Well done me! I have completed the Manaiakalani Reading Practice Intensive and earned my certificate of completion and badge. Now, to be sure that I remember everything I have been taught.
Thanks once again to Naomi, Georgie and Toni for their amazing facilitation of the programme.
During week 8 of RPI, we focused on integrating create tasks into our learning tasks. Here are a few examples Create tasks that my students have been working on over the past week.
JJ completed this task that I created as part of my RPI coursework. Check out the whole task on his blog.
Engaging and Empowering Learning
We want our young people to be empowered so that their content is online. The consistent message that we receive from former students (now in their adult life) is that creativity in their schooling experience has designed who they are now as an adult.
If using AI in the classroom, have the iMac (class computers) signed into a generic class account so that students learn not to use AI on their own devices.
Getting our Creative Juices Flowing
Today we imagined we were book illustrators using the poem Te Marama by Kelly Joseph. We compared our illustrated poem with the published version. One of the differences between my poem and the published one is my little girl is still in bed with the moon phases above her head thinking about the things her whanau do during different phases.
On the other hand, some similarities with my poem are the moon is shown and similar colours.
The parts I like most about my poem are the different emotions that you could read the poem with because we spend a lot of time talking about our emotions and how different people respond to different situations. The parts I like more about the published poem is that the girl looks so peaceful. What do you think?
Why is Creativity Important?
If we want to see our learners as a whole learning, integrated their emotive and cognitive skills allow us to do this creatively, while applying the learning intention. This enables create to be used to support our overall learning.
Using Create to Show Learning
Tighter or Looser design theory around our create tasks. Tighter provides templates: graphic organisers, templates. For example, if a text leads to a specific object (ie backpack/umbrella) use a template of that object and extend the learning to the students adding to the object (ie what’s in the bag?).
Here is an example of a Tighter Create task that I put together for my students to use before we read the text Kele’s Car.
Using Create to Show Learning Part 2
Be sure we are providing opportunities for students to have choice when we are creating our tasks. For example, provide multiple avenues for a create task, or from the perspective of a character of their choice. This is also something that could be easily done with medium. For example, on paper or digital, and using markers or coloured pencils.
Create to Learn “Longer…”
It is important to have set routine create tasks for our students to learn how to do early in the year that they can then pick and go throughout the year. This is very similar to the simplistic create “vlog” task that I have my learning to read students do throughout the year to retell the events of the story and share their vlog video on their blog.
Putting it all together
As a group, we reflected on various areas (from today’s discussions) that we would like to improve on or implement into our own classroom. Here is a screenshot of some of our responses.
I would love to spend some time in the next few weeks thinking about how I can get my students to work more independently and collaboratively to create using the affordances that I have taught them so far this year. Students already know how to retell using their webcams but it would be great to move them to writing and recording a review or the books they are reading in class. I would also like to provide more opportunities for students to have choice when it comes to their create tasks.
My personal thoughts/refections are embedded in this post written in italics.
Connecting with Manaiakalani
The Four C’s (Critical Thinking, Communication, Creativity and Collaboration) are necessary for success and have come out of the partnership for 21st Century Learners.
Relating multiple literacies with technology is a challenge that we have embraced and continue to grow.
Being cybersmart empowers our students to be connected, digital citizens, and confident decision makers.
Smart Learners critically examine information online. When information is presented online that is inaccurate (some articles are printed to use for this purpose) it is great to have students critically evaluate the authenticity of the information and purpose for including it in the article.
Higher Order Thinking to Access Deeper Meaning
Thinking back to comprehension, we discussed the baseline to get into higher levels of thinking. Students need to draw on personal experiences, knowledge, factual knowledge and interpretations that we are able to apply our analysis skills (critical thinking) to.
Show this graphic to the students, and have a chat about what they are seeing. We need to be sure that we are using all our thinking skills when reading in order to access the deeper meaning behind the author’s words.
There are three effective ways to plan for our students to think beyond the literal (modelling, response to text, extended discussion).
Analysis as a Basis for Higher Order Thinking
Using Bloom’s Taxonomy, when focusing on the top three tiers, it is important to realise that this can be done during group discussion. Analysis is the opposite of summarising. Analysis involves close reading of the text to reinforce various skills or ideas (including more complex meanings). Breaking down into the elements of the story into parts that allow understanding to be extended or deepened.
Analysis can be used to “zoom in” or “zoom out”.
ZOOM IN: What words is the author using to show us that Matiu is trying to be brave?
ZOOM OUT: Allows us to make connections.
Interpreting Figurative Language
Students need experience jumping from the figurative to the concrete. Understanding the abstraction is quite a shift from the literal. Start with thinking about the emotions that come to mind when thinking about a word/phrase (ie quiet as a mouse…frightened/scared) Then, provide students with deliberate opportunities to share everything you think about when you hear the phrase (include a visual picture that might be found by the students).
