Thursday, 2 September 2021

An Effective Reading Programme Workshop PLD

 An Effective Reading Programme Online Workshop 

-Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey 

I attended this workshop during lockdown. While it took a lot of effort to stay engaged from 11am - 4:30 pm while doing an online course, it was so worth it as the knowledge that was shared was immense. 

It was really great to listen to this and notice things that I am already doing in my reading programme. Using tools like modelling books, Sheena and Louise's multiple books, a range of the deliberate acts of teaching that were mentioned and also a range of approaches to teaching reading are things that I already do, so it was nice to hear that they see the importance of each of those examples too. 

Here are my notes, activities and big ideas from the whole online course.  

-Using modelling books with each reading group and giving the book to the students to use to record their ideas and also to glue in any graphic organisers that students have completed. Great way to gather data on student learning. 

Short interactive mini lessons support both their reading and writing. 

Important to still have time to read for pleasure and explore a range of texts across different topics. 

Junior context 

When using reading to support writing, make connections to what the children are doing in reading too. Look at spaces, sentence structure, first and last sounds, wow words, high frequency words.

Reading is a lot of talking and a bit of reading. 

Think about how you can group kids to lessen the amount of groups. Think - Level 14 and 15 aren't so far apart so put the kids together in a group. 

We had time to reflect on where most of our kids are working at and what the main things are that they should be learning to do in reading. All of my kids are working between magenta and turquoise reading levels and so their main learning points should be the main points from the top three boxes in the handout below. 

When children are starting to read, the main focus is getting them underway with cracking the code. Thinking critically and comprehension are things that we are working on once they have a good foundation in cracking the code.  

Retelling is the first step of summarising (pulling out the important ideas). 

Louise discussed each of the comprehension strategies in the Reading Comprehension book. 

Shared reading is a great time to incorporate critical thinking discussions. 

Proverbs are a great way to support children's thinking. They support inferencing because you have to go beyond what the words actually say, It's great for critical thinking. 

The teaching of phonics is important but not exclusive when teaching students how to crack the code.

Cracking the code is using all of the visual information that you have available. 

Phonics is a useful strategy for students to use when they come across a phonetically regular word. 

Phonics, chunking and analogy are all useful strategies when writing too as you don't have any meaning to help you. 

Rhyming is also an important skill for writing too - going from look to shook.  

Not all words are phonetically regular - eg. the

Learning high frequency words is important because it's quick and they can read and write them really quickly. This will help their fluency and analogy. Worthwhile teaching them a bank of words up to Level 13 /14. 

Half of the words that children come across as they move through the levels have prefixes, suffixes and / or are compound words. So they need to know this. 

TASK - Adding on suffixes to the base word 'loud'. Chn use whiteboards to add their words. 

(Word building grid in book can be used as a tool to work on prefixes and suffixes). Learning about how if you add a suffix with the vowel at the beginning, you drop the 'e' on your base word. 

TASK - Prefix activity where they write down words with the same prefix, draw a picture of one of those objects (eg. tripod) and then write a sentence using one of the words too. 

TASK - Write base HFW (eg. it) and then write a list of rhyming words and then they walk around and share their words with buddies and add to their list too. 

Youtube channel - The Literacy Place

I DO, WE DO, YOU DO process. However this isn't always linear as we often move back and forth between these. 


Reading approaches: Do a little bit of each, often. 

Read to - 10 mins. 

  • This can actually be done throughout our other reading approaches
  • Many reasons why we read to 

Modelled reading - Most teacher support given. Thinking aloud. 

  • Can be modelling fluency, expression, how to infer, how to predict.

Shared reading - 10 - 15 mins prior to guided reading.   

  • A lot of people think that it's about little kids and big books. 
  • Successful with kids who are getting ready for guided reading and ESOL students too 
  • The children need to be able to see the text so they can join in with the reading process. Lovely time to teach and model the reading strategies that your chn need to learn 
  • One of the most effective ways to teach reading strategies rather than trying to teach each group the same thing. The guided reading sessions can then be focussed around supporting the chn to give things a go themselves

Guided reading - 40 mins (2 + groups, 10 - 20 mins each group). Alongside our kids to prompt and guide them. 

