3 - Action Planning and Testing Ideas

So ideas! What can I do to help the tamariki with their writing?

I am going to focus on the following parts of the curriculum that I feel I am weak on and need more knowledge about and some practical ways of implementing these in the classroom.

1. Sentence Structure/syntax (syntax being the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences). 
2. Differentiation in writing. My tamariki range from being able to write cvc words only with assistance to intermediate level.

I am going to start by testing first of all whether the tamariki know all the parts of speech and what they mean before I start teaching explicitly the structure of sentences. I need to know what they know before I launch into this area of instruction. I see a lot of errors with sentences, lower use of different structures and also repeated structures in their writing. This should help with this area and provide some interesting writing. 

With differentiation for my poorer writers, it is to help them gain more skills but also for some independent work ideas so I am available to help the rest of the classroom with their learning, rather than having to be next to them constantly.

The curriculum now has explicit text that tells you how you should be teaching, not just what. It is far more prescriptive. This makes the research side of things relatively simple. I have to do as it says basically, it is my job. However, I would like them to publish the research behind the curriculum. 

Research

One of the authors involved (among many teachers, principals and experts) in writing this curriculum is Dr Helen Walls. I have been on a course with her in the past and implemented a lot of what she suggested. I am going to read her current thoughts and use some of her resources around sentence structure. 

Regarding sentence structure etc, I will be working with the text: Writing Matters: Developing Sentence Skills in Students of All Ages - William Van Cleave. This covers parts of speech, has explicit teaching with model lessons and follow up activities. William Van Cleave has a BA in English and Women's Studies and an MA in English. He has worked in many schools with children who struggle and has been a tutor, teacher and principal. His book is clear and easy to read and understand for the teacher. 

For differentiation, Dr Walls will be my primary guide along with resources from Brolga Education which is run by Trudy Mayo in Australia to help guide me to maybe doing a better job at differentiation in writing.

I will roll these new lessons out in term 3 and see how we go! 

2 - Hypothesising and Reflecting

 Looking at the two main areas of concern - maths and writing, I feel the area I should focus on this year is writing. Maths has a whole new set of pedagogy with Numicon coming into our school that we've been advised to "trust the process" with and that would be better to reflect on once we really get going.

The new curriculum for writing has been released and boy, is it a busy one! It covers:

• Speech and language using any method of communication a student uses (including AAC)
• Phonemic awareness
• Systematic synthetic phonics (decoding and spelling skills)
• Handwriting
• Vocabulary
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Fluency
• Text structure

Each of these areas a huge all by themselves. 

So why are the tamariki not doing so well in writing? Their reading is ok, but the ability to put things down on paper or on their devices is letting them down overall. Writing is the other side of the reading 'coin' and being able to express yourself clearly is one of the most exciting things people do in this world. 

The tamariki in my class were 5 and 6 years old when Covid hit. There was disruption in schooling with lock downs and failure for whatever reason to engage in learning at home. This also affected their social skills. Since then there has been a societal change in attitude to school attendance, and more kids staying home longer when they are ill. Did this affect their ongoing schooling? 

I also have a cohort of tamariki that have intellectual disabilities which seems to affect writing the most. They have an inability to write clearly (motor skills) and short working memories. They also tend to get distracted by things; one for example, won't write a word down until they know they have spelled it correctly so barely gets anything written down. All of these tamariki require constant supervision and help to write. 

One child is at the very start of his journey potentially using AAC. This is something separate I am learning about.

My question is:  

How can I strengthen writing outcomes for all learners by adapting my programme to meet a wide range of needs and align with the refreshed Literacy framework?

I need to make sure I am differentiating appropriately, that I know the new curriculum and plan accordingly. When I look at the students individually, there are a few things that have not been taught explicitly by myself or previous teachers on a regular or ongoing basis - we haven't needed to. What I have been covering daily is vocabulary, morphology, handwriting and text structures as we cover them. 

What do I need to do to differentiate well, cover the curriculum, and to daily complete more explicit teaching on syntax and text structure? 