Critical Analysis to Read Critically
Critically (unpacking and analysing) a text to gain deeper understanding. This will involve seeing things from a different perspective and recognising those perspectives. Positioning involves looking at the way the text positions us to uncover aspects that are unjust/unfair and/or manipulative.
Presenting Students with a Provocation: A provocation is well resourced through extended discussion.
Reading across texts from different perspectives is found in the new curriculum refresh. Check out Edward H. Behrman’s work for more information regarding this. Providing students with an opportunity to see things from a different point of view (Great for comparing fairy tales).
Synthesising
This is a great resource to use when planning for synthesising. Don’t forget to use it!
Today’s session was full of a lot of information, and it is all about things that we are beginning to do with our students reading at year 4 and above. My favourite section of the day was being reminded about having students challenge and resist information by coming at it from a different character’s perspective. We do so much work in Years ¾ around emotions and being able to accurately label how we are feeling. Allowing students opportunities to practise showing empathy by thinking about how other characters in the story are feeling is such a fun thing to do. It also helps students in the future once they begin being assessed on the higher levels of the Probe test.
I find that I have done many activities similar to these especially when I was teaching higher in the school. It has been fun exploring what this could look like with our year 4 students who are just starting their journey into reading to learn.
I am excited to look at doing a fairy tale themed text set with my reading groups (in a whole class approach) looking at various viewpoints of the stories. I think this will be an easy way to get some of my readers who are still learning to read to begin to develop some higher order critical thinking skills. Who knows, it might even make a good film festival movie at some point in the future…
My personal comments are written in italics and embedded in this blog post.
Connecting with Manaiakalani
All aspects of our lives are improved by having a robust vocabulary in every language we speak. Vocabulary is grown indirectly as a young person through experience and noticing the world around them. It is then directly reinforced through the conversations in the home (or with others) that allow children to interact as a participant in the conversation.
Looking at different ways to make vocabulary acquisition occur, while being more fun has been something that I have inquired into in the past. I have learnt a lot along the way from Dr Jannie van Hees and discussions with Anne Sinclair. I am always looking for new ways to teach this, especially when connecting with students working across such a wide range of literacy levels.
Background to Vocabulary Instruction
How do we improve or work through how to pronounce words? We do a lot of work in semantics/meaning and spelling practice. The lexicon is the body of words that we have in our knowledge that we can use in different ways (orally, written, read).
Although there are many students who will inherently pick up the concepts there are many more who need that direct repetitive instruction and practise. This is especially true with our students who are English as a second language learners.
Word Consciousness
Being able to talk the language of the specialty. Being mindful of talking/writing in a formal language.
How can we incorporate a word work activity into our weekly tasks that focuses on cline words? How can we add some fun into our vocabulary development? (ie puns, rebus puzzles, homophones, ect). I have also gotten away from adding a word wall in my classroom due to space in the past or putting up words for our Inquiry. However, I have lots of wall space this year, so I would like to transform one of those spaces into a living word wall.
Explicit and Robust Vocabulary Instruction
1: Direct explanation (in a learner friendly way)
2: Thought provoking connections to meanings in students’ lived experiences
3: Playful use of words (e.g. word consciousness)
4: Interactive engagement
5: Follow up (multiple encounters)
We need to be careful not to raise the lexicon bar too much. If we need to, what can we do (shared/buddy reading ect) to ensure that the onramp for learning is accessible.
Cracking Unfamiliar Words
During Level 1, learners were using letters and sounds to work out by decoding the word. Younger students learn how to “chunk” and “blend” sounds to make up a new word (phonemic awareness).
This is something that I have been doing very well with my students who are reading below grade level and then connecting back to it for those reading at year 4 and above.
Morphology
Reflect and Plan:
When planning for my reading groups, I use our PES Progressions spreadsheet to determine what I need to be covering for each individual reading group. This, along with our PES Levelled Reading Learning Goals, are what I use when planning for my groups. I teach this directly to my students during our guided reading sessions using the words in the texts we are reading to guide our discussions. Students then have an opportunity to practise that morpheme when completing their independent task. Students also have the opportunity to encounter these morphemes when on Reading Eggs and I have just discovered earlier this week how to assign individualised tasks to students and groups on Reading Eggs. I am excited to bring this into my classroom routine in Term 3.
I would like to put some activities/UDL (hands on) based activities for students to work in in small groups over the holidays so we can put in some good effort in term 3.
As part of our RPI Homework, we were asked to lead students through the "Great Beginnings" activity. I decided to use the same text as we used in our RPI session to offer a high ceiling for this activity and made a few adjustments to make it more Year 4 friendly.
First, I introduced the word "Imitate." We had a great 5 minute discussion as a think pair share, after discussing what it means to imitate, where students discussed whether or not it is a good thing to imitate others. We then jumped up and did a GoNoodle dance video "Boom Chicka Boom." After we discussed that it was a good reason to imitate. The next thing we did was watch a video about an artist who imitated vanGogh's paintings and ended up learning some amazing things about their own painting style.
