RPI 3 - All Things Text

 

Text Selection - Day 3 - RPI

Today I decided to start with an image (Thanks Kiri) as the RPI or Reading Practice Intensive is about picking up the pace for our learners.

Reminders and Revelations

Dorothy reminded us that Reading apps are useful but will never do a teacher's job, especially around creating opportunities for discussion and vocabulary development.

There are a few ways to digitalise text, my favourite is Google Keep. In fact, recently our staff were brainstorming ideas for literacy programmes and different levels and after taking photos the notes were all typed up.

Other digital tools help students build fluency and reflect on what they are and how they read. Although I prefer to use Chrome Screencast, the ideas mentioned here about analysing their own reading,  e.g. facial expression and showing punctuation.

Matt's prompt from his toolkit is a great reminder of how AI can be used as a TA. And help create text at different levels so all students can access the information.

Choosing Appropriate Texts

The Reader has both Cognitive and Emotive sides and we need to consider both of these points of view at an Instructional Level and at their Independent Level. Therefore matching up what they like to do in reading and what they can do to push them further.

Are we tracking the types of texts taught at different year levels, as a school?

We are now moving from Knowing our Learners and applying that information to what we do in the classroom. Helping to better inform our grouping practice and text selection. Reflecting on what we did today I am curious about the areas I said I wanted to improve on - My green boxes included Shared and Guided reading, as I love reading to the students and working with them in groups to develop their understanding. 

My improvements included the multimodel, and after today I can see that we don't need to cover all modes such as images, videos, audio and text every week but to use a couple, as they can feed into or offer a different perspectives that add dimension to the group discussion.

As for the Knowing our Learner, I will be looking at the test with students over the next few weeks (before the end of term) so we can coconstruct our LIs together and then as we take on each Learning Intention we will break it down into success criteria.

Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Doors

  

Mirrors are text/books that reflect the student's world back to them, through links to age, culture or likes.

Windows opens the world to students through emotion, place or character. All students need to see the world from different points of view, not just the marginalised, to prevent people from having an overblown view of the world.

 We also have to be aware of Teacher bias as we honour students' backgrounds and make provision for them to see themselves in the world.  If you have multiple texts you can see different perspectives. Mirror for one and window for another. By tracking the types of text we use we are raising our consciousness of what we using to teach. 

Readability of the text - if we are going to help students accelerate their learning they need to work at their instructional level not the frustration level.

Grouping  Learners

Groups shouldn't be static, the needs of students change and so should the groups. 

Planning and Finding Texts for Your Groups

TKI is my go-to for finding text as I can download and use the links, especially for older Journals. I am trying to identify the tier 2 vocabulary we find in the text. The technical terms are easy to identify it is the other ones as I read so much myself, I have to remember to put myself in student's shoes or ask them.

Text Sets

Multimodel = posters, gifs, text, video, audio, newspaper, so it is more than just print, it is multiple ways of accessing information in different modes. Text set is not just about a topic, consider ideas such as gender barriers, cultural ideals, character development, challenges characters face/overcome, and relationships between characters. Mood, atmosphere, description of character (protagonist/antagonist).

The Anchor or main text is the book/article used for the instructional lesson that will be unpacked with the group. It can be the scaffolding text.

Student Selected Text - to gather ideas for these ask students for ideas they have read or would like to read around the concept/idea.

Skill Builder - Summarising

Thanks Kiri, for making this easier.

Where to from Here -

• Over the break and even before I would like to map out the different text and multimedia I will use for Term 2.
• Checking the teaching is just above target (level they are at, not the frustration level
• Use data from PATs to inform students of what is next
• Coconstructing Learning Intentions

MIT - Alumi Christchurch

 Kia Ora Koutou

Today we caught up with faces we have seen in a few years for some of us, other faces we have seen through toolkits, facilitation and Class on Air.

Dorothy talked about how the MIT program has evolved over the years and how it developed using Design Thinking Tools. Which helps us as teachers to be inquiry-focused in our Practice.

After a quick update on where and how previous members are doing we moved into our purpose for the day. And how our projects have helped accelerate learning in a digital world.

As technology continues to develop how can we utilise it to accelerate learning and create Maximum Impact?

For those new to the process, we quickly revisited Design Thinking.

To be our most successful team we had to have a passion for the problem. I am currently doing Reading Practice Intensive and am applying what I am learning to my Maths program. Kiri is part of the team leading the MPI.

The Essence of a Design Sprint:

A Design Sprint is an intensive workshop that applies Design Thinking principles to swiftly tackle and brainstorm solutions for specific challenges. It streamlines the ideation process, allowing for quick generation and refinement of ideas. While it doesn't encompass the full breadth of Design Thinking, it serves as a powerful tool for rapid innovation within limited timeframes.

We were given teams and four problems we could Ideate on.

Kiri and I picked the Maths Programme Design (aligning it with MPI).

The issues, we identified that need to be covered in a Maths Program are shown below.

