Manaiakalani Reading Practice Intensive - Text Selection - Day 3

Another intensive day, this time about what texts we choose and why we choose them. We are working on the Inside Classroom pou of our pillars of practice (see below). 

Having to do some activities with a tight timeline made me realise it isn't as hard as I can sometimes make it out to be! I often angst for hours over texts and then they are read and done in a few minutes and I wonder at how much time I wasted for the kids not to connect or to "get it" so easily it was almost unworthwhile. I put together a text set in just a few minutes which I will add to but will be using next term. 

I realised over the past few weeks that I really have steered clear of poet
ry. As a poetry lover since I was a child I am absolutely frustrated at myself for the disservice I have done to my tamariki. I deliberately have chosen poetry to start of term 2. I am going to be using ones that evoke the senses which will also help them with the descriptive writing we are doing next term. I have chosen poems about events or situations they are familiar with and can use their prior knowledge to connect with. I have other writing about these same topics that will help fill any gaps they have and to give different perspectives on the subjects.

Another part of the kaupapa that resonated with me a lot this time was ensuring we were providing texts that gave tamariki the opportunity to see themselves, see others and to experience other worlds - mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors. 

                Rudine Sims Bishop, Professor Emerita, Ohio State University

I work in a small rural type of town. We are a decile 2 school and our kids don't go a lot of places often, or have experiences that take them beyond their own small neighbourhood. We do cover a lot of te ao Māori as our tamariki are 85% Māori. They live in a Pākehā world however being only 30% of the town's ethnic make up (don't talk to me about where the 70%'s kids are going to school though!!). We teach Te Atiawatanga which is the way that our local iwi participate and interact with the world (most of our tamariki are part of this iwi). We ensure they know about local land wars, Parihaka and the rich Māori history of our rohe. They are somewhat closed off to the world out there though. They often haven't been out of the North Island, let alone the country. So ensuring they have meaningful interaction with texts of various forms about other people and cultures is vital, and helping them to figure out how Aotearoa fits in this world.

Putting my practice into a rubric to see what I am doing with the way I teach reading was interesting too. I do long texts often as read alouds of novels, where I read something like "The Wild Robot" to them purely for enjoyment, although I model what I am thinking and some new vocabulary occasionally. I cast this to my TV via a reading app and can see some of them reading along as I go. Others are drawing the scenes that I am reading about. They love it and so do I. Guided reading is completed each day but I was a bit slack on the shared reading. I often struggled with what to do with my older students but seeing today's example of shared reading made a few pennies drop so I will be incorporating more into my classwork for term 2. I'm excited!  I also like the buddy reading. We already are focusing on how fluently we read and recording ourselves, so having a friend help them read better out loud in a safe environment will add to this immensely.

Another week chock full of learning and I'm sure I have more to talk about, but will catch up with my fellow RPI attendees at school and my mentor. 

 

Manaiakalani Reading Practice Intensive - Know your Learners as Readers - Day 2

Day 2 was a very intensive day. I feel shattered at the end of it! 

We had a quick look at our assessment data from the PAT Pānui Reading Comp testing. Three of my tamariki are incomplete: one was away and been away a nearly every day I scheduled to run it for him, then two just mucked around and gave answers and attitude in such a way I know they weren't taking it seriously. They will have the joy of resitting with a mentor watching over them.

I have always looked at the ARBs for maths, but no so much for reading. Having the opportunity to look more closely at these was good and I have many ideas for how to use them. The readings a short but varied. I rarely use poetry and that showed in the PAT test as a low area. They were unable to identify metaphors and to picture the scene in their heads and answer the questions correctly. I love poetry myself as my parents gave me poetry books as a child - why aren't I modelling this to my tamariki? Moving forward I will definitely be using these in my reading groups to create discussions and discover how the akonga are thinking and why they are answering the way they are.

My class has quite a few gaps and I'm glad I'm on this course to help me to plug those gaps and to ensure the success of my tamariki with reading. 

I feel a little overwhelmed with the tracking sheet. It requires a lot of time to build up the data and then once it is full, the data needs to be tracked again in other ways at my school. When we get into using it though, we will have some evidence to drop the repetition and just link everything to the comprehensive tracker! Sooner rather than later would be a good outcome. It would be great if the rest of the school used these also as it would mean that as students move through the school we would have the data being tracked and what has been covered. We track students through HERO and know where they are up to, but it is only as good as the data being input. At the senior end we inherit the data from previous teachers and there can be gaps that aren't gaps or things marked off that need re-visiting.