A few great connecting points that she made in the video (and that I put on the whitebaord) were:
"You find new ways to bring energy and expression to your own work."
"....to discover your own voice and style."
"...a way to evoke emotion and find your own voice."
Then, I read the text selection aloud before flipping to the next slide where I outlined the vocabulary words that I wanted to unpack with the class (as seen on the slides below).
To finish off a very informative day we had create workshops. In this time, Clarelle and I shared ways in which we create with our student in Literacy and in responding to or engaging with texts.
What I really enjoy about this time is have a chance to share practical examples of what we are actually doing in our classrooms. I love poetry and it was great to share that with others.
It is always great to hear from the Manaiakalani Research team about how our students are progressing in their learning. It was also very nice to be able to meet up with a small group of teachers from across our cluster to discuss our reading programs.
Here is a slide summary of our time together.
My personal comments are written in italics and embedded in this blog post.
Connecting with Manaiakalani: Class Sites
As always, it is such a blessing to hear from Dorothy as her words are always expressed with her passion for our students and best practices for using the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy.
When the design of our sites is well-thought out it makes learning more efficient for our students. This allows our students to be empowered in their learning.
Dorothy suggested trying out various Muzify. A cool site for students to find a music playlist to match the title, author, or theme of the text they are reading. (Hopefully, many of the songs are student friendly).
Planning a Reading Programme
Planning for ambitious outcomes overarches all that we do. Linking high expectations from our text selections and guided reading sessions to our independent tasks (linking reading and writing). Thinking about when we should be doing mixed ability grouping as well as leveled reading groups is key. How much time are we devoting to reading/writing and how much are we protecting that time? This is an area that I believe we are very good with across our learning space. We often ‘roll with it’ and make adjustments as needed to ensure that we are covering all subject areas, especially literacy on a daily basis.
It is important that we have discussions with our students about where they are in the learning process and what their next steps for achievement are. It is also important that teachers keep in mind, where students have come from and where they are going in regards to the curriculum as well as reading/speaking/writing across the curriculum.
Timetabling
This is a great list of suggestions (rules of thumb) to think about when planning/timetabling for your literacy programme. Keep in mind that students who are learning to read require a different approach than those who are reading to learn.
When planning your timetable, be sure to think about “conferencing with students” and “writing clinics”. During this session, we completed a personal “survey” on our own timetabling, and I have concluded that I need to begin putting in more daily effort into blog commenting and providing feedback other than that done when conferencing with students. I would also like to come up with a more structured writing focus for my Support Worker to begin working with students on a daily basis now that students have the necessary tools to be successful learners in a Chromebook classroom.
Possibly using a “Daily 5” approach, or however this works for your classroom over the course of the week.
Bang for Buck: Digital Reading Apps
When planning independent activities, it is important to think about the “why” behind the activity. It is critical to purposefully be setting up students to be independently thinking about and enhancing their learning.
We use Sunshine Online and Reading Eggs/Eggpress with the students in our Year 4 classes. We will most likely put our students reading at Year 3 and above on Read Theory as the year progresses in anticipation of the PAT at the end of the year as we find Reading Eggspress provides a similar learning experience for our Year 4 students.
It is important to remember that while our digital affordances are amazing, there are also great analogue activities that students can still access on a daily basis to help maximise their learning time.
Read Like Writers|Write Like Readers
Instead of writing about what you are reading, write like you are a reader.
Provide students with a read aloud that models a specific way of writing (using your senses to describe). Then, have students brainstorm the “ingredients” for the writing frame before showing the “tight or loose” writing frame to the students.
This is such a fun activity, and I would love to do something similar to this with my class as the year progresses. One of the things we are thinking about doing in the next few weeks is regrouping our writing classes a few days a week to target students where they are in an effort to fill in specific gaps in their writing.
Inferring
Dr Marzano’s article “Teaching Inference” can be found here. This slide shows 5 the general principles of approaching inference.
Be sure to provide opportunities for students to ‘read between the lines’ when teaching inference (especially when choosing photos to use).
Teaching students how to inference is something that we spend a lot of time on in Year 4 across all our reading groups. We have recently used a video short (that I have previously used in a Class on Air episode) as a whole class/mixed ability group lesson. It was great to do this as a whole class/mixed ability setting so that students engaged in conversations with their peers about something that our learning to read students wouldn’t necessarily participate in at our earliest levels of the curriculum.
Read Like Writers|Write Like Readers Part 2
This was put together by my breakout group. We spent some time thinking about the way that stories start under the eight categories that could be used as examples for students to use when thinking about ways that they could imitate an author to start their story.
Looking forward to using this with my students when we begin to look at imitating writing styles in various ways. It would also be an interesting way to collate examples of figurative language or the use of our senses to describe in texts.
