my name is Ali Brady and I'm early years senior teacher I teach you one to class
it's 24 students and approximately thirty-five to forty percent are English
as a second language students one of the students to work together
collaboratively usually that collaboration will expand their thinking
because they questioned each other and take each other to new learnings that
perhaps they weren't have done on their own firstly tuned to the students into
the mathematics learning after the tuning we do a little bit of explicit
teaching just explaining the lessons breaking off into small groups where
they children can collaborate with each other and draw out their discussion and
return back for a reflection and the sharing of what they had got out of the
lesson today my learnings done with dr. Tyson Yom Kippur oh he's done some
research based around the eight ways of learning which are ways that indigenous
kids learn really really well I've found that those ways support indigenous
learners but are also fantastic for all learners so the no language tuning and
introduction originated from watching indigenous learners learn processes from
their grandparents or from elders in the communities they don't ask lots of
questions and there's not lots of talking and in fact they can sit for
days and just watch a process where I'm saying no languages it's taking away the
confusion that often is provided by lots of talk if English is your second
language
even though there's no language there's lots of obvious methods that they were
using some were using fingers some were drawing somewhere on two numbers some
hung back and really weren't sure at all so there was lots of information that i
was getting as a teacher part of the eight ways of learning is the drawing
the yarn at the starter or sandra and once again taken from indigenous culture
a very successful way of passing down knowledge if you were communicating with
clans that had a different language dialect you would use pictures in the
sand and so that i find is really successful with students of all ages
it's another form of expression and I find works really well when I want to
collaborate in a group and get everybody's opinion it's a really good
way of sharing and adding on to your knowledge and once again if I've got
students EA LD there perhaps not confident sometimes to talk in front of
a group talk in front of a class but often with sand drawings they'll they'll
elaborate and show us what they know ok I saw some really great things then I
saw lots and lots of knowledge look at all the things we know about number
eight you can put their hand up and tell me something they've noticed about our
sound drawing here that wasn't your picture or your story majella what have
you got them down there four times too what does that mean what word should be
four groups of two what else can we see Robert
so together we know lots and lots about the number 8 today I'm looking for the
conversations you have with each other about the numbers and the maths I'm also
looking at how people work together as a group and how we're using everybody's
knowledge to discover the answer okay our first group I forgotten the number
again this time I know it had two digits in it so I've given you two spaces and I
I remember it had a 9 somewhere i can't remember 49 was it the front or 49 was
in the ones column I'm aware of the students that need extension and
scaffolding through their past learning with me in the classroom so the ones
that needed scaffolding had the concrete materials provided and I modeled very
heavily how to work out the solution we made one of those before we've made
explicit to the students that the process is what i'm looking for not
necessarily the answers and that is that expectation then develops their critical
thinking so I'm not looking at finding a correct answer I'm looking at the
process and they're assessed on the process and that's what I want them to
improve okay can you show me please with your thumbs up down or in the middle how
your group worked together as a group those people who had their thumbs up
what sort of things did you see that made your group work well together Bella
we then cool how did you do teamwork great because lots of heads together