I always give a WALT for my lessons and we discuss the Success Criteria (SC). The tamariki do have the opportunity to help decide what the SC should be, but often it may be only one sensible SC offered by them, but at least that gives them a hand and a feeling of co-creation. I will be working on trying to get more out of them though. The splitting down of the AO, LI and SC was a great exercise and one I hadn't thought about it. Also the backwards planning. Makes perfect sense. It's how I handle things in my own life - want to go on holiday? What do I need to do to get there in the months prior to leaving? Same with what the tamariki are expected to be able to do at the end of a unit or similar. So what do I need to do to get them there?? I LOVE THIS. 

The dive into why we do assessment was interesting along with the 7 characteristics of expert teachers. The surprise was that establishing and maintaining high expectations with the learners effect size was so high. I think I do have high expectations, but am I making sure the tamariki know this? I will be taking steps to ensure that I am communicating this clearly, both at a class level and at an individual level. 

Over the past two weeks I have used the supplied slide with inferencing work for reading times in my class. This has been a steady battle with teaching them to learn how to use it and the expectations it has on them and self management. The first week I did no group reading because my time was spent teaching them where, what, how and when to do the activities. My biggest struggle is the tamariki that came from the ipads and have little or no digital knowledge. I have several tamariki that have not used chromebooks before (from outside our school or using ipads) and that has been a learning curve for them that can monopolise time somewhat. Next thing, it's morning tea!  There is also a lack of ability in quite a few to TRY new things. They sit, look and do nothing. Walking around the room, discovering tamariki that were zoned out and not saying they needed help, or not even made it onto my class website surely upped my steps for the week but showed a lot of "helplessness" this year in the cohort. "Someone will do this for me" also showed up with older students completing the work for those friends who didn't get beyond getting their device. I need to work through this and have responsibility and self reliance as a goal for them. 

I am looking forward to using the template slide with the graphic organiser with the week's work to access,  and having the tamariki settle into their reading more. The best thing is seeing that they have gotten books out of the library now - those titles that were in the best fit book choosing exercise! I re-ran the activity with books from inside my classroom - it was a race to find them on the shelves and to read them. This was an amazing result. I will continue to do this activity and vary it somehow to keep putting books in front of them to read and choose. I may get them to try choosing a book for a partner to read based on what they say they like and see if that gets titles in front of them to get excited about. 

We are starting to write book recommendations with covers next week so that they can see what others like. I am going to work with the school librarian to do this in the library too. I think the teina would like to see that their tuakana liked a book as they model themselves and their behaviour on the older tamariki.

Does Kōtare actually enjoy reading?

 A couple of days ago I conducted a reading survey on my tamariki. I have a mixture of year 4, 5 and 6 students (mainly 5/6) and this years' cohort is at a lower academic level than previous years. They are all eager to please though and despite a choppy start with my attendance at school, they have settled in relatively well.

Getting to know your tamariki is key to their education. Knowing what they like, who they are, what they bring to your kopa is essential and being able to plan around this knowledge needs to be evidence based. This survey via Manaiakalani is one way to get to know who your tamariki are as readers. 

Prior to the survey I thought that my kids would not like reading nor read a lot. The exact opposite of myself. I read before I started school at 5 and read everyday - although the past couple of years had me put down fiction and pick up a lot more text style and science books. I am just getting back into reading fiction after the first day of RPI inspired me.

I had a battle with Google Sheets. As an experienced MS Excel user I find sheets frustrating. To add to that I lost part of my brain with covid two weeks ago and I am sorry to say that I have yet to find parts of it!! I struggled with putting the data into sheets and gave up with some graphs that made a great maths lesson for the kids on reading the results. So a win there as they had to figure out that things weren't in order column wise (and what was a column?) so they had to read carefully. They were fantastic and enjoyed the lesson both from a maths perspective and to learn from the data itself.

Kōtare's Reading Data

The results surprised me. I have one outlier who did skew some results. This tamaiti reads texts books for fun and scores in stanine 9 for everything in his year, and stanine 8 for the year higher. 

