What the Research says...

With technology at my fingertips and time not on my side, I prompted Gemini to undertake a deep research to find out more about why teacher confidence levels drop when faced with implementing new learning. 

Click on image to hear the audio overview of full research findings

This is my summary of the findings...

The decline in teacher confidence during the implementation of new learning initiatives is a predictable reaction caused by challenges to personal competence and structural deficiencies like planning time pressures and knowledge gaps. Teachers initially find themselves juggling  anxieties where they worry about the changes needed to be made to routines, alongside professional fears associated with the uncertainty that comes with stepping into the unknown. 

As implementation begins, the concern shifts to logistical and structural constraints where concern connects to the amount of time needed to be prepared to teach the new approach. This efficacy dip is often worsened by perceived external and internal pressures to find the success quickly. PLD must be ongoing, curriculum-specific, and designed to close identified content and pedagogical knowledge gaps, moving away from generic, one-size-fits-all training. Time for reflection, implementation, peer and self observation, and skill practice should be allowed. Everyone learns at their own pace and recognising this is important. What has made the implementation of sound practice in structured literacy more fragmented for my team is the fact the Year 4-6 kaiako have had separate sessions from the year 7/8 kaiako. Different online delivery options has meant a similar message has been shared but as I attend one and most of my team the other, there are bound to be gaps in our shared learning which in turn has lead to levels of uncertainty being higher as I have always been two days behind in my own learning and unable to effectively support my team as they begin each new learning journey.

As a leader fostering a buffer against the cognitive and emotional load is vital is success is to be found and a genuine buy-in to be established. Allowing my team complete agency and control over their implementation decisions within their classrooms has meant we have come back together again with a stronger connection to our new learning. Confidence is emerging and as a result mentor observations to gather a baseline picture have begun. It is only now that I can begin to look for the opportunities being provided for their learners to be creative when undertaking structured literacy learning. I look forward to see where this takes us as the term progresses.

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

I began with a focus of how we (PBS) are harnessing the digital to explore the create aspect of structured literacy. Students learn by actively constructing knowledge, not just absorbing it. This involves breaking down, rearranging, selecting, and demonstrating their understanding, so that  as Elwyn Richardson stated, “...whatever was in their mind, whatever they could visualise, whatever they could see, they created...” It is because of the very reason just mentioned, that I felt this is the the most important and catalytic issue of learning for our learners this year. I didn't want to introduce and unpack a text verbally through preset comprehension strategies. I didn't want to be the teacher who asked my students to summarise a text on a graphic organiser then leave it there. I am the teacher who asks a provocation and encourages talk and creativity. I want my learners to show me their connections to the aspects of the text we are unpacking using the plethora of digital tools available to us. Defaulting to substitution in response to a structured learning process does not, in my opinion, open the opportunities to 'empower my students with creative learning opportunities to help accelerate achievement'.

At the start of my inquiry I thought I would look at our school as a whole. This was when I realised I was comparing apples with pears. Many of our junior team facilitate amazing opportunities for their students to create to show their understanding of a text. Their learners are fully engaged and excited to share what they have been doing any time I walk into one of their rooms. The difference between what they do, and what the senior team do is that many of their create challenges are not limited to capitalising on the affordances digital tools provide. Changing my focus to just the senior team was my first tweak. 

When we began our structured learning PLD in Term 2 with our introduction to the program. We then moved forward into Term 3 for our Community of Practice (COP) sessions and began implementing our structured literacy programs. I made the decision from the outset to lead from the front. By that I mean I made a point of finding ways to include opportunities for my learners to show their understanding of the texts read by being creative. What I noticed other members of my team doing was simply trying to get it right with our new learning. I do have the advantage here of having taught structured literacy for a number of years in the UK. I was definitely 'rusty' but felt confident to add in the new elements to my program. Term 3 was not the time to push the 'create' as I needed a team who were strengthening their own connections and that was more important. This was my second tweak as I took the focus of others and focused purely on myself.

When we met to plan for term 4 I jumped on my 'create' bandwagon. With a number of examples under my belt and on my blog I was able to lead by example. Being able to visualise the outcome has seen a huge change in planning content in my team in literacy this term. I am now looking forward to seeing how these initial ideas look when they are finished. The change here is in my thinking. I now realise that adding create opportunities that capitalise on the digital tools we have at our fingertips comes when teachers feel confident of the challenge ahead. 

Implementing Structured Literacy one step at a time: Step #4 - Reading

After attending a toolkit on Gemini Gems run by Matt Goodwin I decided that introducing this in my learning time this might spark another layer of curiosity with my learners. I followed the prompts shared by Matt and jumped in boots and all to help my learners gain a deeper insight to our guided text 'Malala Yousafzai Speech at United Nations Assembly 2013'. 

