Bursts and Bubbles 2019

This week, the Manaiakalani COL Teachers presented 3 minute "Bursts" or summaries of our Inquiries at the annual "Manaiakalani Bursts and Bubbles." Below is the report that I shared during my three minutes.

The catalytic aspect of student learning my inquiry focused on this year was promoting vocabulary acquisition in an effort to increase dialogic conversations and reading comprehension with my Year ⅞ students. 

I identified this as my focus when I noticed that we, as a school and a cluster, were still struggling to increase our reading results. This was evidently clear from the Wolfe Fisher Research Centre’s presentation earlier this year.  Although many of our students demonstrated shift in their achievement from Term 1 to Term 4 in 2018, they were still landing below the National norm for their age group.

The sources of evidence and data I used to build a rich picture of my students’ learning were PAT Reading and STAR assessments, Running Record data, student voice surveys, and observational anecdotal notes of student oral reading and group interactions.

The main patterns of student learning I identified in the profiling phase were that many of my more able readers actually did not consider themselves to be a good reader, and this made me think further about the actual self-efficacy of our students as readers. I soon realised that the students  overwhelmingly wanted to learn how to read “bigger words” and this often stopped them from participating in group discussions because they didn’t feel they knew how to pronounce the word or even more, what the word actually meant in that context. 

My profiling of my own teaching showed that I had strengths in promoting comprehension discussions, recognising an individual’s oral reading skills and modelling decoding strategies and vocabulary strategies using the surrounding text. But that my students would likely make more progress if I developed in providing ways for student led discussions to occur more freely without feeling the need to give “the right answer”. 

The changes I made in my teaching were taking more time to strategically plan what I wanted the outcomes of our reading sessions to be before, during and after a text was read. Part of this meant that I no longer focused on reading a whole text with a group but we often focused on reading a shorter more difficult passage for decoding and understanding.  Part of this led me to find new ways for students to determine the words and phrases that they found difficult to understand and provide ways for the students to confidently share their conjectures while on the hunt for the correct definition, without simply “Googling” it. 

The literature/expertise that mostly helped me decide what changes to make was the ongoing CoL PD offered by Dr. Jannie van Hees the past few years and the time we spent with her in our team preparing for our Genomics project. I also attended two Agility with Sound sessions led by Betsy Sewell who stated, “Good readers are constantly encountering and absorbing new vocabulary.”

The easiest thing for me to change for that vocabulary absorption to take place was taking the time to dive deep into meatier, more meaningful shorter texts during our microgroup teaching and hardest things for me to change was student perception that they could rely on their prior knowledge and surrounding text to help define an unknown word or phrase. 

Overall I would rate the changes in student learning as amazingly! The evidence for my rating is based on the Running Record assessments that were just conducted on my class of 30 students, who were reading just below to well-below grade level at the beginning of the year, 9 are now reading at or above, and 6 less than a year below grade level.  It is also evident that with 27 of my literacy students have made between 1 and 2.5 years progress in their reading age.

Words Have Power...PES Edition

Today, the teachers of Pt England had a Teacher Only Day and the last portion of our day was spent hearing from Dr. Janni van Hees. Below are my notes from our session.

Janni van Hees

April 2019

Quantities of quality text

• The more books in a child’s life means the more talk accompany there is in their world. What type of talk accompany mileage engagement are our student’s encountering?
• A quick explain (in the gifting zone) helps using ‘real life language’ when working with students
• We can’t afford for too long to be at texts that are too low. Students need to be reading challenging texts routinely.
• It isn’t just written but oral as well.
• We need short, sharp dives into quality challenging texts.

We want our students to be capable in Language: expressing and understanding.

Children’s language and learning acquisition potential is astounding. Don’t be scared to work in the “Goldilocks” zone with kids. The ultimate achievement is uptake! They will get it because they can!
There are two ways to learn language: engagement and usage. It is important to remember quantity along with quality.