As I have mentioned in an earlier post I have already been thinking about a Maths task board so this will help solidify the ideas that need to be included in it. There appear to be several things I have yet to consider.

Of course, we had to put this into a point of view and a How might We?

Our ideas for solutions...

So watch this space to see what happens.

Profile Poems - Creating Description

 I enjoy using scaffolds to help teach students. They give them ideas and structures to achieve. In trying to build character descriptions we looked at Profile Poems. We started writing them about ourselves and then thought about characters in books we've read. This in turn led to thinking about the characters in our writing.

An Example I used with my Class

 

 Other Portrait Poems that could be utilised similarly.

RPI - Task Boards

 Kia Ora,

I started my class later than most, so I decided to dive right in with the task boards after week 1. Also, the first one (shown to us) had a lot of relevant tasks revolving around the discussion rules and the survey data I knew it was a great way to start.

The Yellow set of taskboards is for my more able group, they could handle the variety of options.

However, after RPI session 2, I did notice that I had the choice of task and learning. Students could do Word Lab Idioms or Ponder, which was rotated with Prefixes and Suffixes. Making it difficult to work out who had learnt what. 

If you look at Week 7 you can see I have modified it so everyone is doing prefixes it is the task that varies (as it should be). In Week 8 we will look at Idioms and then return to Prefixes in Week 9. The Ponder I wanted everyone to do so that became part of the 'Must-Dos' each week, as it relates to the Read to Class, book we are looking at this term. 

Initially, I wasn't using the Reading Challenge as a follow-up to independent reading as the links weren't working on our school network. When I mentioned this to the class one of the students found an alternative in minutes. 

The text the group is reading may be worked on over 1 to 2 weeks,  depending on the size and understanding of the students. 

oOo

The Lbue set of task boards is for my lower group. You can see, I have used motes to reiterate the main instructions and Learning Intentions. I will extend this to the instructions for the 'Must-Do' tasks.

I have simplified the Choice section to ensure choice in reading for milage and will teach prefixes and other vocabulary features as needed. 

This group I also see 3x a week and altered the board to show this. From my experience as a facilitator, My modelling book has the questions we will discuss for the text too.

Next, I would like to discuss with students how they will know they are achieving (success criteria) This will probably end up in the Modelling book for each level.

oOo

As I mentioned, I was starting out with organising my class I also created a modified Maths task board with workshop students opt into. They have to attend 2 each week. I also checked what others were doing. As I have Year 7 and 8 I like the detail and option in my task boards. It will be interesting to see how these develop through out the year.

Toolkits - Term 1 with David Clarke

Digging Deeper with Google Sheets + Looker Studio

Useful Sheet formulas

"Importrange" 

This formula is useful if you want to pull information together from different sheets in real-time, so if you update the original data set it will update in the second sheet. If I was to just copy and paste it is now static.

Curly Brackets

VLOOKUP

Great for looking up a reference in a set of data or on a different sheet 

ARRAYFORMULA

Instead of dragging the formula it automatically fills out the column without the dragging.

QUERY

SQL - sequeal 

You can pull multiple columns of data using one formula

I can't wait to try these ideas. Thanks David.

RPI 2 - Knowing Your Learners

 Knowing Your Learner - Day 2 - RPI 

Dorothy - History of Manaiakalani

After discussing how the words Learn/Ako, Create/Hanga, and Share/Tohatoha originated from shared expectations of what makes a great literacy programme, Dorothy talked about how they engaged students in reading through podcasts. Students were eager to be part of the 'rage', so they read to create a podcast. This led to a point where students simply wanted to read for pleasure, which is a success in itself. Now, I can listen to that myself on a podcast.

Base Line Questionaire

We completed a questionnaire relating to our practice, and as an experienced teacher, it was interesting. I made a note of a few of the items I would like to do more frequently and in more depth.

• I plan for learners to reflect on learning intentions and success criteria to evaluate reading progress.
• At least fortnightly, I give learners 'Responding to text' tasks that balance higher-order thinking prompts with 'Create' opportunities.

This idea I have used previously and would like to include it again

• I use termly approaches to promote reading mileage at home such as challenges and learner self-tracking.

I want to monitor this as I love using poetry and narrative text but do I do this

• I use poetry and narrative text to develop learners' literary appreciation of figurative language, character and author’s style.

We will complete this questionnaire again at the end of RPI, so I will be able to report back on how I have improved.

Assessment 101 and Planning for Ambitious Outcomes

To know our learners, we also have to look at their data and understand what they need to learn next. We covered this in the Papakura Achievement Initiative (PAI) in the mid-2000s. I have since encountered this every time a school introduces or revisits Assessment for Learning. So it is great to see that we are not discarding valuable practices along with irrelevant ones.

I have come across the effect size before, but that doesn't mean I remember it, so I am including it in my post so I can refer to and utilise the ideas in my deliberate acts of teaching.

I always have high expectations, but I want to examine how I reinforce them. I've noticed that despite having these expectations, a couple of students still do everything to avoid work. Is it due to the Goldilocks Principle? Or are the purpose and success criteria unclear?

