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!

Reading Practice Intensive - Day 5

 

Day 5 - Planning a Reading Programme

Due to our cluster Teacher Only Day this Friday, today we joined the Tuesday cohort for our Day 5 session meaning that we don't miss our professional learning at the end of the week.  The Tuesday cohort were a lovely group of teachers and we were made to feel very welcome by facilitators Naomi, Kiri and Sharon.  Thank you team!

Like we do each session, we began by looking at how we have gone with our homework tasks.  Unfortunately since our Day 4 session I have had a week off work sick and then once back have taught for a total of 4 days due to release for other commitments.  I have had a coaching conversation and I have been using some AI generated texts for my less able readers related to our hub Inquiry theme, and this has been going really well.

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

In Dorothy's absence we had a session with Fiona Grant today around sites - one of my favourite things!  I wondered how long I have been using Google Sites - after a quick investigation I found our site from 2016, and man, we have come a long way since then!  I think these students will be 16-17 years old now - goodness me!

It was good to be reminded that our site should reflect the Manaiakalani Programme priority goals:

• Engagement
• Personalised Learning
• Accelerated achievement
• Empowerment

I am confident that our hub learning site does tick all of these boxes.  I am proud that our Year 4 learners all have our learning site bookmarked and they picked up really early on in the year how to navigate their way around.  Recently when I was away sick for a week I was thrilled to watch a Year 4 group of readers showing their self management skills and getting stuck into their learning without me there.  If we can achieve this with more of our learners this frees the teacher up to actually get on with the act of teaching.

I am a little disappointed that our current cohort of students don't access any of their learning from home and I couldn't confidently even say that any of our parents have even looked at our learning site.  This is quite different from our Covid lockdown learners from 2020, and this is something I want to promote more throughout our hub.

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

Today has made me think more about a few tweaks we could make within our hub, for example, having the same students for both Reading and Writing, and using mixed ability groups.  I really enjoyed the two sessions Naomi led today about "Read like a writer - Write like a reader."  I cannot wait to see what my students produce using the template that we used today using sensory imagery to create suspense.

We have recently looked at how many minutes a day we teach Reading and Writing so when we looked at timetabling it was good to compare with the suggested 90 minutes a day, 4-5 days a week for Literacy, and 45-50 minutes, 4-5 days a week for Reading.  Our hub coverage is Reading 86 minutes daily and Writing 69 minutes daily.  In Years 3-4 the ideal is three groups per teacher per day, 20 mins each group session - this is what we aim for, with one group working independently each day.  At Reading time teachers should be:

• Teaching groups
• Conferencing with students
• Roving around the space
• Tracking/monitoring learning (digitally via Google Classroom/Hapara, with Mahi Trackers or otherwise)
• Observation notes while working with students (e.g. Guided Reading; formative)

Something to think about: Do I give my students enough choice for their Can Do activities? Am I making their learning less fun by taking this choice away?

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

I loved all the examples of Hand It in tracking spreadsheets, with percentage bars and emojis appearing when tasks are completed but I need to keep in mind if this would work bridging the gap between Year 3s on iPads and Year 4s on Chromebooks.  I hope to try one out with my Year 4 group.  I am also keen to work out how I can lock the spreadsheet so that each student can only edit their line on it, and also work out how to hide tabs from students.

I am excited to trial both ReadWorks and Literacy Planet in my Reading programme.  I already have my students use Epic but haven't yet set texts for them to read or used the quiz function this year.  

The session about Reading apps was thought provoking - are the apps engaging, do they cost money, is it too much screen time, and is the app fit for purpose? The "why" is more important than the "what" when it comes to Reading apps.  In a digital world it is also important that we don't forget about the non-digital activities: word work, paired reading/listening, wide reading, and writing/creating.

Very soon our Year 4s will begin blogging and I am excited to add this into my Reading programme for those learners.

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

• New Reading Apps that I learnt about today
• Inference Matrix from our Skill Builder session
• Narrative Beginnings (and Endings) Mentor Texts posters that each break out group created

Reading Practice Intensive - Day 4

 

Day 4 - Guided Reading (& Comprehension)

Term 2 - Day 4 - and we are back into it again! Although attending online, I'm not well and my brain is not functioning at full capacity today. But here goes!

