Reading Practice Intensive - Day 6

 

Day 6 - Vocabulary (& Decoding)

Naomi was super excited about today's session.  She told us there would be lots of resources gifted to us and it was one of her favourite days of the whole RPI programme.  She said it was going to be a big day - but a fun day - and she was not wrong!

We began by going over the homework tasks from the last session.  I have few to complete but will catch up before the end of the term.  I was proud to share one of my students writing from our "Great Beginnings" work on Day 5 linking Reading and Writing.  One of the teachers in my breakout group shared about her students using Craiyon AI to illustrated their writing so I had a quick play with that and here it is.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of the kaupapa and pedagogy of the Manaiakalani Reading Programme ?

Dorothy talked about vocabulary being the key to learning, how vocabulary growth is directly related to achievement, and vocabulary size in kindergarten predicts the ability to learn to read.  She shared some research from the Welcome to School project in Tamaki, Auckland.  On both assessments of Concepts About Print and Letter ID 5 year olds in Tamaki are significantly below National averages. In other words, most children in Tamaki start school without the developmental and communication skills needed to achieve at expected levels.  

I know there are similar issues at my own school with some children coming to school with significant gaps in their vocabulary evident in the 5 year old entry testing of their oral language. On checking our school SMS our 5 year olds that have started school this year have an oral language age range of as low as 2 years 5 months to 8 years 1 month.

Vocabulary improvement plays a critical role in mediating disadvantage in oral language development and early literacy. Vocabulary helps with development of oral language development and early literacy.  Digital tools can also assist with this.

Dorothy also gave Google Documents a plug - they are under used.  I didn't know about Smart Chips - so I will have a wee bit of sandpit time with these later on.  Thanks Dorothy!

What did I learn that could improve my capability and confidence in teaching reading?

A learner’s vocabulary is the strongest predictor of reading comprehension and by Year 5 70% of reading problems are related to vocabulary.  

The 4 Key Approaches to Explicit Vocabulary Instruction - Decades of research maintain a focus on systematic planning and teaching for: 

• Building word consciousness
• Deliberate, robust teaching of words 
• Skills for cracking unfamiliar words
• Morphology (incl. its importance in subject disciplines)

The biggest thing is don't leave it to chance!

5 Principles of Robust Vocabulary Instruction:

1. Direct explanation (in a learner friendly way)
2. Thought provoking connections to meanings in students’ lived experiences
3. Playful use of words (e.g. word consciousness)
4. Interactive engagement
5. Follow up (multiple encounters) 

We revisited this Vocabulary Cake visual again:

It is the Tier II words we want to increase knowledge and understanding of.

I learnt about the "Lexical Bar" concept - David Corson (1984). This bar is essentially a threshold between common words in English that are usually learned through oral communication during childhood and the academic written language in English learning educational settings. This bar, Corson observed, is easily crossed by some students, but for others, it is a daunting task. For almost all students, crossing the lexical bar requires instruction that explores the lexical nature of academic written language, which includes vocabulary instruction.

What happens when we "raise the lexical bar too much" without providing sufficient support?

Beyond the earlier successes in learning to read, all readers (even adults) encounter more complex texts and unfamiliar words that require  strategic decoding. 

We also went back and looked at our teacher workbook spreadsheet at the learner progressions for each level of learner.  Level 2 and Level 3 have Phonology & Spelling seperate, whereas Level 1 has them incorporated at each reading level.

QAR (Question Answer Relationship) is a question answering and generating strategy that improves comprehension by helping students understand the different types of questions.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 

There were so many great resources that I can use with my students straight away, I'm not sure where to start.  Here is a few of the many I have ready to go on my Drive:

• Spotlight graphic organiser - before and after reading a text.  It will show the teacher what vocabulary needs to be focused on.  Focus on semantics (word meaning), orthography (spelling) and phonology (pronunciation).
• Resource Register spreadsheet - Scattergories List Generator link
• Rebus puzzles
• Using School Journal Teacher Support Material vocabulary lists
• Interactive, Robust approaches templates
• Lots of ideas on developing understanding of phonemes, syllables, prefixes/suffixes, base/root words

What did I learn that could be shared within my wider community, with either colleagues, or whānau/aiga? 

Like I have before I will be sharing a "highlights reel" with my team back at school on Monday and further unpacking at our school holiday team meeting.  Here are just a few things I will be discussing:

• Phonological awareness screening tool
• Decoding progressions and self assessment tools
• Questioning Matrix

RPI: Adjustment Reflections

As a result of our last PRI session around planning a programme, we were asked to implement some timetable changes and focus on high expectation independent activities. 

Timetabling

With having a Year 3 and 4 group of learners I have a big range of Reading abilities from Level 9/Blue right through to a group of very capable students reading at the beginning of Curriculum Level 3.  With a Junior teaching background I always see my most needy students every single day as they have the greatest needs.  We have an 75 minutes timetabled for our Reading session with the first 15 minutes being our Read & Feed time where I read our class novel.  I have 4 Reading groups and I see 3 groups each day.  Sometimes I might be fortunate to have a teacher aide or student teacher on placement which means I can get them to take my fourth group.  Each fortnight I also visit the school library with my Reading class and on that day I only see my lowest Reading group.  My learners are in very good routines and know the expectations that I have for them in Reading time.  They follow the rotation of activities on their group slideshow and know that I will be checking in with them and checking up that any independent tasks have been completed to the standard expected.

Reading Apps

Since beginning RPI I have removed my 'Can Do' activities from my group slideshows and put them separately on my Reading site.  With a Year 3 and 4 group of learners I have both iPads and chromebooks so use a mixture of different independent activities on devices.  We use Epic, Studyladder (with tasks set to meet group focus areas), Word Chain as our main apps.

Turn It In Sheet

At the start of Term 2 I tried using a paper version of a Mahi Tracker with an A3 printed spreadsheet.  The reason I opted for a paper tracker was because I have some students on iPads and some on chromebooks.  I found the Mahi Tracker didn't work as well as I had hoped.  Some students couldn't track along from their name and down from the day of the week (or task) and would tick another student's box on the spreadsheet.  I was still needing to chase the students up to fill it in.  I used it for 4 weeks before giving up!