• Other’s language available to me
• Me trying out the language and using it

We should disproportionally provide language for the kids. We spend too much time with reading groups and not enough time with expanded opportunities for oral language

We need to be sure that we are optimising learning conditions by allowing a flourishing learner potential for learning and language.

We need to Deep Dive in Action.

Say more and talk with detail. (My COL blog post using this)
-Use words and ideas that gift your learners knowledge and words. (YOU-Teacher)
-Use words and ideas so your audience knows what you mean (STUDENTS)
-Use words and ideas that gift your child knowledge and words (Families)
**When talking about the detail focus on talking the detail not necessarily focusing on how, what, when, why, etc. Focus on the details the students present.

Adding detail doesn’t make something more interesting. It allows your reader to see exactly what you mean.

Say More. Tell the Detail.

As part of our CoL meeting last week, we heard from Dr. Janni van Hees and she shared with us some practical ways to get our kids using higher level vocabulary.  One of the strategies she shared with us was referred to as Say More. Tell the Detail.

I decided to try this strategy with my Literacy class this week with the hope of linking the concept to our writing assignment from last week.

Dr. van Hees suggested showing students a simple statement like:

A bird flew into our house.

After showing this to the class, have a discussion about what else we could include as the author to allow the reader to understand (and see) exactly what the author was trying to say. Then, show them this improved paragraph. 

A bird flew into our house. We had a window open and it just flew in. It was super scared 'cos it felt trapped.

Taking this concept into consideration, I knew from the writing samples I had recently scored that many of my students were not including detail of this type in their writing. I have also observed that my students were not used to sharing colourful language when brainstorming and looking at a picture before they begin writing. As a result, I decided to focus my writing lesson this week on painting a picture with our words. 

We began by looking at this picture and sentence:

I saw the sun.

I then asked the class what else they wanted to know.  They came up with things like, 

• When did you see the sun?
• Where did you see the sun?
• How did you see the sun?

We then discussed ways that we could add personification to the description and what other descriptive words they could use when talking about this picture.

We pulled together this list:

• When: On my way to school this morning
• Where: over the river
• How: rays through the clouds
• Figurative Language: Personification the sun is greeting me
• Descriptive words (adjectives): *sparkling river  *bright rays *morning sun

Then, we were able to construct the following detailed sentence.

This morning, on my way to school, I looked over the sparkling river and saw the bright rays of the morning sun shining through the clouds to greet me as I started my day.

Students have been provided with three more pictures to consider while making sentences that paint a picture. I am hoping as a result of this we will begin to see words and phrases from the Goldilocks zone emerge when we are brainstorming for our digital word bank prior to starting our writing tasks each week.

COL PD: Words Have Power

As part of our second COL meeting this term, we spent some time with Dr. Janni van Hees exploring the power that words have and considering ways that we can optimise the words on the page to increase student understanding.

Dr. Janni van Hees

What’s on your mind? One of the strong issues arising are our language meaning making strategies.

Growing our Language Capabilities

Vocabulary through Written and Oral Print

Our Manaiakalani Key Focus: Languaging Learning (2019) from Lanugage Abundance (2018)
-Learning is carried on a sea of language
-Discovering the common language
-Ultimately allowing students to be empowered

Optimising Learning Conditions: Allows for the uptake of the language available. These are things that the students need to do and be aware of when in their learning groups.

-Focus and notice
-Put in the effort
-Take part (participate) fully
-Push myself to the edge
-Dig deep for what I already know
-Notice and focus (Learn from others)
-I share (others learn from me)
-Think and talk, think and need
-Wondering and Asking

This is very similar to the DMIC approach of setting up Class Norms for students to adhere to in order to be successful

Are our students reading deeply enough while being extended enough?-What can we put the lens on?
-Only some learners speak in my classroom when we are learning together
-Question: What is the environment that I have created for responding to the text/question/situation? (What is the culture? Hands??thinking and sharing???)

Point to Ponder: If we across the CoL, have Deep Diving, we are providing quantities of quality texts while increasing noticing of vocabulary and knowledge basis will we be able to see the increase in student achievement. We must provide ways to scaffold understanding so that they drip with understanding.

