Focus Group Data Term 4

Now that our Term 4 testing has been completed, I spent some time taking a look at the data and comparing it to their scores from Term 4 last year and Term 1 this year.  I was easily able to do this for all of my focus group students except in a few instances due to excessive absences during the testing period.

This year, I focused my research on a group of 7 Māori students in my literacy class (as discussed in a previous blog post).  Below is a graph showing the Reading Ages as provided by our 2017 and 2018 Term 4 Running Record Data.  At the beginning of 2018, all of the students in my focus group were reading below grade level between 7.5 and 8.5 years of age and as the graph below shows, they have all made some progress and are now reading between 8.5-9 years.

One of the tests that our students take twice a year is the  PAT-Reading Comprehension test.  Here is a comparison of their test scores from Term 4 last year (2017), Term 1 2018 and Term 4 2018.  The majority of the students did somewhat better on the 2018 Term 1 test, which indicates that there was not much summer drop off with my focus group of students and nearly all of the students made some shift from Term 1 to Term 4. 

Our students also sat the STAR (Supplementary test of achievement in reading) Test, which is another way for us to assess a range of our student's reading skills.  Although, the PAT shows not much drop off in the results, our STAR data clearly shows the opposite. However, I find that students who struggle with reading often decide that it is simply "too hard" and give up on the STAR test particularly in the beginning of the year.  It was my hope earlier this year that we would see greater improvement during Term 4 and in nearly all cases the students did somewhat better.

Lastly, as I stated in a previous post (linked here), I decided to administer an additional word recognition assessment to my focus group called the Burt Word Reading Test.

At the beginning of the year, I found the results of this test very interesting, especially when compared to the 2017 Running Record Reading ages and looking at it now, I feel the same way. The majority of the students who were able to complete both testing cycles made some improvement during the year and in nearly every instance the growth of their reading age this year nearly matched the estimated growth span (the age for the Burt test on the graph shows the lowest age in the scale score band).

I am very proud of the progress my students have made this year in their vocabulary usage and confidence when speaking orally and sharing their thoughts and opinions with their peers.

Critical Successes: A Reflection

The past 12 months have provided many challenges (and stresses!) in my classroom. However, through determination and keeping my eye focused on the real reason I am teaching (my students) I have pushed past the hard times and focused on Key Competencies with my students for much of the school year. Ensuring that behavioural expectations are clear and achievable for all my students early on in the year and keeping that line strong and clear has allowed for students to feel safe and provided for student self-efficacy to flourish. I believe my biggest success this year is in the growth of my students despite the outside factors playing against us. The level of achievement that my students have made during the year has me amazed. There is still room to grow and steps to be taken to continue for future successes, but the data is looking good.

My own personal growth in understanding the DMIC way of maths has been developed and I am now feeling more confident in delivering a successful DMIC style maths program. Once we restructured out learning groups (socially based) students began to flourish. We also began planning together which allowed for the students in our space to work together on their non-DMIC days with students from any learning group.

The Inquiry I conducted into my own teaching has been personally rewarding with the growth that I have been able to see in my teaching and look into how I inquire for my inquiry. This has been largely based on the amazing PD we received as CoL teachers that was easily adapted into our daily classroom teaching and reflection process.

The Pathway to Success

This year I was presented with a very special group of year 5 students, who for many different reasons required a lot of strategic strategies and routines to be formulated, tried, put in place and often reformulated in order to optimise student engagement and begin working on my proposed inquiry into my teaching practice.

Recently, I read the Code and Standards put out by the Education Council and many of the things that I really had to focus on and incorporate into my teaching practice this year are easily summed up by the 4 te reo Māori words listed as the values: whakamana, manaakitanga, pono and whanaungatanga.

The idea of whakamana been one of my favourite aspects of my job especially when working with our learners who struggle the most for whatever reason and striving to find the necessary tool that would allow for that individual student to reach their highest potential. Incorporating key strategies introduced by Dr. Janni van Hees has really helped many of my students reach their highest potential in literacy this year.

