4. Plan for practice

It’s time to plan how you will put your learning into practice.

Try one of these suggestions in your work over the next few weeks.

Suggestions for practice

If you did Activity 1, you saw a teacher aide working with some students and identified some strategies they tried. Select one of these strategies and make a plan for trying it with your students. Consider having an observer watch so you have another perspective on how well you are implementing the strategy and the impact on students. Observation works best when it’s planned and carried out in partnership. Each person should clearly understand the strategy that is being tried and why.

If you did Activity 2, you have thought about your use of open and closed questions. Consider the questions you use with the students you work with. How thoughtfully do you use open and closed questions? What is the balance of your use of open and closed questions? What have you noticed about how this affects the quality of talk with the students? Do you need to increase your use of open questions? Plan how you could do this.

If you did Activity 3, you have sorted some questions for use at different phases of a learning experience. Together, consider when the students you work with tend to require the most support. Is it when you are unpacking the task, completing the task or reflecting on their learning? Plan how you could use some of these questions with your students.

If you did activity 2 or 3, continue to reflect on the impact of your questioning. Are your questions helping the students to take greater ownership of their thinking? How can you tell?

If you did Activity 4, you developed a plan for investigating your provision of wait time. With a partner or team, analyse the evidence you gathered and consider the following questions:

• Do you provide less wait time for different types of interactions with the students? If so, why?
• Does your wait time vary when working with different students? If so, why?
• Do you need to increase wait time? How could you plan to do that?

If you did activities 5 and 6, you have learned about some specific ‘talk moves’. Together with the teacher, plan how you can use one of the talk moves with your students. Make sure you explain and model the talk move to the students so they understand what is required. After a few weeks, ask your students if it helped and meet with the teacher to reflect on the impact of the talk move.