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.

Reading Practice Intensive - Day 7

 Day 7 - Thinking

We are now into the final term of the Reading Practice Intensive with 3 sessions to go - Thinking, Creating and Sharing.  To quote Dorothy "it's always fun to be thinking about thinking!"

We began by going into our smaller breakout groups and looking through our Homework tasks.  This is always a great part of each session as you learn so much from other participants.  It is nice to reflect about what we are proud of, have found challenging, found helpful and what we might still need support with.

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

Dorothy spoke to us about the 21st century skills (Critical Thinking, Communication, Creativity and Collaboration) that are essential for our young people in the world we live in.  She talked about how the Manaiakalani cybersmart programme supports the development and growth of thinking - especially in the Smart Learners and Smart Media areas.  Information should be read critically.  Smart Learners critically examine information online.  

Dorothy is always great at sharing gems of knowledge - whether it is a new website or app or something that I have seen before but had forgotten about.  She reminded me about the Cybersmart Challenges (Fake News, Media Bias, Copyright) cover what is true and what is fake.  I am excited to try the new Adobe Podcast and love the feature of removing background noise and being able to edit the audio like a doc.

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

We looked at the Levels of Thinking.  Learners should have opportunities to develop awareness of the ‘levels of thinking’ involved in being a good reader. 

At the literal level (‘reading on the lines’) information is stated directly and can be located at one or more places.

At an interpretive level (‘reading between the lines’) readers have to use their reasoning and critical analysis skills to work out an implied or suggested meaning (not directly stated). Due to the interpretive nature of the meaning making, care needs to be taken to uphold the integrity of the author’s intention by aligning as much as possible with the evidence available. 

At the evaluative level (‘reading beyond the lines’) readers are making judgements concerning values, correctness or issues of wider social significance (and relating these to their own contexts and lives).

We then looked at these levels using the text "Jump" as well as a YouTube clip of someone bungee jumping and a poem.

We revisited Blooms, Do Bono's Thinking Hats and Solo Taxonomy and how these show a progression from lower order (below the line) to higher order (above the line) thinking. Above the line or “higher order” thinking is more complex, requiring more ‘brain power’. Part of the reason for this complexity is the need to hold more things in one’s head at a time. Another is the 'higher' you go the more abstract (less concrete) the thinking. This is also in part to help hold more things in our head ideas are conceptualised in abstract terms to group, categorise and generalise.

We discussed the 'higher-order thinking skills' like analysing, evaluated and creating. Analysis can be seen as the opposite of summarising.  It was a chance to think about the difference between interpretive questions and evaluative questions,  It can be challenging to be sure of the difference between these, but I like the point that Naomi made about evaluative questions often having an element of interpretation within them. 

Students need to use "hawk eyes" to zoom in and zoom out at a text.  

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

We watched a video about how to annotate a PDF - I didn't know you could do this, so this is a great tool that I can use.  Here is a video I found to use to teach my students how to do this on their chromebooks.

We talked about using the TSM materials for guidance about the figurative language (which I already do) and we had some time to create reading responses for a text that we brought along to use today.  We also talked about practising visualising and interpreting using images - literal verses abstract.  Comparing one thing to another involves thinking about unusual comparisons and why author’s use these comparisons to invoke ideas, emotions, and other features like mood and atmosphere.

We read a poem "The Cave" which was just the text (without showing the illustration until later). What images or pictures did the poet create in our minds? What was the person doing in the poem? How did we know?  After a discussion you would show the students the poem in the school journal and ask - Was this the kind of image of the cave you were thinking of in your mind? 

We learnt about how we can use a provocation - present it, discuss it and then ask who agrees or disagrees.

This was the provocation from the text "The Jump"...

A provocation, dilemma or perspective can also stimulate higher order thinking through discussion. Collective thinking about a problem can support learners to get to “the bottom of an issue” together: many heads are better than one.

As a teacher I should be looking for opportunities to challenge and resist.  

We had an opportunity to create a provocation from the text that we brought along.  My text was "No Girls Allowed" so I chose "Rugby should only be played by boys!"  Questions to follow would be - What character do you relate to?  Have you ever felt like this character? Who is the author? What message is the author trying to share with us?  Why was the text created? What does this text say about your gender roles?  Follow up ideas - Re-write the text so it has a different ending, Make a petition, Write a letter to the tournament organisers.

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

Once again I have a lot of great ideas and resources from today's session.  Lots to share back to my team at school, and lots to get stuck into and use in my Reading programme.  It was great today to have so much time to create a resource based on the text we brought during the day, and for it to be be complete and ready to use now.

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!