I have always believed that by being aware of Manaakitanga, and increasing a student’s sense of well-being and confidence directly impacts their ability to learn. Taking interest in a student’s day-to-day life promotes a sense of self-worth and importance, and allows for me, as their teacher, to understand possible barriers that need to be overcome for a child to succeed.

Showing integrity by treating my students fairly and respectfully is something that I am proud to say that I have heard students both past and present say is one of their favourite things about being in my class. This allows them to know where they stand and that they have a voice. It is my strong belief that by formulating this type of relationship with my students is what ultimately allows accelerated learning to take place. The concept of Pono also lays the basis for whanaungatanga to occur. Once that relationship has been fostered, a sense of Whanaungatanga is felt and students realise that their class is a whanau within the village of Pt. England School, they feel free to participate in dialogic conversations, take risks in their learning groups when answering tough questions, and in every aspect of their school life they are always striving to do their best.

Without these 4 values strongly evident in my classroom, I would never have been able to conduct my inquiry into my teaching this year, and my students would not have benefitted as a result of it.

I am currently in the process of administering the last of my end of the year tests, and as soon as that data is all in I will be sharing it on my blog and comparing it to the data from the beginning of the year.

A Quick Glance at My Focus Group

It's that time of year again!  Time to look deeper at our data and our focus group.  Unfortunately, my end of the year testing is not quite ready to be posted due to student absences and Running Record testing still being conducted.  While the progress made by my focus group may not be accelerated progress as the defined 1.5+ years the progress my students have made this year deserves to be celebrated. 

The students in my class have made massive leaps in self-efficacy and as a result will hopefully, only continue to grow as a confident reader able to discuss and make connections with what they are reading.

Reflection: 2018 Professional Learning Cycle

When I first thought of this learning cycle, I had a difficult time packaging it all together. However, looking back through my blog posts and reflecting on the pathway that my students and I have embarked upon this year I have to take a deep breathe and nod my head at the difference it has made in my own teaching. Strategically remembering to take time out to develop a love for language and language development through reading (using many of Dr. van Hees’ techniques and a few of my own) has made a world of difference for my students.

NZ Curriculum (TKI)

I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the Professional Development we have received as a CoL team this year. Whenever I listen to Dr. van Hees, I gain so much knowledge and sequentially grow as a teacher so much in my understanding of how to provide a pathway for vocabulary acquisition through dialogic conversations. I have also become more aware of using rich vocabulary in all of my interactions with my students and in what we provide as visual aids around the classroom and on our site. The CoL Professional Development from the Woolf Fisher Team has pushed me to become more aware of what is necessary to further my own professional learning through inquiry and how to present my inquiry at a higher standard.

Most of all, I have enjoyed being able to share my inquiry with others. Whether it be during our CoL meetings, PES Inquiry meetings (twice a term), presenting at the Manaiakalani Hui or conversations in the staff room, I find that I always gain perspective from the insight of others. Iron sharpens iron when you have professional conversations about your teaching practice with others in the field of education and I feel that I learn so much from these conversations...even if I sometimes have to remind myself to take a step back and not take offence when suggestions are made for improvements, which often provide motivation to reflect upon my inquiry at a deeper level to see where change is being effective and where it might need to be adjusted, scraped or turned completely around.

I can no longer go back to teaching without conducting an Professional Inquiry at anything less than the level we were pushed to achieve this year. I can only hope that I have done the process justice. However, I know that I have grown greatly as a teacher and as a result my students have flourished as well.

Visible Teaching and Learning Workflow

This week, the staff at Pt England had their term Manaiakalani PD with Dorothy Burt.  I found it to be a very informative session as we reflected on the year so far, and the steps that Pt England teachers before me (and some other key Manaiakalani teachers) took to get us where we are today.

So, today's session could easily be summed up as a celebration for what we are blessed to be part of as Manaiakalani teachers using our Learn, Create, Share model to educate the children that come through our doors each morning.

Dorothy challenged each of us to spend some time reflecting on this year, before creating a video that demonstrates our visible teaching and learning workflow. 

