RPI: Day 8 Create!

I really enjoyed todays session as it allowed us to be creative as well as to think about what create does look like in the classroom. I often spend a lot of time trying to come up with the prefect create task that I sometimes forget about that simpler create tasks that can be just as effective with learning and also makes all students to be able to feel successful in their tasks and their own learning. I am excited to make some changes to my create tasks in the next few weeks and gain student feedback on the types of tasks that they enjoy doing. 

Reflecting

It it always really good to start our RPI sessions looking at the homework and reflecting on what has been working in the classroom. As part of our homework we needed to have an observation of one of our reading sessions looking provocations and having group discussions. For this I was able to record one of my sessions and then go through it with my mentor Toni Nua and talk about some of the things that I could change to make sure that all of my students are sharing with each other during reading sessions. I have a small group of girls who tend to sit quietly and not engage with others during guided reading and will let others share so I was able to share this with my group this morning and gain some other ideas to try in the classroom. Thankyou Georgie! I am looking forward to trying out the post it notes with this group next week. I was also able to reflect on my own teacher wait time, I often will just answer the question and move on without giving the students the chance to agree or disagree with each other or add in something new. So I am going to be going back to basics with my ground rules for talk and allowing the students the opportunity to share during guided reading. These students are moving into the reading to learn phase of their reading journeys and we don't need to go through every single question or part of the text when we meet during guided reading they are able to be more independent with their reading and my focus for the next little while will be fostering those critical thinking conversations. 

Create 
Dorothy Burt came to talk to us about create this morning and made us think about why our learners create. This was a really great part of RPI today because it brought it back to the reason that we do create in the classroom. It was really interesting and positive to see that New Zealand has ranked 5th in the world for creativity with our 15 year olds! I think this really highlighted the importance of create and why we do it.

This morning we were asked to read a part of the poem and then design our slide with what the poem was showing. I used Crayon AI to come up with these images. It was a really interesting process as I couldn't quite get exactly what I was wanting from the images. It was really fun at the end to then compare what we had done and the imagery that was given from the poem. I do get a bit nervous with creativity myself as I feel like I am not very artistic but being about to use these tools made me feel a lot more confident in being able to share my take on the image. 

Routine Opportunities
We looked at a range of different create tasks and were able to create some tasks that were asking the students to design and create. This was a really nice time to be reminded that not all of these create tasks need to be elaborate but we can do this smaller design tasks that I think will allow the students to be able to feel successful in what they are doing in reading. I love the text Sunday Hero and it was really fun to come up with a stencil task for this. I am really excited to do this in class and see what the students can create. 

Choice 

I really enjoyed looking at some different things that we can try in the classroom and have students to use to create. I often forget about the great tools like "Storyboard That!" and using quizzes for students to be able to create. I have been looking at this as a follow up task using a doc and having students ask each other questions but I really like the idea of making this into a activity where students can create their own quiz to share with each other. 

Book Trailer

This was a really fun activity, we were able to create a book trailer for a book that we really like to be able to sell to someone else. I actually really enjoyed doing this and this is definitely something that I will try and do in the classroom. It will be really interesting to see students recommending books to each other. 

Longer Create Tasks

I really liked looking at the novel study sites and am thinking how cool this would be to have in our space as a resource. I always have good intentions to start a novel study but it never comes to fruition we get half way through and stop. I feel like creating a site where the students can go will keep me accountable in being able to complete this until the end of the book. 

Overall I really enjoyed today and I got so much out of it to bring into the classroom in the next three weeks. I am looking forward to implementing some of these create tasks and seeing how the students go. I am also looking forward to working on the collaboration aspects with my students because I know they love to work and share together so it will be really fun to see what types of things we create in the next few weeks!

RPI Day 7: Thinking

Sharing and reflecting
This morning we started with sharing about our successes and challenges since our last session. I really enjoy this part of the session as we are able to share different thoughts and ideas with each other. During this time I was reflecting on how I am completing my vocabulary and word work activities. I have been doing this separately and having a spelling task for overall words but what I would like to try next week is have my vocabulary tasks instead of overall spelling and they will hopefully nicely link my reading and writing. Some other suggestions to check out from this morning is using the Cambridge dictionary and online voice recorder to record discussions. I am also really keen to check out other people's vocabulary tasks that they have created and try to incorporate some of these into my own planning.

Smart thinking for smart learners
I really enjoyed hearing from Dorothy and being connected to some different tools that we can use in the classroom to engage our learners to make them think. I will definitely be looking into the fake news sites that have been created and link my class and team back to the fake news Cybersmart lessons as a way to introduce this to the students. I am really excited to look into Squiz Kids and use this in the classroom. We have also been looking at podcasts as a school and I am really excited to use this with the students as I think it will be a really great tool for students to be able to record themselves reading and remove all of that background noise from the classroom. 

