When the light bulb turns on.

                                           

I had an ‘a-ha’ moment this week with my AVID class.

In an AVID class, when a student finally sees the point of a topic or task, and their light bulb goes on -  we call that an ‘a-ha’ moment -  and we actually get them to make note of it in their workbook by putting an exclamation mark (!) next to whatever it was that helped them get the point. It’s my favourite moment in a classroom.

But this time it was my ‘a-ha’ moment. It was when the AVID students were partaking in the tutorial process and I was partaking in Quality Teaching Rounds. I saw how two independent parts of something I was involved in, came together - my light bulb went on and I mentally stuck an exclamation mark next to it.

Quality teaching is a term that I had heard, and thought I understood, before I became involved with the framework. Basically, the framework is a list of  qualities that a lesson needs in order to make it an engaging and relevant lesson. In the rounds a small group of teachers collaborate to discuss teaching strategies and observe and code lessons against the Framework, all the while seeking suggestions and feedback on how a lesson might become more engaging and relevant - adding quality.  It is a thought-provoking way to keep your teaching strategies on point. The framework gives you something to “hang” your skills on.

This is my second time being involved in QTR. The first time was prior to me completing any AVID training or knowing anything about AVID. During the AVID training, I had thought that the strategies link in extraordinarily well with  the Quality Teaching Framework - they just seemed to fit together. All the strategies could be hung onto an area of the framework. This was my first ‘a-ha’ and I thought the only way I would truly know if AVID equalled quality teaching was to be involved in QTR a second time. My goal was to have my QTR group observe an AVID lesson and code it against the Quality Teaching Framework.

So, this week my opportunity came around.

As part of the AVID process, the students take part in Tutorials. Each student has to think about the work they have undertaken throughout the week and consider a section that they have not thoroughly grasped - we call this the Point of Confusion (POC). They are then able to work with a small group of students to try and determine the answer to their POC. The most interesting part of a tutorial is that it is not run by a teacher - the students work with a tutors from the University of Newcastle - and the students love it!

A tutorial works like this:

1. Before the tutorial date, each student must complete a Tutorial Request Form (TRF) - this helps them to develop their Point of Confusion about a topic.

                                     

2. Students attend the tutorial and they present their POC to their group.
3. They work in the library with whiteboards and the whiteboard tables and they write down the process their thinking goes through. (You should try booking the library for group work activities - students like writing on the tables.)
4. The group’s job is to support the student to come to an understanding about the POC - they are not to tell the student the answer - they have to ask questions that will guide the student to the realisation - this realisation is the ‘a-ha’ moment!
5. Once a student has had their ‘a-ha’ moment, another student gets a turn to present and the process starts again.

It is a hard process. Next time someone asks you a question, try it - try not to answer their question directly. See if you can ask them a series of smaller questions that may lead them to understand how to come to an answer themselves. It’s a tough strategy, and sometimes it takes longer than others, but the process encourages students to think about their learning path.

Anyway, getting back to my ‘a-ha’ moment! This week, during Quality Teaching Rounds, we coded a Tutorial against the Quality Teaching Framework -  And it was brilliant!! Every section of the Quality Teaching Framework’s target was hit at a high level. This meant that the intellectual quality of the Tutorial was high - students engaged with problematic knowledge, used higher-order thinking through substantive communication. This meant that a quality learning environment was created through student engagement, high expectations and a positive social support network. It also meant that Tutorials have significance to students as they are all included in the process and are able to bring what they do know to the table and express their understanding - each Tutorial is about what they do know and using it to understand what they don’t know.

Light bulbs went off in my head - A-HA!!! For me, this is why AVID is working and the strategies are important. It fits beautifully into Quality Teaching.  Turns out AVID and Quality Teaching are not two independent projects I was involved with. They are intrinsic of each other and the students are benefiting from these two independent aspects of teaching working together.

AVID = Quality Teaching = AVID

If you get a chance to work with the Quality Teaching Framework by participating in a Round, I truly hope that you take the opportunity. Teachers should never stop learning and I have learned so much from collaborating with colleagues and inviting them into my classroom - I hope that you have many more ‘a-ha’ moments and your light bulb shines brightly.