The video I created walks you through a lesson that a reading group of my year 5 students students worked on the last week of Term 3 as we wrapped up our Inquiry Study on healthy living and Hauora.

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?

Language Acquisition: Using a Video Clip Round 2

In our learning space, we have decided to take our school-wide learning topic for the term and split it into 2-3 mini-learning foci.  Using literacy as the basis for most of our topic learning, I decided that this term, I wanted to launch each mini-focus with the language acquisition task that Dr. Jannie van Hees demonstrated during her CoL PD in May 2018.  This is something that I tried with my class last term during two different class sessions (Day 1, Day 2, Create Task).

During the middle three or four weeks of this term, we are focusing on physical activity, in the form on cooperative and competitive games. I decided to lay a foundation for my literacy students by finding a video that discussed the benefits of physical activity.  I had to make sure to find a video that was not only kid friendly, but also in the "Goldilocks Zone" for my students.  This meant that I needed to find a video that provided a high level of "meaty" vocabulary for my students to chew on while we discussed the benefits of physical activity.

The first thing we did was watch the video as a class. Students were very interested in paying attention and pulling what they could from the video since we have done this kind of activity a few times already this year.





Students then spent some time discussing what they could remember with a partner.  They were asked to figure out which member of their team was the oldest and have that person talk first. Students were only given 30 seconds to say as much as they could with their partner only listening.  After 30 seconds they swapped and the other partner was given 30 seconds to say whatever they could remember. 

As students reported back to the whole class what their partner said we created a Google Drawing to show the 6 different Benefits of Health. Although students were able to provide lots of details from the video, they had a hard time naming the 6 benefits.  So we used a transcript of the video shown on one screen to help us decide what the first benefit was and pull the important parts from the paragraph to include on our diagram. 

We were able to create labels of what we thought were the benefits in the red boxes and we spent some time filling in the first benefit using the transcript. 

We will be meeting again (due to the time schedule of our learning space) to complete the rest of our discussion next week on Tuesday. 

DMIC PD: Student Justification and Explaining

Today, our staff had Don and Mary come in to talk to use about our DMIC journey and what the future looks for us as a DMIC teacher.

The Journey so far...

• No longer thinking about Numeracy Stages but Curriculum Levels
• Letting go of items that were part of our old "tool kit"
• "O le tele o sulu e maua ai figota" Through collaboration the most difficult challenges can be overcome.
• Play with our groupings and think about how the children work well together and who they like working with
• Thinking of different ways to gain perspective of the class that will help to formulate groups we may not have considered otherwise
• When you are getting frustrated...stop, and have a reflection on how things have been going compared to the past 5 weeks, term or year?

Student Justification and Explaining

Using the Communication and Participating Framework:

Use this during our norms discussion...pick one for the class to focus on using. Once they have built up a bank of them, have students spend time in norm discussion going over them and what they look like just like we did with the norms.

• Require that students indicate agreement or disagreement with part of an explanation or a whole explanation
• Ask the students to provide mathematical reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with an explanation. Vary when this is required so that the students consider situations when the answer is either right or wrong.
• Ask the students to be prepared to justify sections of their solutions in response to questions
• Require that the students analyze their explanations and prepare collaborative responses.
• Structure activity which strengthens student ability to respond to challenge
• Expect that group members will support each other when explaining and justifying to a larger group
• Explicitly use wait time or think time before requiring students to respond to questions or challenge
• Require that the students prepare ways to re-explain in a different way an explanation justify it

What questions support generalising?

• Does it always work?
• How does this look compared to what we did last session?
• How does what ____ said compared to what ____ said?
• Where else could you use this?
• Does the rule stay the same when using (whole numbers, decimals, fractions)?
• Could you do this with _____?
• Can you see any patterns?

The Casual Link...Accelerate: Conversation #3

During our beginning of Term 3 CoL meeting Dr. Rebecca Jesson challenged us once again by providing time for our team to engage in a number of conversations about the integrity of inquiry implementation. I felt that it was important to spend some more time reflecting on these guided questions in an effort to ensure that I am on the right path with my inquiry moving forward during this very important teaching term.

