ALL PLD Dyslexia, ASD and Anxiety

Great PD! Diverse Learners
What I have taken from it:

Anger is another presentation of anxiety. Fight, flight, freeze

(Images borrowed from NZ Anxiety website)

How can we as teachers help? 

Explicit coaching around emotions for kids that flare up out of nowhere. Talking through physical aggression. Listen to your body. How do you feel? How is your heart feeling? What do you feel like doing right now? What else could you do?

Prevention is better than reaction. Know your learners well enough to know how much they can cope with. If they can work for ten minutes, stop at 8 minutes.

Parents:

Parents of diverse students are often tired and overloaded as they have been dealing with their children for a long time. They don't need teachers telling them how bad their children are.  Communication and building relationships with parents of diverse learners are extremely important. Showering them with love. Then they will feel supported - and will support us.

To get accelerations for diverse students, we need to use a holistic approach, not just learning.  Include teaching about emotions, attitude, active participation, self-esteem, taking risks, self-managing.  

Teacher agency is okay!! Recognizing, today is not the day to teach this specific activity that I planned. Press pause and revisit at another time. If that means they need time outside to play ball before they come back to learn, that is okay. Make the call. 

Reporting for diverse learners – could include attitude, confidence etc. Not necessarily tests…

Learner Action Plan

Tap into their strengths; e.g. possibly let them take the lead in something. If they like science, use science to get them to do the writing.

In the classroom: 

Set things up that is available for everybody, but have a rule that when Student Anxiety needs a quiet space, they might have to stand up and give him space. Talk to your class.

Explaining that we are all different, some like sport, others not, etc, etc.

Setting a culture of caring, acceptance, and understanding.

Diverse Students: 

Dyslexia can learn to read, write and study efficiently when they use methods geared to their unique learning style.

ASD has lots of things going for them. Topic interests, exceptional memory for facts and figures, a high degree of accuracy, attention to detail, follow instructions and rules very accurately, creative arts

Honest, loyal, sense of humour, hobbies

Universal design for learning (UDL) a good approach for diverse learners.

Engagement, representation, action and expression.

Think of visually busy and quiet spaces.

Dyslexia – recognising letters on the keypad is a challenge. Might be better to write than type.

Myths: that they read backward or spelling being jumbled.

It’s about trouble remembering letters symbols for sounds and letter patterns in words.

Explicit phonics teaching makes it better.

They don’t have a lower level of intelligence.

Tips for dyslexia:

1. Specific and explicit phonics instruction

2. Build their vocab and comprehension through audiobooks

3. Front-loading before group learning- do not let a dyslexia student do Guided reading before they have listened to the MP3, read it with somebody beforehand or read the book before the time. It’s too hard. Don’t let them decode for the first time in a group and expect them to read. Too stressful.

4. Move from the known to unknown. Working from at to cat or like to bike etc

5. Avoid passive phrases and sarcasm or double meanings. They don’t understand.

6. Praise is very important. Praise them for asking questions.

7. Find ways to provide increased processing e.g. deliberately pausing after you ask a question

8. Check-in with students soon after they commence work to ensure they’ve got it right – if they haven’t, ensure you put them on the right track

TKI Online SoundSense a good phonics program.

If testing:

- Digital Clock

- Short breaks in the middle, tests in two parts

- Multisensory approaches work best

- Quick drawing to illustrate concepts

- Use pictures, diagrams and charts and use coloured highlighters for emphasis

- Use real objects as props

When anxiety is high, reduce the demands, when anxiety is low, increase the demands.

https://www.theottoolbox.com/    OT Website’

Sensory pathways see 3D stickers of a bridge can be good in a corridor to give anxious students a chance to move when anxiety is high. 

Weatbags on their shoulders could ground them.

Do heavy work for diverse kids before expecting them to sit down and learn e.g. wheelbarrow - picking up leaves or digging in the garden, that cannot settle to sit down and learn.

