Home Learning Part 2!

Description
Students in charge!

Significance
I got the idea from Poto's blog post - about giving the students time to talk, time to take ownership, time to lead!

Learning
Week 2 of Home Learning Part 2, I decided that Room 11 students will now host our morning calls. The decision was inspired by Poto's recent blogpost about letting the kids do more of the talking during the google calls.

The idea was mentioned last Friday in my class call with Room 11, response was 50/50, some looked excited and others didn't even blink. But thinking of lockdown and how i'd usually run my calls, it can be quite boring. If the students have no input or questions, they're sitting there for a good 45 minutes watching and listening to me. So, our first student-led session was this morning, I decided to choose Rottpon and Anna, because I know they'll get the job done and take the lead. I did provide an opportunity of 'volunteering' but I think they were still in shock, with the thought of 'Miss Tupou just said we had to run the meetings' - yikes!

But I know how my class works. Yes, they'll be hesitant and nervous at first, but once we get the ball rolling, they will roll it as far as they can.

So what?
I've learnt to practice what I preach! We often hear teachers talk about 'student voice is important' and 'learning should be student driven' but do we really let the students drive the learning? If so, how often?

As teachers, we're accustomed to the idea of 'leading the learning' and forget that our students watch us everyday. They know what we'd say, they know the class routines, they know EVERYTHING. Poto's reflection was a reminder for me to give my students a chance. A chance to have fun, to wear the 'teacher' shoe and to sit back and enjoy.

And that, is how Home Learning Part 2 is going :)

Blogpost #11 - Collecting Data

Describe how you will keep a record of each of the above in a manageable way

Having a plan for everything is part of teacher practice and as a CoL teacher. However, with the realities of Covid-19 and having been in lockdown twice this year, that plan wasn't executed as expected.
If you have a look at my previous blog posts, you will find out more about the changes I have recently made in my practice.

Collecting Data:

1. OTJ's - Overall Teacher Judgements
2. Assessments - Probe/PATs/Teacher Observation/Student Educational Output
3. Student Voice on reading & writing
4. Frequent Spelling/Grammar mini-tests
5. Student Blogposts
6. Video recordings of lessons
7. Learner Wall - display of student literacy work

Record Keeping:

1. ETAP graphs - these are produced once assessment results are entered
2. Spreadsheet 
3. PAT graphs
4. Video recordings of students working independently but also in guided reading sessions
5. Photos
6. Interlead Reflections
7. Observation notes (either from myself or from another Teacher who has come in to observe a lesson)
8. Student Voice - have a recorded visual/audio of a talanoa between students and teacher about their thoughts & feelings about Literacy and the focus on Vocabulary

Blog post #10 - Monitoring the effects

Identify informal and formal ways you are monitoring the effects of your changed practices/intervention on learner outcomes. Explain the reflections and tweaks you are making along the way 

1. Interlead Reflections - Glen Taylor School uses interlead as an appraisal tool. It allows us to reflect on our teacher practice as much as we want. From 'wow' moments, to 'fail' moments. It's a great way for me to monitor the effects of my own practice and the new changes I've implemented.
2. Student voice - this occurs informally and formally at GTS. Once a term, our learners provide learner voice on our practice. Informally, we use google forms or padlets to gage student ideas on what learning should look like for the term, what they enjoy most about each learning area, what Miss Tupou needs to work on etc. We are open to feedback from our learners because we tell them "We want to be the best teachers we can be, so be honest about what needs improving, no offence will be taken".
3. Teacher Observation - With shared reading, I've noticed student engagement is at an all time high. For the first couple weeks of re-introducing shared reading, we looked at song lyrics and spoken word poetry. Our goal was to 'infer using evidence from the text'. First time we worked on this as a class, it was a fail, due to interruptions through out the lesson (Kapa Haka rehearsal, support staff teachings, dentist appointments etc). So, I tried again the next day, with my whole class there. It was a huge success. The song was 'Dear Mr President' by PINK. We had a class copy put on the whiteboard and each student was given a copy of the lyrics. By the end of the lesson, most of the students had made 5+ inferences/anecdotes on their pieces of paper. Below is an example of one students anecdotes on a piece of spoken word poetry piece, we used for shared reading.