I believe the best place to refine my intervention is to provide more opportunities for students to see the vocabulary we are trying to build being recycled as often as possible. This happens by providing opportunities for discussions in literacy to build upon the vocabulary list when we read texts about the inquiry topic. This is done as best as I am able to with my students still on the Junior School end of the colour wheel.  However, with my students who are reading age 8 and above I am able to do this more in depth and with more consistency with the texts provided. I am also working to provide avenues for the vocabulary to be used by the students in the literacy create tasks and their writing tasks. By allowing students to hear, see and use the vocabulary we are focusing on in many ways will hopefully allow for the recycling of words to occur and become the new normal for my students. 

Integrity of Implementation Conversation #2

During our beginning of Term 3 CoL meeting Dr. Rebecca Jesson challenged us once again by providing time for our team to engage in a number of conversations about the integrity of inquiry implementation.  I felt that it was important to spend some more time reflecting on these guided questions in an effort to ensure that I am on the right path with my inquiry moving forward during this very important teaching term. 

The intended change in teaching was to integrate a more strategic approach to providing avenues for extended vocabulary development and usage. I have been trying to implement the new strategies that have been modelled at our COL PD sessions. My goal is to implement each strategy before we meet again and then find ways to recycle that strategy every 5 weeks or so.  However, timing is always a factor and change in scheduling as the school year becomes more and more busy. I have been trailing most of the activities with my own literacy groups and sometimes as a whole literacy class.  I have also used some strategies during our whole space (60 student) writing lessons.

I know I have been doing it differently because I try to capture digital evidence of my changes or student examples over time.  This information can be found in my various blog posts and whole inquiry reflections as the year draws to an end.

At times, there have been some intended changes that have worked out exactly as I had hoped, and other times I have had to modify things slightly to work with the students that I had in front on me for that timeframe.  However, for the most part, I have tried to do the language abundance activities as close to how they were modelled for us.

Integrity of Implementation Conversation #1

During our beginning of Term 3 CoL meeting Dr. Rebecca Jesson challenged us once again by providing time for our team to engage in a number of conversations about the integrity of inquiry implementation.  I felt that it was important to spend some more time reflecting on these guided questions in an effort to ensure that I am on the right path with my inquiry moving forward during this very important teaching term. 

We are very blessed the the majority of our research on Language Abundance is being provided for us during our Professional Development sessions with Dr. Jannie van Hees.  Jannie always models for us a number of proven activities to do with our students in an effort to introduce, recycle and maintain the rich level of vocabulary that we are hoping to move our students to using on a daily basis.

I have been trying my best to trail everything that Jannie has introduced to us and include my experience on my professional blog. However, I believe that I am finding it difficult to balance the time allotted for each activity as well as continuing with our general literacy program. I am hoping to spend some more time this term providing more opportunities for my students to experience Jannie's Language Abundance activities and becoming more confident with the delivery as well.

I have learnt that sometimes in order to make a difference you have to do things differently.  This can be a scary thing to do, especially after hearing our school (and CoL) beginning of term refocus talk, which discussed the importance of seeing all of our learning groups a minimum of two times per week in each subject area.  However, in order to deliver some of the language abundance activities some of those sessions would have to be combined group activities.

Language Abundance: Chain Linked Writing

Near the end of May, Dr. Janni van Hees came in and talked to the Manaiakalani COL teachers about Language Abundance within in our classrooms (see blog post here). One of the things that Janni spoke about was the idea of creating a dialogic chain (or paragraph) with our students to illustrate grouping details/ideas together in a physical chain.

This term, our school theme is "Move 'Ya Body" and as a focus the students in our learning space are exploring the Maori idea of hauora through their literacy tasks.  After introducing the concept of hauora to the students last week through their reading, we decided to have them write about how they have all four elements in their own lives.

This morning, I launched this concept with the students by providing time for them to Think-Pair-Share what they remembered about hauora.  We then discussed the elements of a paragraph (topic sentences, details, closing).  Students were randomly selected to read aloud sentence strips that were prepared ahead of time.

