RPI Day 8 Reflections

For our homework from our last session we needed to complete another reader profile survey on our students as well as provide some create tasks that we had looked into at our last session. 

Create Tasks 
I really love the text Sunday Hero as it has a lot of key ideas to pull out from it. For my create task for this I had the students design keys that show how Oma remembered things from the past. The students then had to describe what they keys were showing and then share this with someone else in their group to respond to what they keys made them think of from the story. The one thing that was really difficult was copy and pasting the keys into Photopea which is where most of my students enjoy doing their create tasks. So next time I think I will have a PNG download of the image that they can save and then upload into Photopea. I do think it went really well having the outline of the key for them ready to go as they were then able to create with the outline already there. Some of them came up with some really cool designs which they have linked on their blog. I did really enjoy this task and I think the students did too.

Reader Profile Survey 
I did this again with the class and there was some shift but not as much as I thought their might be. One of the things that was positive though was the students rating themselves slightly higher on liking reading at school, "I am good at reading" and "My teacher thinks I am good at reading." It was also a good reminder to see what kind of texts that my students enjoy reading so I am thinking for the rest of there I will try and incorporate some of these different texts into our reading program so that the students are being exposed to a range of different texts. 

I have really enjoyed changing up my create tasks and response to texts tasks in the last few weeks and am excited to keep these going in the classroom. I have also enjoyed looking at the data from the reader profile survey and thinking about how I can add and change to my reading program to try and push those results more in a positive direction. I would like to complete this one more time next term to see if any of the other changes I have in class will make an impact. I will share this again next term!

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. 

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!

RPI Day 5 - Planning a Reading Programme

Today we had day five of RPI which was titled planning a reading program. There were some really interesting ideas and new tools that have come out of todays session which I am excited to share as well as take back with me into the classroom. As always with RPI day's I love gathering all of this new information and trying to think about how I will add this into my following weeks planning. 

Reflections
At the beginning of todays session we were asked to reflect on the homework tasks and share what is going well and what we might need support around. As I shared in my breakout group I have found a new passion and excitement from reading planning since our last session. I have been adding and trying things in the classroom that were not too dissimilar to what I was doing but I feel a bit more inspired about them and thinking about how I can include student voice and really have students delve deep into topics and have discussions around what they are learning. I have had some really great conversations with Toni my mentor around adding in novels and other texts to really extended those readers which I am also excited to continue to put into practice. 

Class Sites
We were fortunate enough to have Fiona Grant join us this morning to talk through class sites and to think about the progression that these have made over the years. It was really great to be reminded of the four key goals for class sites and thinking about how we can ensure that our learners know how to navigate the class site as well ass sharing this with whānau. This has been a really good reminder for me to check that the class site is functional and that all of the links are working and to ensure that during parent teacher conferences this term that whānau do know how to access the class site. 

Looking at the bigger picture
The key focus for today was around linking reading and writing and finding ways in which
we can integrate the two. One key thing that stood out for me in this particular part of the session was having workshops and conferences with my groups. I think I so often focus on getting those guided reading sessions done and pulling out the key ideas and listening to the students read I often forget to check in with the learners and give them the opportunity to share their learning in a group setting. So this is definitely something that I am going to be adding into my timetabling going forward.

Teacher Timetabling
I eluded to this a in my previous paragraph about making time and ensuring the time for conferencing with the students. I do try and make time for this during our literacy rotations and I do always manage to get through my groups and see them enough times however sometimes these sessions can take longer than expected and it takes away from the conferencing time with the students. My big take away from this part of the day was to be intentional with my timetabling and add in these times. I think by having more detail in this timetable will make sure that I stick to it and that I have time for all of the things I want and need to complete in the classroom. So watch this space on this one! There never seems to be enough time in the day!!

Mahi Tracker
I currently have a turn it in sheet that the students use and we have been working on getting better at adding things this term. I have seen some really amazing ones today that are really clear and show the progress that I would like to try out in my class. So I am very much looking forward to revamping my current turn it in sheets to be more user friendly and visually appealing. 

Digital Reading Apps
This was a really interesting part of today looking at some of the digital apps in more detail. I currently use EPIC! in my classroom but I have discovered today how many amazing features it has that I am definitely going to be using going forward. I have added the students into groups and will be trying from next week to give them specific books to look at. I am also really excited to try out https://readalong.google.com with Fiona Grant recommended, I will be adding that into my choice board from next week!

Skill Builder Inferencing
Again another incredible skill builder session today all about inferencing. I am really looking forward to trying some of these tasks in the classroom. I always forget about how powerful it is to just use an image for inferencing and using that as a starting point. This part of today also reminded me of the key into inference workbook that we have a school so will be adding this into the mix as well. 

