Unbelievable

 

It seems such a long time ago since I started the course. If I knew how I'd feel at the end of the course, I wouldn't have felt so worried at the beginning. It has been a massive but thoroughly enjoyable learning curve.

Every session really opened my eyes and motivated me as a learner. The examples of each of the Pillars of Practice and putting them into practice over the 3 weeks really helped consolidate the learning. The students really enjoyed finding out what new activities we were going to try each week. They were quick to reflect on how much they enjoyed them, especially the use of learning intentions, fresh graphic organisers, success criteria and create.

The modelling book was especially helpful as concrete examples made it easier to create my own templates.

Everything in the course, after a long time in teaching, gave me a fresh approach to reading and has motivated my colleagues, students and me. The new ways to explore vocabulary, skill builders kete, and loose and tighter creates went down very well.

The observations and conversations after the homework was done with my mentor. helped clarify my understanding of the sessions and ensured I kept focussed. It would have been easy to let other commitments draw me away from implementing the learning. Thank you, Lauren!

I am a slow processor, so sometimes I needed a longer time to create and process. Having a place to put in the homework before the session was really helpful. 

I look forward to continuing on next year.

A big thank you to all the RPI team for so much support and my breakout group, Anna, Paige, Tania, Angie, Dani and Patricia, who helped with my learning and making it fun.

Is there any possibility a Writing Programme Intensive is on the way, as there is a great need for this in our studio?

So Many Great Ideas: Where do I start?

Each session, I have created a slide with the highlights and possible ideas that could be used in our studio programme, and each session, the slide gets longer and longer as there are so many wonderful ideas to engage the students as readers and writers.

The part of the pedagogy I am interested in developing more is collaborating to co-create design choices. 'Inside' the create the students could choose from photographs, videos, screencasts, posters, movie trailers, trioramas and Google Draw. for the students' Novel Study.

The Ruru's had a looser, open-ended create, while the Penguins had a tighter template. Both groups were given the option to make an i-movie or written response to their creation. The "creates" will be shared on their blogs with a template to be attached to explain their "create".

The students requested to use the poster format to create a new, more appealing to kids, book cover.

It was great to get a variety of creates to draw on, and I am especially looking forward to sharing the Tighter and Looser Design Infographics" with my team and students.

I would like to improve my confidence in using AI, especially Chatgpt, as I am not a fan but have yet to base my response on any factual experience. I used Chatgpt to explore the author's purpose of writing "The Twits" and "The

Secret Lake".I am going to use a "Sentence Structure" slide by colleague, Eugene, created with

the help of Chatgpt.

Figuring It Out - literally and critically

 

The day went amazingly fast with ideas about how to deepen children's thinking when they are reading. from guided activities to independent.

One of the most interesting areas for me was giving the children a provocation based on the text they had read, discussing it critically in their groups and coming up with an overall consensus. The idea allowed the children to analyse the text and then synthesise what they had discovered into their create.

An example of "Response to Text: Vocabulary". Used as part of the students' novel study. Response to text

I also enjoyed learning ways to explore figurative language authentically - using our novel study text rather than task-based activities (one-offs). I used the visualising and interpreting example to create Visualising and Interpreting a simile slide.

Allowing the students to think critically, communicating their points of view with evidence to back this view up has become an integral part of our novel studies (across the studio). It has opened up doors to sharing our ideas and adapting each other's activities to meet our students' needs. It allows for collaboration among group members and the continued use of "Talk Rules" helps guide the discussions.

My next step is to dig into ways to provide opportunities to discuss what we think the author's purpose was as they were writing the novel and how we can verify if our thoughts are correct. Write to the author, google search or AI?

Mind Explosion

So many ideas and so many things I suddenly want to try as I could see how much the vocabulary ideas would enhance my current programme and give the students and myself some structure and scaffolding - deliberate teaching.

Share with the team/staff some practical ideas:
Pick Up and Go Syllable Activities  
Morphology (Chapter 12) Orton Gillingham Teachers Manual 2019 
The Morphology Project
Spelling Progressions (United Kingdom)
Matrix Maker (prefix, root/base, suffix
Base Word Plus suffix
Phoneme Activity

The plan to bring it all together helped me focus on three key areas I would like to work on.:
1)  working with my team to start building a road map to phonemes, syllables and morphemes programme.

2)  Integrate my syllables and morphemes skills with my guided reading and independent learning (handwriting, Pick It Up and Go activities)...3) Reduce the size of the text I use and look at it in greater depth..

I am looking forward to mote feedback to my students to see if it has a greater response than comments on their work - click replied but often not actioned : >

Follow up:

Examples of Vocabulary work.

