Teaching with a difference.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at how we will do things different after lockdown. One of the promises I made was to move away from boring. So I tried one of the lessons from Te Rito Toi.

With Gretchen's support, we started off really easy games that introduce freeze frames and being creative. Then we started the L3 lesson plan for regulating Robot which teaches students the value of self-regulating. 

Initially, the students were a bit sceptic, a few sat out on the outer skirts of the class as they were uncomfortable with the unknown, however, later they started joining in. And today, after 6 days of doing drama, all students but 1 participated. 

The shifts I noticed was the students were more relaxed after the activities, the class was a bit noisy while doing the activities, however, when I counted down and said freeze they froze beautifully. The topic was of great interest to the students and they enjoyed working in design teams to design robots. They were capable of a lot more than I anticipated. The topic leads itself perfectly into reading and writing. Their listening and dialogue skills have improved tremendously. I am looking forward to seeing if they carry this through to our science discussions. 

Video Clip of the first lesson, where they were acting out a story that we read called No, David, No! One person had to act out the wrong thing they were doing, and the other person had to say No, David, No!. 

I really enjoyed teaching drama and this unit just confirmed the importance of making learning fun and engaging in order to lift the reading and writing standards. Now I am looking forward to seeing their designs and writing on the topic of robots. 

Returning after Lock Down

Lockdown - wow, what a journey. We had to learn so quickly, adapt and adjust.
There were positives and negatives to online learning. But what is certain, is that we now have the opportunity to hit the reset button. Reflect on what worked or didn't work in Term 1 and once again adjust to make it better.

My commitment to the way forward is:
Working more collaboratively with my Class Colleague and team. Developing workshops that cater for the whole class, not just a group of students. Teach to the gaps in their learning. Trust students more to choose what they want to do and in which order. Allow room for creativity. Giving students more choice about the way they want to present their work. E.g.

What I am dropping: 

Working in silo's, expecting a specific outcome, trying to control when they do the work and of course,  getting rid of boring. 

The Literacy Place - Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsy Online Webinar

This is just what I needed, a reminder of all the amazing activities there are to encourage students to engage in their literacy.
We zoomed through some ideas of how to use retelling to support comprehension, oral language and support writing.

What is important is quality over quantity. <=>
Work should be engaging - scaffolded - and feedback given.

In a balanced reading programme you will have:
Modelled Reading (I do)
Shared Reading (We do)
Modelled Reading (We do)
Guided Reading (You do)

These approaches are not linear and should be short in focussed time.

Reading is also divided into 3 groups: Reading for pleasure, reading to support writing and reading to learn.

For writing, there are 3 categories: Mini-Lessons, quick writing and writing lessons.

The Literacy Place
On this website, there are numerous resources and lesson plans. Including ideas around how to support oral language.
Ideas that I really liked and want to try are:
Prompt strips
Ice-block sticks (writing sentences from a story and students have to order them)
Retelling squares (Beginning, middle and end)
Pizza retell
Story Boards
Story Maps
3D Story maps
Map it - quick writing
Call a friend
Talking strip
Story making frames
visual summary
Senses summary
Sequence map.

These activities will especially be helpful with my students that are struggling with writing. It is crucial that I do oral language activities to support their writing, as learned in ALL and TESSOL. Looking forward to introducing some of these activities when we go back to school.

Te Whai Toi Tangata Workshop2

During our workshop last week we looked at different models to implement change under the heading of "Leading, enabling, managing sustainable change".
Leading - your dispositions and actions
Enabling - whether you embrace it or co-create
Managing - managing it - get to grow it
Sustainable - how to keep it sustained.

Different models we looked at are:
Stairway of successful innovations: in this model, it is key to focus on the initial 3 key ideas. If one is missing, the model has the potential to fail.

The implementation Dip: Where initiatives have their own life cycle.

Innovation Adoption Life Cycle: In the model, it is important that you get an understanding of people and where they fit. Get data. Eventually, it becomes too uncomfortable to be on the "wrong" side of the curve and shifts will happen. 

The Process of Transitions: In this model, you get an understanding of what demotivates people.

The model that I am most familiar with is The Process Of Transitions = the learning pit. It was good to see why people opt out of change and why it is important to understand the people you are working with and which model will suit your school the best.

A fantastic resource to invest in is Learning Talk by Joan Dalton. 

T-Shape Literacy PLD

I had the privilege of attending a workshop with Dr Aaron around T-Shape Literacy. This blog entry is a little long, but there was so much for me to take from this workshop, that I really wanted to type it up for future reference.

The workshop was built around a better understanding of how text can support students going deeper into their learning by providing a wide range of text. I really appreciate the explanations around the different text types, for example, what scaffolding text, complimentary text, challenging text and student text means. The part that I would like to get better at is the student text. I don't give my students the opportunity to choose the text on a topic and could really start having more focussed library lessons where they have a task to find information on a specific topic.

When then dug deeper into topics such as how we can teach aspects of literacy such as, "How do authors create a mood?". Lots of references were made to multi-model and finding text that has good examples of these.

After having all the text types and digging into the texts, you could prompt writing starting with provocative statements or questions e.g. zoos should be banned, is online learning the way to go?, the media always portray Papakura in a bad light. etc.

In order to be successful and giving students the opportunity to excel, we should increase their critical thinking about bigger issues, have more connection on topics that they have prior knowledge on, have more conversations that are authentic and relates to the text, bring creativity to the fore whether it is acting or a DLO, and finally, teach cognitive strategies e.g. skimming and scanning.

So where or how do we start?
1. Choose a topic and write provocations or a big question down.
2. Identify valued learning outcomes.
3. Think about the summative assessment & success criteria for VLO's (Valued Learning OUtcomes).
4. Curate text sets.
5. Engage with individual text.
6. Bring it all together.

Use as much local and relevant text as possible.
Think of ways that you can support students in "magpie-ing" new words as they engage in the text. (Hear, see, write, understand).

A typical vital lesson will be:
1. Create interest, enthusiasm and give a purpose.
2. Activate their prior knowledge and begin to build necessary background knowledge.
3. Introduce some key vocab.
4. Use Scaffolding text here (which is the first text introduced in a T-Shape literacy lesson).

Ideas to help with the introductions to the scaffolding text is:
- Create an anticipatory guide - what you thought about characters before you read the text and then after you read the text.
- Create a concept star where you can brainstorm text topics and find out what they know about the topic including if they know about any myths linked to it.
- Vocab jumble where students get a table of words has a few minutes to study it and then have to cover and write down as many as they can remember.
- Traffic light activity where the students highlight words according to the traffic light colours. Green: I am confident and know the words. Orange: These are words I have seen before, but are a little unsure about their meaning. Red: Words that are completely new to me.
- Writing frames: (this activity was quite fun to do).

We had to think of a very special place in our mind.
Write the following down:
- an emotion that comes up in your mind when you think of this place.
- place - where it is.
- a way of walking, how would you walk/run to this place (Adverbs)
- Colour - what colour jumps to your mind when you think of this place
- sound - what sound do you hear when you think of this place
- smell - what smell reminds you of this place
- Time of day
- what's the weather like there

Now use this information and complete the writing frame:

It was ... (time of day) when I walked .... (adverb) to the .... (place)/ It was a ... (weather) day. The sunglasses I was wearing made everything look .... (colour). There was a strong smell of ....(Smell). In the distance, I heard ...(Sound).

So what:
I really want to think more critically about the text I choose and focus on the first lesson to and how I can introduce new vocab. I will revisit this page often and try new things. The traffic light and writing frame activities grabbed my attention and I am sure the students will love using them.