  • If you have disengaged chn, using an I read, you read type situation can be useful. The chn can still be working on listening and therefore understanding and discussing what is happening in the text. You are just taking aware the responsibility of decoding but the chn are still learning.
  • Ideally, chn actually shouldn't be introduced to anything new, it should be more about consolidating and practising their learning  
  • 10 mins is a good amount of time for the students that are new to reading. 15 mins is good for the students who are a bit further up the levels. 20 mins is appropriate for your more proficient readers. 
  • Don't forget that they have already had access to explicit teaching in reading with read to and shared reading. Guided reading is just the next level down. 
  • Introducing the book includes sharing new vocab
  • Don't see guided reading as get through your groups and get through the book
  • It's about the quality not the quantity - both in terms of groups and books
  • Ensure there is time for talk! This is so important. 
  • Think about having one or two goals for a group and keep those goals for about a month. You cannot nail / effectively work on one reading goal in one lesson 
  • Chunking a longer text is really good too. Read one page, come back together for example. 
  • Students shouldn't read in unison or do round robin reading 

Independent reading - 10 mins. Self select a book and read independently. 


Independent activities 

  • Don't plan too many activities 
  • Mixed ability groups can work well 
  • Consider students moving between activities when they are ready rather than when teachers finish with a group 
  • Provide some choice and chances for students to self manage their learning (must do, can do) 
  • Plan activities where students can return to the text to deepen understanding, reread, talk and be creative (craft activities). 
  • Story maps can foster creativity, visualising, retelling and sequencing events 
  • Same but different activity venn diagram 

Modelling books - Louise showed us a modelling book that had a group goal sheets (PM 34). This has the kids names, two goals and a notes section. This was a way to track how the students are going with their goals as well as which lessons they have taken part in. She also recorded tricky words from a book (and the page numbers) in the modelling book too. 

-Give the kids the modelling book for a warm up acitivty or a follow up activity. They might be recording their ideas in the book too. 

Use songs as a way to practice comprehension strategies. 

Handa's Surprise book - could add speech bubbles on different pages and have chn say what they think the characters might be thinking. Could also have chn think of questions that the characters might want to ask too. 

Owl Moon book 

The Very Cranky Bear book 

GENERIC FOLLOW UPS - Focus on giving chn generic activities to do after shared reading rather than thinking about and making new worksheets for each book. This can be brought into independent work time and involves the chn going back into the text. 

Lessens the planning time and also the time spent explaining the task as chn will already know how to do this task. 

TASK - Each child pretends to be a person on a boat emigrating. One child moves around the room with a thought bubble and / or speech bubble and asks students to share what they would be thinking or saying as those characters. 

TASK - Using post it pointers to identify anything they have learnt about the narrator for example. Focus was on inferring. 















Wednesday, 30 June 2021

External Recognition DFI Course - 30th June 2021

Day Nine DFI Course- Ohaeawai School 

Today was the last day of our DFI course. We started the day by reflecting on the last week and the course overall. We shared any questions that we had about our upcoming exam too. After that, we filled in a feedback form about the course overall. It was good to reflect on what I have learnt throughout this journey and what my highlights were. 

Next, we met with Vicki online so she could share about some of the Manaiakalani roles and opportunities that we have access to now that we have completed the DFI course. 

EXAM TIME!!! We had 3 hours to complete the online exam. I found that I had heaps of time left after submitting my exam so I spent this time working on my blog and doing some of my own schoolwork. Thankfully, I passed! It was great to get my results so quickly. I wish we got feedback about which answers we got right and wrong though. 

We spent this afternoon sorting out our blogs and making sure we had labels on all of our posts so we could get our DFI badges from Vicki. Here is my badge below. 


Overall, I really enjoyed doing this DFI course. It was great meeting everyone and learning together. Here is our DFI whanau on Day One and Day Nine.






Wednesday, 23 June 2021

Devices DFI Course - 23rd June 2021

Day 8 DFI Course - Paparore School 

This is our second to last course day together. We started our day by reflecting on the past week. This reminded me to print out the resources that I have found to use with the Bee bots in class. 

Our first session of the day was with online with Dorothy. The focus was around the word ubiquitous. This session discussed how research shows that decile 1 kids have heard 30 million less spoken words by the time they start school than decile 10 kids. These words can be in any language but the huge amount of words that some children miss out on in those first few years of their lives, affects the amount of learning they have access to. 

