Teaching Parts of Speech

 Yeah, I know, just like any other teacher, that yes, we need to do this. However, with restraints and the curriculum as broad as it is, I didn't realise I had missed a stage until I tried to get the students to write a sentence one word at a time. 

The fun fold your paper over once you have written your word and pass it to the next person. Took too long and wasn't a lot of fun. (Please forgive me, I had a group of students for 4 years before this class, and I knew exactly what they had been taught over the previous years. I assumed this group had learnt it too.)

We had talked a lot about onomatopoeia, so that was where our sentences started.  

Onomatopoeia, the name of a person, was adverb, verb, in the adjective, noun.

As we went, we brainstormed examples for adverbs, refreshed their knowledge of verbs, made a list for adjectives and then refreshed our understanding of nouns. 

So as I said, what should have been a quick fun activity, wasn't. But we still come out with some fun sentences.

Smash, Clyde was silently trodding in the fat grass.

Agh, Shony was silently dancing on the long tv.

Swish, Harlem was happily sleeping on the skinny chair.

Splash, Lexus was sadly lying on the hairy table.

Pop, Davis was quickly fishing on the spotty whiteboard.

Smash, Marcus was patiently riding on the tremendous hairy cow.

You can just hear the laughter we caused reading them out to the students.

I am looking forward to trying this task again but this time making sure the students are well prepared beforehand and not making an ass of myself.

MIT @ KPMG - Final Meeting

Today we discussed... 

Identifying students who didn't return to school quickly after each lockdown to ensure gaps are plugged after COVID-19, for future years. 

Identifying students who were online to access learning and how this impacted on their learning during the year and how are could tracking this.

How would we present this work (Creating Writers) in a non-digital environment? e.g. the Cook Islands. E.g. Using different medium to make the body of work accessible.

My Woulda Coulda Shoulda for MIT 2020

Woulda  (with 20/20 hindsight)

I wish I would have pushed for access to Chromebooks for students in class earlier in T1, to train them to 'log in' efficiently, and where to find things they would need during lockdown for learning to continue. 

I would have like to see SLT engage with the MIT process helping to breakdown barriers and time restraints.

Coulda (woulda but circumstances challenged)

I could have pushed for time to teach all students to 'log in' and taught them how to locate the class website, linking into meets and put the learning on the class website as I have previous years but was restricted this year. 

Shoulda (simply shoulda but didn't have time)

Having been to the Manaiakalani Outreach and Principals Wānanga, I should have asked to attend earlier ngā Wānanga to see what is needed and the focus for the coming year. As this would help with direction and evidence of what needs to be done to help accelerate learning.

I was intrigued to find out that the term 'Phonics' has changed to 'Structured Language', useful for students with dyslexia and it is something I would like to investigate more of next year to help students with spelling.

Although we are done for the Year 2020, I will continue to add to the Creating Writers site and develop it with the aim to create easier tasks as I have Year 3 and 4s in 2021.

Final Writing Results for 2020

 It is interesting looking at the results in writing after using the tools I have created and added to 

my site Creating Writers

Thursday we went to the zoo and saw lots of animals. I saw a baby baboon. We saw a lion moving to eat and the other lions were sleeping under the tree. Mr John took a picture of us. - This is an improvement from one of our ESOL boys, who would write one sentence when he arrived.

Arriving at Auckland Zoo everyone waited for the other bus to arrive at the zoo. When the bus finally arrived we all sat down and listened to the rules, from the zookeeper. We all got into our groups and grabbed our lunch. Then our group sat down and ate our rolls. After finishing our rolls we ran to see the animals. First animals we saw were the emu, zebras and giraffes. They were so tall. Next, we ran off to see the scary lions sleeping. The last animal we saw was the big fat elephants. - Previous a reluctant writer.

Year 4 students in our class had also received the same teaching. I was curious about how their results looked from the beginning of the year. 

Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! 

"We are going to do this all day. If you can't stop your chitter-chatter!" Mrs Kereopa shouted, "Heads, shoulders, knees, toes!" She kept shouting.

Finally, we stopped talking and shut our mouths. It was only Kereru we were waiting to come, so were can start our day off at the zoo. Just then Ms Castle came in and shouted loudly, "Is everybody ready for the zoo?"

"Yes!" everybody shouted yelled.

Then we all got up and into our groups. I was in group one, and group one was the last one to explore the ginormous zoo. At last, our group was off and we were very excited looking forward to seeing all the animals in the zoo. - Due to unforeseen circumstances this student only wrote for 20 minutes but what an interesting beginning.

"Put your hat and shoes on," Mrs Mundy said.

We put our hat and shoes on, all except Dakora. Miss did the roll call, and gave someone from each group the name tags, to give to us, so people know who we are. We went outside and got some instructions. I was in group 2, we walked down the driveway to our bus and got on. 