6 didn't read anything which was sad, but lower than I thought it would be. They generally fell on the "liked reading at school" side which was a relief, but looking at the individuals who didn't like reading at school it was the poorer readers which I felt for. 

I shared the titles of the books that they had as favourites and several were interested in trying reading the books that the others enjoyed so that was great. I will be starting a recommendation system in class where kids write reviews for others to read with the book and have it on display for others to see and perhaps be inspired to read.

Just under half the class does not have their own library card. Again, I was surprised that it was that high! I am getting forms from our mobile book bus that comes from our city library to school so that others can get one if they wish. I will encourage parents to sign them up. 

I wonder if some filled it in, in such a way in order to please me though. I hope not. These tamariki hunger for attention and love which as a role model for reading, I hope to influence them that reading is awesome and worthwhile.

Manaiakalani Reading Practice Intensive - Reading is Core to Learning - Day 1

In typical Vicki fashion, I managed to be sick on the first day of the course! But credit has to be given to the facilitators for their support and the interesting nature of their presentations -  I loved every minute of it.

It was great to go through and be reminded of what makes a good reader. I read before I went to school and was always supported by my whānau to read. I still read morning, noon and night and can't do without a daily fix of some reading or another. I love to learn and I found it easy throughout my school years. Not so for a lot of my class and I can see where I can shore up my practice to help pass on my absolute love of reading to my tamariki. My community is a small one deep in poverty and inequity and reading is one way of helping them to lift themselves up and out into the world and make great gains.

The pillars of practice make it "easy" to see where I need to focus my energy on in the classroom, and beyond.

In assessing where my tamariki are with their reading disposition, I already have data on what they like to read, when, where and how they feel about reading. But I have not yet done anything with it. I can see how I can now get their buy in as to what they can do to help themselves read more, and what I can do also. 

The exemplar reading slide with activities is a great resource. I already use some of these activities, but to see it laid out in both the younger and older reader levels was excellent. I will be endeavouring to use this format with my class as much as I can this term. I have levels from pre-emergent to 15/16 year old readers in my class although all seem to have a "helplessness" attitude with regards to learning that I am trying to overcome. This format will help make delivering my programme a lot easier.

I would also like to introduce a tuakana/teina reading group in the library at lunchtimes. I have a lot of tamariki that aren't into playground rough and tumble and spend time in the library. They love showing leadership and the teina are in awe of them. This will grow relationships across classrooms and the school and give a lot of tamariki the reading mileage they aren't currently obtaining.

I was sick the day of school three way parent/teacher/student interviews and will be rescheduling these after school in the coming weeks. I am now going to add some extra questions to my agenda about reading for the whānau. Maybe me getting covid was a blessing in disguise! 

 

PGC 2023 - Hypothesising and Reflecting

So why and how?

The tamariki have had three years of Covid. Time away from school through lockdowns, teacher and student illnesses. During this period a lot of activities have also been curtailed. We completed no trips away, weekend activities were almost non-existent for long stretches of time. Interesting experiences with lots of vocabulary were few and far between. An increase in screen time for everyone as activities went online has meant less time with other people, more gaming time for kids and less interaction at home with their whānau. Note, this is not ALL whānau, many many parents made and still make, huge efforts to get their kids doing things outside, sports, hunting, fishing, trips to places and a lot more and have enriching discussions with their tamariki.

From observation it appears that parents across the world have become more protective of their children. They don't want to upset them and want to protect them from any adversity. This is not surprising due to the way the past few years have been. Children are now more anxious and their attendance has reduced as a group. Parents aren't willing to force their children to school when they aren't feeling safe even in their own homes. 

This is a big issue with multifaceted causes and it will be years before research can really figure it out, if ever. In the meantime, what do I do?

Action taken - General Cognitive Understanding

• Instructions given verbally, written, and recorded for those who need it.
• Checking in by having kids repeat what I instructed if needed.
• Opportunities given to be leaders in class to build skills.
• Working independently - short time periods at first, extending these times as they get better at it. They are not used to working independently well.
• Choices given - but limited at first. Then more and more offered as each child progresses. 
• Education on making decisions. How to make a good decision. 
• MANA value discussions every day.
• Rewards given to those who show they are working hard (trying). Rewards for those who come and ask for help. 
• When asking for help, working on exactly what help they need. They are not good at giving specifics and sit and wait for me to do it as their teacher. Working on getting them to explain exactly where they are stuck. The questions usually started when they were told to begin our activity. They oftentime haven't even got their pencils out when they say "they don't know what to do". They seem to know, but they can't identify their sticking point, apart from having to do the mahi!