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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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.

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. 

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: 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. 

Language Acquisition: Using a Video Clip Day 2

When we were able to have some time as a class to sit together and watch the second half of the chosen video clip, I was very surprised at the reaction from my students. They seemed to be indifferent to the idea of watching a video clip (something our students generally love).  However, once it was time to begin the discussion, they jumped right in and even some of my quietest students were willing to share, both with their partner and then with the whole class.

Once again, after watching the video, I took some notes to display on our literacy wall based on the information the students reported hearing in the video and seeing on the transcription.

I am excited to do this again either later in the term, or next term as time allows, using our School's Inquiry Topic as my video focus once again. I am very interested to see how the student's retain this information and are able to use it in the future. 

Language Acquisition: Just Roll With It!

This week, while reading aloud from our class novel, we came across the word 'cantilevered'.  As soon as I said it, I immediately thought of what Jannie told us during our last PD session.  

I told the class to remember that word for later. 

Do we do we do more of the same and not make the difference or do we change what we are doing and make the difference?

-Dr. Jannie van Hees

 Once we had finished reading our selection for the day, I asked the class who remembered the word we didn't want to forget.  We then wrote the word on my whiteboard, and talked about where we could look to help us better understand the definition of the word. 

Students were then given the opportunity to spend some time exploring online to discover the definition of the word. There were quite a few that felt empowered and worked together to pull their resources to create their own definition.  These students were also led down a rabbit trail of exploration learning ever step of the way more about bridges and how they are made as a result. 

Near the end of the class period, I Chrome-casted this Google Drawing that was shared on the blogs of the students in this group.  They were able to share what they found with the whole class, and the confidence they had was amazing.  This is definitely something that I will be encouraging my classes to do in the future. 

Check out the students' blogs here: Jerry  Nature  Zoe

Reading or Oral Language

Do we do we do more of the same and not make the difference or do we change what we are doing and make the difference?

-Dr. Jannie van Hees

After hearing Dr. van Hees make this statement, I felt that I had been given "permission" to simply "roll with it" during our oral reading session. I am reading a novel to my class called "My New Zealand Story: Harbour Bridge" by Phillipa Werry.   I chose this read aloud because our school topic focus for the term is Physics: Force and Motion.  My hope was to engage my students (especially the boys) from a different angle using something that is part of their everyday life. 

We are having a great time reading this story, and having many discussions about New Zealand history along the way.  My class is beginning to feel empowered to further their own understanding about a topic they come across while reading.  We have learnt about Opo the dolphin and after hearing from Dr. van Hees, we spent some time exploring famous bridges of the world simply by looking at pictures. 

Students were asked to share what they saw with a partner and then report back to the class what their partner said. I took some time to record what they shared on poster paper so we could use them again at a later date. 

It was awesome seeing how engaged by students were and how they were making connections between the bridges by comparing and contrasting what they were seeing. 

We may not have done any actual "reading" sessions that day, but I believe the learning that took place in my classroom was far more valuable.  My students are now fascinated about bridges around the world and want to know more.  

I think I may have found a future reading assignment for later in the term. 

Language Acquisition: Using a Video Clip Day 1

This week, I decided to try out the video clip technique shared with us by Jannie during our CoL PD last week.  In planning for this exercise, I chose a video clip that provided a chance for my students to extend their knowledge on the four elements that are required for flight, which is our topic focus for Term 2.   I spent some time looking for a youtube video that would be in the "Goldilocks" zone for my students.  Hopefully, this will help provide an avenue for language acquisition to take place as Dr. van Hees suggested.

First, I spent some time watching the video and writing a transcript of the material presented.  I quickly realised that the video was too long to use for one session, and I decided to split it into two parts hoping that my students would be able to understand all four elements by the end of the second session.

