Digital Fluency Intensive Week 1

For the next nine weeks, I have the opportunity to be part of the Cohort #2 of the 2019 Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive. I am very excited to begin this journey, and I am looking forward to discovering some new tools to be used with my students and in my planning.

This week, we spent time focusing on Google Drive and Google docs. It was a great opportunity to refresh my thinking around these two elements of Google suite. 

A few take aways that I have are:

1. When copy and pasting, it is important to press Ctrl+Shift+V and not simply use Ctrl+V.
2. When on a doc (or in a folder) that you want to add into your own drive do not make a copy. Press Shift+Z
3. Use the "Assign" tool when adding comments for students to create questions about a text for other students (those they have assigned) to answer. I am really excited to use this with my students. 
4. When working with a group (ie parents, school club, or group of teachers) create a Google Group to use as a platform for sharing and discussing information.
5. I am very diligent when organising my own Google Drive but do I offer opportunities for my students to clean up their Drives on a regular basis?
6. We also explored a few new Chrome Extensions that I am excited to try in my classroom. Watch this space to see which I decide to use and how it goes with my students. 

Testing Hypotheses

Explain the hypotheses about teaching that you decided were MOST worth testing, and why. (WFRC #8)

For each of your hypotheses, explain how you will test it and what evidence would support (or refute) that hypothesis. (WFRC #9)

Scaffolding:
Am I scaffolding too much and at the same time, am I removing the scaffold too soon? It is such a delicate back and forth that we must do, especially in a class setting with students working across three curriculum levels?

WHY: Many students in my class, are so used to being able to do things in a step by step process as described and monitored by teachers in the past. Students are not used to self-monitoring their own progress.

TESTING/EVIDENCE: The most immediate way to test this is by observation of independent student work. By providing students with assignments that have the scaffolding in place as a pre-observation and then removing it for a later assignment will provide the easiest way to visualise and assess student achievement. Once it is observed that a task of that nature can be completed without the scaffolding, then move on to the next task type.  I also believe that the effectiveness of this will be seen when analysing student running record results. Many of our learning tasks are created in a way that will allow students to think about a text in a way that is required for the higher level running record tests.  If students are able to make that connection from their assignment to the test question then growth is evident.

Collaborative Sharing Time:
Do I provide my students with time to learn from each other? We spend so much time in class reading about similar topics, but what can I do to provide opportunities for groups to grow wider with their understanding of a learning topic by learning from their peers in other reading groups.

TESTING/EVIDENCE:
Evidence of .this would occur by careful planning on my part and the development of tasks for students to work in across their reading groups. This could provide students with a common language about a subject but depending on which text they have been exposed to they would have different levels of understanding. Students working together collaboratively like this has the potential to create cross-group creative tasks for students to shine with those from higher/lower reading levels.

Addressing Student Learning Focus

Develop a set of hypotheses about patterns in your teaching that could be changed to more effectively address the student learning focus. (WFRC #7)

1. Time Management: Am I expecting too much or too little of my students when it comes to their follow up tasks?
2. Collaborative Sharing Time: Do I provide my students with time to learn from each other? We spend so much time in class reading about similar topics, but what can I do to provide opportunities for groups to grow wider with their understanding of a learning topic by learning from their peers in other reading groups.
3. Scaffolding: Am I scaffolding too much and at the same time, am I removing the scaffold too soon? It is such a delicate back and forth that we must do, especially in a class setting with students working across three curriculum levels?
4. Reading Strategies: Am I offering the right follow up tasks (in a creative way) that allow to students to develop their specific reading struggles?

Process of Hypothesis Development

Describe your process for developing hypotheses (what you read, who you talked with). (WFRC #6)

Conversations with:

Woolf Fisher Research Centre
-Students across our cluster are making some achievement, however, they still remain below the national norm for their age group.
-Wider and Deeper Reading Models
-Increased Reading Mileage 

Russell Burt-Principal 
-Ongoing Staff meeting discussions about our school reading data and next steps

PES Staff Inquiry Meetings
-Twice a term, we have staff meetings designated to discussing with and gaining feedback from our staff in regards to our 
Team 5 Colleagues
-As a team, our team wide focus in on reading and as a result we have ongoing conversations during our team meetings (Both formal and informal)

2017-2018 COL Bursts and Bubbles
-Listening to the presentations from the CoL Teachers from across Manaiakalani

Professional Development/Reading:

Betsy Sewell (blog post here)

By the time students reach years 6,7, and 8 they have so many gaps that have been created by the inability to know HOW to apply specific reading skills like letter combinations, sounds and words.  What can we do to change the way they are learning? Betsy offers many new strategies that we are implementing at lower levels around the school.

Dr. Janni van Hees (Blog thread here)

During the past few years, I have been able to have multiple sessions with Dr van Hees across the grade levels due to the different classes I have taught. Her messages are always the same (students need to talk more and be talked to using high level vocabulary), but she continually brings new strategies to consider and trial in class. 

What Every Primary School Teacher Should Know about Vocabulary?-Jannie van Hees and Paul Nation

Manaiakalani Create PD

This term for our Manaiakalani staff PD, the whole cluster was invited to Tamaki College for the afternoon to spend some time engaging in a fun create task or two.  I signed up to make Vietnamese spring rolls.

We were split into groups of 4 and put into kitchens around the room to work. Each kitchen was responsible for prepping the ingredients needed to make various types of spring rolls. We were in the shrimp kitchen. My job was to cook the vermicelli noodles, dice the lettuce and then I split the prepped veges into two different serving dishes.

After learning how to prep the rice shell, we were given time to explore the various ingredients and make our own spring rolls to sample.  We had a lot of fun and I look forward to making these again in the future.

Preliminary Findings

Begin to collect evidence and data  and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence. (WFRC #5)

Earlier this year, I conducted a student voice survey in an effort to understand my literacy students a little bit better and to gain a deeper understanding of their reading likes/dislikes.  When looking over the survey I was pleasantly surprised to learn that of the 28 students who took the survey only 2-3 said they didn't enjoy reading and just over half of the students also put something in their answers about how they enjoy reading even more when they are able to relax and not be distracted by others.  Students indicated that they enjoy reading most in silence.

When creating the survey, I was curious how the students saw themselves as readers. So I asked the question:

 

I was happy to see that only 21.4% of the students in my literacy class considered themselves to be slow readers and when digging deeper I was exceptionally surprised to learn that some of those students were actually some of the more able readers in my literacy class.

Students were also asked (in short answer form) what they wanted to improve on the most in reading this year and the most common response was that they wanted to be able to read and understand "big words" the first time.  I found it very interesting that this is something that our students indicate as something they would like to work on and it is also something that we have flagged as an important area of focus for the students in our cluster. 

I have also collected and created a spreadsheet for my students that shows their test scores from Running Records, PAT, and STAR as well as their Curriculum level from the end of 2018.  I have included the data for the students in my focus group below as compared to the national scale score average.

Another piece of evidential data that I am collecting are student reading ages based on the results of the PMBenchmark Running Record kit which I will be administering during the next few weeks.  This will be compared to the data from the end of the 2018 school year to see what the student's shift in reading age is over the past 6 months.

The last piece of data I have is found in my anecdotal teacher notes where I indicate observations that I have when reading aloud with students from my literacy class.