Dorothy shared how technology helps us to remove barriers, find solutions to problems, and provide opportunities for new ways of learning. She highlighted the importance of technology and ensuring we don't dismiss it as just a tool. She said it is a tool but not just a tool. Dorothy showed us some apps that students can use on the iPads or Chromebooks to create rewindable learning. She also shared a range of questions for us to reflect on that were based around ubiquitous and rewindable learning. These will be interesting to reflect on in the upcoming weeks as we approach the end of term. 

The next session was around the cybersmart curriculum and how we should focus on teaching the students to make smart decisions with technology as opposed to teaching them how to keep themselves safe. Being Cybersmart is the roof to the whare of Manaiakalani. Vicky talked about how while we need a strong foundation, we also need a strong roof too. She also introduced a systemic approach to teaching the students how to be cybersmart (each term had a particular focus). Vicky also talked about the need to teach students about their digital footprint as this can greatly affect their lives. For example, secondary students need to be aware that what they are sharing online can impact on their job opportunities. 

Our next session was based on the Manaiakalani journey. It began by looking at how Te Tiriti of Waitangi principles are woven through Manaiakalani. Equity and access was a key focus for Manaiakalani when looking at devices that would be used within the programme. We also learnt about the devices that were introduced and used throughout the Manaiakalani journey. 

Next we had the chance to explore using Chromebooks. This was great because I haven't had many opportunities to use these before. We practised using different shortcuts and finding different things on the keyboards.

We then had a session around iPads. The beginning of the session was around teaching the students how to care for the devices. These were things that we have covered in class both in my own lessons and lessons with Whaea Donna (Manaiakalani Facilitator). We had the chance to use the Explain Everything app. We tried using a few tools on the app. This is not an app my school uses but it was good to explore it today. Here is my quick creation below. 


In the afternoon, Vicky talked to us about the exam and what this will look like. We also learnt how to register for the exam. We had the chance to create in either Explain Everything, Screencastify or Hapara Workspace. I explored Hapara and learnt about creating a workspace, giving feedback and submitting assignments. My Hapara workspace wasn't loading properly so I couldn't finish creating but it was great to learn more about Hapara. 

Vicky shared some tips about gadgets we can add to our blog and ways that we can monitor our student blogs too. 


Wednesday, 16 June 2021

Computational Thinking DFI Course - 16th June 2021

 Day 7 DFI Course - Waitangi Treaty Grounds

We spent our day at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds which was stunning. It was lovely to be on this whenua for the day.

     

As always, we started the day by reflecting on our past week. Then we moved on to our Hapara hot tips session where we learnt about workspaces and how they can be used to store resources and assessments among other things. 

Our next session was around the new digital technologies curriculum. We learnt about the two parts to the digital curriculum; computational thinking for digital technologies, and designing and developing digital outcomes. I had been to a workshop earlier this year based around this new curriculum but honestly haven't revisited it since. So it was good to go back to it and learn more about it. 

One part of this korero was about how teachers need to ensure that we choose digital technologies purposefully as opposed to using things that are just fun or have that novelty factor. This is something I think we have to constantly reflect on because there are so many apps and websites that we come across that look great, but aren't really that effective within our classroom programmes. 

We also saw some examples of learning intentions that could be used that are in line with the progression outcomes of the curriculum. These were great because I can easily incorporate these into my classroom programme, especially when we are using technology like the Bee-bots. 

The next session was a deep dive into the future of tech. We looked at one video that had a lot examples of what technology might look like one day. It's interesting to think about as I think there are many pros and cons. Kerry also highlighted that we often don't know about breakthrough technologies that are happening right now in New Zealand. 

Our next session was based around the Manaiakalani pedagogy focus of empower. We learnt about how this aspect is really about empowering people to take back control of their lives. Part of these slides were about the lives of whanau who struggle with the cost of living and having a limited income. Vicki talked about how students in lower decile schools are coming to school having heard far less spoken words than students in high decile schools and how this affects their schooling. She also talked about how we can have the ping pong type conversations with students through things like blogging.

We then had a session around stop motion. It was great because we had the chance to create our own animations. I worked with Paul and we used the stars for our animation. We spent a bit of time just looking through the buttons and tools within the stop motion site. 