We then took a look at Formative and Summative Assessment, and I love the analogy with the chef.

Many tools can be used for both formative and summative assessments. It was interesting breaking down how we can obtain more teachable data from NZCER Assist to help focus our planning. All assessments should be worthwhile and purposeful. In other words, we should use them to teach from, not teach to. And then, of course, we need to triangulate data, and observation data is just as important.

As teachers, we must prepare students for testing to ensure we catch them before they fall behind and create assessment-capable learners.

Keeping Track of Learning

I found this interesting because when I was working with paper planning and assessment in clear file folders, I did this successfully by tracking what was covered as well. However, the more digital I became, the more scattered it all became and not in one easily accessible format. I look forward to using this workbook to collate and track what is being taught. - example 

Below are images from pages in my class workbook.

Tracking Reader Profiles

I found this discussion really reassuring because the Reader Profiles gather a lot of information. It was explained that we don't need to track all of it in detail; we can focus on certain areas, and these are the first ones. I am going to pick 3 to focus on Mileage, Attitudes and Self-efficacy.

Assessment Tools

It was interesting to hear how the PATs have been updated and to have access to the new manual.

Developing Assessment-Capable Learners

I enjoyed this part of the day. As I mentioned before, I have been taught to include Learning Intentions and Success Criteria for a while (not going to say it will give too much away). It was interesting to see where others display the success criteria. I have done it straight on the site and still do for some areas. However, with groups in reading all reaching for different targets or the same target at different levels, the success criteria can look different.

Chatting about the wording of WALT or LI helped to solve a couple of issues, as I often wonder how much I should include and I agree it is easy to over word preventing students from applying the learning to other areas or too broad.

Where to from Here -

As I mentioned earlier I have some ideas to strengthen my practice and encourage reading that I want to focus on from the questionnaire.

Once we have done our assessment I am looking forward to analysing the tasks and seeing how I can use this data in my planning and sharing the practical part of the results with students.

Of course, I would like to start co-constructing Success Criteria with specific groups and making sure my LIs are clear, precise and not to specific.

Data Reflections

 Data Reflections - Cluster Schools

Checking out the goals for the Cluster first is a great way to orientate our focus and update those of us who are new or in my case returning to the cluster.

This book came out in 2019 and reflects what we, as great teachers, are trying to do: teaching to improve student achievement and progress. We're not just aiming for students to make the usual year's progress; we're talking about making two years' progress in a year.

Russell Bishop has recently released Leading to the North-East. The Government has used this research to help develop the Common Practise Model being implemented across Aotearoa.

As Leaders how do we make sure teachers have time to do what needs to be done to maintain the integrity of teaching and making sure it is explicit.

Looking at the Network data if students stay in a Network school for 3 years they achieve above the norm. This can be seen with the e6 data points over these 3 years.  Unfortunately, students made less progress last year in the cluster than they had in previous years. 

In Writing are we still:

• Using explicit instructions?
• Are we teaching how to write using different genres, structures, and descriptions?

This is the summary of the Writing. We also discussed having genuine experiences for students to help build their writing understanding. By immersing them in the bush they will understand how to use their sense to describe.

In Reading we noticed: We need to get on to our intervention not just talk about it. 

Our Y6 students are tracking slightly below the norm but on the same trajectory. The Years 7-8 data appear to look better however there is only a very small cohort. How intentionally are we teaching, How do we ensure the Pillars of Practice are being upheld after RPI.

In Maths we discuss the changes for PAT leading into this year's round of data collection. The norms have changed.

Structured Literacy

 Kia Ora

Today we took a look at Structured Literacy - Phonics Plus which can be found using TKI

The first 3 Parts of Phonics Plus are:

• Learning the Code (Sounding out words),
• Phonemics Awareness (Relationship between letters and sounds and manipulating them)
• Making Meaning - You can use Ready to Read Phonics
• Thinking Critically - School Journals
• 
  
  
  
  

The Assessment found on TKI shows how we gather data and remember to compare apples with apples. In other words, if you use a phonic plus test use that again to evaluate later.

Phonics Plus works well being taught in groups (3)

Teach sounds without the extra vowel sound d = 'd', not de or m = 'm', not mi or ma

Can target specific sounds helping students to fill gaps.

Books practise sounds already exposed to so students can keep moving through, and don't need to be held up because they didn't get one sound.

Vocabulary - Other words that mean bad - sore, hurt

     Put them into the sentence in the book.

Can you show me mat/ make the word mat (using letter blocks)

     If you can spell mat show me pat

Praise, Praise, Praise - reinforces they can do it.

Scope = Summary of what is to be taught

Sequence = order to teach sounds e.g. Kākano Phase Overview

Doing the same activity using a different method helps maintain focus - it is about the sounds.

• Whiteboard

• Blackboard

• Alphabet blocks

• Magnetic Letters

• Blank dots

Shared Books can also be used to reinforce learning.