We begun in our smaller breakout groups to go over our home work tasks, and although they are complete I still have a few things to do on my "To Do" list (long term plan of text coverage on my teacher workbook and my digital modelling book).  It was great to share a tip about using Canva for the Year 3 students to record themselves read - that way all of my readers can do the same task with half on Chromebooks and half on iPads.

No insights from Dorothy today as she is at my school at the Manaiakalani Convenors hui, and I miss all that excitement working from home.

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

We started by going over the Manaiakalani Pillars of Reading Practice again. Last term (on Days 1-3) we focussed on the first two pillars. Pillar 1 - Planning for Ambitious Outcomes and Pillar 2 - Planning to Use Diverse Texts. Day 4 (today) will continue to focus on the second pillar with more of a focus on Guided Reading. Guided Reading is still considered to be an important part of a classroom Reading programme in NZ but it is only as good as the teacher's knowledge brought to each session. That includes - a pre-identified small group of learners; shared learning needs of the group; and , texts selected to support the learning needs and engagement considered. Guided Reading should not be taught in isolation but with integrated links to other instructional approaches like shared, buddy and independent reading.

The gurus of Guided Reading are New Zealander, Dame Marie Clay, and American women Irene Fountas and Gay Pinnell. Irene Fountas and Gay Pinnell have extensively developed the work of Dame Marie Clay in the United States, and created substantial Guided Reading resources.

While we are focusing on Guided Reading in today's session, it doesn’t happen in isolation. There are also read aloud (which we would call reading to) where the teacher reads to the learners, shared reading, and independent reading. All reading learning does not happen through Guided Reading only, learning will also happen during these other important reading opportunities as well.

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

I enjoyed the learning about Prior Knowledge and Background Knowledge prior to reading a text, this is something very important at our school with our second language learners. Seeing this in action with the video and the transcript from Whaea Anita was really good. It was interesting to learn about the two different approaches of introducing the learning intention (purpose) - something that makes so much sense but goes against what I've always done!

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

I love the idea of using the student's recordings of themselves read to observe their reading behaviour - the LTR-WWW Protocol (Listening to Reading - Watching While Writing). Also love the Fluency Scale rubric - and this is something my more able students can assess themselves on. It was a little tricky without the actual text in front of me and on my screen instead, meaning I had a screen split in 3. In my trial one it was good to be able to stop and start the recording if I wasn't sure what the student said. Background classroom noise is something I need to talk to my students about this though. I do also wonder how much time this would take to do each student once a week, and would this get faster as I got better at doing it?

I have further work to do on my Digital Modelling book. It was good to see how this connects with everything else in today's session.

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

What will I take back to my team? So much! I think today's session has connected some of the pieces of the puzzle/elements of the previous days. I will share ideas around prior knowledge/background knowledge, when to share learning intentions, the Fluency Scale, the LTR-WWW Protocol, and some graphic organiser ideas.

But in a few days when I am feeling better and a bit more human!

Reading Practice Intensive - Day 3

Day 3 - Text Selection

Another full on day of professional learning! Great to start the day with some reflection on our "homework" tasks as I got some great ideas to take back to school for our mahi on Extended Discussions from my breakout group.  Loved the idea of Accountable Talk based on an enlarged picture (for students to study) and the students having the discussion stems ("I noticed...", "I agree...", etc) to really focus on getting the talk (discussion) flowing.  I also enjoyed seeing everyone's slide decks and will make time to look at these in-depth during the holiday break.

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

Today Dorothy talked about print text vs digital texts.  I found this interesting as recently I have read  online about recent research showing that "using devices has been shown in some studies to contribute to some kids becoming short sighted; particularly if they use devices for long periods of time without interruption." [Charity finds shocking number of New Zealand children with eyesight issues, optometrist blames screens - Grace Thomas - Newshub - 29/12/2023]. Another online article "found that the reading comprehension skills of children who read printed text were six times better when compared to children who read the same content on a digital screen. ['New research shows kids learn better from books over screens" NewstalkZB 17/12/2023].  I guess with everything in life there needs to be a balance but it is something to certainly keep in mind.