Our next session was around using Scratch. I have used Scratch Jr in the past so it was good to explore this tool further. After lunch we had the opportunity to explore more of Scratch, stop motion animation or the blue bots / bee bots. I saw some awesome examples of how we could create plastic grid mats for the students to use when programming the bee bots. Alicia showed us how we can use the mats for story sequencing and foundation facts in mathematics. We also looked at some resources that we can find online to use with the bee bots too. I made a video of how I programmed the blue bot to move to different characters.

 

Next I created a stop motion animation. I had a play around with the tools on the site, created a title page and added text to the video as well. I enjoyed learning about this today. It was a lovely day of learning. 

Wednesday, 9 June 2021

Enabling Access - Sites - 9th June 2021

Day 6 DFI Course - Paparore School 

I missed this day as I was sick but I have looked back through the agenda and the resources for this DFI course day. Today's course was all about Google Sites. 

On one of the slide decks, there were some points around the purpose of a learning site and the visual appeal of them. I liked looking through these as I like to understand the purpose behind why we do things and tips around what something could / should look like. As I already have a class site, it's good to think about these things as I could definitely go back and make some changes to mine. 

I did have a look at some of the class sites that were shared with us too. There was a real range in terms of how they look. Some of the sites had things that I couldn't access. This was a good reminder to make sure that my site doesn't have that same issue and that I have shared everything properly. 

I took some time to look at Mandy's blog post and leave a comment. It was great to see that she had made some changes to her own site too. I have definitely done the same after learning more throughout our DFI course. 




Wednesday, 2 June 2021

Collaborate Sites DFI Course - 2nd June 2021

Day 5 DFI Course - Ohaeawai School 

Our Manaiakalani pedagogy focus for today was around the kaupapa aspect of teaching and learning being visible. The foundation of this idea was, can you see it or can you not? Dorothy shared the idea that sometimes our learners fail in the school system because we have spent so much time hiding the learning journey from the students themselves.

She also asked "what have you done to lay out the learning journey for your students this week?" This was an interesting idea to reflect on. Dorothy talked about how Google Sites became the one stop shop for making teaching and learning visible for everyone. This is something that we would learn more about through the day. Many aspects of this korero linked to the idea that there are no surprises when everything is visible. Dorothy also touched on the research done by John Hattie around visible learning for teachers. 

Our next session was around mutlimodal learning. One key idea that I reflected on most was the need to engage learners and hook them into their learning. I think this is a foundational idea of effective teaching and learning in any class. Differentiation and personalised learning was an important part of this as we know we can't engage all learners in the same way all of the time. 

Kerry talked about how the homepage of a google site is like a shop window. We want the audience to want to explore our sites. We looked at some examples of presenting information in traditional formats vs multimodal formats and how this can drastically change the level of engagement and student agency. 

We had a chance to explore some different google sites from a range of year levels. Some of the sites were really aesthetically pleasing and it made me want to make some changes to my own class site. 

Our next session was about creating a google site from scratch. I have already created one for my class so I have played around with this over the past year. It was a great refresher on how to create a site and what to keep in mind when doing so. Vicky also recapped the importance of creating a google site that entices your audience to want to look more at your site.

We then looked at a multi text database which showed content around T shaped literacy. This was interesting because I have heard this mentioned many times since moving to the Far North, but I didn't have any knowledge around what this actually was. We had a slide deck available that we could look at which outlined the theory behind T shaped literacy. We explored some of the themes on the database and chose one that we wanted to create a multi modal site to be based on. 

We planned our site either on paper or on Jamboard. Here is my initial layout plan for my site. The layout changed a lot when I actually started making my site. 


I found some stories and articles that children could read, watch or listen to and added them to my site. I tried to ensure that my site was in line with the T shaped literacy theory and had main, complimentary, scaffolding and challenging texts. 

Here is the link to my multimodal site





Thursday, 27 May 2021

Writing Workshop with Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey

Developing an effective writing programme workshop - Far North Reap 

- Thursday 27th May 2021

Here are some of the big ideas, activities and suggestions from Sheena and Louise, as well as some of my thoughts and reflections.