Students and I adapted the chart so we had only one page - ticks pre-reading, highlighted post-reading. lots of great discussions.

Had to think hard to adapt the sentences to fit for our words.  Again lots of discussions and laughs. 

When asked which way they liked best to learn about the new vocabulary in our Novel Study, it was divided, so we agreed to repeat both ideas in the next two weeks.

This format really got the children thinking about prefixes, suffixes and base words. It became a competition to see who could find the most words with all 3. - they instigated this, and it continued for the following Morphemes Matrix the next week. They used Google, dictionaries and the text to find as many combinations as possible.

For mote responses and comments on their work, they thought the mote was fun but preferred it when we had discussions in class, individual feedback and peer feedback.

Great ideas to take through the next 3 weeks!!!

It was a very fast day with heaps of learning and sharing. We do seem to be weary at the moment through with illness, workload and possibly winter weather. It was nice to have a laugh together.

The work we did today gave a greater understanding of the Pillars of Practice: Reading to Writing. I had been doing a lot of answering questions and summarising but not using the text students had read to scaffold their writing. I also see the need to use a better balance of analogue (going to teach my students that one) and digital tools to cater for a wide variety of learning styles.

I am very keen to use mote to give feedback to my students as some just click done on comments on their work or in their books - don't they don't respond to them (any ideas much appreciated). 

With Teachers Workbook I am tracking one group (Year 4's) individually. This week I have included my other groups - planning and tracking progressions as a group, and identifying individual's gaps where needed. It will be interesting to see how this goes over the next three weeks.

The read to write are great activities to share with my group as this is where our focus is going next. It was great to personally practice Sensory Imagery to Create Suspense. Writing the words to the questions created a clear path for my writing and I could visualise the scene in my head. I have Year 4's through to Year 6's and they could all achieve this whether by drawing their answers or writing. It definitely gave me confidence to write!

With my team, students and whānau I am going to share the Q-A-R and Literacy Planet sites as they would be a great addition to our Choice reading for our Taskboards.

So Much Spinning In My Head

 Gui

There has been so much learning today and so much I would love to implement. I have decided I need to look at the PIllars of Practice and identify what I am going to focus on - constructing clear LI's and SC on my taskboard, guided reading exploring background knowledge (video) then adding students' prior knowledge linked to background knowledge and modelled reading aloud. on T-shaped Literacy slides.

The taskboards continue to be a great way to see models for the Teacher Workbook, especially LO's and Success criteria I need to refine in my own programme. The Prior Knowledge versus Background Knowledge helped me to clarify what I could do when the reader has little, inaccurate or no knowledge - going to initiative in my T-Shaped: Pests and Predators.

For my learners, I am going to be more specific in our modelling books -working on exploring Background Knowledge and making sure the taskboard reflects our learning. Finally, I am going to introduce paired and reading aloud on video followed up with introducing the students' rubric. I will give them a copy to reflect on my reading aloud and identify what I could work on - should be a great discussion.

I have created a team slide to share Skill Builders, Observing Readers, Rubrics and possible changes to our T-Shaped Literacy activities. I have put useful tasks and activities into our Shared Drive. I am looking forward to sharing my journey today and exploring what they find helpful for further additions to our slide.

Enthusiasm Plus: Text Selection and Skill Builders

 My notes are full of things I want to try, new learning and excitement for planning for next term. I am enthusiastic about being able to go back to my team with innovative ideas for our planning in the holidays around Inquiry and Literacy. 

The discussion around selecting text and recording in the coverage page on the teacher workbook identified for me the need to include more poetry and visual reading. So my goal this term is to monitor the text I use and add where needed. 

Using mixed-ability groups is a common part of our school learning. I hadn't thought of the students moting the text for other group members. This had been very motivating, allowed monitoring of fluency and accuracy and was lots of fun for everyone. 

I was very excited to focus on the Skill Builders as this gave me practical ways to focus on the strategy of summarising. Summary Skill Builder.

My next goals: 

* As we are integrating Inquiry and Literacy it is going to be important that I include both Inquiry, Reading and Writing WALT's and success criteria in our T-shaped tasks without overwhelming the students.

* To check I am giving coverage across the genre.

* To not skip read to as this often what goes first.

Getting to Know My Readers: Where to Next?

 My reflection on Session 2's learning.

Today was my session in the Manaiakalani Reading Intensive Practice. We discussed how we could use our student's assessment results and surveys to help guide us in providing a reading programme that involved the children's interests and needs.

