Spelling Toolkit

This afternoon I participated in a helpful and practical MK Spelling Toolkit.  I will be using it in regards to The Code spelling programme.  It looks very user-friendly and I'm looking forward to using it.  

LAST DAY - RPI: Day 9 Sharing Reading (Cohort 2)

Today we focused on sharing reading.  We all had to be a blog detective and explore a blog post and profile.   I chose Adan's and filled out the google draw template below focussing on what he's like as a reader from his blog, what he's good at and his interests.  

I was impressed with Adan's blog and will use the template we were given for my students to have a go at.  Seeing what other students are creating for their blogs is a great task and can broaden the horizons of both students and teachers when blogging.

Naomi discussed how a school adds a disclaimer to their blogs 

e.g Catalina @ Hornby Primary

I am a Year 5 student at Hornby Primary School in Christchurch, New Zealand. My teachers are Mr Taylor and Miss Scott. This is a place where I share my learning so sometimes my work may not be complete. Remember to be positive, thoughtful and helpful when you leave a comment.

This was a gem of an idea which I will be implementing for my students.  Then hopefully this will get more blogs posted especially if we run out of time to do the quality check and go from Hand-it-in, straight to publish. 

Visible Reading & Learning Blog title - Naomi’s good idea when students create blog titles

E.g Today when you post a title use figurative language e.g pun, alliteration, rhetorical question, simile etc I will use this too with my students to help jazz up their blog titles.

I really enjoyed this RPI course and look forward to improving my reading practice with all the awesome resources we've been given and been shown how to use. 

Naomi, Kiri and Anna have been brilliant facilitators and made this course enjoyable, fun, productive and challenging.

Now to the hard part, implementation!:)

RPI Day 8 Creating

Today we had Dorothy Burt and I enjoyed her talk. What resonated with me was when she talked about the importance of getting our kids to be the creators of content not just the consumers.  Dorothy shared cool resources with us such as Crayon - AI generator, Podcasting, Canva and Adobe Firefly or express suite (available for $7 per person in NZ Schools but retails for $1200!).

I learned Why Create is so important: engages & empowers and ‘Looser’ & ‘Tighter’ ways to design Create-to-Learn.  I created a response to text task.

                                        

Naomi shared a handy tip which was when searching up  a topic e.g Google - umbrella png template black.  I can use this when searching for stencil ideas.

There was a focus on opportunities for choice - tools, design, product - and collaboration.  We received some examples and templates which I look forward to implementing.

One-shot film was introduced to us and we had a go at creating our own one minute film for a book trailer.   This I found daunting but fun and it really got the creative juices flowing.  I even drew a Minecraft Creeper and used it in my book trailer.

Some tips for this  Making a book trailer (One shot film) task would be:

• Make sure students know the book well
• Sign off on script
• Get students to work in buddies (after they've read the same book)
• For reticent students get them to use avatars - stationary or moving.
• You don’t need actual green material for the green screen as long as it’s a contrasting colour to what students are wearing.
• When getting students to Reflect on their one shot film they can use the following prompts:What are you proud of? What do you notice? What would you do differently?

Create over longer units - I found these sites super helpful, with amazing ideas and they've given me ideas on how I can give this a go with our school topic themes for each term. e.g Kensuke's Kingdom novel study,  Danny the Champion of the world and Navigation.

RPI 7: Thinking (Cohort 2)

 Today was all about Thinking.  I learned about the importance of Thinking and the role it plays in improving understanding.  We focused on the 3 levels of thinking below:

Getting students to build their thinking skills through Collaborative reasoning will improve my students ability to think critically. 

I enjoyed the Provocation provided: e.g To be brave you have to scared.  This provided robust discussion and deeper level thinking within my group.

In my class I can see provocations being helpful in challenging students perspectives and helping them to see others points of views.It should help to refuel discussion.  I'll have to remind students to challenge ideas not the person.  

I'm also going to get my students to understand from a resistant perspective by rewriting parts of that text. E.g Write from the perspective of Pania or the lady who doesn’t want to bungy jump.  What would they say if they did do the jump?

I found Naomi’s talk on Critical analysis helpful.  

Over the next 3 weeks I will be implementing the following:

Vocabulary - Day 6 RPI

Today was all about Vocabulary.  We discussed what we did for H.W and shared our ideas. 

I liked Wayne’s idea which was having reading split into 2 parts.  One part focussing on working with a reading group then they did a follow up task.  The second part was focusing on vocabulary conferencing and giving feedback and feedforward straight away.

Dorothy's - Vocabulary talk was insightful. She highlighted the importance of vocabulary and the connection to reading comprehension.

