Bursts and Bubbles 2023

Last week the Manaiakalani COL teachers shared the impact of their 2023 Teacher Inquiry. The link to all the inquiry bursts can be found here. 

Here is my journey...

Here’s a question that frustrates me each time I mark easttle writing samples… Why have you used that word? Yes, the words change, but the question stays the same. 

We model, unpack and provide rich opportunities for a wide variety of vocabulary to be explored and used, yet at the end of 2022 and again at the start of this year, most of my learners reverted back to using simple everyday words in their independent writing. I thought this was the catalyst for the low vocabulary and spelling scores. Scores, I thought, we could improve with a concentrated focus on spelling conventions and rules.

The time point 1 data analysis showed that my learners were using words they could spell, instead of the words they wanted to use, but couldn’t spell. 

However, as we all know, some ideas don’t go the way you want them to. I thought, if we knew how to spell the words, we would use them. Wrong! Yes my learners could easily spell and define the vocabulary we explored in class, but unless directed to, simply did not use them. 

This all changed when Dr Jacinta Oldehaver sent me a professional reading that unpacked the word gifting journey Sylvia Ashton Warner had been on many years before me. In a nutshell, what began as a focus on spelling conventions and rules, quickly morphed into an inquiry into word consciousness which involved my learners being aware of new words, their meanings, and how these words are used. 

My students were conscious of the words they were meeting in their T shaped literacy units because they owned them. When I say owned them, it is because I physically gifted them a word each. A word on a square of paper that they had to keep alive by looking after them and bringing with them physically, to each literacy lesson. 

The motivation to learn these words, and more importantly use them in context came through daily challenges that as a group they were expected to meet. Who would have ever thought these small squares of paper would encourage 15 students to make sure each word had been used by its owner twice each lesson! This group knew when a word had only been used by it’s owner once, and got very creative in their ways to ensure the daily target had been met. Intrinsic motivation at its best.

Ironically I started hearing these words used in discussions across the curriculum and noticed they were spelt correctly when used in written responses, which was something we never actually focused on. 

The inclusion of these words in the T4 easttle writing samples resulted in a noticeable change in vocabulary and spelling scores when time point 2 data was analysed. Student voice collected at both time points shows the fear of making a mistake remains the biggest hurdle. However for these students, the journey towards overcoming this has begun.

The most important learning I made in regards to fostering a culture of word consciousness, is that sometimes things don’t go to plan so don’t be afraid to start again if it all goes wrong. Drive the change and find ways to give your students ownership of the change you want to effect by making it purposeful and fun.

Sharing time at PBS...

Over the last few weeks we have had our own PBS version of Bursts and Bubbles to share our 2023 teaching inquiries. This was really interesting to listen to as I could see the change in practice being embraced. There were many successes celebrated as we continue to work together to accelerate shift in the achievement levels of our learners.

The DLO below is a snapshot of a year of inquiry and is shared with permission. If you would like to read about the journey behind the summary, click on the teacher's name and it will take you to their professional blog.

COL interview 2024...

What achievement challenge are you considering as an area of focus in 2024 and why? Include in your WHY both evidence and your own passion/expertise

This year my inquiry focus began with me thinking it was the challenges spelling brought to the table that caused most of my learners to revert back to using simple everyday words in their independent writing. I thought I could improve with a concentrated focus on spelling conventions and rules. My thinking was by doing this my learners would start to use the words they wanted to use. I was wrong!

It turned out what I actually needed to do was swamp them with words they had never heard or seen before and make the challenge of connecting to them fun and purposeful. This journey is explained on my blog, and made this year of change practice a fun one. This made me think, I need to do more of this, but in different ways, which is why I think strengthening vocabulary is the direction I see my 2024 inquiry going. 

What learnings from the 2017 - 2023 CoL teacher inquiries have informed or inspired your thinking.

Learning with and from my fellow CoL teachers has meant I have collected many ideas from others along the way that have become firmly embedded in my practice, like this one. A number of years ago Kiri and I observed Matt Goodwin teach a guided reading lesson. What stuck with us was the collaborative doc he was using with his students. We were inspired to use and have overtime, adapted his original idea to what is now our planning format.

