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.