When I reflect on writing, I have to be honest and say, it is not my favourite thing to teach. I have always found it easy and so struggle sometimes as to why the kids just can't do it well! I have focused previously on maths and reading, but writing has always taken somewhat of a back seat in comparison to my own education about the matter. I do PLD on it, then struggle to implement. This new curriculum has definitely given me the impetus to do better. How? That is the question. The curriculum is NOT that explicit!!!!

1. 2025! Here we are! Noticing - my context

My class this year has had a wonderful start to the year. I have a mix of year 4, 5 and 6 students. 13 boys and 10 girls. 15 are of Māori descent, one from Tuvalu, and seven identify as New Zealanders (European descent). This is the lowest number of Māori I have had in eight years in my class. Only 3 are year 4.

They are widely spaced in their curriculum levels, from below 6 months at school to being able to read as a 14 year old (and understand what they are reading!).  Three have been diagnosed with an intellectual disability (mild) and one is virtually non-verbal with a diagnoses of autism. This child has a full time teacher aide to help manage their needs throughout the day until 1pm when they leave to go home. They get tired very quickly and cannot currently cope with a longer day yet.

Noticing

They are also the quietest class I have ever had! Most are focused and keen to learn and can manage pretty independently with work targeted to their level. This has made it a lot easier to teach and to manage the classroom behaviour. A few have a tendency to be a little disruptive but come into line fairly quickly and easily with current behaviour management. Those same few sometimes have issues in the playground too.

Initial testing has shown the following:

MATHS:

• Half the year 6 students are stanine 4 or below.
• Just over year 5 students are stanine 4 or above. Two that are below have diagnosed intellectual disabilities and may not move far.
• ALL year 4 students are stanine 6 or above.

READING:

• 60% of year 6 students are stanine 4 or above
• Out of 6 year 5 students tested, two are stanine 5 or above, and two may not move far this year due to disability and are well below. 67% are stanine 4 or below. 
• One year 4 student is stanine 4, and the other two are stanine 5 & 8.

WRITING:

• At the time of writing this, I have yet to complete marking the Asttle assessment for writing. A cursory look over their writing makes me believe I will be looking at similar figures as maths, not reading. Writing has a higher cognitive load and it can pose greater difficulties for learners.

I think that I will be focussing on Maths with the new curriculum bringing in far more requirements and more curriculum items to teach. But I also feel that writing needs a big push as well.

My next step is to develop my question from this information. What is the most important thing I need to focus on this year? It will be a busy year as we roll out the new Literacy and Maths curriculum, complete PD around this curriculum and wrap our heads around the requirements. We are doing a lot of it already, but it is imperative to ensure we on point with our delivery.

Professional Development 2024

Here is the list of the professional development I completed this year. Not a long list, but very impactful. 

Professional Development Log 2024

From within the log you can access my reflections on each of the PLDs I attended.

The one I enjoyed the most was the airport kōrero because I had no idea about the significance of the area and was just one of those people who walked the airport and thought it looked nice! I should have known better. 

A great year this year!

Manaiakalani Reading Practice Intensive - Sharing - Day 9

 My class tends to see blogging as a requirement and not as an opportunity to learn further. It is beholden upon me to turn this around, to embed it into our work and also to get them to reflect better.

We have sentence stems laminated and on every single chromebook.Nearly every time we blog, I get the same questions “how many stems do we have to do” (nothing has changed, still the same amount), “what does this mean?” (explained EVERY time) and the waiting for me to type it out for them (which I do not). They see it as a chore, as they do a lot of work in the classroom. “Do we have to read ALL of this?”, YES. 

Another issue is the lack of participation and commenting from whānau despite notices, posts online on different platforms and discussions kanohi ki te kanohi with them. We aren’t particularly good at commenting on others’ posts either. I feel this will be a focus for term 4, learning to comment better and setting aside time each week to visit others’ blogs and to give good feedback on their peers’ posts. It doesn’t help that our teachers aren’t particularly good at commenting either on each others’ professional blogs or those of our tamariki, although we are changing this.

The tamariki do not see blogging as part of their learning. Being able to write coherently and reflectively on their blogging is reading and writing! To express themselves and to think about what they are learning is the cherry on the top and a way to accelerate learning if done often enough.