The class had to decide which statements linked together to form our introduction paragraph and which statements were random details that might fall into the body paragraph links later on in our writing. We also prepared a digital dictation of the paragraph for students to listen to and type into their assignment before writing their own body paragraphs. 

The girls enjoyed being our human paragraph chain. 

The chain was added to our wall as a visual reminder to apply to future learning. 

I look forward to later in the week, when we discuss student writing as a class to have students chain link the sentences they have written for their body paragraphs. Hopefully, this will provide a deeper understanding of paragraph development (and conversation skills) for the students in our class.

CoL PD: Rebecca Jessen

Dr. Rebecca Jessen

Planning and Predicting: THEORY is everything

Studying cognition is like studying dolphins but only being able to see them when they pop out of the water.  How do I adjust what I do for when the dolphins pop out?

Image Source

We should have a strong theory for what language abundance should look like for student acceleration to take place.  Providing opportunities for students to have meaningful conversations using rich vocabulary. Remembering to recycle vocabulary throughout the school day. 

Now is the time to take what we found 'worked' last term and make it happen more often this term. We need to start taking our results (looking at the kids 'it' worked for) and think about what worked for them and how it worked differently.  Also, reflecting on what I did differently.  Bearing in mind, how different students engaged, and how I engaged with different students.

Revisiting our Theory...what causes the shift? How was I able to obtain shift in the students so far this term? Theory is not quite everything. The only way to know if it works for a certain student is to try it out. 

Analysing implementation data

Moving from:

-What I wanted to happen (planned)?

To:

-What actually happened (delivered)?

To: THIS TERM

-How can I make sure this happens even better every time?

Opportunities for Teacher Learning

1. Figure out the students' strengths and needs

2. Use the existing research base to plan something different that is likely to use strengths to meet the need

3. DO the different thing

4. Which engages the students in a different way of learning?

5. Which results in learning...for all? for some? WHY??? What explains anomalies?

CoL Meeting: Russell's Message for Term 3

It is important to remember not to over scaffold and not promote independent thinking will not allow the opportunity for students to have metacognitive growth.

Success of our students needs to be evaluated by the teachers to ensure that change is occurring to make those success continue to happen for those children. Our success must be evaluated by looking at the value added to the student's understanding.  It is important to remember that teaching is an intervention...and it is important to remember that 'great teachers make children learn.'

What do we need most in Term 3? It is the 'bomb' term.  Go hard!  There are no tests, reports or major interruptions (productions, Fiafia).  Therefore, the 'guts' of our Inquiry need to be completed by around week 4 Term 4. This is the term to push for your Inquiry and student acceleration. We must be able to deliver the curriculum really well,  and make sure its visible. If the learning is not visible, then we as educators have failed. Student work must be in the right place on their Drive and shared on their blogs.

Extending Language

The language of success v GI cheechee

• motivation
• expectations
• What language do we speak when it matter most?
• Remember the cultural origins
• How do we grow/revisit/maintain language & concepts 
• How are going to do this during Term 3?
• Link the language of success to the known environment
• Make children speak to the known environment
• Provide them with a formula or template
• Sing my song
• Write really interesting stuff with a real world purpose

We need to be sure to plan effectively to promote listening, speaking, reading and writing into our planning on a weekly basis. We need to have things that actually deliver the WALT's we have planned. If they don't, it means that our students are not improving unless they are directly working in front of the teacher. 

• Number of iterations of high value activities
• Real world context
• Check in points/conferencing/direct instruction
• 2x week meeting minimum
• completed work
• visible
• published

Our students need to be posting to their blogs a minimum of 2 times a week.  This will directly impact our accelerated progress. 

Using Our Knowledge to Create

Once students LEARNed about bridges and became "bridge experts" they worked together in small groups to CREATE their own project to display their learning. Groups were encouraged to work collaboratively once they selected their create task from a "101 ways to Create" poster that is hanging in the classroom.

One group, used their knowledge from the reading and came up with a list of interview questions that they wanted to ask our school's Executive Officer, Mrs. Sorenson.