How would your work support Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa?

I have for a very long time run a visible site. A large number of my resources have been shared across the motu. I see them in Manaiakalani programs like the DFI and RPI, and have been a part of a number of research initiatives with Wolf Fisher for a number of years. All initiatives that have helped me continue to change and adapt my practice to help my students achieve the 1.5 times shift and give them the tools they need to find success.

Which elements of the extensive Manaiakalani research findings inform or challenge you as you think about this?

Recognising our tamariki don’t have the academic literacy to access the learning is the research finding that continues to challenge me. Many of our learners simply do not have the literacy skills and confidence needed to record their ideas independently. When you add to this the fear of failure or making mistakes, it’s not hard to see the reality of the struggle many of our children face in Y7/8 with topics they are struggling to connect to.

How would you like to be supported in 2024 as you undertake this inquiry?

The support I would like in 2024 is to continue to be a part of planned opportunities to see and hear how other COL teachers drive inquiry in their schools. This would enable us to build on and strengthen the processes we already have in place.

How would you plan to support your colleagues in your school with their inquiries and/or teaching in the area you are exploring?

Aside from continuing to model my inquiry on my blog, I have found that the best support I can offer my colleagues with their inquiries is to guide them through the inquiry process term by term. To make this rewindable and manageable a few years ago I created our PBS Teacher Inquiry DLO, which is our version of a ‘how to’ process and is shared with staff in termly chunks. In term 4 we come together and have our own sharing session. Something I have driven as our PBS within school kahui ako is to ensure opportunities to focus and discuss our teacher inquiries are planned for, in order to keep the process alive throughout the year. 

I would like to add that even though I am not in a position due to my teaching, mentoring and DP responsibilities to apply for the across school role, it is not because I do not want to challenge myself in this role. It is simply because I do not have the time available to commit regularly to the time requirements of an across school kahui ako. However, I am, as I have been in the past, always happy to support anyone with their teaching inquiry or teaching program if I am able to.

Exploring Qualitative and Quantitative Data...

Each slide below contains the comparative data gathered from time point 1 and time point 2. Underneath the graphs I have analysed the shifts in more detail. It is important to note here that I have only analysed the data gathered from the 15 students in my literacy group that present both data collection times.

 

What I noticed as a result of my intervention was that once the knowledge of simple rules and/or conventions of spelling was in place, the challenge element was lost. If I wanted the momentum to continue I quickly realised I needed to adapt and change my thinking and my approaches.

As mentioned in my previous post, the fear of spelling a word wrong or choosing a simpler word seemed to have been left behind as the desire to use the words was more powerful. The learning became about the words and not the hurdles that prevent them from being used. The more I used these words, the more my students used them. Being confident to use and apply more sophisticated vocabulary in context accurately became the norm. My expectations were clear and I noticed that as my student's confidence grew the higher my expectations became. The exciting part was the students took ownership of this challenge and regularly helped each other find the words to use to shift responses to the next level. Student created and driven tally charts evolved as a way of monitoring that everyone had used their word twice, with the others in their group prompting those who had not met daily challenge. 

An interesting observation with the word gifting strategy was when I physically gave my students a piece of paper with their word on it, the ownership and connection to that words was much stronger than when we used a randomiser wheel to select our words. I feel this was because the words on paper could be physically touched, seen and used. Making the gifted words digital made them more abstract. Maybe this was a step too far too quickly, as looking back we overlooked the consolidation step. 

Student voice gathered at both TP1 and TP2 and collated in the DLO above, allows for a comparison of student voice and attitudes towards spelling. To collect this data we used a Google Form survey to get to know our class as spellers. I have edited the original survey responses to reflect those only from my focus group who were present at both time points.

The comparison between the two timepoints (all analysed in the DLO above) shows there are some positive shifts happening in mindsets but when looking closely at how my learners see themselves I see we have a long way to go. This is possibly due to the historical belief that I can't spell it so I won't use it, ESOL obstacles and a fear of getting it wrong. This will definitely take more than a year for change to cement itself, but as we close our 2023 learning journey's deep dive into word consciousness, I feel confident we have laid some strong foundations to build on.