Read like writers and write like readers
This part of todays session was by far my favourite by looking into different ways that we can use journals and texts to model the way in which we want our learners to explore language and features in their writing. We read the opening paragraph to the story "Great Beginnings" which has a lot of really beautiful language to describe the opening to the story. From this we were then given some prompts and questions to eventually write our own paragraph. This is something that I am very excited to try in my classroom. It also happens to be a part of our homework for our next RPI session, so I hope to reflect on how that goes before my next session. 

As always I have really enjoyed my RPI session today and have taken away some key things that I am really excited to explore and use in my classroom and literacy rotation. I love that with reading and writing there is always something new to explore which is why I think reading is such a passion subject of mine. I have lots of things to explore in the next few weeks and I can wait to see how they turn out and to share my findings on here, so watch this space!

Hybrid Learning

The last few weeks have been an interesting few weeks! Our number of students at school dropped dramatically for a week or so and then have started to pick back up again. This made us as a school reflect on what was needed for our community in order to continue giving our learners access to their learning and education. We deiced as a school to have a hybrid way of learning where our students at school would continue on with learning as "normal" as possible with the option for our students at home isolating to continue learning at the same time. 

What does this look like?

For our students at home we have gone back to our online learning model that we have used for the last few years with out team. Students have access to learning each day as well as two Google Meets a day to connect with a teacher from our team. The students at school are then shared among the teachers at school to continue learning at school. I have been tasked with looking after our online learners for the last few weeks and it has been an interesting and rewarding experience. 

In our first two weeks I had a large number of students learning online due to isolating at home. This was where we had more students online than at school. It was really beneficial for the students and their families have access to this while at they were needing to be at home. 

Online learning 

The online learning model that I set up was similar to previous years where students has access to reading, writing, maths and a design task each day. We have looked at different countries around the world which has peaked interest each day to come online and join the meets and find out what we are learning. (Pictured below)

We would also run two meets a day, one at 9am and the other at 12pm for the students to check in with me online for help with the work on the site and also wellbeing checks. 

My focus for the 9am online meet was always an introduction to the topic where we would go though each task for the day in detail and read the text as a group. Students would also have the opportunity to ask for help if they needed it. Our 12pm meets were always a wellbeing meet with a bit of fun for the students as well. I wanted to have it like this so we would have engagement with our learners online which would also then transition into coming back to school. 

The students seemed to really enjoy the online learning with many ready to return straight back to school after isolation periods. By keeping the learning going online and showing that school was a safe place to be after isolating it allowed the students to feel more comfortable coming back to school. It has also made those at school who need to go into isolation more comfortable with jumping online when they are at home and making the transitions easy. 

School learning 

This week our numbers has increased considerably with my class now being at almost 70% back in class. This has been a great change to see and has also changed the way in which we are running our online learning. We will continue to run it as is for the rest of this week and then will change to focus more on the students who are at school while also providing some sort of online learning to those who are at home isolating. My thoughts at this stage are to reduce the number of online meets to one a day where it is just a check in with the learners and see how they are going while also providing daily activities for them to complete. While those students at school will have "normal" like the beginning of the year learning. 

By having this option of online learning still accessible it will be easy to change to the demands of our team for those who need online learning and those who need at school learning. This has been a great way to try and continue on with engaged learners both at home and at school. 

Raising Reading Achievement Site - MIT 2019

Reflections and next steps:

It has come to that time of year where I am reflecting on what I have learnt through this MIT experience. I have had many ups and downs along with big changes throughout the year. I am on track with my reading site with still needing to add some resources sitting in my drive for my site to be fully functional. They purple level for learners reading at 8 years is good to go I am just adding resources to the gold and silver levels. 

End of year data:

I have now looked at my end of year data and can see that all of my learners have made progress this year in reading. I have placed the graphs below where I have shown reading age improvement as well as reading level improvement. The reason I have chosen to use reading level improvement is that some of the reading ages require learners to pass two test and although they may not look like they have improved in reading age they have improved a level since mid year testing.

The blue lines on the graph show end of 2018 reading ages and levels, the red lines show mid year 2019 data and the yellow lines show end of 2019 data. From this you can see that all of my learners have made some progress on paper but I think the biggest progress that I have seen is in the confidence of my learners in reading and the excitement that they have when it comes to reading now. 


The change is huge and really encouraging to see. Looking at the data closely I can see now that there are some who are now stuck at that 9 - 9.5 year range so this is something I will take into consideration and hopefully add to my site as well. 

Presentation:
The original presentation can be accessed from this blog post or can be watched in the video below. 

 
This is my presentation that I completed at the wanaga and have just recorded to show my journey. It is about 8 minutes long so below I will add time points where if you are just interested in my site you can see that, or if you are just wanting to have a look at the data you can go straight to these time points. I have also relinked my site into the post so please feel free to have a look around and let me know if you would like a copy of this to use in your own classroom.

Quick Time Links:
0:22 - 2018 Data 
1:20 - First steps 
2:46 - Screencast Example
4:17 - Mid year data
4:58 - How the site works
6:43 - Next steps and end of year data