#9 - Inquiry Implementation

Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention

What changes have I made in my teacher practice so far:

1. Having a balanced reading programme - Using 'The Reading Book' by Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey and after attending an inspiring PD early this term (Term 3), hosted by Sheena and Louise,  I began to follow the recommended programme. So, I do teacher read for 10 minutes (also known as Modelled Reading), then we have Shared Reading for about 15 minutes, then it's time for the guided reading sessions (40 minutes), this is when Daily 5 takes place also, giving the students time for student-led learning and self-choice of the tasks, but also provide me with time to meet with groups. This is how my reading programme currently looks like, and it's on a roll!
2. Explicit Vocabulary Instruction - using resources & strategies that focus on improving vocabulary knowledge. (The Reading Book by Sheena Cameron).
3. Repeated exposures to new words/strategies to help determine word meanings - Some of the activities I'd include in my reading lessons were word diagrams, vocabulary ranking, front-loading of key words and its definition and analysing vocabulary choice. Miss Wilson Says pdf 
4. 2 minute warm-ups - At the beginning of my literacy block, I give my students 2 proverbs for the day. After screening the first proverb, students are encouraged to discuss in their table groups what they think the proverb means and why. It encourages critical thinking, vocabulary awareness and gives learners time to talk to each other.
5. Shared Reading - I gave up on shared reading last year because I felt like I wasn't doing it right. It also gave me more time to work with my groups. So basically, it was an easy way out. Sheena Cameron's PD inspired me to bring it back and do it right. She shared a sample planning template on how she plans for shared reading and how it would look like in the classroom. From that moment, I told myself "I'm going back to shared reading". I can say now, that in the first 3 weeks of doing this, the engagement went from 0-100. Maybe it's because our text types for those weeks were song lyrics and spoken word poetry. I knew it would hook my students in, so I decided to use it. But also, Sheena suggested doing so with the older kids (7&8).

#8 - Discuss and Blog post

My Inquiry Question and theory of action/chain of events

How will I change my teaching practice to ensure my learners are developing a deeper understanding of vocabulary (in Literacy)?

With the ever so changing year we're in, my inquiry has experienced twists and turns along the way. I was unsure of whether I was going to continue with this, or change it because of the impacts of lockdown, but evidence, assessment data and my heart tells me, to go back to square 1. Stick with the initial inquiry question because it's an area of concern in my class.

Theory of action

For a number of years, teachers and researchers have identified VOCABULARY as one of the key areas of concern amongst our learners. While our students have made great progress in Writing, there are still unanswered questions with why the results are not the same in Reading (vice versa). My concern is that students vocabulary knowledge will continue to be a weakness amongst our cluster and school community. For this reason, I decided to focus on the reading achievement for my inquiry challenge. 

In reading, I introduced the Daily 5 programme as a new approach to the teaching of reading. Reason for this, I felt a lack of structure to my reading programme. I needed something to follow, something of sequence and something that proposed order. Daily 5 has been great. It took 6-7 weeks to set-up the programme and I feel like it's an effective running programme in my class. All Daily 5 tasks support VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE, providing opportunities for students to read to self, read to someone, work on writing, word work and listen to reading. This Daily 5 tasks are great for independent activities and self-driven learning while I focus on my group guided sessions.

From this, I noticed when working with my groups that 'decoding' was a struggle. Bringing to awareness the need for a huge focus on VOCABULARY. Taking this into consideration, I began looking for resources that supports children's understanding of vocabulary. Some of the activities I'd include in my reading lessons were word diagrams, vocabulary ranking, front-loading of key words and its definition and analysing vocabulary choice. Miss Wilson Says pdf 

In addition to this, I finally opened up 'The Reading Book' by Sheena Cameron & Louise Dempsey. This was the missing piece to the puzzle. It provided me with a structure on how to run an effective reading programme, it made me bring back 'shared reading' into my programme, and it brought structure. #LightbulbMoment

The reasons I think these changes in my practice will be effective for my learners are because it brings increase focus on DECODING. Enabling learners to practise chunking, phonics and analogy. Small changes like paying attention to prefixes and suffixes, use of small whiteboards during shared reading and encouraging moments for 'think, pair, share', 'walk and talk' and 'tap and read', giving students base words and getting the learners to add prefixes and suffixes and even reading aloud rhyming words. These changes can result in huge progress. Says who? Says Sheena Cameron.