Key things to remember

  • Have realistic goals about how often you will work with the learners (suggestion, one group a day)
  • Expose students to a range of texts in reading and writing 
  • Repetition is key 
  • Chunk it up (the writing process or the piece of writing) 
  • Purpose and audience - this is so important for learners to know and understand why they are writing 
  • Link reading and writing - shared reading is a great warm up for writing 
  • Teach kids to note take 

MY GOAL: To explicitly teach my students how to self check their writing. 

Our curriculum doesn't outline when we need to teach different text types. Teaching the same text type over a long block of time (4 to 6 weeks) is boring and not as engaging for learners. With the younger levels (especially New entrants to Year One), Sheena and Louise suggest we don't focus on text types. Instead, focus on doing something and writing about it. They will learn about using capital letters, full stops and writing the sounds we can hear for example.

Sometimes we go too fast for children. It's not always about the quantity of writing but the quality. Repetition with different contexts is great for children to develop their writing skills and knowledge.

Louise shared about their suggested structure of a lesson. This included a lesson introduction (15mins), independent writing (guided - 20mins) and a lesson wrap up (10mins). She talked about how the wrap up is important because it's that opportunity for children to share as well as give and receive feedback. The students don't always need to finish their writing before the wrap up. Louise also showed us how we could chunk a narrative writing task by showing them a video on day one, children write their introductions and review their writing. The following days they would work on their next two paragraphs and then their conclusion. I already break my writing into planning, drafting, editing and publishing but I haven't been breaking the sections of the writing up. 

Pygmy Seahorse video - could use this for children to practise note taking. You could stop a video and have the children write their notes (gives them a bit more time). Prompting would be used in this time to support learners.

Drama is a great thing to use in writing too. In this example, Louise had shared an image of a cave as a writing prompt. She then had the children act out moving through the cave, This can help children to imagine what it's like actually being in the cave. It can help build vocabulary too. Sheena talked about how research actually shows that movement can support the children's ability to write. If they have had this time to get up and move around, it can help them settle in to writing. 

Sheena and Louise also have a Facebook page where there are lots of ideas and resources. 

In the introduction to writing lessons, you could have children clapping the full stops, making a capital letter with their body, finding sounds, letters or words on their word cards. 

Clear criteria and challenge - visual, memorable and measurable (able to find it or tick it). Don't make children write out the WALT or SC. It's not a good use of time. Children need to understand it but they don't need to write it down. Learners need to practise saying their sentences. Louise talked about a class she worked with and how they used the success criteria to self assess. They had to look back at their books and check if they wrote a sentence, used capital letters, or wrote words they knew. They circled words from their word cards that they wrote in their books too.

Can also use a challenge in writing too. For example, using two adjectives or adding in dialogue. 

Exemplars can be short or long, and really useful. Children really respond when there are exemplars written by others in your class or school. This is something I have done before and it definitely makes using an exemplar more meaningful. 

We looked at a Union of Strength video and Louise showed us how we could use the Hook Book resource to help learners create an effective introduction. In a video , Louise shared the success criteria with learners, and then gave examples of how the writers could hook their reader. She then read out examples and had the children identify if the examples of writing were dialogue, jumping into the action or setting the scene. This was a great example of modelled and shared writing and moving between the two in a lesson introduction. She also talked about how we or the children could put a wiggly line under a word that could be better. 

Self check - read your writing, can you spot three mistakes? Give opportunities for children to celebrate their self checking too. 

Partner checks are great because someone else gets to hear or read your writing and give feedback too. It's also another chance to proofread, edit and review the success criteria. Make sure the author reads their writing while the partner is a respectful listener and then starts their feedback with a positive comment. Next they will give feedback based on the success criteria. Task for learners - look at the last sentence in your partner's work, is it a super sentence? If not, work with your buddy to fix it up. 

Sharing circles - each author reads only one sentence. Doesn't take too long and is a great way to share their writing. 

Punctuation mime - great way to have the children notice the punctuation in a passage as well as helping them know what the punctuation is called. 

Complex sentences create relationships. They explore cause and effect and give the connections of time. For example, I ran to the bus stop BECAUSE I was running late. Now the reader knows why I was running late. 

Overall, a fantastic day packed with learning and lots of reminders about the awesome things we can include in our writing programmes.