Text Coverage

As part of RPI we have been introduced to a workbook that we can use as a tool to collate all of our data for reading as well as tracking our learners, planning and text coverage. Part of our homework between sessions three and four was to fill out the text coverage section of our workbook. I decided to start with reflecting on term one to see what I had completed and where any of my gaps might have been with text selection. 

I started by looking at groups individually and seeing what we had covered during our guided reading sessions. One thing I noticed straight away was how heavily I had used fiction texts during term one. I then decided to have a look at whole class teaching for reading and realised that as a class we had covered a lot of non-fiction texts related to the overall reading topic of the week. 

One key learning I had from being able to visually see my text coverage was that there were lots of gaps with texts such as poems, novel and pictures. I think as teachers we often forget how powerful pictures can be for our students and how reading these can be helpful in transferring inferencing from images to text. 

Next steps for me on this is to continue to work on filling out the text coverage sheet and use this in my mid to long term planning to ensure that all text types are covered. 

Formative Information through Observations

Formative Information

One of the really useful parts of RPI has been having my mentor, Toni Nua, come in to observe my literacy and guided reading sessions. It’s given us a chance to have some great conversations about what’s going well and where I can keep growing to make my literacy program even better. Recently, Toni watched a lesson I did on "Suspenseful Beginnings." In this activity, I gave students a suspenseful start to a story, and they had to add their own powerful vocabulary to create an opening the grabbed the attention of the audience. 

From this observation, a couple of things really stood out. One big takeaway was making sure to set clear expectations at the start so the students know what the session will look like and what they’ll be doing. I also realised I need to give them more space to share their ideas. Adding a bit more "wait time" in discussions lets them think things through and contribute more, rather than me jumping in with answers or prompts too quickly.

I've also started recording some of my sessions with groups so I can look back and reflect on my practice. My aim is to have at least two recorded lessons each term to track my progress and spot areas that could use some tweaking. Watching these back will help me see what’s working well and what might need a different approach. It also means I can share these recordings with Toni to get more feedback on specific areas, especially within guided reading, to keep improving.

I’ve added a few examples of our suspenseful beginnings creations to this blog post. After the students wrote their suspenseful openings, I decided to use CrayonAI to generate images based on what they’d written. This was a really fun activity, and the students loved seeing their words come to life visually. 

RPI Day 6: Vocabulary

I absolutely loved todays session, the focus was around vocabulary and getting our students excited about words. My biggest takeaway was that vocabulary improvement plays a critical role in all aspects of our teaching, this can be either topic specific vocabulary or looking at those tier II words. 

Connecting with Manaiakalani

Our first session with Dorothy Burt this morning was really insightful and I got a lot out of it. I will admit google docs is not an application that I use a lot in the classroom I often revert to slides but after today I will be making changes to how I use google docs. There is so many great things that can be created in docs and I am excited to try some of these new things out in the classroom especially around vocabulary and adding these into my follow up activities and planning. This is definitely a slide deck I will be going back to for ideas on how to change up my follow up tasks and pre reading tasks. 

Background Knowledge

This image slide really resonated with me and made me think about how important vocabulary is to our students. I really liked the use of the spotlight activity and again this is something that I will be using in the classroom. I think it will be a really effective way to see where my learners are at before even reading the text and seeing what our next steps are going forward, this could also pick up other key words that might need some extra focus. Another thing that was a lightbulb moment was reading words into contexts. We were given some really great tools that I will look into using and will just make it a key part of my planning as well.

Word Conciseness

We had a chance to look at some really cool vocab games and challenges that we could try in the classroom. I know my class will love them so am excited to take this back with me into the classroom next week.  This part of the session really highlighted my need to have a visible word wall and this is something that has been added to my holiday to do list!

Explicit, robust learning opportunities 

Looking into tier II words in more detail was really good and being explained the lexical-bar was really interesting. The thing that stood out most and got me thinking about how I can do this is bridging the gap between at home language and school language. This is interesting as it is something that I have been discussing with my class a lot lately especially around professional and unprofessional environments. I really liked the term survival words and I think that is a really important thing to be thinking about when introducing a text to students. 

Cracking Unfamiliar Words

I loved this session as it really made me stop and think about what I actually do in the classroom to make sure that students can chunk words and how they can tackle hard words they come across. I have a lot more tools that I am keen to try out in the classroom and focus on not just looking at this with my lower readers but my higher readers as well. Syllables has been something that we have started looked at with writing poems and I really like the chin test to see how many syllables each word has. 

Morphology

I have really reflected on this part of the day and looked into my teaching practice and seeing where this actually currently fits in my planning and this is definitely an area that I need to put more focus on. I haven't really added this into my long term planning and it becomes something that is occasionally looked at during guided reading or as a vocabulary follow up slide that is never really delved into deeper. I am going to be adding word work into my timetable going forward and there are so many amazing and creative ways that I will be able to do this. I am looking at having a shared text for Matariki next week and am really keen to try out some of the new things that I have learnt today. Spelling progressions is another thing that I am keen to try and look into, I know we have a list that we work off so am going to locate that and add that to part of the program. 