Some thought provoking learning about reading in a digital world - reading apps, tools and approaches.  What do we use? What don't we use enough? What about AI? Do we use the technology available to its' full potential? How can we work smarter not harder?  How can we use digital tools to support reading? Tools like - voice typing, Google Keep, transcripts from YouTube, Screencast to develop oral fluency, and assigning tasks using comment function.

Accountability (which I will come to again at the end) also made me think about my students learning.

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

Going over Rudine Sims Bishop's concept of 'Windows, Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors" was good.  I knew a little about the concept from being involved in the Manaiakalani Reading Observations and also our cluster data feedback sessions.  But it makes a lot more sense to me know, especially how "mirrors" can give students a false sense of what the real world is actually like.  I love this quote from the end of the Youtube clip we watched "I mean it's not just children who have been underrepresented and marginalized who need these books. It's also the children who always find their mirrors in the books and, therefore, get an exaggerated sense of their own self-worth and a false sense of what the world is like because it's becoming more and more colourful and diverse as time goes on." [Rudine Sims Bishop - Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors]

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

Accountability came up in discussion several times today - how to I track what my students are doing? How could a Mahi Tracker (spreadsheet) where students link their completed work, or record how many chapters of their library book they read today, etc so I can see all this information in one place without having to open Hapara and checking work has been organised into their Reading folder on their Drive, and just relying on a high trust model that they are infact reading their library book during silent reading time.  Sure, this will take time to set up and for students to learn "how" to do this but they do need to be accountable for their own learning.  

I'm thinking now about how we group our students for reading.  The last two weeks of this term my students are in mixed groups reading, learning and (hopefully) performing plays to each other.  I have mixed my Blue/Level 9 readers in among my Emerald/Level 25 readers but I have never thought to do this for "normal" instructional lessons.  I really enjoyed watching the Flea in the Glass Jar Experiment Youtube clip (which I have seen before) and thought about my lower readers when I watched it today.  Am I limiting their ability to have rich extended discussions when they are just with their group of four?  How can I group my students according to the gaps in their learning (from my assessment data) and have a group focusing on Summarising and another group focusing on Inferring? 

I gained a lot from our work on the The Three-Tiers of Vocabulary Framework. 7000 words in Tier 1 (a third grader likely knows about 8000 words). A literate person would know Tiers 1 and 2.  We need to ensure we teach Tier 3, which makes sense when learning the specialised subject matter.

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

Things to share with my team and the wider staff: Smart chips (something I didn't know about at all), Screencast (and how to do this on a chrome book and a Mac book), using ChatGPT to modify a texts reading level,  the 3 tiers of vocabulary, and probably more that has slipped my full brain at the moment!

I also got a nice little "to purchase" list for the school library today!

Reading Practice Intensive - Day 2

Day 2 - Know Your Learners as Readers

Naomi summed the day up towards the end - the first two days are about "Lighting a fire and keeping that fire lit while we keep going!"

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

We began Day 2 with a very insightful session with Dorothy Burt talking about the Manaiakalani "hook" being about need to hook / entice / reel in students if they are reluctant readers.  We learnt about them awesome things from the birth of Learn Create Share - Literacy Circles and Korero Point England podcasting initiative.  (Blog link and Site link)

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

I really enjoyed learning more about assessment today, talking about formative and summative assessment, what types of assessment we currently do at our schools.  I currently do not share assessment results with my students (I have in the past) and it was good to have a reminder that assessment should be collaborative if students are part of the journey they will make more progress.

When we first looked at the Teacher Workbook tracking spreadsheet my stress levels rose slightly! But now a few hours later I am looking forward to really diving deep into our Year 4 PAT Reading Comprehension data, as well as the Reader Survey results for (what will be) my target group.  Then it will be great to use this assessment to really inform my planning!

It was good to go through the basics of looking at the PAT results (item score, for example) and how to read what information this gives you.  This is something I will go over with my team at next week's team meeting.  I also did not know that there were activities on ARBs that would support PAT gaps.

The green band shows how learners scored, and the percentage who got this question correct above it. The red triangle is the national norm, with the percentage who got it correct as the norm.