Zones of regulations – see website Lea Khypers a strategy to identify emotions

Speld – for dyslexia diagnosis

Some strategies for teachers

Start with RTLB to do a screen

TAI Group 2

I am starting a new group of ALL students. This time it will be an all-girls group from 1 class in year 3/4.
What is different from the beginning of the year?
* I have a clearer idea in my head of what my goal is for these students.
* I have a better understanding of what needs to change to accelerate their writing.
* I will focus less on surface features and more on deeper features.

Do I know everything now? NO! But I am getting better at understanding what to do. Where my focus should be to make the biggest difference.

During the holiday I attended an International Reading Recovery Institute.
One of the sessions I attended was about Effective Literacy with the focus on accelerating writers. I felt so empowered after attending the session. My focus was wrong in group 1. I was focussed on planning structures, vocab and layout of writing. (This is also important but should not be the focus).

Where am I going to start?
I want to start by introducing the independent writing wall. I will choose a picture prompt, we will talk about it for 5 minutes jotting down the vocab and bumping it up where possible. Then give them 10min writing time.
We will only be using our books not chromes. (Eliminating typing stress).
Then we will share our writing in the group for 5 minutes. The goal will be to develop confidence, excitement, creativity and increasing vocabulary. (Take the focus off spelling). The next day, I will give them one thing to focus on, that I noted in the previous days work e.g. Today I want you to try and use adjectives/punctuation/rereading, etc. If they cannot do it independently, I will model and workshop where needed.

TAI Reflection - Finalising Group 1 ALL

After discussions with my principal, we decided to end my current ALL group and start a new one in term 3 as ALL was intended to be short term intervention.

The progress made was measured with an e-asttle test done on the last day of term 2. The results were as followed:

Student A	N4	Shifted from 1B to 1A (lots of absenteeism and writing on last day of term)
Student B	O4	Absent but huge shifts in writing and confidence.
Student C	K3	Shifted from 1B to 2B
Student D	L4	Left school
Student E	A4	Stayed the same. (Chrome broken, wrote on paper)
Student F	C4	Shifted from 2A to 3B

ALL intervention works.  More for some students than others. But it will take a long term intervention to undo 3 or 4 years of backlog in their learning. So I am happy with the shifts that have taken place and I am hoping that these students will take what they have learned, and apply it in their writing in class. 

Term 1 and 2 has been a huge learning curve for me with regards to my understanding of ALL and what my focus should be. I'm hoping to have a quicker start with my second group, and be more organized in what I want to teach as I have now got a clearer understanding of what teaching accelerated writing entails. 

TAI: Am I making a difference, student 2

March 2019

June 2019

The biggest difference I can see in Student 2 is:
* Growth in confidence 

* A storyline forming (The second text was not finished) More ideas...

* Use of adjectives

* A mixture of simple and compound sentences

* Using different sentence starters - time connectors (One day, the next day, then)

Where to next: 

* Organizing my beginning, middle and end into separate paragraphs. 

* Using capital letter and full stops in the right places.

* Using more punctuation such as exclamation marks and using a question in a narrative. 

TAI: Am I making a difference?

E-asttle at the start of 2019.

Writing in June 2019. 

Student 1: 

 If I compare his writing at the start of the year to now, I can see some changes, but to me, they are not yet significant. 

The differences that I notice are: 

* The organization of the text has a better layout. Grouping into a beginning middle and end (not yet ideas into paragraphs). 

* There is a more prominent use of a variety of adjectives.

* A better use of punctuation, capital letters and full stops. 

* The problem and solution are bit clearer. 

So where to next: 

* Work on how each idea has a paragraph, and how to expand on ideas. Not just listing things. 

* Using complex sentences and punctuation. 

The second text was not 100% independent, as we worked together on the plan. Also, we are always pushed for time. Perhaps I should do a proper independent writing sample, to see if what we have been working on in class, has really sunk in, and would transition into a writing sample.