ING RODOLFO AGUSTIN ESTAVILLO VENEGAS RUBRICA.

Feedback Form for Raella Kahuroa

Date Footage Recorded: Friday 21 September 2012

Session: P1-A4

Duration of Recording: 15.09 minutes

Critical Friend: Dr Amanda Bateman

SCAFFOLDING

How could I improve my scaffolding of the concept that I am trying to teach? (the concept is a more diversified understanding of the idea ‘strong’)

The angle on the concept of being emotionally strong seemed to be better understood by the children this time. I think that this could be in part due to you replacing the word ‘strong’ with the word ‘brave’; this worked well. You also ask the children about their own experiences of feeling brave which also works well; as they are the experts of their own knowledge they will find it easy to talk about the things they know about.

Is anything detracting from my attempts to teach the concept of ‘strong’?

There seem to be some issues with physical space. Although you handle this very well, the children seem to be a little distracted from the topic at hand because of the space limitations. A comfortable environment is important for children’s learning, so this may have been the main distraction.

The use of pauses are much more noticeable and there is no longer a sense of the interaction being rushed.

The responses could be facilitated a little better as was evident last time. Maybe it is helpful to be aware that turns of talk need to be discriminately related to each other in the process of building a conversation. This means that, in an ongoing conversation between people, each person’s turn at speaking will build on the prior person’s utterance. Out of a single utterance, there is usually one part of that utterance which is picked up on by the next person to speak and this makes the 2 utterances connect to each other. So, if someone is talking about buying a cake, the person who they are talking to might respond to their sentence by either sequentially talking about the cake (by saying something like ‘what type of cake is it?’) or by responding to the location of the shop (by saying something like ‘which shop did you buy it from?’). Either way, one point in the prior sentence is responded to. Your interactions can sometimes follow the pattern of – your question-child’s answer-your evaluation of the answer-next question to another child and so on. This misses out the usual conversational responses in everyday conversation which I have just pointed out in the cake example.

Am I responding appropriately to children’s ideas?

You respond well to a girl at about 8mins 26secs where she comes to sit in front of the camera – you ask a question, she answers and you pick up on her answer to expand her thinking on this topic – great! You’ll see that you respond to her contribution much better this way.

With the next girl you do the same – but when she says she is brave for eating her lunch and going to kindergarten, you respond with ‘because you have to be away from mum’. This response offers your own ideas of why she is being brave and is not directly responding to what she has just said; maybe she felt she was being brave for another reason. By linking onto something the child actually says you can make sure that you are responding to their actual utterances accurately.

To improve responses, once the children have given an idea of how they are brave you could pick up on this a little more by relating your next turn at talk to directly connect to some aspect of the child’s prior utterance.

CHILD ENGAGEMENT

How engaged do the children seem with the session in general?

I think they seem much more interested in the talking about their experiences in this session, although there are still a couple of distractions.

How engaged do they seem with the concept I am trying to teach?

Engagement can be seen through joint attention, so when there are a couple of turns of talk between you and a child there appears to be a good level of engagement.

What could I do to promote and sustain their engagement with the session? With the concept in particular?

Responding to the children’s utterances in an ongoing way, as explained above, will ensure that the conversation flows and this process will demonstrate engagement.

TEACHER LANGUAGE

How could my language as a teacher change so I could better: -scaffold children’s learning

Through your replacing of the word ‘strong’ with the word ‘brave’ the concept is better understood by the children. Your language here is at a better level for the children’s thinking and they respond well to your questions about being brave.

As I have stated above, by using a formulation of the children’s answer you will be directly responding to their prior utterance rather than guessing their intentions, or stating your perspective of what you think they mean.

Is my teacher language appropriately pitched for the age group? How could I improve this?

Yes, these interactions seemed to explore the children’s ideas at a level which they were able to talk to you comfortably.