Describe and explain the changes/tweaks you have made in your practice along the way...

As I have previously stated, motivation is intrinsically related to engagement. If my inquiry this year was to make an impact on my learners achievement, I needed to find engaging and purposeful ways for my learners to embrace the challenges that come from being introduced to a wide variety of new vocabulary. At the start of the year I felt that the hurdles in front of us were connected to spelling and my learner's connections to rules of spelling. Time point one spelling and writing assessments showed a huge disconnect between how words sounded and what my learners appeared to hear. 

I began by capturing my learner's attitudes towards spelling through the e-asTTle self reflection analysis and through a survey that helped me get to know my learners as spellers. There were definitely some eye opening results with the fact spelling was seen as important but this group of students did not see themselves as being good at spelling with the majority choosing to use an easier word when the one they wanted was not one they could spell. Traditional spelling activities were suggested as ways of strengthening our connections to the conventions of spelling but I was excited by this. I remember as a child learning my words, getting them all correct in the weekly test then never thinking about them again. I didn't see the purpose of the test then and I couldn't see it now. I do remember the students who rarely found success in this activity spending many Fridays in the sickbay. I did not want that pattern to develop so I knew what ever we did it had to be fun, purposeful and achievable. This where, following an online PD session with Louise Dempsey that I blogged about previously, our journey into the world of affixes began.

What I noticed here was that once the knowledge of simple rules and/or conventions of spelling, (eg: dropping the 'e' off a base word before adding the suffix 'ing') was in place the challenge element was lost. My learner's enjoyed the activities but I noticed the time taken to complete them became shorter, and the reliance on the dictionaries to create new words from a base or root word was becoming less and less. Therefore it was time to make some changes to keep the learning and motivation going. 

Change came after a meeting with Dr Jacinta Oldehaver. I explained my dilemma and asked if there were any readings she knew of that might support my word consciousness journey. Jacinta shared a reading with me about the word gifting experiences of Sylvia Ashton-Warner. I was about to begin a new T shaped literacy focus and needed to find a way to help my learners connect with the sophisticated vocabulary associated with the unit that they needed to be able to use and apply in context and independently. This post will explain what we did. In a nutshell, what began as a focus on spelling conventions and rules quickly morphed into an inquiry into word consciousness which involved my learners 'being aware of new words, their meanings, and how these words are used. Students who are conscious of the words they are meeting are motivated to learn them and use them. 

Student responses to the texts reflected an accurate use of words most had not heard of before, being used both in extended discussions and in the justifications of their thinking. A definite win here! My learners thrive on challenge so as explained in the link to the post above, I added the challenge of each person being required to use their word twice each reading lesson. I noticed that both of my groups had created a tally sheet so the score was kept. I view that as intrinsic motivation at its best! 

The fear of spelling a word wrong or choosing a simpler word seemed to have been left behind as the desire to use the words was more powerful. I was able to quickly correct spelling errors with a hotspot style workshop that used the conventions of spelling as a reference point. To consolidate that part we used the dictionaries (our version of 'paper google'), to find other words that followed these conventions so that we could make the all important visual and auditory connections needed. The learning became about the words and not the hurdles of the order the letters are written, that prevent them from being used. My part in this was to model the use of these new words we were meeting across the curriculum. The more I did it the more my students did it. The key learning here as their teacher is, if I want something to happen I need to walk the walk, talk the talk and continually drive the challenge outside of the context in which the words were actually met. You can not simply introduce something and leave it there. New learning must be revisited and used if it is to become internalised knowledge. 

The graphic below is something I found after I had been on my inquiry journey. This reaffirms the direction I took to shift student achievement and change my practice was the right one. The reading component in the graphic below aligns with the T shaped literacy units of Great Beginnings, Representation and Genre that I have been doing as part of a research initiative lead by the University of Auckland.