The biggest thing I need to do as a teacher is to actually timetable the time to A) complete a blog and B) to comment on other’s blogs. It is not enough to say “blog your reading” in the response to text or elsewhere because if they do not manage to complete the mahi, that is the first thing that falls off. It needs to NOT be a perfunctory “here’s my work” and that’s it. 

Research shows those tamariki who blog at a "high" level (2.5 posts on average per week) actually gain levels in asTTle writing scores. By writing and reflecting, they become better writers. This could be a game changer for some of my tamariki.

I currently have non-negotiable blogs (they HAVE to blog about something) but they are perfunctory reflections based on sentence stems we have provided. I am going to show them blogs from other schools that show how much more thinking has gone into their blog reflections.

I will also make a concerted effort to comment on their blogs more often. It is something if I don't timetable it into my life, it will not happen except in random bursts!

Another aspect of sharing we looked at today was collaboration. Completing "creates" with other tamariki in the class. I can see this sometimes going pear-shaped so I will need to set some ground rules with input from the tamariki as to how this will work and how they are held accountable in their pairs or groups. I will also be asking them how they would like to collaborate and creating success criteria with them around their dispositions and expected behaviour.

We blog about once a week at the moment and it happens at odd times. I will formally timetable these into the day and also have a time for them to post comments on others' work. Some have completed how to write a good comment, but I think all will actually benefit from another round of lessons on how to write great blog comments (along with blog posts!)  

As the diagram shows, commenting and responding is not linear! But it hits all aspects of the curriculum with regards to English (as the curriculum currently stands anyway!) It is one way to help increase literacy time while doing something the kids usually enjoy.

My biggest area of concern though is the whānau engagement. i have two parents who comment on blogs. One is a high school teacher who understands the benefits of commenting (also a Manaiakalani school). How do I get others involved? I liked the ideas of sending home reading "homework" to do as a whānau. I will think long and hard about a few activities that whānau do not find difficult or time consuming to ensure they do want to do it and get it done. The kids won't be hard to convince but I don't want meltdowns at home if there is raru about having to do it.

It is the final day of the course, I am happy in one sense that I have achieved a lot on this course and that it is done. But I am also unhappy as there goes the accountability, learning, collaboration with teachers all over NZ and the myriad of other benefits being on this course has meant. I can't wait to get on the MPI and hopefully a writing version of this same course. Excited!!

Manaiakalani RPI Course - The Highlights

This is by far, the best PLD I have been on regarding reading. I completed a one year Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning after 30 years away from University and my initial Law degree. This one year diploma was mainly theory with 14 weeks of placement. Although we learned how to plan etc, a lot of it was not very practical as to how to set a reading programme up, what to do with the kids, how to do rotations, what to put in rotations, it wasn't even explained why we use rotations!  It was an eye opener to get into our practicum classes and see how things were run. Different teachers did different things, for different reasons with different theory behind it. WHAT WAS I TO DO?

I had a fabulous Mentor Teacher and colleagues who I gathered information and ideas from and away I went. We were always changing things up but I had a few misunderstandings practically which have given me a good laugh in retrospect, but the revelations in the Manaiakalani RPI course came thick and fast.

The practical advice and modelling backed up by robust research was very very helpful. My favourite sessions involved vocabulary and the create session. I am the first to admit that I am not very creative at times and find it difficult to come up with engaging content for the tamariki digitally. The suggestions and the way to develop these was extremely helpful. It made me feel more confident I could actually do things that make the tamariki use their brains and new found knowledge into new contexts to help it transfer to their long term memories.

Vocabulary is a passion of mine, but the way to teach it was varied and this course gave me a clear pathway to teaching it. My teacher's aide, Te Arani made an amazing vocabulary tree for my class and brought my vision to life. It has been hard to actually keep up the use of it, but that will come with repeated use and reminders to myself!

I have changed the way reading is presented to my tamariki and the independent work is more aligned with their learning objectives. Before it could be a little hit and miss at times, but things have slotted into place now. Six years of teaching and I'm still learning the basics it seems sometimes. There's so much to choose from, so many things thrust at you and so many ideas about what is good to do, it is nice to have a clear path to take with reading.