Looking back at the reading survey and identifying the groups' interests will help me build a programme to incorporate texts that will motivate them and introduce them to texts they have yet to opt for notably poetry and newspapers.

Also, opening the children up to the amazing world of our school and local library

We looked at the Teacher's Workbook which had a one-place stop for planning for our groups, assessment results, assessment reflection, notes and observations on our students.  This planning initially sent me into a tailspin as I thought about how I could link this to our current 4 teaching team. Our teamwork plans covered the areas in the workbook through studio data spreadsheets, planning through T-shaped literacy, Literacy Circles and Group planning with AO's, Learn, Create and Share format.  I have decided to use the workbook for 1 team currently and see how it can fit in with our team planning and what impact it could have further down the line. I shared the Workbook with my team and will reshare it after I have worked through to mid-term 2 to get a real feel for the format. I have started with Week 6 programme and Week 9 planning recording in the Workbook and using the Taskboard. I have made adaptions to make the sharing of the students learning more compact - a work in progress. The sampler Taskboards has really helped in guiding my thinking. Choosing a genre for students to read from has turned out to be a great discussion point -scarey stories weren't on top of the student's list, but they have loved exploring titles in Epic and sharing the scary bits : >

The session on the Pillars of Teaching explored how the PATs can guide the students' learning. I have used this to inform my teaching and shared with whanau and students. at Learning Conferences. I was pleasantly surprised at the children and whanau's questions about the results and what it meant for them.

The "Characteristics of Expert Teachers"  had the greatest impact on me. As I read it I thought this is so succinct and achievable. It sits beside me to reread and check off as I plan. It just makes so much sense and keeps things in the "Goldilocks" space.

Waking Up My Reading

 

Waking Up My Reading

This is the first of 9 sessions in the Reading Practice Intensive programme. This course has already awakened my curiosity about how to provide a fun, exciting learning programme for my students across the curriculum using reading as my door in.

Kaupapa and pedagogy of the Manaiakalani Reading Programme

The "Designing Learning with the End in Mind" helped clarify where teacher instruction, teacher scaffolding and student learning fits in.

T = more teacher focus, levelled text, harder to read to grow

T/L = negotiating between learners

L = learner creates and shares in a variety of ways. Graphic Organizers, Multi-Modal, T-shaped Literacy, Reciprocal Learning, Literacy Circles

WHAT LEARNING SHOULD LOOK LIKE:

• Model to practice for the whole school/studio???

Implications for improving my capability and confidence in teaching reading.

• the RPI course will introduce me to new ideas, remind me of old ideas I stopped using and give me opportunities to reflect on my reading programme with colleagues.
• use the idea of the "Taskboard" in with current T- Shaped Literacy to increase students' self-efficacy.

Implications for my learners? 

• sharing of the survey, giving us a direction as a group on how we can learn together to enjoy reading and learn.
• use the idea of the "Taskboard" to provide opportunities for self-efficacy for the students - motivating students, helping them make choices for themselves (buddy?) and persist in face of difficulty. Links to our RISE values of resilience, integrity, success and empathy.

• discuss 3 tiers of vocabulary - where are you confident, where would you like some support, who could support you, what support could you offer

Implications for my wider community.

1) Colleagues

• share "Designing Learning with the End in Mind" to clarify where instructional, scaffolded, independent learning best fits.
• share the survey with my team. Would this be a way of connecting with our students? Mid-year and end of the year to reflect on changes over the year.
• share the "Power of Talk" ground rules, how can it be implemented across the curriculum, and how does it connect to current "DIMC" sharing (closely : >)

2) Whānau/aiga

• share later in the year as I become clearer in the process - possibly send them an adjusted reading survey.

Watch out for the photographs to follow over the next 3 weeks : >

ting

All About Me

All About Me

Hi, my name is Sharon Robertson, and I have lived and taught in Christchurch all my life. I love everything to do with the sea – bodyboarding, swimming, snorkelling, fishing for yummy kai and long walks along the beach with my adorable dog, Patch. In the holidays, I enjoy holidaying with my family in Kaikoura, water fights with my niece and my nephews on Christmas day, gardening and relaxing with a good book. I like to play board games on wet days - Cluedo and Pictionary are family favourites.

Tēnā koutou katoa. 
Tihe mauri ora.
Ko Aoraki te maunga.

Ko Opawaho te awa.

Nō Otautahi ahau.

Ko Rāwhiti tōku kura.

      

Ko Robertson tōku whānau.

         

Ko Sharon tōku ingoa.

    
  Nō reira, tēna koutou, tēna koutou,tēna koutou katoa.