Graphic retrieved from here

Being confident to use and apply more sophisticated vocabulary in context accurately was a huge step towards changing mindsets. I know this helped us make shifts in literacy in the classroom this year and am looking forward to seeing if there has been a change in the types of words used in our time point two writing assessments. By strengthening students connections to vocabulary and the spelling conventions that accompany these new words, I hoped to see a change in attitude towards word choice which would be transferred to personal writing, higher levels of self efficacy and an overall shift in achievement so that a higher number of our learners are achieving at or above the expected norms in literacy. The most noticeable change has been the change in the mindsets of both myself and my students. 

Restating my inquiry question and chain of events...

This year I want to find out if a focus on spelling conventions foster an environment where word consciousness strengthens connections to the learning? Creating a causal chain helps me stay focused on the purpose of my teacher inquiry. We all know how easy to fall down many rabbit holes along the way so having a causal chain to look back on helps to keep me on track and visualise the end point. My initial post to introduce my causal chain is here.

At the start of term 2 my role in our school changed dramatically. I went from being one of three deputy principals to being the only DP. This change aligned perfectly with the start of my ERO journey so as I'm sure everyone will appreciate, my focus and time was spent co-constructing our matrix evidence. I found I was spending less time in the classroom and more time meeting the commitments of my DP role. Fortunately our students weren't bounced from reliever to reliever as Dianne took on the leadership of our day to day teaching component and I tried as hard as I could to be both a teacher and a leader. I quickly realised that I needed to let go of many of the lessons I loved teaching. The only one I held steadfastly to was literacy. That part was non negotiable. I was one year and one term into my T shaped literacy journey and didn't want to let that go so I had to learn how to be present in both roles. The flip side of this was that although I was using my teaching time to work towards increasing my learner's confidence using more powerful vocabulary and exploring affixes in an attempt to strengthen phonological and spelling awareness I did not blog my journey formally. Instead I had a Google doc full of notes that I knew I would be able to transcribe at a later date.

I capitalised on the PD provided as part of the T shaped literacy initiative and attended a number of online PD sessions run by The Literacy Place. This helped me grow as a teacher who knew I needed to model what I wanted my students to replicate. Looking back at the 'intervention' box on my causal chain kept me on track. I ended up using this like a checklist which meant I had a plan and was able to stick to it to help me achieve the goals I set for myself. When looking through my student's eyes, the reading responses both oral and written, to questions and provocations provided by our T shaped units, has continued throughout the year to be our record of their shifts in the complexity of their vocabulary choices from experimental to mastery. 

Celebrating the win...

This week the words I heard in our class speech competition completely stopped me in my tracks. Standing in front of an audience of their peers was every member of my reading groups confidently used the vocabulary we have encountered, unpacked and explored throughout our Reading units this year in context. Gone were the usual go-to's and in their place was a plethora of sophisticated vocabulary. This is a win in every sense of the word! 

To give my last sentence some context, the previous week I had taught an explicit lesson on speech writing. This lesson contained exemplars at a variety of e-asTTle writing levels. That meant my learners were exposed to a healthy mix of simple and more powerful vocabulary. One of our challenges involved applying our knowledge language features to edit an exemplar and move it to the next level. This is where my students very sound understanding of the more powerful vocabulary needed came to the fore. This then lead to a rich discussion as each group discussed their vocabulary choices and explained why they had made these changes. We applied the same strategy to levelling up the structural features.

Unfortunately the next few days saw me off sick, which meant my learners were left to work independently on their own speeches. I did share explicit instructions via email but knew these students would be working without guided teacher support. The comments tool in Google docs definitely gets a shout out here. I shared my feedback and left them to it. Move forward to today. I saw and heard the outcome of explicit teaching, creative ways of helping my learners connect to new and powerful vocabulary and a year long focus on affixes in action. 

My next step is to record some of these speeches that will be uploaded here so that I have a permanent record of what success looks like.

T Shaped Literacy Unit 2 - Representation...

This T shaped literacy unit focused on representations in a text. Our students asked if we could do this unit as a whole class so we listened. I lead the sessions and was able to incorporate differentiation with Dianne reinforcing the learning with her groups. The only time we separated was for the introduction of the content specific vocabulary. I have discussed my word gifting strategy in an earlier post. This meant once again we were able to be creative and strengthen our own teaching styles. 

