Lock Down Level 4

I thought I would take this time just after lockdown level 4 in New Zealand to reflect on some of the things that I did during lockdown to keep my learners engaged and wanting to learn. We had a template and way of how we were going to run things in our team organised if this was something that did end up happening. So with the change in alert levels it was a relatively fast transition from teaching in the classroom to teaching from my office from home. 

The first few weeks were about finding the right balance between what they learners were going to be able to achieve and how much work to put on the site to keep them engaged and wanting to learn. I tried to keep the content and flow as similar as possible to what my learners were used to in the classroom so it made the transition easier. Each day I would add a morning video to introduce the topic for the day and give the learns a chance to see what was expected of them before the first meet. 

As a team we decided that we should have at least 3-4 meets a day to keep the learners engaged and give the chance to offer help when needed as well as answer any questions that the learners may have had. We had set times for our morning intro at 9am and then the last catch up at 2pm. The rest was left to what we felt our classes needed. 

I was really impressed with the turn out of my class attending meets. I had about 65-70% of my learners on meets and engaging with the learning throughout lockdown. 

After the holidays:

We did have a period of time in the holidays to reflect on how we could make the work easier for the learners to access and how to continue teaching as much as we could from home. ANZAC day was during this lockdown so I decided to have an ANZAC themed week. I also wanted to give the learners different content and ways of writing to make it more engaging and fun. 

Parrant's Pantry

This is where the idea of Parrant's Pantry came from! I decided to show myself doing some baking at home. This was something that my learners could do at home as well and also give them a video to watch and follow and write instructions. The learners loved it. I did only create a few episodes as I didn't want it to be too repetitive however I know others in my team used this template for there classes too. Check out Parrant's Pantry ANZAC biscuits below. 

Once we moved to alert level 3 I returned to bubble school and Matt Goodwin took over my classes online learning. I helped to create some resources and attended some of the classes online google meets however my focus became my learners at bubble school. 

If you would like access to any of the activities and work that I completed during lock down please check out this link to see my weeks 1-3 where I was teaching from home. The rest of my classes work is under Mr Goodwin as this is where I retuned to school. 

2020 Inquiry Plan

This year I have decided to shift my inquiry to maths. This will look at my own knowledge in maths, how to effectively teach maths and how to find my learners next steps and how best to help them. 

This year I have been given the opportunity to have the extension learners so my biggest question is how can I extend my learners so that are getting the most out of their maths learning?

In order to find more out for this inquiry and how best to go about it I will talk with colleagues. I will also observe other teachers in my school who will be able to show me new ways of teaching and planning. 

I am excited to start this journey with maths this year. Changing my inquiry does not mean that I will stop my MIT reading inquiry. This is something I will still continue to inquire into and add to my site that I have created throughout the year. 

Final Blog Post - MIT 2019

This year has been one of many ups and downs with trying to decide what is the best way to go about my inquiry and also the best way to create a tool for my learners. My tool is now officially complete and ready to use. All of the activities are now available to be used in the classroom. The link to my site is here. Please feel free to use this in your own reading program, you can either link the site directly from your own page or I am able to send you a copy of the site which you can use and modify how you would like. 

Success?

Looking at my class data I can see that my target learners for this inquiry have all made at least 6 months progress with some making as much as 1.5 years. My learners have really taken on this challenge this year and have focused hard in their reading which can be seen in their results. I am so incredibly proud of each and everyone of my learners. 

Where to next?

1. I am still having a slight problem with getting my learners recorded readings to work on the site so unfortunately this is unavailable at this point in time but I have linked each of my learners blogs to their names and the recordings can be reached from there. I am going to work on making sure that these are accessible in the new year.
2. Continuing to use this in my class for next year as well as sharing it with others in my team. I will continue to monitor these results next year. I would also like to continue to add activities to the site as they are created as this will add to the resource bank. 

Looking ahead to 2020:

Next year I would like to look at how I can implement something similar to this in my writing program. I would like to see how I can help my learners to make significant shift in their writing as well as their reading. 

Thank-you:

I would like to say a huge thank-you for the opportunity to be apart of the MIT19 team. I have learnt so much over this year and I think that it has strengthened my knowledge as well as helped me better my teaching practice. It has been an invaluable learning experience and I am extremely grateful for this opportunity.

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

Link to my site - MIT 2019

Reading site update:
I have only just realised that I haven't posted the link to the reading site that I have created. I have put this up now so it is visible for people to have a look at. As we have a reading site on our class page I have been trialling out some of these activities on here so I am yet to upload to this site. I am currently working on having all of these activities on the site ASAP and will definitely have this sorted once I am back from camp next week! I have also had a slight problem with uploading the voice recordings from my learners to the recorded stories section as we have been using screencastify I didn't load these properly into my imovie so will be working to fix this problem as well. Here is the link to the site.

Next steps:
Adding all of the resources from my drive to the site.
Trying to had video instructions for the activities
Please feel free to have a look around the site and use the resources in your own classrooms.

Wananga Presentation - MIT 2019

Last week I had the opportunity to present my tool at the 2019 Wananga. we had to complete a pecha kucha style presentation where we had 20 slides and 20 seconds to present each slide. Here is my presentation and I will later add the notes. This was an incredible experience and opportunity to share my journey this year and how my tool has progressed into what I have now. 

Term 3 Update - MIT 20!9

Term 3 Update - Raising Reading Achievement

This term I have been working hard to try and get my site up and running to the class so I am not double handling my work as I am currently putting this on my class site as well. I still haven't had this go live to my class BUT they have been using many of the activities that I have been working on after guided reading sessions. So I am making progress! This will be a school holidays top priority so that I will have it ready for day one for term 4. Although it is double handling of work for me at the moment I feel that this is the best way to see how the activities work in my classroom and I would rather that than having a half finished site in action from my students. 

Data:
Last time I posted I talked about my data making improvements which has been great to see. I have added a graph of my students data and how much progress they have made this year. 

This is from my mid year testing which has shown an increase in reading age for my target group of students. I am hopeful that this trend will continue with my end of year data as well. 

Highlights from the term:
One big highlight from this term has been the attitude of my students towards their learning. I had one of my students ask to have a reading test as she felt that she had made progress in her reading. She had intact moved from reading at 8 years to 8.5 years which is great progress. However the biggest highlight out of that whole thing was this student taking ownership of her own reading and wanting to see how she was going. She has been working really hard and it has been great to see that her hard work is paying off. 

How is my reading site going?
It is getting there it is still under construction and I do have a little bit of work to do over the holidays to make sure that it is up and running ready for week 1 of term 4. Here is a little look at one of my pages that is complete and ready to go:



This is for comparing and contrasting. My overall vision is that I will have this as a guided reading session in class and we will learn how to compare and contrast as a group. Then instead of having to come up with a task that is directly related to the story or article that they have read they will be able to pick an activity that they will enjoy and be able to continue the learning from our guided reading session. 

The comparing reading log is one that can be used across the term and is an activity that can be used every week to strengthen the reading achievement objective. So that leads onto my where to next which is adding more activities to this site and having it ready to roll in class next term! So watch this space to see when I finally go live with my site!