Reflection

• Each term the tamariki have gotten better at working independently.
• They can all work for about 30 minutes independently after I give instructions.
• They feel better at asking questions of me.
• Their questions about the work are more precise and targeted. I am not taking "I need help" at face value but questioning why? On what? What is hard? Can someone help you that isn't me? etc. It seems to be working well.
• Still working on making choices - finding the information first before you make a choice. Trying to ensure they all have one choice that they find interesting/like the method of creating etc to increase engagement

Action taken - Knowledge Building & Vocabulary

• For two terms, and now the third, we are working with our Inquiries with reading as well as dedicated inquiry time. Not only are we reading and researching our in inquiry area, but covering knowledge related to that inquiry, whether it is based on questions the tamariki have or not. T-Shaped literacy is behind every choice also. Multi-modal options are being offered so that every tamaiti is able to access the learning and show me how much they know even if they can't read or write well.
• Daily Warm ups - every morning we hit random topics on a slide show. Things that are related to maths vocab, daily words, general knowledge, inquiry topic words, ANYTHING that increases their general knowledge. Sometimes we get waylaid with discussions and the kids ask questions about things that really interest them which is awesome.
• It has resulted in more questions. I am trying to teach them to ask better questions by modelling great questions and asking them good questions. Trying to get them to think better! With limited experiences and knowledge, it is hard for them to wonder a lot. They don't seem at times to have any wonderings at all, but these sessions have opened up a lot of good questions and answers. It's fun and the kids like doing it.
• ReadWorks - a reading comprehension online programme. This involves 5 mins of reading preassigned, levelled reading passages about non-fiction themes I choose. They have to read them, (or listen if they aren't reading at all, or poorly) and then write down two or three things they want to remember into their online "book of knowledge". I am considering having them write it down using handwriting too, but won't change that until 2024. Research shows that handwriting information gets it stuck in our brains better than typing. These small tidbits of knowledge they find interesting is also often a springboard for discussion about the topic. For those that can't type their answers, I quiz them on what they listened or read about verbally to ensure they understand what they read. I try to align these readings with the inquiry we are doing, but it isn't always possible, so random items can pop up, but that all adds to their general knowledge.
• TIP Charts. I have loved these since I saw them on a PLD in either 2018 or 2019. I update them each inquiry to cover words we may come across. The vocabulary is gone through thoroughly so when they see it in their readings, it isn't new to them. Well, that is the hope!
• Base & Root words work. I began teaching morphemes. Each day we focussed on one morpheme and then used those words all week. For example dec = 10, TW = two etc. The kids LOVED this. They could understand what some words meant when they knew what part of the word meant. They had to think hard and use their ability to find clues like word detectives. This enabled them to make connections to multiple words with that morpheme and decipher what they MEANT. Not just how to say them. I can decode te reo Māori kupu and pronounce them ok, but I do not know what they mean. If I can decipher some of the part of a word though, it usually gets me on the right track. This is the same for English too. 

Reflection

• I won't see any benefits from this until we do the final assessments of the year. 
• I see a change in their thinking with the increase in vocabulary
• The research says to start knowledge building earlier rather than later. I can't fill in all the information that these tamariki have not yet been exposed to, but I can only do my best.
• I feel that later teachers may benefit more from their increased general knowledge than I will.
• Their reading assessments will only be better if I have covered off a topic that is in the assessments. Chances of that, slim! It isn't that I want to give them the answers, but I want them to understand what key words mean so they can understand the reading and interpret the questions and answer them correctly. If they don't know what some of the key words mean, they are stuck. That isn't done by decoding the word, but whether they know the meaning of it. 

PGC 2023 - Noticing and Investigating

Within a few weeks of starting the year, it was noticed by the senior syndicate team that we all had the same issue. A lot more tamariki that were well below in their reading. We had a stark separation between year 6 and year 5 students, far greater than previous years.