We began by introducing the vocabulary to give our tauira the resources they needed to help them unpack and make sense of the new learning. Our next step was to revisit the learning from the Characterisation unit before we built our own connections to the topic of representation by drawing on our prior knowledge and personal biases when looking at how scientists are depicted in a wide variety of texts. We then looked at well known scientists and concluded that our biases clouded our judgements.

Our topic this time was Superheroes. I chose comics as the text type and selected pre 1980 Spiderman, Superman, Batman and their female counterparts to help us compare and contrast the gender bias that was reflected a representation of the time. I chose the comics from this time as the later ones explore issues that would not be suitable for all my learners. As with my other T shaped units I chose to collate all my lessons in one DLO so that everything was easy to find and easy to access for both myself and my learners. The presentation below has the links to all teaching points, texts used, follow up tasks and student responses.

The DLOs below reflect the student responses and show their strong connections to the topic and content specific vocabulary. What they don't show however, is the rich discussions that took place as each concept was explored and unpacked.

Listening to my Learners...

Collecting student voice is one of the most powerful forms of feedback. As the strategy of word gifting was new for us I wanted to see if my thoughts aligned with the thoughts of my learners. To capture this I shared a Google form with the students in my reading groups. The slides reflect the responses.

The questions I asked were:

• What did you like about the vocabulary gifting in Reading?
• What might you do differently to get to know the new words in Reading?
• How did this help you in the Representation topic?

Implement and Try#2: Word Gifting...

I have been approaching my inquiry into word consciousness as a whole language focus and not simply looking for opportunities to strengthen spelling skills. This term I have actively planned for opportunities to adopt the word gifting strategy that Sylvia Ashton-Warner used to elicit key vocabulary. 

Making Reading Meaningful - Sylvia Ashton-Warner and the Language Experience Approach by Sherron Killingsworth Roberts points out that by embracing some of the guiding principles for practice of Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s work in developing the Language Experience Approach (LEA) we can strengthen the connections our tauira have to the more challenging topic based vocabulary needed to make sense of new learning. The principle that resonates most with me is to offer ongoing, authentic language and literacy experiences, including lots of opportunities to speak, listen, read, write, and think about their own and others’ words.

In my reading program this term I have been focusing on the concept of representation in texts. This unit was designed as part of the T-Shaped literacy PLD that I have been on with the University of Auckland for the past two years. In each unit there is a vocabulary component that we up until now have unpacked as a class. This time around I decided to make a few changes, with the most powerful change being to gift the content specific vocabulary to my learners. 

The first thing I did was to create a list of the words and their definitions. These were then cut up and placed face down in front of the groups. After everyone physically selected their card the next challenge was to find the their partner by matching the word to its meaning. We needed to establish ownership of these words so the challenge to use their specific words twice each reading lesson was laid down. To ensure this happened my learners were asked to bring their word to every time we had reading. These word cards were not pretty or laminated but became a part of every reading lesson as along with ownership came a sense of responsibility.

No one immediately connects to a word so each pair was given the challenge of introducing their word to us. The details of the challenge are on the slide below.

What I found was that strong connections were made by the owners of these words. This was evident in reading responses, extended discussions and questions asked. What I wasn't expecting was that every student in the group could use every word accurately and in context. The example below from team 1 shows how these words were used in context accurately and effectively.

With the success I found in reading using this strategy, I decided to transfer this challenge to our science inquiry. Again, ownership meant connections and connections meant explanations of experiment outcomes were explicit. This is definitely an activity I would use again as it was unique, purposeful and fun.

Māori achieving success as Māori Webinar

 

Last week I joined the webinar hosted by The Education Hub to listen to Janelle Riki-Waaka explore what Māori achieving success as Māori means from a Māori worldview, and how teachers and schools can consider how well their environments and practices support ākonga Māori to succeed and thrive.

Here are my notes - Link

Linking my Inquiry to the Literature....

Share academic or professional readings and explain how they and other sources helped you form hypotheses about aspects of teaching that might contribute to current patterns of learning.

