BSLA Module 2 Notes- Year 1

Independent activity ideas: link directly other components of lesson. e.g Quality Picture Book lesson and phonological awareness.

Need to be independent- train class/systematic need explicit teaching. Change target each week rather than too frequently. Consider different learning spaces.

• -utilising buddies/tuakana (from Nikau)
• -must do, can do
• -ideas- bingo, memory, snap
• - eye spy game
• -magnetic letters
• -puppets/picture sequencing
• -pictures of the story and kids write retell
• -handwriting to practise letters/sound
• -building vocabulary: build shelters, retell using seesaw- (focus on vocab), actions using vocab

Module 3 Taumata 5 (Beginning of Year 2)

Base teaching on majority of class needs.

• BB1: Quality Story Book ( Characters, Setting, Problem, Plan, Action and Ending) Thoughts, Feelings verbs- exclaimed, tell, shouted etc
• BB2: Spelling Patterns. Morphology, Prefix, Suffix
• BB3: Reading and Writing based on PHOM
• BB4: Small group reading lessons

Phonological Awareness, Orthographic Patterns and Morphology Skill Building (PHOM)

Explict teaching of phoneme.

Using segmentation board to split up target words into phoneme boxes.

• Maximise teaching: Ask children to read each word aloud once all words have been written.
• Extend teaching: Fast finishers can write a sentence that contains one of the target words.
• Simplify teaching: For children who are having difficulty writing letters, hand out laminated letters or letter blocks for the children to manipulate.

(Questions for Ang: where are these lessons found?)

Links to Reading and Writing

This activity provides an important opportunity for Year 2 children to receive explicit teaching on how to write different types of sentences and how to apply orthographic knowledge to spelling words in context. In many of the activities, teachers and children build sentences related to the quality children's storybook they have been reading and also integrate orthographic patterns that have been taught in the PHOM section of the lesson.

The activity links closely to small group reading instruction using the Ready to Read Phonics Plus Series and the Fun Facts. This part of the lesson can also be used as a springboard for the whole-class writing lesson for the day. Detailed lessons for whole-class writing will be posted on the Learn site over time.

(Question: Where are fun facts found?)

Reading shared book: Discussing- Characters, Setting, Problem, Plan (Solution), Ending

Characters: Write simple sentences that describe characters.

Patrick and Wayne were/are........describe the characters in pairs using mini white boards.

Maximise teaching: Ask children to read sentences aloud. Highlight words that are either tier 2 vocabulary or target words in current or preceding lessons. 

Extend teaching: Fast finishers can add adjectives or adverbs to their phrase.

Simplify teaching: Ask a child to tell their phrase to a buddy who writes it for them.

This week my goal is to start teaching PHOM lessons and small group lessons with one group on the same sound. Starting with Mahuri- ai ay

PACT PD Staff Meeting with Su. 14/9/21

 We explored how to make teacher judgements today using the PaCT tool. Reviewing what we have already covered reminded us that we need to remember to look at what we are taking away from each lesson.

Take aways:

1. It is important to view the illustrations provided to get a really good idea of what the big ideas really mean for each set/ signpost.

2. If you think a student(s) is displaying evidence at one signpost then read the descriptions above and below to double check the level of sophistication fits.

3. The illustrations are also really great ideas for teaching a big idea.

4. You don’t need to review each student for each set. You would group students to think about where they are to decide your deliberate acts of teaching for the next steps, one aspect at a time.

5. We will rotate our specific focus each term on reading this year as we familiarise ourselves with these learning progressions. It would be impossible to be thinking about all the aspects for R, W and M constantly!

6. As always we would use OTJ from a number of evidence sources to decide where students are.

7. The focus should be less about where students are in terms of giving them a ‘level’ and more about “What do I need to teach, and them to learn next”. 

We took a sample of students work and then looked at each aspect and used the blurb and the illustrations to help us place a student on a sign post. 

A good discussion happened at the end of the hui regarding E-asttle v's PACT tool for end of year assessments. