Key into Inference

One tool that I have been really excited about this year has been the key into inference resource. I have only really just scratched the surface of using this as a tool but from what I have used and see it has been really effective in making my students think critically and not just pick a literal conclusion. I have used this tool as a micro formative tool throughout the year and it has been one of trial and error which I will outline in detail below. 

The first thing I tired was photocopying the tasks for the students and having them complete them during guided reading. This did not work as well as I would have liked. It was one of those things that took a long time to organise because there weren't enough pencils (they have mysteriously vanished as usual). So this was the first part of the hurdle the second part was actually being able to understand what they students had written, some of the writing is very clear and some is very hard to decipher. So after much trial and error this way I decided lets try something else. 

The second thing I have tried is to create these in Google Form for the students to complete either before guided reading or during guided reading. This has proved to be quite useful and an easier way to look at the data and analyse it quickly as it is already in a spreadsheet. The only problem I have encountered with this is making sure that the link is only visible to the students in my class due to copyright. The other issue I am having is teacher error, I have created these forms but each time I have created them there is something that I haven't like about it or something that hasn't been effective. So again this is a work in progress. I know I will be able to continue to use these resources for the rest of the year as well as next year so its about trying to find what works and what doesn't. 

From the few of these that I have completed this has been a really effective tool to quickly gauge where students are and what they need to work on. I am just needing to make it more user friendly for myself and my classroom, so watch this space!

Student Voice

I have been pondering student voice for the last few weeks now and have been trying to think of the best way to a) collate this and b) how to show that there have been changes throughout the year. I always tend to find that this is the last thing I think to look at whereas it should be the first thing we look at. Because the students are the ones who we are needing to see if they are enjoying the changes and if they are working for them. 

I have been lucky enough to be recording Class OnAir again this year and I have been able to capture some great student voice throughout the year. Even though I haven't complete formal assessment of student voice I have been able to gather this anecdotally throughout the year. We have been focusing on how to infer meaning and some of that has been through the development of characters in a story, how they are described and what actions they are showing in a text. 

The more I think about student voice the more I think about to one of my lessons this year, which I thankfully had on camera for a Class OnAir episode. One of the questions was how do we know then the text was written. There were many clues of this in the text however most of the students thought that it must be in olden times because it was about an old lady. But one of my students pointed out that they were watching the show "Brooklyn 99" which is show that has only recently been around. Through this realisation the students made the comment that he was "mind blown" because he could finally see that there are clues through the text that we can use to understand hidden meaning. This was not only a great learning experience for the students but it made the other students excited to find clues as well as complete the follow up task of creating a GIF. 

I have come up with a way to access student voice and this has been more of an anecdotal way this year. At the beginning of the year students set goals for what they wanted to achieve and a lot of these goals were around reading and how to improve. So I will use this as a baseline and then interview each of the students as a goal check in to see how they are going with their goal and how much they understand the key areas that they have been working on in literacy this year.