As a class, we watched the video.  Then, after discussing what they learnt (or heard about) with a partner, we had a class discussion sharing what our partners learnt.  Students were asked to repeat or rephrase what they heard the student sharing with the class.  As students were sharing, I was creating a topic web on a large piece of poster paper for the students to refer to.

 Then, we popped the transcript up on the television screen, and I read it aloud paragraph by paragraph. We stopped after each and pair/shared before reporting back to the whole class.  Once again, I modelled creating a word web for my students on poster paper in front of the class.

Overall, I was extremely impressed with the level of vocabulary my students were able to pick up from this activity.  Students were then asked to create a Google Drawing illustrating what we learnt (using the notes I made on the poster).

 I am excited to do it once again next week with the remainder of the video.  For the first time going through this process, my students did relatively well.  We still need to go over turning my notes into their own sentences, but we will get there...together. 

CoL PD: Language in Abundance

Janni van Hees

Language in Abundance

Major Sources of Language are noticed by students anywhere anytime in any text.

Our work is to heightened the acquisitional potential.  

-What is the optimal condition for learning?

1. Children rely on two things for optimal language learning.

1. Receiving
2. Trying

How can we as teachers balance the usage of these two things that are noticeable.
We are very good as educators at providing avenues for students to  try language
(general classroom interactions/discussion).  However, we aren’t always providing avenues
for students to be exposed to new language that will ultimately allow them to acquire the
language into their own word bank.

2. Unless you have optimal learning conditions you will not be able to have optimal
learning take place.

3. Students need to be scaffolded to be effective conversationalists.

4. Planning Preparing Providing-Language Acquisition Potential

Next Steps:

Show a short 1-1:30 minute video clip that has vocabulary/information in the “Goldilocks”
zone for the children.  Have students pull out information and annotate down the side of the
video (try using VideoNotes with more able students). Also, provide a transcript of the video
for students to read in a pair, or together as a group. By providing students with multi-modal
ways to experience the same information multiple times provides an avenue for language
acquisition.

Janni van Hees: Where will you put the lens?

As part of our bi-termly, Kahui Ako meeting, we were able once again to spend some time learning from Dr. Janni van Hees about Language Abundance. Below are my points to ponder and take home notes from our session.

Dr. Janni van Hees

Language in Abundance-Where will you put the lens?

Flourishing my learning and language

• -Focus and notice
• Put in the effort
• Take part (participate) fully
• Push yourself to the edge
• Dig deep for what you already know
• Learn from others-notice and focus
• You share-others gain from you
• Think and talk; think and read
• Wondering and asking opens up possibilities to know

This allows for students to feel empowered to contribute to not only their own learning but the
learning of others around them.

CONTEXT RELEVANT LEARNING-This should be the teacher focus!

One of the biggest challenges for students in schools like ours is acquiring the language that is
needed to literary-type context.  

Case Study Notes:

Using visuals brings reality to a lesson for our students.

-It is ok to provide the rich language and have the students unpack what they think it might
mean

-Be sure to keep having students repeat the learning availability in order to

provide avenues of recycling for student retention.

-Teacher needs to be sure to select the right pictures and provide 3-4 of the

correct rich language descriptions

-Provide opportunities for the students to NOTICE and FOCUS.

It’s not about providing opportunities to talk, but provide opportunities to build your knowledge
of complete language structures (word groups, text types).

Using what students have direct access to and tapping into that resource is allowing
excitement to build and ownership to develop of their own learning.

Language in Abundance: Impacting focuses

-Reading tsunami: each learner, each class, each school, CoL Wide-

READ MORE...READ WISELY..LOVE TO READ

-content knowledge-expanded perspectives and experiences

-grammatical and vocabulary knowledge-worlds open up

-VocabularyPlosion: Use WordPlosion intensively/regularly +/or implement core
elements-explicit attention to vocab

-Conversational Teaching and Learning: quality scaffolded ideas exchanges
as the ‘norm’

-Topic specific Spoken Texts: quality and quantity

-Explicit language attention in every context: quality-cutting edge-
involving-enticing-relevant