Term 2-Phase 2

Already this term has provided some teaching challenges, and I have had to reflect on my teaching for each group as well as the class as a whole.

 Our students are so blessed that they are able to receive many different forms of literacy intervention. At various times during our literacy block, I have over half of my class receiving literacy support. It is such a wonderful opportunity for them to take part in these programs/teaching sessions and nearly all of the students have shown great progress over the past term. However, as the classroom teacher, it presents some unique challenges with scheduling, lesson planning, and small group teaching sessions.

With that said, I have reworked the literacy program in my classroom. We begin everyday by orally reading a chapter in a novel. So many of our students do not read for entertainment purposes, and reading is one of my favourite things to do. Spending this 5-10 minutes a day reading to my students is so valuable for many reasons. At first, they were very reluctant to sit and listen, but today, I accidentally went to move right into our writing lesson and was stopped by a number of students reminding me to read. I use this time to model reading a novel with the kids. Before beginning each day, we review what happened the in the previous chapter, and while reading I often stop and discuss various vocabulary words, figurative language and make predictions about the events to come.

Each Monday, I have decided to begin class with a Dictogloss that show cases the writing concept for that week.  So far this term, we have focused on onomatopoeia and character descriptions.   This provides students with an opportunity to sound out words that they hear, take notes, work with a small group to construct the paragraph, and revise/edit punctuation and spelling errors.  In just two weeks, the difference in student interaction has improved greatly.  There are still a few extremely shy students who are finding it difficult to work with others but I have been shuffling their partners each week to promote different level students working together.  Plus, there are a few students who are unable to do this assignment due to their own personal language/literacy constraints.  I still have them listen to the reading and try to take notes.  They also still listen to the conversation with a small group in order to have the oral interaction with their peers.

Students have been working this term to read and create Comics and Superheroes.  I have decided that we are going to be learning a concept during our whole class writing sessions that will have a shorter follow up assignment.  As a result, this term, I am working to include more writing based reading follow up tasks.

So far....so good, but it's only week 2!  However, I am very excited for this new challenge, and for the opportunity it presents to present more "CREATE" opportunities with written language with my reading groups.

Term 1 Inquiry Presentation

This term, I decided to do a walk through of an individual student's journey during the past term as we work to solidify the building blocks within their writing tool kit.

2016: Bring Out the Lego!

It's here!  A new school year!  Complete with new challenges, adventures, trials and successes!  This year, I am so excited to be part of Team 4, working with our Year 4-6 students.  Our block is separated into two learning zones, and on our side we have only Year 5-6 students.  There are four teachers working with approximately 90-100 students in an Open Plan Modern Learning Environment.

I was gifted a big box of Lego last school year, and I was so excited to bring them out for our students to play with during our first rainy day lunch.  Once the initial shock of seeing so many Lego wore off, the excitement and creativity that flowed through the students who chose to play with them was inspiring.  As I begin to think about my personal teaching inquiry this year, I keep being reminded of that big ol' crate of Lego.

At this point in their school adventure, my students have heard so many things about what to do and what not to do when crafting their own piece of writing.  Unfortunately, for most of them they have a toolbox of tricks and bits of information that is as unorganised and shocking as my crate of Lego.

My inquiry this year is to use formative assessments to help take those crazy toolboxes of writing tricks and bits of information and turn them into something that opens a clear pathway of understanding for my students when they sit at their computer and begin to type.

My students will hopefully learn to become excited writers who are able to turn words on a page into a document that meets the necessary requirements for the task at hand.

Turning this...

Into this....

Jannie van Hees-Vocabulary Expansion

Vocabulary Knowledge

Points to ponder:  The more thematic and connected you are within your literacy lessons the more knowledge students are going to retain.

Major Sources of Vocabulary for Students:

• Noticed by Students

anywhere/anytime/any texts

• Oral Texts

face to face, television, radio, internet, lectures, presentations, classroom

conversation and dialogue

• Written texts

teacher selected-academic-curricular text and incidental

student selected-school texts/outside of school texts

Points to ponder: The more you instill in your students the love for words, the more they are going to retain and grow their vocabulary.

KNOWING a WORD

CLEVER

-Context Ready (Can I use the word in sentences that are detailed and well-shaped?)

VERY CLEVER

-explain/meaning ready (Can I explain the word’s meaning without using the word?)

Using a NewsCast to pick up Vocabulary

1. Unpack the topic
2. Share vocabulary heard (after 1st listening)
3. Teacher has prepared Rich Vocabulary Caught list
4. 2nd listening (NO VIDEO) but words are show on screen to read with commentary

***Students can do this exact process with any video and have them create the

steps themselves to share with others.

Points to ponder: In order to write well, you need to know the subject well.

Term 3 Inquiry Presentations

This term has ended just like the previous, and as a staff we have been sharing what we have learnt in our inquiries this term.  For me, this marks the end of the 2015 school year, and I have learnt so much about my personal teaching style and student engagement.  I look forward to the 2016 school year, and the pathway to deciding my focus for a new school year in the months to come.

Manaiakalani Digital Immersion Term 3

At today's Manaiakalani Digital Immersion we were tasked with exploring a CyberSmarts assignment that our kids could use focusing on the "create" element of our Learn, Create, Share model.  We decided to focus on the next Digital Learning Object (DLO) for the students in our team.  It was decided to use the Smart Values heading of CyberSmarts and focus on The Pt. England Way and the 3 P's (Partnership, Participation, Protection).

We have a very basic layout for our students at this point in time, but our main idea is to lead the students through the learning task of the Smart Values-Making Links assignment prior to beginning their DLO animation.

Term 3 Check In

Today, we were able to share our Inquiry updates with a Professional Learning Group here at Pt. England School.  This term, my students are continuing to focus on completing their assignments in a timely manner.   I have begun to scaffold my delivery of assignments differently, and students are given smaller tasks to focus on in a given time frame.  Hopefully, once the tasks are all compiled together, they will have a completed assignment.