2017 PD: Connecting With Manaiakalani

This year I will be working as a CoL Teacher within my school, and as a part of this role I spent today at Day 1 of the Manaiakalani Cluster Orientation.  It was a great day collaborating with staff from across the cluster, including those who are knew to our cluster this year.  We spent the day hearing from Dorothy Burt about Who, What, How, and Where of Manaiakalani.

It was so amazing to be reminded about the backbone of what drives Manaiakalani to do the amazing things we are blessed to do to serve our community and the learners within it.  My favourite part of the day was the simple reminder that Manaiakalani is about the people...not the computers.  It is about making a difference in the lives of our students and their whanau by enabling them to become 'confident, connected, life-long learners'.

Things That Work-PD w/ R. Jesson

Today, as part of our back to school PD, our staff met with Dr. Rebecca Jesson from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre to discuss "Things that Work" according to our cluster and school wide data.

High Ticket Items for High Progress Teachers

1. Critical Thinking
2. Extending Reading/Writing (Mileage)
3. Extended Discussion

How can we continue to raise the ceiling for our fluent students and still provide advanced learning for our kids who are struggling?

We Need to Continue:

1. Focused reading instruction/guided reading
2. Extra mileage from reading literature and reading to inquire (wide)
3. Extra thinking through discussion about illustrations/inferences/perspectives/author’s craft (deep)
4. Scaffolding for independence in reading

Risks of Scaffolding:

1. Dependence:
1. Teacher attention (noticing)
2. Teacher correction (fixing)
2. Narrowed opportunities for Learning
1. Read aloud (so read less)
2. Receive more item knowledge instruction (read for meaning less)
3. Engage in tasks with less ‘holding power’ (read less) and off task more
4. Given less to read (read less)
5. Get interrupted more often, by more people, more quickly (read less)

Scaffolding both Wide and Deep:

1. Choosing content for thinking
2. Choosing texts for thinking
3. Ensuring balanced diet of texts to build thinking over time
4. Generating discussion for thinking

Critical Decision #1

Content choice-important, contestable, relevant

1. Reading and writing about something
2. Reading and writing to access the curriculum at level

Critical Decision #2

Text Choices

Critical Decision #3

Textual Diet:

Narrative dominates:

• Controlled Vocabulary
• Controlled Challenge
• Tight Learning Focus

Critical Decision #4

How to generate student discussion:

• We know children tend to guess what’s in your head
• Often say as little as possible to let you know they know what’s in your head
• Find ways to communicate that the purpose is to build on one another’s thinking