I have really learnt a lot from today and I am really excited to incorporate many of these new ideas in the classroom from next week. I will be adding this to my long term planning. We have planning for learning coming up next week and I am really excited to share this learning with my team and see how we can all incorporate this into our planning. I have decided that I would love to try a word for the day and have different puzzle activities for my students. I am very excited to have those reading and writing connections which I am going to have in my planning so looking at the same sort of text for reading that we will use in our writing to strengthen both areas. I also have lots of my own learning around some of these things we have learnt today which I am excited about. I really did get a lot out of todays session and I am looking forward to next week and the changes that I am going to implement. 

Adjustment Reflections

Our last RPI session was around our literacy timetables, independent activities, reading apps and making reading-writing links. Since our last session we have been asked to make some tweaks and changes to our practice that aligned with the last session. I have made a few changes and tried out a few new things which I will reflect on in this blog post. 

Timetabling
I haven't had much of a chance to change up my timetable for seeing groups during literacy however I have made changes to what each of these groups are doing when they come and see me. I try to see each of my groups each day during literacy to either have a guided reading session, writing session or a check in with each of the groups. I have made my groups for reading and writing the same so that I am able to change up what we are discussing as required. This has been really helpful in trying to implement new activities. One of the things I have reflection on since our last RPI session is to not be afraid to use group time to go through activities so this has been really helpful. 

Reading Apps
One thing that I have started to implement in the classroom is the read along app where students read aloud to their chromebooks and their voices are picked up and they are given stars for words they get correct and then opportunities to learn how unfamiliar words are said. The students have really loved using this tool and love seeing how many stars that they can get. Another thing I have changed with my reading apps is how I use Epic! I have now been working on giving students extra texts related to the topic of the week so they are having more reading milage on a particular topic. 

Turn-it-in sheets
I had really grand plans of changing my turn-it-in sheets but unfortunately with reports being due and being out of the classroom for a week due to a family matter I haven't had the chance to change this yet. I will work on changing this up over the holidays, my students are already really familiar with using a turn-it-in sheet I just want to make it fancier with a progress bar like some of the ones we looked at during RPI session 5. So watch this space, new layout coming soon!

Reading-writing links
This is something that I have really loved trying to incorporate with my students. I have been making sure to take the time to identify links at any opportunity so that the students are able to see these links a bit better. I tried out the suspenseful beginning task with my class which was an interesting experience. In reflection I should have modelled this better the first time and gone through it step by step to make sure the students understood the brief. There was a lot of confusion along the lesson as I could have made it more explicit, however the end product was great and the students by the end really enjoyed it. I will definitely do this again and I think I will use the same prompt so that the students know what they are doing and will so this as a whole class. Toni Nua came in and observed this lesson and we had a really great conversation after this lesson with some next steps and things that I could have done differently and will definitely take on board when I do this lesson again. 

It has been a great few weeks making tweaks and changes and I am really excited to keep these things going in the classroom. These are also really great tools and ideas that I will take into term 3 with me as well as share with my team so that we can all do this in our space for term 3!

Stocktake so far...

It has come to that part of our inquiry where we have been asked to stocktake what we have done so far. I have used the questions below to help structure this blog post and have kept them in here as well just so you know what I am answering and why. 

Have I used a range of sources/ tools/ evidence about the students to understand their learning in a really rich and detailed way? Do these include: standardised assessments, student voice, whānau voice?

In my previous blog posts I have outlined some of the tools and evidence that I have used about the students in detail which has allowed me to really understand their learning in a rich and detailed way. Some of the key tools and evidence that I have used are:

• PAT Reading Data 
• PAT STAR Data 
• PROBE reading test
• Observations from guided reading
• Reflections from guided reading sessions
• Reader profile survey (student voice)
• Whānau voice I will gather from parent interviews later on this term.  

Do I understand their strengths at least as much as I understand their areas for development?

From the tools and evidence that I have collected I have been able to see the areas that my students excel in which is being able to decode really well. The students are also able to easily locate key information from the text to answer literal questions. I will continue to work on strengthening these areas as well as working towards filling the gaps. 

Have I developed a strong profile of their achievement based on sound theories from a range of relevant sources?

I have looked into some academic readings which I have written about in a previous blog post. I am also part of RPI this year so we have completed a range of readings that have linked to the changes that we have been making to our practice. I have also written about these changes in my RPI reflection blog posts after each session as well as the homework tasks that we needed to complete between sessions. 

Identify THREE measures you could use pre- and post- to compare students’ learning before and after your intervention.

I am going to be using a range of different tools to measure pre and post intervention to be able to compare learning. I will outline this below with a brief description. 

• PAT data - I will use Reading Comprehension and STAR to compare students data from the beginning and end of the year.
• Running Records & Probe tests - again I will compare this data from the beginning of the year to mid year to end of the year. 
• Reader profile survey - I will compare this data at three time points throughout the year to see if there are any changes to student voice on reading. 
• Observation data - I will collate this and see what trends I am noticing from observations. 

What opportunities have presented themselves during this time to innovate and collect evidence of students’ learning?

I have been very fortunate this year to be part of RPI so I have had a range of different ways to collect evidence pop up throughout the year so far. Form talking with colleagues and looking at data in depth I have also come up with different tools such as probe to have a different set of data to see what areas need extra development. Ground rules for talk has also been an incredible way to give students the power in group discussions, this is something I want to continue to develop.