"Shanell, come sit by me." Te Hanni said.

"Ok," I said back. 

We talked and talked until, Ms Kereopa said, "We need some kids to go with Ms Castle."

"Ok," Matua Samuel said, "You can go you can your whole group can go!" - This student would previously write one or two sentences and never attempted to use speech.

The results in student data have validated my efforts. I look forward to continuing to add to my site with alternate lessons and ideas for structuring the various forms of writing. 

I believe that not all students are ready for this input into writing at the same time. However, they still need the teaching and may need it more than once, like in other curriculum areas.

Online Toolkit - Creating Writers

Introducing my site Creating Writers through an Online Toolkit on Tuesday 27th was scary. 

Would people be as thrilled with the site as I am? 

Would the tasks be as useful to others as they are to me?

Little did I know that according to the sign-up sheet my toolkit was going to be one of the more popular on Tuesday night. I sent out the invitations with the link to the toolkit presentation and a link to the site.

2/5 of the people who signed up turned up to the online toolkit. Even though I had just been through the Wananga Presentation I was still nervous. But a colleague turned up and put me at ease and the comments at the end blew me away. 

Here are some of the comments:

• • Great idea to start with Onomatopoeia. Thank you.
  • Such an amazing resource, I have a lot of seniors who are very reluctant to write anything, so hopefully, this can spark some interest.
  • I look forward to using some of your ideas on your site. I can see a lot of work has gone into it. Thanks for sharing your resource.
  • Thanks so much, Tanya - What a great resource!
  • Big thumbs up Tanya, any rewindable resources are wonderful.
  • A fantastic resource and I will keep watching. Brilliantly visible and rewindable!
  • Thank you for sharing - looking forward to exploring further and using :)

  
  

  Have you checked it out yet? Come and visit Creating Writers to see how it can help your students.

My Presentation for the Wānanga

Here is a video of my final presentation. You will have to imagine me standing next to 2 large screens with the slides automatically flicking over every 20 seconds.

When recording my presentation for my blog I used this feature as I didn't like the clicking sound in the background as I recorded my speech to go with my slides.

My favourite part of the Wananga was the discussion about the learning results and how we can bring about change by working collaboratively across schools as well as within our own school.

Manaiakalani Outreach and Principals Wānanga

The Plan: Up early to beat the traffic is always a good idea. Made even better with a free coffee. 

Today is the day we have to give our presentations. It will be all over for us by lunchtime and I think that will be a blessing. Even if I am in the first group. 

We got this!

Woolf Fisher shared the results of the year to date assessment including the PAT Maths. Which showed low achievement but middle accelerated progress. We want high achievement and high progress.  If classes are falling in the low achievements and low progress not helpful to learning as many starting off behind and not given the chance of reaching their potential. 

We were informed writing is the opposite, high achievement and high progress. We need to do this for math and reading. 

Instruction in math is good but similar to national averages.

Reading is over-represented in low progress and low achievement. We need to disrupt this pattern with relentless focus from teachers.

Reading develop model 3 phrases of development  

Basic Literacy Skills are necessary, but not sufficient to lead to Intermediate levels of comprehension. Disciplinary for High School Levels of understanding need to be more than general reading comprehension and conventions of different genres.

Early years students need strong foundational skills and teachers need to be able to diagnose those who don't have the initial reading skills quickly and efficiently. Teachers need to prepare and look further ahead to prepare for more advanced reading leading to High-Level Practises HLP.

Not possible to do in class observations which was a challenge so changed to online observations where Woolf Fisher looked at text visible and activities from class sites for that week. Looking forward to possibly doing a mixture of online and in class.

What we need to know:

• HLP doesn't happen spontaneously need to be planned and prepared 
• Teachers need to plan for more sophisticated lessons for reading
• If teachers look at small samples it means less stable data
• Limited exposure to longer text such as novel biography at least 100 pages or 
• 1 hour plus movies

Things we need to consider with the text we use for reading:

• The balance at different levels on the class site, we do group reading so each group should have the same opportunity at their level.
• Who is in the text, how can we help students relate to these people?

This slide was interesting as we consider the above and try to help students to see it as Mirror text or Window text.

Mirror text - can see people like me relatable 

Window text - can see how 

Can make mirror text more relatable through the ideas of conflict and relationships...

What could we do better? (In reading)

Need to use a range of figurative at metaphoric language in the text

Draw attention to how text is structured at different levels may be doing this through modelling to groups but is it explicit enough?

Questions covered information and plot others had no focus, looked at the theme or plot and other literacy elements but were limited. 

Reading needs more critical literacy needs to be deliberating planned and taught with higher levels of analysis, there was no evidence of this. 