Individual learners reports show how they answered each question.  The dotted horizontal line is their stanine and scale score.

Key for what the different dots mean.

Discussing the difference between AOs (Achievement Objectives), LIs (Learning Intentions) and SC (Success Criteria) was good, especially how they connect and that success criteria should be co-constructed with students (which I usually do).

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

I would like to look into doing a bit of podcasting with my learners - either getting students to record themselves reading texts aloud or for students to interview each other about texts that they have read.  I have already discussed this with Sarah (leader of our Year 5-6 hub) and how we could make this work at our kura.  This also resonated with me as only yesterday, at my Leaders of Learning day, we were discussing the correlation between reading at conversational speed and comprehension.

Currently the students in my hub enjoy reading and listening to ebooks on Epic.  I would like to look into other such websites that offer this type of thing for free.

I want to spend some time to really dive deep into my PAT Reading Comprehension data and analyse individual questions so I can make some decisions about how I can up-skill my students to be able to answer these questions correctly.  On initial glance our Year 4 students have gaps in the following questions:

Question 2   - 44.19% answered correctly - Narrative text

Question 13 - 40.48% answered correctly - Narrative text

Question 16 - 42.86% answered correctly - Explanation text

Question 17 - 38.10% answered correctly - Explanation text

Question 18 - 38.10% answered correctly - Explanation text

Question 19 - 23.80% answered correctly - Explanation text

Question 22 - 38.10% answered correctly - Procedural text

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

I will be sharing numerous content with my team (as explained above) and also reporting back to the Senior Leadership team when we meet next week.  I am also grateful that I have a colleague also taking part in the Reading Practice Intensive so that we can discuss how we found the session today and what our personal next steps are and any things we could do together - it is great to have a sounding board to throw ideas around.

Another full on day of learning - feeling enthused but also wishing for more hours in a day! Feeling a bit mind-blown!

Term 1 Reader Profile Survey

This week I analysed the results of a reading survey on my Year 3 and Year 4 learners.  

The first key observation was the reading skills actually involved in completing the survey - many students needed assistance with reading the questions or needed an adult to ask them (interview style) the questions one-to-one.  I know I was ambitious trying to capture the viewpoint of my whole hub but I only ended up getting 55 out of 76 to do it. (And I'm not even going to mention the nightmare of discovering that when the students tried to do it on iPads they ended up editing someone else's as they were doing it at the same time!)

Students in my hub are a mixture of Year 4 students that were in my Year 3/4 hub last year, and Year 3 and Year 4 students who have moved up from the Year 2/3 hub.  I knew that they had different experiences with how Reading is delivered and taught at school.  I was surprised that 35% of students didn't like Reading at school.  I think this is a bit sad, and wonder what we as teachers can do to change their perceptions.

I was pleased to see that 71% of students are currently reading a book for enjoyment.  I did assume this may be higher -we regularly visit the school library regularly and have lots of opportunities where students silent read.  Do I assume the others just have a chapter book in their crate that they don't read or that they are not enjoying reading the book they currently have out from the library?

I was also pleased that 80% of students think that reading can make them smarter and help them to relax.  

I was a bit shocked in the number of students that had a card for the public library.  The Hornby public library is literally within our school zone and less than a 10 minute walk from our school.  During Covid times the "library bus" came to visit us (although a bit irregularly) and we got a lot of our students signed up with library cards at the time.  This cohort of students would possibly have not quite started school.  It is a real shame that such a free, community resource is not valued and utilised more by our families.  Does this also reflect on our student's parents as readers themselves?

The variety of types of books students enjoy reading was pretty much as I thought, and reflects perhaps what teachers read to their classes for our "Feed & Read" each day.  Common answers - chapter books, funny books, scary books and picture books.

Further results if you are interested are here:

So now what?

I am looking forward to diving deeper into what I can do as a teacher to change these survey results for the positive.  I have some ideas already (promote silent reading, book selling popular authors to really hook these kids into wanting to read certain titles, exploring the library to capture the interest in books other than chapter books or picture books).  I am more exciting to get into this professional learning and be able to share it with my wider team.