We also noticed that the new akonga were unable to do things for themselves. They lacked the ability to get themselves a chair, didn't seem to be able to figure out how to use an exercise book to write in or how to follow simple instructions.

This required a massive rethink of the organisation of our classrooms. Cognitive load had to be reduced, daily routines unpacked and simplified and repeated constantly and even then I found I was still struggling. 

These akonga were behind primarily in reading, some had an inability to decode, but the biggest issue for my classroom was comprehension. As a student of te reo Māori, I have spoken the language since I was young, however I am unable to understand a majority of it. So in effect, I can decode and say a word in te reo, however, I can't understand everything I read. These tamariki are like this too but with their first language.

A few do have difficulties with decoding, these were put into a special reading programme developed by the RTLit for one student, and copied for 3 others in my classroom. But how to tackle comprehension?

The current route is to teach comprehension strategies in isolation, for example, how to infer, how to find the main idea etc. We choose books that make it easy to use that strategy and teach it regardless of the topic. 

Unlike the "reading wars," there has not been the same focus on comprehension as there has been in decoding. However, there is plenty of research about it and most points to the way we teach comprehension as individual strategies is not best practice. It will be interesting to see the way this research develops further. 

In my opinion, this research makes sense. Readers who have relevant knowledge about a topic prior to reading a piece about the topic, or have a good vocabulary before reading about a topic, understand what they are reading more. 

One example given was a reading comprehension assessment which was about baseball. Those kids who played baseball or were involved in the sport in some way did far better than the readers who knew nothing about the sport before reading the text. Even poorer readers (as assessed prior) scored well if they were in baseball teams in comparison to their "normal" reading level. Knowing a bit about something first (especially vocabulary) meant the children could comprehend better the article or story they were reading.

According to research, understanding word meaning accounts for as much as 80% of reading comprehension (Davis, 1972; Nagy & Scott, 2000). So why are we spending so much time on teaching strategies when we would be better off increasing their word knowledge base instead? If the strategies may only account for 20% or LESS of a child's reading comprehension, why would we waste so much time teaching them how to find the main idea in a story? Which they may indeed miss because they don't understand what they are reading in the first place?

Good general knowledge or "topic" knowledge means better comprehension. Being able to find the main idea in a text won't happen unless they understand what they are reading in the first place. They need the vocabulary involved at a basic level to be able to make inferences from the text that the author is making. You can teach them what an inference is, but if they can't understand a few key words, it won't be apparent to the reader. 

Building Knowledge. The Case for Bringing Content into the Language Arts Block and for a Knowledge-Rich Curriculum Core for all Children By E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

Reading comprehension is not a “skill” Robert Pondiscio

How Knowledge Helps It Speeds and Strengthens Reading Comprehension, Learning—and Thinking By Daniel T. Willingham

Dramatic New Evidence That Building Knowledge Can Boost Comprehension And Close Gaps Natalie Wexler

Vocabulary Instruction: Essential for Proficient Reading Timothy Rasinski, Ph.D.

A Kindergarten Lottery Evaluation of Core Knowledge Charter Schools: Should Building General Knowledge Have a Central Role in Educational and Social Science Research and Policy? 

So, practically, what should I be doing in the classroom?

Professional Development 2023

This year has been a year of breathing. A year of trying to not take on too much outside of direct school work. Late 2022 I was diagnosed with long covid. It has been a rough time for me personally. My mental fog has lifted, but unfortunately my body is still on the floor. If I spend a couple of hours doing something outside my energy "envelope", I suffer for days afterwards with overwhelming fatigue, muscle pain and headaches. 

As a result, I made a decision not to take on extra PLD that I organised myself this year until I felt I was able to cope with extra commitments on my time. 

Our school PLD focused this year on Restorative Justice. I also attended a Manaiakalani conference where I was upskilled on everything from maths, history and minecraft, to the latest google updates we can use in class. I attended an archaeologist's tour of a local battle site between Māori and the crown in the 1860s as part of the Taranaki wars and also when on holiday, made sure I went on a tour which taught us about the stories in Rarotonga and how they reflect our stories here in NZ.

Here are my reflections on my PLD:

Restorative Justice

Manaiakalani BOI Summit

Waireka Battle

Manaiakalani Principals' Conference

Migration stories