Higher Order Thinking
It was really great to look at different examples of questions that we can be asking our students during guided reading sessions dn then incorporating these into follow up activities as well. I think I often can create literal and interpretive questions but I often leave out the evaluative questions where students need to make a judgement based on the information from the text. I know that my students will really love this challenge and I am looking forward to using this in the classroom in the coming weeks.

Analysis

We looked at Blooms in detail during this part of the day which was really interesting. I have seen this model before but never really deep dived into it and we were given a really great explanation of it and how we can use this in the classroom. I have learnt a new tool of using highlight on PDF which I am very excited to use in the classroom. I have previously been printing off the text for the students to highlight old school so I am really keen to try this out. One big takeaway from this session was showing a competing definition of a word to counter the evidence as this will really make the students think a lot more critically. I will be using this in my planning next week so will let you know how this goes! 

Explore 
One key thing we discussed today that has stuck with me is students not just being passive consumers of a text, we want them to be able to think critically about what they are reading. We looked at a range of different digital organisers that support the exploration of texts. I am quite excited to create some of these and use these in the classroom in the coming weeks. 

Critical Analysis 
We also had a deep dive into perspectives and positioning and how we can make sure to add this into our literacy program. With perspectives we looked at creating provocations about a theme in a text, this was something that I initially struggled with because I think I was thinking too much about it. However once I started to read the text and pick out the key messages and ideas I could feel the cogs in my brain turning to find a provocation linked to my text. I am really excited to bring this to my reading groups next week and focus on having those discussions during and after our sessions. I am interested to see how the students tackle this for the first time and can’t wait to hear their thoughts and ideas around the topic. As I think about this I also remember a key thing from this part of the day and that is exploring the fact that disagreement can be risky and we need to make sure that we have a discussion around what it means to share a thought and opinion as a group. So I may start out with an introduction piece to get the students comfortable with having a position or idea that not everyone might agree with. 

We also explored how to be purposeful and to add bias for the students into texts that can lead to discussions. I really liked how Naomi had used the text Jump and taken other parts out of this text to lead to a bias that the students could very easily see once it was pointed out as well as a great way to build and foster conversations and discussion around this. This really made me think about how I need to be more intentional with some of the key messages and ideas that I pull out of the text as well as explicitly bringing these ideas out during guided reading. I have reflected during this time that this is something that I need to work on, I need to explicitly put this information in my planning so that we are able to bring it out during our guided reading sessions. 

Response to text
Finally today we looked at how to create a response to text task that will really make the students think critically about what they are reading. We were given the opportunity to plan for a group for next week and I am looking forward to seeing what my students create from this text, guided reading and response to text task. 

I thoroughly enjoyed today's session and I have taken a lot away with me. We had a chance to reflect on Planning for Higher Order Thinking and what we could change in our teaching practice to ensure that this is happening in the classroom. You can see from the image I have added above I have lots of areas that I would like to work on in the next three weeks in order to plan for Higher Order Thinking. So I am very excited to see what the next three weeks brings and I cannot wait to share what my students come up with and share with each other during discussions. 

RPI Day 6 Reflection and Changes

After our last RPI session we were asked to have a look at our word work and see how we were timetabling for this in the classroom. This was something that I was focusing on during guided reading and pointing out key words as we were reading however I wasn't actively involving this into my follow up tasks. I have tried a few new things since our last RPI day and I have loved putting them together and my students have enjoyed looking at key words in greater detail. One thing I have really focused on brining back to my literacy program is spelling words and linking these back to the texts that we are reading to give the students more opportunities to see and use these words. 

Spotlight
This has been a great activity that I have been trying in small groups as well as the whole
class. The thing I really like about this activity is that it make the students think about each of the words before we even begin reading the text and allows some of the students who do know what the words mean the opportunity to share with their peers. This activity has also been really beneficial after reading. I have been working with groups through this step so far but it has been great to locate the word with the students and have them reread the sentence or paragraph to find clues about what each word could mean. I am interested to see how the students go working together without teacher input for this part of the activity, so watch this space I will report back with how that goes and the best way to monitor that. 

Word Associations
This has been another activity that I have tried in the last few weeks and the students really enjoy it with being about to connect these words to different words to make sense of the word or to make meaning. After the initial stress of trying to find words that are associated I have also enjoyed preparing this task and walking the students through it and I think it has been really beneficial. 

When have/might you ..?
This is another thing that I have added in which is still developing with my groups. I have
found they are able to think about where the answer but need to elaborate on the answer. The one thing I have found hard with this is finding a good voice recording tool for the students to use on their chromebooks so that I am able to hear the discussions that they are having. 

Next steps
After meeting with my RPI mentor Toni Nua we have come up with a few other things that I can try in the classroom to develop students understanding and knowledge of words. One thing that I am going to try as an overview of a topic or an introduction to a topic is Wordplosion. This will help the students to be able to look at the root words and then be able to build on these words looking at the word families as well as looking at synonyms for words. I am quite excited to try this and I think it lends itself really nicely with our topic for this term.