Below are screen shots of the Gem we used that show my initial prompt and the students interactions with the Gem to support their reading. I used the prompt that Mat gave as the example in his toolkit, so need to acknowledge that it is not my original idea.

I found this to be a really creative way to help my learners make sense of the response questions in ways that helped guide them to where they might find the information rather than simply giving the answer. 

The way this ran in our room was after introducing and modelling how Gemini Gems worked, I put the Gem on my computer and left it available for student use on a central table. This was both a great resource and a really creative way to capture my learners interest in the topic. A bonus was that once the Gem had been used the conversation in groups was richer as new perspectives were shared when some students disagreed with the initial collaborative responses. The learning 'arguments' were evidence based and allowed for the skill of negotiation to be used authentically in context.

I used a Gemini Gem with two guided texts last term and found on both occasions this was a very effective way of strengthening my student's connections with texts they were not familiar with. The feedback from my learners has been captured below.

Create in Inquiry...

Once again with 'create' in mind I planned my Inquiry unit on Dinosaurs with these activities in mind. Pretty much I started at the end of each learning task and worked backwards. What I found throughout this unit of learning was the retention of facts was much more than usual. I know Dinosaurs is always a fun topic to unpack but this time around, student voice told me the activities we did to show our learning were fun and made the facts stick. 

We started by making our very own dinosaur eggs out of salt dough. Who knew an activity usually found in the junior classes would engage my Y7/8 learners so much!

We then hatched our eggs. This roughly translated to opening the eggs and placing them somewhere in the garden for photographing. After discovering our dinosaur fossils we used Adobe Express AI to reimagine our photos to reflect what a real ‘find’ might look like based on where our research of where similar fossils have been found in the past. These 'finds' gave each pair a focus dinosaur to do a deeper research on.

Our dinosaur eggs reimagined using Adobe Express

Kaleb shared an idea that I loved so I changed my planning. He suggested that we show some of our dinosaur research by creating a movie using AI. For this task we used  https://hailuoai.video. The learning here was in the prompts. 

Click here to watch Hasna's movie

Click here to watch Beniz's movie

Click here to watch Dito's movie

Responding to a question in exactly 50 words. A fun way to encourage students to be succinct in their responses and provides a great opportunity for rich discussion to evolve.

Brooke and Mareta's Google Vid to showcase their research on Mary Anning

Implementing Structured Literacy one step at a time: Step #3 - Reading

Using texts suggested in the Refreshed English Curriculum for Year 7-8 this term has allowed me to experiment with aligning my learning in structured literacy Reading with the curriculum. To be honest my years of Reading PLD has afforded me the luxury of making very few changes to my practice. I have had to make changes in a few areas like vocabulary and text structure, but for the most part not a lot has changed.

Rather than explaining how I teach reading I have decided to showcase how we capitalised on the create aspect of learn - create - share to strengthen my learner's connections to the content in the text and the learning that ran along side it. As you can see create opportunities are easy to include in a structured reading program. They don't need to be 'perfect' but they do need to provide opportunities for our tamariki to take ownership of the learning and make the connections they need to make sense of the wide variety of multimodal texts in a reading program.

All these lessons have been taught as a whole class. Some students have needed further opportunities to unpack the text and all follow up activities are done collaboratively in groups or pairs. At this stage working independently on follow up activities is something we are working towards. I find that collaboration makes new learning seem less scary and helps my learners take risks they would usually shy away from.

A focus on dialogue and the structure and purpose of graphic texts

A focus on rich discussion and forming an opinion by exploring both sides of a provocation

Group discussion and text responses captured on Adobe Podcast

AI generated posters using Adobe Express to showcase important quotes

Google Vid and Adobe Express to capture an illustrated DLO of my learners reading a poem 

You can see examples here in my learner's blogs, which have all been shared with permission.

• Loa
• Valencia
• Maania
• River
• Taisorn

Implementing Structured Literacy one step at a time: Step #2 - Writing

As I have said before I am on a mission this year to both successfully implement structured literacy and to keep the create opportunities alive. I jumped in with both feet. No delicate toes dipped in the water, just a giant splash! One way I have capitalised on the affordances of 'create' in writing was to start at the end and probelm solve our way to the start.

By this I mean instead of starting with the exemplars of what a text type looks like, unpacking the structure and language features and exploring the vocabulary needed I tapped into our Inquiry topic of Dinosaurs and challenged my learners to begin by constructing a prototype of the skeleton of their focus dinosaur. 