Apps Dorothy mentioned

If we use word wall app task get kids to screen shot when done with timestamp on a google doc and have it shared on the mahi tracker.

A handy tip was the importance of the humble Google doc and how it can be utilised to created a variety of vocab. activities/tasks.

e.g

The importance harnessing digital tools

Robust - 5 principles of robust vocabulary teaching

I want to try these

and these.

Overall I enjoyed today and I am going to restructure my timetabling to include at least one session per week to teach vocabulary/morphology tasks.

Day 5 - RPI Planning a reading programme

Today I learned about what to consider when Planning a reading programme.  It was a lot but I think if I try one thing at a time e.g Turn in sheet I should be able to manage.

My goals are to create easy to maintain multi-modal tasks for a group or two next term and to improve my Learner timetable where they click on the image for their group e.g Albatross, which will take them to their slide/s and/or reading mahi for the week.  

I'm going to try to make slides with Must do, Can do activities for each group and potentially reconfigure my class site to include Reading, Writing & Maths.  I also want to make a one stop shop for reading response templates e.g KWL chart.  

I like to find a new book to read aloud to the class and to demonstrate how to read with fluency and expression.  Remembering to share with my learners this is what good reading sounds like.  

I will grab boxes of books and try reading first and have a good sense of where to stop. I'll read 2 chapters then stop and say if you want to find out what happens next here are the books.

I am also wanting to try the turn in sheet.  Do it next term and make it one thing a week e.g Reading.

It was helpful having time to sign up to the different independent tasks as well.

Today I enjoyed everything but especially the Write like a reader and, Read like a writer task I did.  I'm keen to try his task with my students to help improve their writing experiences.

Guided Reading & Comprehension - (Day 4 RPI 12/5/23)

 This week we focussed on:

 Guided Reading (& Comprehension)

• Need-based grouping for explicit processing and strategic reading guidance;

• Discussion to extend and deepen understanding.

• Explicit teaching points to target instruction.

• Independent response-to-text to consolidate learning.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 

Squirrel - Use this word when kids are getting off track & need to get back on task.

Begin using a shared novel with at least one of my groups to start with. 

Encourage students to be Active readers - e.g When you go I want to notice this…

Try using a Vocab. wall and use the - You say, they say technique.

Use a Word wall behind me and stick new words learned during reading on the wall behind me.

Prompt for background knowledge.

Students could try using the Screencast function on chromes and the transcript feature.  

Reading response ideas would be for students to do a Read aloud & use the fluency rubric to assess where they think they're at then blog about it.

The rubric below can be used for students and teachers:

Fluency: Multidimensional Fluency Scale
		1				2		3		4
		Reads in a quiet voice. The reading does not sound natural like talking to a friend.				Reads in a quiet voice. The reading sounds natural in part of the text, but the reader does not always sound like they are talking to a friend. Uses some stress and intonation.		Reads w/ volume and   expression. However,   sometimes the reader slips into expressionless reading and does not sound like they are talking to a friend. There is reasonable stress and intonation.		Reads with varied volume and expression. The reader sounds like they are talking to a friend with their voice matching the interpretation of the passage.
		Reads word - by - word in a  monotone voice. Might sound like a robot.				Reads in two or three word phrases, not looking at punctuation.		Reads w/ a mixture of run-ons, mid-sentence pauses for breath, and some choppiness.		Reads with good phrasing;  adhering to punctuation. Uses phrasing to carry over meaning from line to line.
		Frequently hesitates while  reading, sounds out words, & repeats words or phrases. The reader makes multiple attempts  to read the same  passage.				Reads with extended   pauses or hesitations. The  reader has many “rough  spots.”		Reads with occasional breaks  in rhythm. The reader has  difficulty with specific words  and/or sentence structures.		Reads smoothly with some  breaks, but self-corrects with  difficult words and/ or sentence structures.
		Reads laboriously.				Reads either too fast or too  slowly.		Reads generally at an   appropriate rate throughout reading.		Reads at an appropriate conversational pace   throughout the reading. Might adjust pace to match meaning. e.g. suspense

What did I learn that could improve my capability and confidence in teaching reading? 

I need to be taking observation notes. I could use a blank running record and focus on using: Insertions, Omissions, Tolds, Self corrections, Substitutions. I could work on making the time to observe students reading individually to check on their fluency. Some suggestions are: Y5/6 once per fortnight, Y7/8 once per month or needs based (could use screencast or voice recordings). I try to take notes of what I’m seeing. 

I'd like to look at rejigging my groups and making them smaller.

I want to try including strategies and skills focus when choosing Learning intentions.  

