Following up from last week and our lists of classroom provocations, today we met to walk through each room to discuss what provocations we actively put in certain areas and possible ideas for further inclusions. We also discussed the idea of including a provocation basket in our rooms, packed with resources that we can easily pull out during tuning in and reflection time. That way we have easy access to resources and can inspire the children to take up the provocations. We are hoping that this will build links between Investigations and our formal learning. For example if a student wanted to research bugs we could reach into the basket and pull out a report planner that they could record their information on and discuss how they could then develop a report to share with the class.  Tanya and I worked on building up our baskets today and will begin to trial it in investigations tomorrow.

As a follow up from solo taxonomy I have also started to discuss with my students the concept of red, yellow and green thinking. They have picked up the idea quickly and can see that green thinking is a deeper level that builds connections to other areas and involves teaching others, creating and innovating. I will continue to work on developing the language and working with the focus students to stretch their thinking to the next level.

This week we were working on creating a list of new provocations to match our week 7 and 8 planners. Working together, using Google Drive, we were able to create a list of linking AUSVEL content and the parallel learning intentions and success criteria. Using that we created a list of provocations for each of our investigation areas. In maths, for example, our Intention is to develop a deeper understanding of 2D and 3D shapes. Using this as a prompt we will place different shaped cookie cutters for play dough to allow the children to engage with different shapes. These provocations should also help to guide our reflections with the children as we can draw their attention to the shapes they have used and their features. Our next step we be  adding these provocations to our investigation areas in a way that will engage the students

This week I have been thinking about Solo Taxonomy and how we could use that form of thinking to help our 1/2s in Investigations. Through the couple of weeks I have been working with Provocations we have seen that not many of the students are developmentally ready to use the provocations effectively. Tanya has said that while she can see her children aren’t using the provocations they are still engaging in learning that interests them and so she isn’t worried about forcing the provocations. Having thought about this and after Sophie Murphy’s presentation about Solo Taxonomy I started thinking about new ways we could encourage deeper thinking and learning in Investigations, without having to push the provocations.

The idea of including red, yellow and green levels of thinking is one that I think my students could pick up and run with in Investigations. The language involved in this ‘traffic light’ model is easier than using the formal language and allows children to start to think about where their thinking is as well as how they could work towards the next level. Hopefully through these conversations we can also encourage our students to use the provocations to get them to that next level of thinking. This would also allow us to follow the advice from Yong Zhoo about allowing our children to create and explore their unique differences rather than always focus on the curriculum or the set learning intentions.

This week our team discussed how well we are reaching our students through implicit teaching in literacy and numeracy. After looking at the ACARA standards for teaching and learning time in these areas we felt that with Investigations taking up so much of the morning block we weren’t fitting in as much as we thought. With this in mind we revisited our timetable and began to throw around some ideas of how we could better spend our time teaching implicitly. We decided that we needed to work towards  a model of Investigations that would best suit the needs of our children rather than one that fit perfectly with Kathy’s model. We discussed how their developmental stages can affect engagement in investigations and whether this can impact on the students use of provocations. After talking to Christine also about some of our concerns she helped us to see that we need to monitor how many of our students we can see engaging with the provocations and decide if we believe the learning is worthwhile for the majority.

After lots of talking it through we decided that we would trial only doing investigations three times each week so that we can work towards a better literacy block that has clearer focuses and explicit teaching. Through the coming week we will monitor how the kids respond to the new timetable and groups. In my class also I want to discuss with the children how they can work towards being more focussed in Investigations.