The prototype... Each pair was given a 1 sheet of coloured A3 paper, 2 sheets of newsprint, a vivid, a pencil, a ruler, a pair of scissors and access to the sellotape. I explained that apart of constructing their prototype I needed them to write down the steps they followed to create their model. This was hilarious to watch! The conversation was rich and purposeful as work arounds for dilemmas were suggested. The outcome, slightly wonky models with some very creatively written steps. 

The teaching... To demonstrate the need for clarity and simplicity in the instructions I asked to use one of the sets of instructions that they would be happy to let me follow in front of the class. My learners had so much fun with this task I ended up having to put names in a randomiser to choose. Everyone wanted their instructions followed. To be fair I let everyone have 15 minutes to fine tune their set of instructions before I started. As always to prove a point I needed to over exaggerate what I was being asked to do. Once again we had so much fun! I did manage to construct a model that resembled a dinosaur but as I had no accurate measurements it looked nothing like the one I was trying to replicate.

The learning... We need to be specific. We need to be clear and our steps need to be written so that they can be followed accurately. We explored the 'bossy' verbs and made our adaptations. All learning that would have taken place had I taken a more formal approach, but wouldn't have been nearly as much fun. Connections to the task were made all round. I need to mention here that this was a whole class lesson for 54 students. I did have Dianne, my buddy teacher and Mat our wonderful TA as well but I led the learning. No extra scaffolding, no simplified work, just pitched at the right level because I know my learners. We used the power of collaboration and the power visual and tactile opportunities provide. Everyone regardless of ability understood the purpose of the task and knew what they needed to do. I noticed at each step of this challenge that my learners were helping each other too.  

The outcome... We made the tweaks to our instructions and repeated the process. This time there was more attention paid to precision and detail. Wording of instructions were road tested on another pair, and more refined models constructed. We then formalised our learning using a scaffold for a procedural text which allowed me to reinforce the structure and language needed to be successful. To add a fun element we then had a go at creating a different dinosaur model following a set of instructions created by another pair.

The process illustrated...

                                                        

          

Implementing Structured Literacy one step at a time: Step #1 - Handwriting...

With the challenge of keeping the 'create' aspect alive in our kura, I made the conscious decision to lead by example. Last term we began our structured literacy journey. The first three PLD sessions were huge! The cognitive overload was real. I am a teacher with many years classroom experience both in Aotearoa and in the UK and I found making sense of all the new learning a genuine challenge. I found myself quickly realising why the 'create' component of our learning was pushed to the back. 

The big message behind everything is that the learning should be taking place at a 'perky pace'. That's doable once you have made your own connection but when I first attempted a structured literacy handwriting lesson it took 35 minutes! Not 35 minutes because my learners were off task or because I didn't understand the goal of the lesson, but 35 minutes because my learners were focusing of being meticulously neat. No one wanted to make  an error, no one wanted messy work. I genuinely ran out of motivating phrases to say! As for the spelling, well lets just say that was another time consuming disaster. My experience told me I needed something to change and it had to be fast. The first thing I changed was to ditch the preplanned resources and use my own. I needed to make my connection through my ownership of the learning. So how did I do this?

• I co-constructed a handwriting resource with my learners by giving them each a letter and asking them to come up with the practise sentence to accompany the letter formation learning.

• I introduced the digital timer. What a life saver this turned out to be. It added a fun challenge element that kept us all on our toes and helped us meet the brief of having a 'perky pace'. We vary times now from 5 minutes to 10 minutes. This allows the person keeping time to randomly challenge the pace of fluency. I do need to remind people here that Year 7/8 students in the main do not need to be taught letter formation so that removes one of the challenges our junior team have.

• As I said earlier we needed an element of ownership in the learning. I wanted my students to monitor their own progress and set their own goals. We did this by creating a marking sticker. My learners now evaluate their own work by considering the size, shape, slope, speed and space. It allows them to easily see where they have been successful and what areas they need to focus on. This has now evolved to our very own stamp thanks to the awesome design skills of April Song, who helped me bring my idea to life. We use a buddy system to share our successes and our next steps at the end of each handwriting session and at the start of the next one. This also helps me see at a glance what it is I am looking for when I am roving around the room giving feedback or when I'm starting a lesson and need a focus point.

                                           

• We alternate handwriting lessons with keyboard lessons to build keyboard fluency. Doing this has been a huge hit with my learners. We use this site for the keyboard challenges.

To remind myself why we need a handwriting focus I have added this last part from notes I made during one of our initial training days (source unknown). Fluency in handwriting helps to enhance critical thinking. Writing fluency encourages students to think critically about their ideas and how to present them, ultimately deepening their understanding of the subject matter.