Teaching Spelling in Primary and Intermediate Schools - Link to article

'Spelling is key to success in writing... In the intermediate years, spelling and handwriting combined (together labelled ‘transcription skills’) account for 41% of the difference in students’ writing fluency. Working memory is limited in its capacity which means that if transcription skills – spelling and handwriting – have not been practised to automaticity, these will likely occupy all of working memory and prevent the student from thinking about other things, such as the ideas they wish to express.'

Reasons why spelling impacts on students’ writing:

• Misspelled words may blur the writer’s message and could influence teachers perceptions of the student’s ability.
• Lack of spelling knowledge may lead to a student avoiding certain words
• Spelling difficulties may affect student confidence about their ability to write, which in turn may impact on motivation and cause them to avoid writing practice

• Spelling supports decoding as it allows students to hear sounds in words and represent them with letters and orthographic patterns (the ways sounds are spelt).  
• Key learning in a spelling program (explained here) should include phonemes, graphemes, vowels, consonants, syllables, digraphs, morphology, and etymology. A challenge because of the 44 sounds (phonemes) in spoken English, the 250 ways to write those sounds (graphemes) and the facts that many of these sounds can be represented in more than one way.
• Teachers should follow a spelling programme to support teaching of spelling patterns and rules.
• Students need to practise retrieving knowledge from memory before it needs to be taught again. 
• 10 minutes of spelling instruction every day is more effective than longer less frequent lessons - guided reading allows opportunities to revisit this learning at the right level.

What to teach...

• Phonemic awareness (listen for sounds and syllables in words)
• Sound-to-letter patterns and relevant spelling rules.
• Use lists of words with the same sound-to-letter correspondences (not randomly spelt ‘essential words’).
• Morphology– the study of meaningful word parts (eg: adding prefixes and suffixes and how they change word meanings)
• Latin and Greek roots
• Etymology– the study of word origins.
• Identify the anomalies of written English

Joy Allcock' example of senior primary spelling program...

• Day 1: Sound or rule for the week
• Day 2: Word meanings
• Day 3/4: Segmenting and write words with the spelling pattern
• Day 5: Dictation

Effective Vocabulary Instruction - Link to article

'Vocabulary knowledge is fundamental to reading comprehension; one cannot understand text without knowing what most of the words mean... The amounts of difficult words in a text predicts text difficulty, and a reader’s general vocabulary knowledge predicts of how well a reader can understand text.... The goal of all vocabulary teaching is for students to be able to use new vocabulary fluently and purposefully in speaking, reading, and writing. This is best achieved through a combination of explicit instruction and opportunities for meaningful practice,  both during literacy instruction and across the curriculum'

• Vocabulary knowledge is a strong predictor of reading comprehension by Year 5, and by Year 8 it is the main predictor of success. Research has shown the gaps and disparities between high and low achieving students widens as students in these year levels require higher levels of word knowledge in order to infer new word meanings, make meaning and find success. 
• Whole class teaching has been shown to be just as effective as small group and one-on-one interventions, and short sessions (of 20 minutes or less) can be just as effective as longer ones.
• To achieve students need to learn about 3,000 words per school year.
• Vocabulary knowledge is the key to progress in literacy, and in all other curriculum areas. 

Incidental learning and explicit instruction

• Incidental word learning occurs within the context of reading
• Teachers should model use of sophisticated vocabulary across the curriculum and in instructional language
• Use the think aloud strategy to define words and reflect on the author’s use of a word in a text.
• Explicit instruction in word meanings is essential as a deficit in vocabulary knowledge will prevent inferences from being made.

Selecting words to teach during literacy instruction and across the curriculum

• When planning a unit consider vocabulary challenges to identify which words that need explicit instruction.
• Use a three-tiered system to decide which words need to be taught explicitly:
• Tier 1 words are common, everyday words used in oral language
• Tier 2 words are more wide-ranging, specific used in written language more than in conversation 
• Tier 3 are content specific 
• Tear 2 words are the words that will need to be targeted for explicit instruction.

What to teach...

• Correct pronunciation, the written form, and an understanding of the word’s meaning are key priorities
• Greek and Latin roots
• Affixes

How to do this...

