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!