than wait for their teacher to “bail them out” if they get stuck on a problem. 

Increasing student independence when explaining math concepts was also beneficial for student engagement.  Students were much more likely to pay attention and be following along with the conversation if they knew their peers may need to ask them for help or may ask them what their opinion is about what is being said.  Looking specifically at participation, it increased by 140% just between the first and second lesson and stayed steady from there.  There are also other signs of student engagement increasing that were not specifically looked at (but are an added benefit) such as noticing that more students are aware of questions being asked and we waste less time on repeating what was said.  These are huge things that I am excited to find ways to bring into other mini lessons throughout the day. 

Looking at the rubric scores on the individual videos from the beginning towards the end shows that individual student conferencing and goal setting contributed towards the improvement in scores.  In addition to the numbers, students were visibly more confident when asked to explain strategies after meeting one on one with me to review their strengths and things they could work on.  One thing that I wish I would have done is had students record a “mid-way” video throughout the action research project.  This would help me better determine whether the improvement shown was related to the whole and small group lessons, the one on one conference, or a mix of both.

 These videos have been the most impactful with communicating to families.  Since I use ClassDojo, I can see which parents view posts.  In the past when I have posted a video or picture of myself explaning a math concept, I would have 50-70% views/participation.  When their child posted the video explaining a concept themselves, 100% of parents viewed and communicated (liked or commented) on the post.  This is huge for determining next steps within this action research.  Linked here is a presentation that includes more samples of student work and visuals to go along with this data.  

Next Steps

With the data that the parent involvement on ClassDojo provided me, I plan on getting started with implementing student reflections and explanation on their portfolios for all subjects as soon as possible.  My wheels are already turning for next year and how this can be implemented when conveying expectations to parents at the beginning of the year or how I can use students to communicate information in replace of a newsletter (that I know rarely gets read).  Looking back now, of course a parent would rather watch their child show them or tell them something rather than the child’s teacher!  I’m so glad this action research project helped me discover these ideas and concreate ways to implement them. 

I also plan on continuing our work around accountable talk specifically in math.  I believe that with more time my student’s individual scores could have increased even more and more of my class could have been meeting standard, so we’ll keep working towards that with similar lessons. One thing that I plan on changing for whole group lessons is giving “challenge phrases” to incorporate throughout our normal math lessons rather than continuing to provide specific instruction around accountable talk.  Hopefully this will increase the variety of phrases being used throughout our lessons. 

The final thing that I want to investigate further in regards to accountable talk in math is looking at its impact on student work in math problem solving skills.  Our school’s building SIP goal is centered around word problems and increasing higher level thinking in math problem solving skills.  I plan on brainstorming some ways that I can conduct a similar action research project that looks at the work that has already been done and its correlation to improvement on my student growth goals.  If I find that there is a strong correlation, I plan on sharing this with my building as a tool to improve our building’s overall SIP goal data. 

Accountable Talk Action Research Impact- One Year Later

 While you can see from the above reflection impacted my teaching practices and student learning in student math discourse and my communication of learning to parents, it also has impacted my teaching practices through the next school year and within other content areas.  I implemented the accountable talk sentence stems listed above from the beginning of this school year with my first graders in math, and I have noticed that this is carried into all subject areas when students are having discussions.  When students can explain their thinking clearly and use other student's thoughts to expand their thinking or ask questions, the level of understanding increases drastically.  Facilitation of sentence stems is something I will continue to implement at the beginning of the year for all of my future classrooms, no matter what grade I am teaching.  My building principal was even able to take the sentence stems I was using in my first grade classroom and give them to some intermediate grades who had student struggling with dialogue within their lessons.  Starting accountable talk practices building-wide is a great way to consistently facilitate vibrant classroom discussions as students progress in their learning.  

I also took what I learned from students sharing their thinking in digital portfolios in math and made that a common practice in all subjects.  Though I switched platforms from class dojo to Seesaw, students are now sharing their own learning in math and literacy.  Our building SIP goal changed from Math to Reading this year, and I was able to use the student math explanation work that I did in my action research and apply those findings to sharing reading strategies with parents.  Allowing students to take ownership over their learning and share it with their parents is another tool that I learned from my action research project that I will continue to use to improve teaching and learning, both at the classroom and building level.  Seeing the impact this had on my particular classroom last year, I used this information to dig into research around engaging parents in reading this year at my building level.  Seeing the high parental involvement on the digital platform last year when students were sharing their findings rather than myself, I wanted to search for research that was consistent with my findings.  While I found various articles suggesting why this is so much more powerful, Mireno's article about engaging parents in the digital age was very profound.  I was able to relate it not only to the work I was currently engaging in with reading practices, but also to apply it to my findings last year in my action research.  

References:

Lynette, B. R., Says, T. I., Says, C. W., & Says, L. (2017, May 18). Getting Started with Effective Math Talk in the Classroom. Retrieved December 02, 2017, from http://minds-in-bloom.com/getting-started-with-effective-ma/

Math Talk 101. (n.d.). Retrieved December 02, 2017, from https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/genia-connell/math-talk-101/

Michaels, S. (2013). Accountable Talk Sourcebook: For Classroom Conversation that Works. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh.

Minero, E. (n.d.). Parent Engagement in the Digital Age. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/parent-engagement-digital-age

Seattle Pacific University-teacher leadership standards, Standard 3