CoL PD: Dr. Jannie van Hees

At times, with our kids so engrained in the online digital world, we can easily overlook the complexity of the language they are being exposed to. Vocabulary can become challenging, complex and have high meaning-high carrying demands for our students. It is important to look at the 'meaning-making demand' when looking at the kinds of texts our kids are looking at in the digital world.

This is very beneficial to use when working with students in a wider/deeper reading format (similar to what I was inquiring into in 2017).  The ability to teach students to rise above and persevere especially when reading at a higher level is invaluable.

Janni also led us through an activity that could be easily adapted to any grade level.  She used the theme of her grandma's birthday and had many cards made up with phrases on them that could be grouped into various themes, put together to tell a story, and/or read aloud by students. Janni talked about the importance of having the kids use the activity set multiple times during the week and for different purposes each time. This will allow students to spend time discussing different phrases each day, which will ultimately provide students with vocabulary acquisition on the provided topic.

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Low Floor/High Ceiling in Literacy

As part of our DMIC professional development, we have been discussing a low floor (easy on ramp for our students who struggle)/high ceiling (a way to extend those who are ready to go further) concept when planning for our weekly maths tasks. It has been proposed that we should be doing something similar when working with our students in literacy as well.  After spending some time thinking about what this might look like in literacy, I have decided to try some things out this term.

For example, one of my reading groups was asked to read the text "Idea City" prior to meeting with me to read aloud and discuss.  Their independent assignment required them to gather some basic information from the text and then explore another website to select an artwork of their choice to describe and recreate. This allowed for students to independently explore NZ mural art as an immersion task during our first week of our Art focus term. It was my hope that students would make connections with the mural art around the country and the mural art in their own community.  

Going into week 2, students will continue to look at NZ wall Murals and those who are fast finishers will be asked to complete an Advice blog (format created by Matt Goodwin) as the 'High Ceiling" task.

As the term progresses, and into the 2019 school year, it is my goal to explore adequate low floor/high ceiling activities for my literacy students.

**Please note: This reading task was over the course of two weeks due to a already shortened week 2, which also included our end of the year writing assessment.

Expanded Vocabulary Usage

When planning for our reading groups during the past few weeks, we have been focusing on new ways to provide students with ways to utilise what they already know to further their understanding of unknown words.

We trialed it first with our students reading in the 9-9.5 instruction range and we used an assignment created by my teaching partner (Hannah West) as a follow up task for students reading the School Journal text "The Butterfly Project."  Students were first asked to look at a word in the context of the story and write what they thought it meant.  Students were then asked to look at a sentence from the story and replace indicated words with words that meant the same thing.

After seeing the success of this task, we decided to trial a similar version with our students reading at 8.5 years this week. Students were asked to replace indicated words in five sentences taken from the story with alternate words that have the same meaning.

Our hope is by providing independent tasks similar to these, at this level, our students will be able to think about the words they are reading and make meaning and inference at a deeper level.

What kinds of activities are common among teenagers who work well with others?

During our July CoL Meeting we were asked to read the article "What kinds of activities are common among teenagers who work well with others?"  (OECD Publications)  Below is a summary of my thoughts and take away information from that article.

• Schools are social places where students "hone the interpersonal skills required to function" in society
• At our school, we often begin teaching this through "The Pt. England Way"
• Many students are struggling with the 'expected' social skills of their everyday environment in contrast with those of the school and then ultimately the workplace
• Student problem solving and collaborative skills are now looked at in formal testing situations and when seeking adequate paying employment opportunities
• NZ students (along with Japan, USA, Australia, Singapore and Korea) score among the highest in the world when working collaboratively to problem solve
• They are among the best at working with others worldwide
• While students who are more physically active score better when collaboratively problem solving, they do not see a difference when simply collaborating in general in other areas
• However, students who participate in after school activities like: online video games, hanging with friends/talking on phone, helping around the home enjoyed teamwork activities
• Those who assessed social, chat or internet networks did not enjoy working collaboratively

In conclusion, it is important to note that students should be encouraged to participate in activities outside of school, especially those including household chores, family conversations, less time gaming,  and physical activities.   

I find this finding quite reaffirming for what I would consider to be simple common sense. However, I feel that there is definitely a need for this to be made into a publicly researched topic since there are so many households in the world that are allowing their children to participate in activities that limit social interactions and do not promote family interactions. 

A Team Approach

During our Week 6 Staff Meeting, we spent some time looking at our reading data trends in our own classrooms and then discussed what we were seeing across the team.  It was definitely apparent (as I questioned in my previous blog post "Mid-Term 3 Shift Update") that we have a large number of students across our Year 5/6 team (of six teachers) that are instructionally reading between the ages of 8.5-9.5.

We broke up into groups of two (a year 5 and a year 6 teacher) to consider 5 main areas when planning for the students reading at that level.  I was paired with a year 6 teacher, Migi Sio, and this is what we came up with.



When we shared back with the remainder of our team, it was very surprising to hear that most of us chose a very similar WALT to focus on (simply worded differently).

A next step for me will be discussing this further with my teaching partner, Hannah West, to determine how we will be implementing this focus in our learning space.

2018 Manaiakalani Annual Hui

As a CoL Teacher, I was asked to present a short 10 minute synopsis of my Inquiry to date at the Annual Manaiakalani Hui.   It was a great time to reflect on what I have done so far in my Inquiry and to begin to think about what I should try to do in the next few weeks before the end of the term.  I always enjoy sharing what I have been doing in my classroom with others, and it was a great opportunity to have professional conversations with others from across our cluster who are doing similar inquiries into their own teaching practice.

Although it was a bit daunting at first, it definitely was a great honour to have Dr. Jannie van Hees join the round table discussion about my Inquiry. 

To start each round of presentations, a short video was played introducing the CoL teachers that would be presenting.  Here is the video that I put together for my presentation and a few pictures from my round table presentation.

Mid-Term 3 Shift Update

At the end of term 2, we knew we needed to shift some students around in our learning groups for various reasons (mostly we had students leave the school mostly from my literacy group).   To help with this selection, I created a graph indicating where all the students in our space were reading during Term 2.  This graph was created once we had finished our Running Records using the PM+ kit, which is the summative assessment choice for all students in Manaiakalani reading below the age of 12 (when then move to using the PROBE reading test).



This graph allowed both of us to see exactly were the majority of our students landed on the colour wheel the the number of students we had reading between 8 and 9.5 years.  To help with grouping, we moved about six kids from the pink learning groups to the purple.

A few weeks into the term, I decided to spend some time testing my students using the Running Records in the PM+ kit to see if there had been any additional shift. As seen below, the number of students who shifted from mid Term 2 to mid Term 3 simply concentrated those reading from 8.5-9.5 even more.



Next Steps:
1. Reflect with my teaching partner to see if we can determine a strategy to continue to move these students in their learning.
2. Determine how to implement those strategies into our daily learning routine
3.  Discuss if as a year 5/6 team the trend continues across the school year. Why is this such a difficult span to overcome?