• Be clear and explicit when discussing word meanings
• Repetition to consolidate
• Use visual representations of words to aid memory
• Provide opportunities for students to pronounce the words themselves
• Finish a sentence which uses the word
• Act out word meanings
• Unpack sentences with the word that do and do not, make sense
• Identify examples and non-examples of the word’s meaning. 
• Find synonyms and use in context

The Role of Motivation in Learning - Link to article

Motivation is what ‘moves’ us and is the reason we do anything at all. It is an orientation towards learning. Motivation can be intrinsic (motivated by enjoyment) and extrinsic (motivated by reward). For teachers, a lack of motivation has long been one of the most frustrating obstacles to student learning. 

How to do this... 

• Set goals - performance and mastery
• Be aware of self efficacy - the extent to which a student values learning a skill or concept directly impacts their effort and mastery of that skill or concept. 
• Normalise the struggle 
• Encourage the importance of asking for help
• Students who believe that they can succeed are more likely to reach their goals.
• Use the analysis of the student survey 
• Remind students of the purpose behind the learning
• Allow for visual connections to be made

How these readings helped me to form a hypothesis... 

My hunch at the start of the year was that my learners opted for the safe and known when selecting vocabulary to use when asked to write independently. It is the fear of making errors that decides the levels of self efficacy. If you begin school with a vocabulary deficit the gap only widens as the depth of learning increases. To help overcome the low self efficacy and reliance on the use of everyday words I see from these readings that I need to be actively planning for more opportunities for word consciousness to be explicitly taught. This term I did the training and will be introducing 'The Code' spelling programme to support the teaching of spelling patterns and rules, something suggested in the article, 'Teaching Spelling in Primary and Intermediate Schools'. 

Much of what I have read affirms the direction I am taking, with my biggest takeaway being the amount of time I need to spend focusing on word consciousness. To date we have been spending longer but less frequent periods of time on these lessons, so I will be increasing the frequency and decreasing the amount of time spent on each lesson. I now need find out if I am motivating my students to want to use more challenging vocabulary, not because I want them to, but because they realise they know how to do this and want to take risks in their writing.

T Shaped Literacy Unit 1 - Great Beginnings...

This T shaped literacy unit focused on the the beginning of a text. Dianne and I decided that we would split our class into two groups. We kept these groups separate so that both of us had the opportunity to teach these lessons in the way we wanted to without having to run an idea past each other before implementing it. This meant we were able to be creative and strengthen our own teaching styles. I lead the introduction with the whole class so that we were all starting from the same point. The lesson I followed is on slides 16 -21 on the presentation below and was the same lesson we were taken through by Aaron and Selena. What was hugely beneficial for me was that Dianne observed me doing this and gave me some great feedback and feed forward. It also showed us clearly which areas we needed to reinforce in the following lesson. 

We began by introducing the idea that a narrative text is broken into three parts, Act 1 (the beginning), Act 2 (the middle) and Act 3 (the end), so that everyone understood what is was that we would be focusing on. As our focus was the beginning or Act 1 we unpacked the type of information we would find in this section of the text. This is what we used to help our learners visualise the learning and make their own connections. I think this was the most used slide in the DLO as both myself and my group referred to it often and reminded me of the power of having a rewindable resource. This is on slide 11 of the presentation below.

I chose to collate all my lessons in one DLO so that everything was easy to find and easy to access for both myself and my learners. The presentation below has the links to all teaching points, texts used, follow up tasks and student responses.

I began by splitting my group into two teams. No particular reason for the grouping as my idea was that each time we worked together different people would take on a different role in the group. This worked brilliantly as I began each reading lesson by asking who the leader was. What I loved seeing was how the rest of group supported each other and respected the roles they were undertaking for the day. 

After our introductory lesson which had no links to our actual topic I began with a couple of front loading lesson (slide 22 -26) to introduce my learners to our topic of 'Refugees" and help them build their own connections. I chose this topic because I am very aware of the need for all my learners to see themselves in the texts we unpack. This topic can be a sensitive issue but I talked to my students who identify as refugees about what the texts were and what the follow up work would look like. They were all excited to share the stories many of their families have been through and added valuable contributions to our learning that we never have got from just reading a text. 