How does T shape link to probe questions? 

Must be collaborative across school levels and schools to help build resources that dive deeper to develop more understanding so students are prepared for High School and University.

Need a balance between directed and choice text or students only might read the easier text!

Sarah's presentation build questions and showing the type of question with help with this in Reading Purple to Silver. Click here to visit site.

And Aletha is right, in the fact that if students don't know how to actively listen, how are they going to engage and develop their learning? So I believe these two sites will help us to build needed listening and reading skills.  

But we can still be thinking about what more can we do? Yes, many teachers are using multi models but do these show the skills and forethought to develop deep understanding? After lunch, we discussed this in our Cluster Groups and there was a range of ideas from developing teacher knowledge (possibly through Louise Dempsey and Shenan Campbell), slowing down our teaching so it is more deliberate, visible and rewindable, developing a shared way across school and clusters. So exciting...

Reflecting on Manaiakalani  

Manaiakalani is a foundation for future focus kaupapa. Creating a strong foundation structure but school and communities bring their own design flair to the learning and curriculum. 

Wānanga Presentation Preparation

 Here is my presentation - Attempt 1. 

Adjustment 2 - included changing the order of the slides, modifying my notes so I could keep up with the 20-second flip. Now I just wonder how it will all sound. 

Adjustment 3 - Background to match my original proposal to help break up all the white. 

Moving to Relationship-Based Learning

We are moving from Cultural Responsive Practise to Relationship-Based Learning. 

TOD and we are out at Awhitu Environmental Camp, thanks to our Board Chair. We are experiencing some of the activities our Year 7 and 8 do when they come to camp in January. 

We competed at archery and learnt the steps the students learn. Bows on toes, load, when you're ready to, fire. Don't forget to wait until everyone is finished. 

We hiked, the main hike is around 2 hours we tried to do the short version, but it was nice out in the fresh air and we did three activities. At the lookout, we stopped and shared one thing about ourselves depending on the lolly we grabbed. We visited the old homestead and had a history lesson, and then shared some more. Once on the beach, we had to create an image that represented us. Mine was footsteps in the sand. But I loved the frame around the layers on the beach. 

We had an excellent day for being outside. Inside we discussed What does Relationship-based learning look like and what does it mean for us as teachers.

Relationship-based Learning 

What does that mean?

What does that look like for students?

• Time for them each day
• Knowing your learners
• Patience
• Connecting

Why is this important?

• Accelerates Learning
• Fewer Behaviour Issues
• Students Teacher feel good
• Freedom to make it Fun
• Feel Valued

What does it mean for Staff?

• Knowing each other
• Helping growth
• Mutual Respect
• Tolerance
• Using each other's strengths/ help develop weaknesses
• Laughter/Humour
• Patience
• Honesty
• I got your Back
• Be Constructive
• Taking off Pressure
• Being Equal
• Knowing Vulnerabilities
• Showing Understanding/Empathy
• Trust
• Cohesiveness

Preparing for the Wānanga

Time is upon us, unfortunately, this weekend we were due to go to Cook Island but due to travel restrictions, this is not happening. As I sit here feeling cold I am slightly disappointed to not be in a warmer climate. However, I am glad we are all safe.

I am however getting ready for the main presentation of my MIT project that will be given to numerous principals and Manaiakalani Trust members. 20 slides that will go into a Pecha Kucha, which will make the slides ticket over every 20 seconds, so a total of 7 minutes I will be presenting. It doesn't sound long, especially when I stood in front of the staff recently and did professional development on sign language for 30 minutes (although that was partly hands-on). Not nervous, not nervous. Have I convinced you yet?

Here is what I have started with which developed into ... now to put together the slides and practise what I want to say (which will be in the speaker notes).

 

I am so grateful that we have had to keep this record of what we have done, as for this task I referred back to the posts I have created to help identify my original thinking and the revisit the process we have gone through.

MIT @ KPMG for the Next 'SCARY' Steps

Today we made it to KMPG, it was the first time there due to all the uncertainty that has occurred through the initial nine months of 2020. The first section was great, looking at what everyone has created. (There are some exciting digital tools that the MIT teachers have made.)

One I have already started to use (that is not my own) for reading as I have groups at Purple and Gold or reading ages of 7.5 years and 8 years. The fact I don't have to think about making questions using the different types (literal, re-organisation, evaluation, reaction, inferential and vocabulary) means I can focus on helping the students all thanks to Sarah. Click on the title to check it out. I have even shared with some of our teachers.

My next steps are to continue adding resources to the site and prepare the slides for the presentation to Principals. Nerve-racking.

We had fun during the day catching up and enjoyed great hospitality and food at KPMG. We were all keeping safe using masks as we move around Auckland.