Today during the RPI, we have been learning about best practice for teaching robust vocabulary (& decoding) as part of our reading programme. At one point in the afternoon, we were asked to explore four different templates for independent student learning with a partner. Then, we were given time to pick a possible Term 3 text and create two robust vocabulary tasks for that reading text.
Here are the tasks that I put together:
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.
