Reflecting on the Journey and Sharing

'Sharing is caring' my mother always said, bless her. Today I have realised that by sharing on blogs allows others to show caring towards the one sharing. This has an incredible impact on the learning of the person sharing. Commenting, on a post, has and impact on self esteem and that impacts on self efficacy. Suddenly someone notices what you are saying. So the key to learning is getting blog post comments up. 

It has certainly impacted on my expectation that I have around the importance of quality blogging, task collaboration and feedback/feed forward. I am looking to contiue to develop my skills in this area. Would love for someone to put together an online resource for all the wonderful Responses to text that have been created as part of this programme, maybe it can be incorporated into tki so that we are able to work smarter.

Set the bar high, but doing that without creating teacher burnout. I was thinking about where I can put the pillars of practice so I don't lose site of what is important. It occurred to me that I should have ias my screen ssaver but then I thought maybe it would get lost with the folders that I have there. So I think I have settled on either the teacher work book or maybe in each of th modelling books. Planning for ambitious outcomes has taken on a whole new meaning. 

 As Alexander Graham Bell says "When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."

And so it is with the RFI, the journey has come to an end but is just beginning. I can see how to plan a way forward, the skills I am going to need to embed early next year to set my learners up for next year. Accountability will be the first but within that I need to keep my expectations real. I look forward to sharing what I have learned with my syndicate and school. Planning for next year needs to start now and I am looking forward to end of year testing results and redoing the Reader Survey.

I can see ways to impliment what I have learnt in other curriculum areas and look forward to the challenge next term to start setting this up for next year. Watch out learners! 

Getting Creative

Creativity is not necessarily my strong suit. I love a good model in this space. However creativity is good for the soul and a key element of the Manaiakalani pedagogdy. In Dorothy's words 'as well as creating motivation and engagement cognitive and social engagement emerge..' I hope I have not misquoted you Dorothy. 

The key to this will be ensuring I add a least one new digital tool each term. Creating with digital tools is challenging for me as I feel I don't always have the problem solving tools when something isn't working. Being a Mac user I will need to be practising on a chromebook to get the user experience.  At least then I will know the fish hooks. 

When I think about it I am more comfortable with the physical create.. but in this case alot is ending up on the walls and not on the student blogs. I will need to task myself with ensing the i-pads are at the ready so this type of create can be recorded and is accessible to students to post. 

The starting place for me will be with short text responses. It seems more manageable in the short term. A tighter approach would be need for my least able. I can then be 'looser' with groups that work co-operatively and are task focussed. 

Using a site allows for a range of literary elements related to one text to be given to learning without it seeming overwhelming. I don't do many longer text with my learners but perhaps this could be an option for text term given that the fourth term can be disjointed,  and this would give learners an opportunity to work collaboratively.

The new curriculum is focused on recommending reading to others, thereby building reading communities. I enjoyed the task creating a one take film. But as always aimed for perfection! Here is my effort on selling 'Verdi', sorry for going overtime... I got a bit engrossed in what I was doing. The real laugh was I did hit record properly and had to do it again! I tried it this time in google meet. Hopefully this is a more accessible way for students. I think I will get them to film each other. A quick critique would give me an opportunity to discuss what not to do!

This leads nicely inot collaboration. There are many benefits of collaborative tasks and it is a way to overcome barriers that may be foet by less confident students  by assigning roles that suit their personality. To make it more manageable and accountable proabably smaller groups are better idea (pairs) To allow for co-operation but less distraction.

I have used Canva in the past but am looking forward to seeing how I can better use this tool. I don't feel. i have got the best out of it in the past. To offer choice anything rcreated here could be a physical or digital copy. I liked the idea of a blank template shared on the site for creating an info graphic.

Well lots of homework so I had better get my thinking cap on.

All about thinking

 My thinking has been stretched today... my task now is to stretch the thinking of my students. 

Reflecting on what I can do as an educator to ensure they become active participants of the world. In this time of misinformation, growing division and outright lying it is so important, going forward, citizens of the world develop their ability to make decisions about the thinking of others, based on bais, and prejudices the author may have. They need to be able to identify fakes and flawed analysis. Okay, now I need to get off my soapbox!

I have reflected on the questioning I can use to promote deeper thinking about text. I need to work on ensuring there is a range of question types. I need to continue to work on pre reading skills and modelling expectations so my students can work confidently and independently on the tasks assigned to them. Using the I do, We do, You do model to develop their independence. I will work on further developing text response tasks that will ensure that students are developing meta cognitive skills.

I like the idea of introducing them to the world of fakes.

