TLAC 301: Check for Understanding in the Online Classroom
Towards the end of my first workshop with Uncommon Schools they mentioned a new workshop they had just finished designing focussing on checking for understanding, I immediately booked onto it.
This time round the presenters were Erica Woolway (one of the co-authors of ‘Reading Reconsidered’) and Joaquin Hernandez, who again were an absolute credit to the Uncommon Schools and Teach Like a Champion team. A hallmark of their work is that they use video to exemplify points but they also practice what they preach by modelling strong teaching in the online classroom.
The most important task of teaching is to know the difference between… ‘I taught it’ and ‘they learned it’
We kicked off with this quote from the legendary John Wooden and it set us up beautifully for the next 90 minutes.
Agenda
This time round all of my breakout rooms were with the same colleagues, Christina & Abigail. We didn't quite get round to finding out where we were all from as we dove deep into discussing what we were seeing in the video.
The workshop asked us to focus on the three challenges to checking for understanding online:
Velocity: the data can flow past us quickly, just think of your chat box, hands up and emojis
Integrating: student responses can stream into a variety of platforms, the chat, forms, whiteboard.fi so we need to carefully manage this to not overload our own working memory
Attending: our focus and attention is being tested each time we are at the computer. Our emails, whatsapp, instagram, twitter is only a click away
We were first shown this clip from Mika Salazer and it was so clear how deliberate she was in guiding the retrieval practice. She endeavoured to make it fun and like in the previous workshop her positive narration was excellent as she received responses from the students. In terms of managing the velocity we noted how she broke the retrieval practice down, ‘lets focus on A’ and cold called a number of students, helping her get a few good bits of data, before stretching it at the end.
Making the data stream manageable
A key idea of the session was to promote the thinking that we should gather data on student learning at a pace and in a format that is manageable for teachers and the students. It's important to not here that our working memory is easily overloaded and this time in front of the screen has exacerbated this, to an extent we are at the mercy of our working memory when teaching online and trying to check, check and check for understanding.
One of the best videos I have seen as part of the TLAC training is this one from Sadie McLeary. I’ve used it a few times in my own delivery in school but during the workshop it was fascinating to look at it from the angle of the three challenges. Notice how she makes the data stream manageable by asking students to fill in the blank and how she takes time to purposefully read their responses, positively narrating the contribution, this makes it easy to process for her. And she builds momentum by gathering some quick data before moving onto her ‘wait question’. She covers so much in such a short clip. Just great remote teaching.
Rachel Harley also managed the data stream really well in this clip. I was impressed by how Rachel slowed the pace of the lesson down while she managed the velocity of the data coming her way through the chat, and how she integrated the data by copying student responses onto the handout visible on the screen. She went even further by reading out the responses and then cold calling a student to tap into their thinking even further.
Making it manageable for students
In our breakout rooms we discussed how we, as teachers, can make the format and pace of checking for understanding manageable and we spoke about a number of ways that we could manage the cognitive load of our students and help them focus their attention. A few of them that we ,myself, Christina & Abigail, like were:
Capture in Writing: this is where the teacher types student responses into a shared document and or slide (Show Call) for all to see and focus on for that time in the lesson.
Isolate Key Elements: some teachers we saw highlighted the part of the document or response they wanted students to focus on directing their attention to that isolated item on the screen
Narrate the Chat: throughout the TLAC videos what I have really enjoyed seeing is how each teacher narrates the chat, thanks students for their responses and appreciates their work making them feel seen and valued.
Online Show Call
Sharing students work is an excellent use of classroom time and is a brilliant way to help our students learn by either showing great work or showing work that needs improved and working with them on it, all part of a good I,We,You approach.
I really liked this video of Heather Pirolli using Show Call with her students and showing them a common error and note her language in how she makes it safe because it is such a common error. I also loved her use of a collaboration board on nearpod and seeing the students responses to the question ‘what's wrong here?’. Brilliant.
I will definitely be implementing more show call utilising my visualiser when i return to class as I think showing student work and highlighting the good work or improving the work is an excellent use of classroom time.
Culture of Error
Our final learning of the session was on building a Culture of Error in your classroom. Classrooms that are alive with a Culture of Error the students acknowledge mistakes with comfort, willingly make their mistakes visible to teachers and their peers and confidently take risks knowing full well that it may result in failure. Now isn't that a classroom that you want to have.
A great example of this is in Sadie McLeary’s classroom. We were asked to pick out what language she uses that we would like to steal. So i’ll challenge you to watch and listen closely to Sadie and ask what does she say or do to ensure her classroom is alive with a Culture of Error?
I’ve loved my workshops with Uncommon Schools and can’t recommend them enough. They think deeply about what works best and really consider what great teachers do in their classrooms.