Enabling Exploratory Reading

This term, I decided that in addition to teaching my reading groups the basics for reading that we all teach (decoding, inferencing, etc) I wanted my students to understand that their Chromebook is a tool for learning independently as well. We have had many discussions about how it is ok to stop when reading independently and explore online for an answer to a question that may have popped up when reading. It amazes me that my students thought they weren't "allowed" to use the internet to further their understanding of a topic being discussed in class.

So, keeping with our Auckland Harbour Bridge theme (which has evolved from our read aloud novel), students were asked to read two newspaper articles about the Harbour Bridge and then one website page about the forces of bridges.  While reading, students were asked to list important and interesting facts on a padlet, and they were encouraged to click on other links found on those pages to further their understanding to ultimately become a "bridge expert."

Students loved the opportunity to explore on their own and many took the padlet assignment seriously. 

DMIC: Planning and Understanding for Big Ideas

Step 1: Begin with the mathematics

• -Planning takes time. 
• -Consider what you students need in the way of Big Ideas (NZ Maths Key Ideas is another place to look for Big Ideas
• KNOW the Curriculum for your year level
• Google "big mathematical ideas"
• van de Walle book is highly recommended

Step 2: Thing about your students

• What do they bring mathematically and culturally
• Put current knowledge and interests at the centre of instructional decision making
• How can you best present mathematical concepts that match prior knowledge?

Step 3: Decide on a task/problem

• Be clear about the big idea you want to connect to and explore
• It must be group worthy with appropriate challenge level
• Low floor, high ceiling
• Culturally responsive and relevant to your students
• Using bigger numbers allows for students to work at a higher (deeper) level of understanding

Step 4: Predict what will happen

• Anticipate all approaches including misconceptions
• Recognise what they are thinking and how to move forward
• Identify what you're looking for and who is going to share and why

CoL PD: Language Abdundance

Janni van Hees

Language in Abundance

Where does language occur? 

-Spoken

-Print

Keep in mind, we could have mileage in one of these areas but it is important to ask yourself is it heightening the level of complexity that the children are able to achieve. We have to be prepare to shift our pedagogical beliefs in order to make the necessary shift in our student's level of achievement.

Elaborative Style Responses

•  Tuning into and picking up the message and meaning expressed by the child
•   Offering more-structurally, word choices, contexts
•   NOT posing questions or "wringing" more out of the child
• Co-constructing and co-contributing- focused on the child and growing their language and understanding

It is important to remember to be a co-contributor by focusing and noticing. In the end, the children are in apprenticeship zone, but the teacher is the key contributor to their learning. The quality of the material and the way we role it out is very important.  However, inside our classroom there is a lot of 'knowing'.  We need to capitalise on what it known and it is our job as the teacher to raise the level of their understanding...the level of the 'known',  As a teacher, we don't have to hurry and respond, we need to be circumspect and it is ok to say "I'm thinking....". 

To and Fro Talking (Conversations): Chain Linking what you say to each other

You can't talk past each other, you need to be sure you are linking and shaping things that are connected potential paragraphs. In order for two points (made by students in a sentence form) to be chained up (to form a paragraph), they have to be related to one another. 

Next Step: Introducing the chain link method of conversation building to my literacy students in the hopes of it transferring to maths and our DMIC program as well. 

Manaiakalani Staff Meeting: Create

Today the Pt England staff had an amazing time with Manaiakalani's Dorothy Burt focusing on the Create aspect of our Learn, Create, Share model.

The cognitive challenge we have with our students is to hook them creatively to do something with their learning.  Our children need to be better problem solvers and communicators and we believe that the hook to achieving this with our students is through Creativity. 

Create: is a doing word....students need to be doing things with all of their body utilising their senses.

Visual Representation of Create in Manaiakalani

Language Acquisition: Using a Video Clip Create Task

Now that we have watched the whole video, students were asked to use what they learnt from the video and the posters we created from our discussions to create a Google Drawing poster displaying the four forces of flight as related to an airplane.

I found it interesting that the hardest part for my students was taking the notes that were displayed and writing sentences to describe each force.

Here are some examples from the class:

Latisha

Siakupega