This is a site I would like to explore further, along with the Tree Octopus story. I am thinking I will need to do this over the coming week to prepare students for the challenge of identifying dis/mis information. 

I liked this graphic that Dorothy shared, and will share it with the class to see if they can interpret it.

I also liked the analogy of the hawk, zooming in and zooming out.

Then it was on to figurative language and the impact it has on readers and writing. THis cause me to reflect on the narratives we have focused on in week 2 around Te Ao. Interesting all the text I choose had strong male central characters. I thought about if I had seen other text with strong female leads and what that says about the ones I chose to present to the class. I can see I will have to dig deeper to see if I can find those strong female role models. I am sure they must exist.

The next sessions had a focus on planning for our teaching. When faced with having to come up with a provaction I struggled with finding something that was not overtly racist.The Bok Choy text is all about racism. The provaction ' It is okay to judge people based on where they come from' or 'what they look like' first came to mind. In the end I focused on behaviour. But the whole concept of judging others still bothers me. Maybe something about 'Behaviour is a guide to character' would be more appropriate, but is that too abstract for my year level? Or do I go with the idea that the setting gives context to the attitudes? Even then this is not really true there are plenty of discriminatory behaviour toward all sorts of groups in the world today. Is this going to be to controversual for discussion at home? It has left me feeling a bit uncomfortable.. do I need to be brave?

Anyway I need to focus on the pre reading activities and making time for this in an already crowded space. Once this is established it will be integrating the writing into the reading programme. This will be challenging for my target students because whilst I can monitor the reading, independent writing on a given topic in any depth is a challenge that will be avoided. 

As always it was a day that challenged my thinking and  has let me feeling like there is so much to learn.

All things Vocab

 Ah.. another great day so much to take in. 

Dorothy gave a great insight to the digital tools already avaiable to us. How did I ever miss 'Smart Chip' ? Maybe there is a need for a toolkit on the harnessing these digital tools that exist in the background of tools we already access? Certainly lots of options to explore over the coming break. So much to learn, so little time. The statistics around exposure to vocabulary are not new to me, but are always sobering. Who knew Hairy Maclary could be so great for teaching language? How many parents have read 'rollicking' and 'gambolled' without really understanding the meaning? I can build word conscieniousness. 

Then came the realisation that actually I am doing my students a disservice by not making these words available to the learners in my room. Yes, I try to use rich oral language but am doing the same in my reading, or do I give limited opportunities for students to move words from their receptive vocabulary to their productive vocabulary? If you don't plan it, it won't happen! How many 'see it, say it. write it' opportunities are there in my reading/writing programme? 

I think I do the decoding phonemes part of vocabulary building well, maybe that was because of my junior school background. Certainly I haven't nailed the word morphology. Some of the meanings of the affixes was new to me. Thank you for the prebuild digital tool, it will make including this so much easier.  The key for me will be to decide to a few tools, teach well them and then use them well. As time goes on I can add one or two new activities, to interchange with existing tools, each term to build my bank of resources.

Thank you for the access to the resources. We are using 'The Code' as a tool within school, it gives it a structure similar to the UK progressions. So teaching of spelling patterns in a structured way is covered. There are opportunities for me to extend students with Reciporical Teaching and building capapbilities as group members using roles. This is something that I have touched on before in the our Kahui Ako work with Louise Dempsey. If I am hearing it from two sources it reiterates to me the importance of it to my learners! Go deeper, not wider, at my current year level this is truely possible.

It is time for me to reflect on my current practise, have a refresh over the upcoming break ready for the last two terms. I can see coming back into the folder regularly to check in with where I am and next steps for teaching with regard to the literacy programme I am implementing.

Planning a Programme

 Thought I had this susssed... boy was I wrong!

I was smuggly thinking: yes, my site is going well, the students can navigate it, parents should be able to navigate it with their child's support.

So the first session class sites I thought, oh yeah there are some good examples on here, maybe mine could do with a bit of a polish.  There were some good pointers in Dorothy's segment.

Then there was the focus on our homework. It was fun looking at the various presentation of work for daily rotations and weekly plans. It will be interesting to take the time to complet the stocktake and run the yardstick over my efforts. 

This will be super helpful as teachers are the connection between the curriculum and their students. Timetabling is a critical element to ensure that the precious time we have is being used to the the best advantage. No more down time doing busy stuff, but making purposeful use of time while you are dragged off over playtime incidents.