This does not mean I didn't enjoy the other sessions. I absolutely did. I have slowly put into place nearly everything now that I have been taught. I had to ensure that I didn't just change everything straight away, but be sure that the tamariki in the class were ready for change and that I could model it, practice it and embed it before I added more change into the mix. Some of my tamariki do not like change so I had to take moments that I knew I would succeed or succeed with most of the kids otherwise it would be a disaster. I did get a bit excited once or twice and have to back a change out due to the tamariki becoming discombobulated! Nothing like a sense of chaos to upset the apple cart.

The reading pillars, or pou, are extremely helpful in developing my classroom programme. What I am doing, what I need to do, where I am going and how I am going to achieve the lift in reading we need to see. The checklist makes it eminently practical to implement. Moving forward I am going to continue to blog about how I am going with ensuring my programme refers to and uses the different pou. If I haven't done a blog in a few weeks about this - comment and give me a kick in the proverbial!!!

I'd like to thank the facilitators of the course, particularly my group leader Anna for her caring attitude and down to earth understanding of the pressures teachers are under at times. It made for great sessions and learning opportunities. 

Manaiakalani Reading Practice Intensive - Creating - Day 8

Creating. This is my biggest weakness! I often struggle to come up with ideas. I am a creative person in my own time - photography, art, crafts, writing... why can't I do this in class?

This session made me realise it is much easier than I had lead myself to believe. Seeing others' work has set off a few lightbulbs for more and having a resource bank I can use as is, or to springboard my own ideas off, is just a godsend.

Creativity is what sets humans above animals. We need to create beyond just making a bed for ourselves or a functional home. 

Creativity helps us come up with new ideas and make progress in different fields like science, technology, business, and the arts. It allows us to think outside the box and find solutions to problems. Without creativity, we would not be able to move forward and face the challenges of our changing world. These changes are coming thick and fast and it is essential our tamariki learn to harness their creativity.

When we think creatively, we can approach problems from different angles and find unique solutions. This is helpful in our personal lives and also when dealing with big issues like climate change, poverty, and healthcare. Creativity helps us find new ways to solve problems and make the world a better place. In a world that is constantly changing, creativity helps us be flexible and adapt to new situations. It allows us to think on our feet and make the most of opportunities that come our way. With creativity, we can overcome obstacles and keep moving forward.

The underlying kaupapa of Manaiakalani is "the hook". What is going to hook tamariki in so they excel at everything they do. What is going to excite them? What is going to motivate them to learn and change the world? Creative work is one of these hooks. Get them to create something exciting and they will learn more and achieve more with what they believe is no more effort.

It is important to come at their learning from all angles and opportunities. Multimodal creativity ensures that the tamariki are more engaged and that as many as possible are hooked in.

Looking at the opportunities I offer my tamariki create wise, it is clear that I need to ensure that I am stepping up on what I give them to do. The biggest issue I have in class with offering new things is that it can sometimes take multiple sessions of "I do, we do, you do" for them to do the simplest of creates. I can have bulleted step by step instructions which they won't read, I use mote to give them instructions verbally - but they won't listen to it. They go straight to DOING it and doing it badly often. Or, after a whole class lesson on how to do something I can't run a small group as there are multiple interruptions with kids so far off course that I want to cry. We may have done a particular activity several times, and yet the same questions come up. They seem not to be able to understand instructions despite the five ways I have given it to them and the rewindable learning on it. This is something I have to work on and could well be my reading for a fortnight or more. I will have to go through an instruction and we discuss what it means, what are they supposed to do, throw some maths word problems in there, a few class activities with instructions, but really just be teaching instructional words, what they mean, testing if they understand (as a comprehension "test") and the sometimes fun consequences (with some tricks up my sleeve) when they don't read or clarify instructions up front. A few ideas are running around my head now.

What I love about Manaiakalani is the collaboration amongst teachers. The support, willingness to share ideas and mahi amongst everyone is amazing. Teachers too often are reinventing the wheel and you may have a 1000 teachers doing the same thing on any one day yet each of them have created their own resources to teach it. This doesn't happen in Manaiakalani and I love this aspect of the kaupapa.

I have come away from this session with many ideas and I am relieved that I am now armed with more creative ways of engaging my tamariki and hopefully boosting their rate and depth of learning.