With our first text I asked both groups to use the same Google doc to record their thinking in the comments tool. Response challenges on the shared doc were identified through the use of a different coloured font, meaning we learnt with and from each other. The most valuable learning I carried over from 2022 was to include a 'Questions we have' slide and a 'Vocabulary we don’t understand' slide. Discussing the content of these slides at the start of each lesson meant that we learnt with and from each other the whole way through. The slides on the DLO shared are not filled in as often the questions and vocabulary the groups identified as needing further discussion were recorded on paper. 

After the first text, we decided that each group would have their own Google doc to record their responses on. Follow up responses for each text were the same which helped to reinforce the purpose behind the learning. As I mentioned earlier slide 11 was referred back to each lesson as it enabled my learners to use the content specific language I was looking for when formulating and sharing their responses. 

My biggest takeaway going forward however from this unit is to continue to include the synthesis responses in each individual text response. This allowed for ideas to be quickly transferred to our framework and enabled my learners to discuss and synthesise the information effectively.

The image above shows how I included this in the reading response tasks.

This image is the framework that we use to help us synthesise ideas across the texts. After comparing and contrasting the information from the three texts we used, Team 2 responded to the challenge of writing an argument convincing other students why one of the story beginnings is better than the other(s) with this response:

Our group has made a definite choice that Abbas’ Story, ‘From Afghanistan to Aotearoa’ had a preferable exposition as they used short and meaningful quotes such as. Imagine having to make an impossible choice and face misery after misery or start a new life.’ They also used the techniques called ‘rhetorical questions’ to make the readers think about the questions. Another technique is using dramatic and effective words to build the tension. In the story in the last few parts of act 1, the question in the first line has been answered when they had a catastrophic conundrum between staying in their motherland and being miserable or risking their lives to escape their misery and hope of a new era. Would you risk everything  for freedom?

I really enjoyed teaching this unit and am looking forward to seeing if the deeper understanding my learners have for narrative beginnings transfers to our upcoming written challenges.

T-Shaped Literacy Intervention - Record of learning link 2023...

To consolidate and strengthen our learning Dianne and I are taking part again this year in a project run by Dr Aaron Wilson and Selena Meiklejohn-Whiu from the University of Auckland, to investigate the effects of a T shaped literacy intervention of Year 7/8 students' reading and writing of literary texts in subject English. 

Following on from my 2022 post and as a record of my learning I will be updating this post as we move through the project. I will be sharing the resources I make for my class in additional posts. As with last year we began the intervention with a pretest to gather baseline data and paint a picture of where our current class is starting this journey at. Following on from each session we will implementing the new learning in our class program.

Links to notes from our PD sessions:

Session 1

Session 2

Teacher inquiry at PBS 2023...

This year Dianne Fisi'iahi and I are both in-school COL teachers for Panmure Bridge School. What I like about this is that there are two of us leading the implementation of teacher inquiries for 2023. This means neither of us are trying to find time to have the professional discussions needed with our colleagues. By sharing the responsibility we are able to manage this much more effectively than past years. I look after the teachers participating in the RPI program as I am their mentor, and our beginning teachers. Dianne looks after the more experienced teachers. This means we are playing to our strengths and guiding teacher inquiry effectively in our school.

We began our journey by using the presentation I created a few years ago which helps us set up our PBS staff for their inquiries into their own practice. With two sets of eyes we have adapted and tweaked my original slides, making our inquiry process more streamlined. I am also enjoying the fact their are two voices delivering the messages, which means we can support each other in staff meetings. 

We began by supporting our teachers to analyse their data to find the gaps in learner knowledge, then use this to identify a target group and formulate their inquiry questions. All inquiries are visible with links to professional blogs being recorded on a shared doc so that we can learn with and from each other. Our second TAI session was about creating a causal chain to help map out inquiries and stay on track. Both of these TAI staff meetings have been shared with a purpose to encourage buy-in and inform blog posts. 

Dianne and I share our inquiries as exemplars to guide those new to this process. We have also shared the link to the Manaiakalani Kahui Ako page so that teachers can find exemplars of inquiries that align with their year levels. Our next step is to encourage our PBS teachers to tap into the expertise of the Across School COL teachers.