Some good steers on digital apps that are puposeful but activity is tracked. All I need to do is make sure this is visible to me a nd my students are held accountable for their time. No more sneaking off into social conversations... or at least if you do you better have a plan to catch up in your own time! I still need a 'help' sesson on Sunshine's to make sure I can allocate work correctly. Would love some tutorial videos on this if any one is a 'whizz'.

Enjoyed the Read Like Writers and Write like Readers sessions. I have used something similar In my Writing site 'Writing from Go to Wow". But I can see how I can do this so much better. Really cool using 'real text' the kids are reading at the time.  

Last revelation that reading is not one text a week. It is all the multiple texts I can pull in. Yes it is a bit more time but I don't have to develop anxiety about choosing the perfect one to focus on for the week. I can use all three, or more! I can see how this approach will increase reading milage.

Pulling it all together still looks a bit daunting, but I will get there. A focus list of of points to consider will help me. I think focusing on one topic over all groups will help me. At least then I can use the same resources and just adapt them slightly depending on group ability. This is going to be more manageable than creating four individualised responses to text.  Wondering how long I focus on learning intentions- there seem to be a lot to get through and rolling them over regularly and then going back and revisiting seems to be the way to go. I also am reflecting that if I keep a similar learning intention over all the groups this will make it easier to create resources at three levels, opposed to four resources on different LI's.  Smarter not harder. 

I am certainly applying a lot more thought to my reading programme but it is a long way from perfect! 

Shaking it up

Wow another great day... the more learn the more I realise what I can do better.  Less is best, focus on what you really want to teach so you can qucckly move on:; don't try to do too much. Always pause for reflection.

We need to give learners multiple encounters with the vocabulary and ideas, modelling our expectations and focussing on engagement and enjoyment.

I need to up my game in recording observations, for lower readers I can use Sunshines Classic, for more capable students I can use screencastify, or a voice recording. Whatever I do it needs to be focussed and productive. Loves the guidelines for year levels, I have never seen these before. So Year 3/4 once a week and 5/6 once a fortnight. I don't have my target students reading aloud for the recommended 20 minutes. I need to up my game in this area. Maybe this is why I don't see the improvements I want to see. They are involved in reading for this time but it is not alway aloud. Note to self programme this in!

In general groups my next steps are around questioning. I liked the way we engaged with the the modelling book and planning it is going to help me use these more efficiently and improve my planning as a result. The bettter the plan the better the result. One question that lingered in my mind was should I when doing the guided reading planning have a sheet for each group with multiple weeks (only 4 sheets) or a four groups on one sheet requiring ten sheets a term? 

Then there are the non-negotiables that need to be on text reponses: learning intention, a connection to the text, questioning, a creative and sharing task. I am glad we have been given some exmplars. I need to make up a template so I can quickly access these and don't just hash one up. It takes too long!

Selecting Text - So much to choose from....

 Another set of engaging sessions...

Love the sharing of learning that being part of Manaiakalani brings.  The encouragement and support if offers in terms of creating resources that will benefit my learners and resources that learners can create to improve learning outcomes. Fantastic resource bank of strategies today that can be implemented in the classroom.

Learning today was based around text selection. My ahha moment was exploring advanced search on Journal Surf! Why have I not used this before? Loved the session on shared reading. This makes it far more engaging for learners and meaningful in terms of 'bang for buck'. On reflection my current shared reading has been zone out time for students! I can see some ways to make meaningful change in this space. 

The Mirror, Window, and Sliding Door analogy is inviting, and a great way to view the learners perspective. It is aligned with text selection in that first learners need to see themselves related in text, then be able to see through the window into a wider world, then they are enabled to walk out into that space.

As a way of looking into the mirror I am thinking that using whakatouki in shared sessions would allow students to engage with  the culture of being a New Zealander and give the opportunity to look at inference. It would then need to be supplimented with a longer text so that the skills can be taught. I can see me deep diving into the skill builder sessions in the coming weeks. 

The window on the wider world will be broadening the context of learning. What does this look like elsewhere? My pondering is how far can I open the door and nudge my struggling readers out into the wider world without leaving them behind? My current thought is: even if it is only a toe out the door, it is still out the door. First a toe and then a foot... can I make in the weeks ahead? What will it look like for these learners next year?

The power of the Workbook was again emphasised with the opportunity to draw from what we already know about our learners and plan for success by ensuring that we are developing good readers, opposed to ensuring that they tread water.

I will continue to engage with parents, caregivers and whanau on the importance of modelling reading, and engaging in wide reading experiences with students. 

Fellow teachers would I'm sure benefit form the Skill builder resource. From the quick dabble today I can see what a wealth of information it will provide and model explicit teaching of the vital reading skills.