Ideally I want to make a transcript for my target reading group similar to the example below:

Day 4: Guided Reading Lesson Transcript

Read the transcript independently. Choose the most appropriate label from the interaction bank to describe the learner/teacher interactions and copy and paste into the analysis column. You can use a label more than once. You should insert all the labels that match. You will have time to discuss your choices with your Breakout Group afterwards.

Interactions bank

Prompts for background knowledge	Prompts for text information (or ideas)	Prompts for vocabulary knowledge
Shares background knowledge	Shares information	Shares thinking (about text)
Introduces title, author and topic	Affirms students knowledge	Draws students attention to reading purpose

Speaker	Teacher / Student Interactions	Analysis of Interactions
Whaea A.	Today you are going to read The Zoo Debate by Philippa Werry. This nonfiction article asks the question: “Should we have zoos?” and gives reasons for and against.	Introduces title, author and topic
Whaea A.	What do you know about the work zoos do?	Prompts for background knowledge
Lazer	At Auckland Zoo they keep animals people can go see like elephants, tigers, lions and all sorts of other wild animals. I’ve been there.	Shares background knowledge
Cybelle	Me too. I’ve also been to Auckland Zoo. They have a new baby rhino.	Shares background knowledge
Whaea A.	So some zoos have breeding programmes?	Prompts for vocabulary knowledge
Cybelle	Yes. They have a baby rhino that was born  last year called Amali.	Shares background knowledge
Whaea A.	That would have been a real celebration!	Affirms students knowledge
Whaea A.	Any other work a zoo does?	Prompts for background knowledge
Uriah	Zoos also keep wild animals that are going extinct, so they need to be protected.	Shares background knowledge
Kyla	Yes and also ones that have been treated badly or got injured.	Shares background knowledge
Naizer	I agree with Uriah. I think Kea are in danger and they have them at Auckland Zoo.	Shares background knowledge
Leigh	I don’t know much except what we watched in the video yesterday.	Shares information
Whaea A.	Great! You know some things about the work zoos do.	Affirms students knowledge
	You’re also going to learn there is an ongoing, big debate about zoos. The author gives arguments for and against zoos that makes this a debate.	Draws students attention to reading purpose
	What does the word argument mean here?	Prompts for vocabulary knowledge
Uriah	Maybe people disagree with each other and they say why.	Shares information
Whaea A.	Yes exactly!	Affirms students knowledge
	Look at pages 17 and 18. Have a read of the yellow sticky notes and then we’ll talk about an important idea at the centre of the arguments. [Learners read] What did you learn?	Prompts for text information (or ideas)
Kyla	The breeding programmes at zoos help to save endangered animals.	Shares thinking (about text)
Cheyanne	But it also says most animals they breed don’t  get put back in their natural environment.	Shares thinking (about text)
Whaea A.	So say why that’s an argument for, or against.	Prompts for text information (or ideas)
Uriah	It’s against because zoos  just maily keep the babies, they don’t help them survive in the wild.	Shares thinking (about text)
Whaea A	Right! So if you look at the layout of the page the left has arguments for zoos and the right has a matching colour for the counter-arguments, against zoos.	Affirms students knowledge
	Many of these points are about zoos’ work in conservation. Look at the section called Glossary at the end and someone tell us what conservation is. That person choose someone else to tell us how conservation is part of the work zoos do.	Prompts for vocabulary knowledge
Kyla	It says conservation is the protection of animals, plants, and the natural environment. Nazier?	Shares thinking (about text)
Nazier	Umm..Zoos have vets? So they protect wild animals by operating on  them when they get injured?	Shares thinking (about text)
Whaea A.	Yes, that’s one way zoos can be involved in conservation.	Affirms students knowledge
	You will soon get to read other examples. Most of the examples will help us think about  one important idea in this debate: Let’s write this important idea in our modelling book because we are going to see why it's so important. We will also need to justify (or give reasons) why it’s so important. The important idea that keeps coming up in this article is: “people support zoos for conservation reasons, but others argue there are better ways to protect wild animals”.  Shortly you are going to read silently on your own to find evidence of this idea, but you will need the meanings of a few key words first. [Cycles through 3 cards with the words enclosures, endangered, habitat; learners pronounce after teacher and are told a brief student-friendly meaning - teacher gets students to attach to Word Wall] Ok, now you have some of the key vocabulary, I want to read pages 10 -14 silently, by yourself. Then close-read slowly a second time.  As you read, put a “stick it” arrow next to any evidence of this important idea [points]: “people support zoos for conservation reasons” [Hands out stick it arrows]  Write ‘for’ or ‘against’ on the ‘stick it’ to show whether the evidence is being used to support zoos’ conservation work, or not. Any questions?	Draws students attention to reading purpose

*Note: Modelling book will also make visible the focus words for learners.