Reading Practice Intensive - Day 8

Day 8 - Create in Reading

I have been looking forward to this day's content, and now that it is almost over I am looking ahead to what exciting things I can plan for my students in Reading.  Today three of my cohort joined the Tuesday cohort as we have one of our ministry teacher only days this Friday.  The Tuesday cohort was very welcoming and had a good vibe.

We shared our Homework tasks and how they had gone first.  A challenge for many with all of the sickness around, both with teachers and mentors.  I have to catch up with my mentor as I haven't had a chance in the last couple of weeks.  I discussed the frustration that although my students can engage in a great extended learning discussion about a text, when they come to complete Response to Text activities they struggle to capture what was discussed in their answers.  Kiri suggested two tips that may help - (1) Have a teacher aide scribe everything said in the discussion (out of view) that can be referred back to, and (2) Use an online voice recorder and record the discussion audio for the students to check back on.

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

It is always great to hear from Dorothy each RPI session that we have - today she was joining us from her car! She began by asking us, "Do you do your best thinking while your hands are creating? 

Dorothy talked, quite obviously, about the foundation goal of the Manaiakalani programme is to motivate our learners to engage with the curriculum (the "hook").  We want learners to not only have have opportunities to create digitally but also to create across the spectrum of disciplines that include art, music, movement, drama, and all forms of making. It is important to capture these creative artefacts and responses using the affordances of digital technologies. We can do this in ways we never could before. 

Dorothy talked about SiSoMo (Sight, Sound and Motion).  The more senses you can engage in creativity the more deeper you can go with consolidating the learning. With digital tools, we can create like never before. Not only can we use ever increasing ways to harness digital innovation in creative ways, but we can digitise and share what we create with our hands in the ‘real world.’  

It was interesting to find out that OECD's Pisa tests rank New Zealand's 15-year-olds 5th in the world in creative thinking (out of 81 countries).  In the same round of tests New Zealand ranked 10th in reading, 11th in science and 23rd in maths - these scores all show drops.  Interestingly Singapore was number one in all subjects.

AI was also discussed - how will this impact on our creativity.  We still want our young people to be creative without using AI.  Dorothy shared a few more AI tools for me to check out.

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

Today we had lots of chances to create resources that we can use in our Reading programmes.

The first activity we did was using an unillustrated poem and recording ourselves reading a paragraph and then adding the audio and an AI image to illustrate it.  This was really amazing when we saw what each other had created - all so different.  What do you think?

Mayer’s principles of multimedia learning provide a blueprint for how to structure multimedia elements to maximise learning outcomes.

Creativity empowers learning - Digital technologies empower creativity.

We revisited the SAMR model (which I often think critically about when I see some colleagues teaching and learning).  And I often need to remind myself not to slip back into bad habits of "substitution" when organising activities for students.  We should all be striving to be in the top section - Modification and Redefinition.

We added examples of how we have designed opportunities for learners to Create after reading using multimedia ideas (see below) and this will be a valuable resource.  It is great to look at other people's ideas and recall that I used to do some of these things - but why did I stop?!

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

We looked at short responses to texts - before, during or after reading.  We looked at "tighter" and "looser" design options for responses.  We had an opportunity to create a response task and link it to a register (which is another fantastic resource to use with my learners).  I created this prediction activity on a slideshow which I plan to add to Explain Everything as well.

It was good to revisit some of the Create tools that I haven't used for a while.  My students are loving using Canva at the moment.  I hope to teach them how to use a variety of new tools and then offer them the choice for what tool they would like to use for response tasks - Storyboard That, Book Creator, Pixton, making quizzes.  I regularly "magpie" ideas from other school's blog posts to use in my programme.  

After looking at our Uru Manuka Cluster data last week for our Reading Observations, we certainly need to focus on adding some choice into follow up tasks and opportunities for students to collaborate during follow up tasks.

It was great to have Fiona Grant join us today and run through was a one-shot film is.  How cool would it be to have a green wall in our learning space to use as a green screen?  Maybe a conversation with the caretaker coming up!  Then we created our own one-shot film! I must have missed the memo to have a children's book with me.  After a mad panic around my house I managed to find one of my books from the beginning of my teaching career to use.  What a hilarious activity watching all the one minute videos at the end!  My Puppy and Me by Mercer Mayer was my one-shot film, which I will not be posting on here!

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

Our last task for the day was a reflection actiivty on Padlet where we needed to consider "What do you need to adjust?"  We reflected on the day and identified areas of Create pedagogy to further develop in these categories - Opportunities, Collaboration, Design, Choices, Display/Digitalise(Share).  We then added our next steps to the Padlet.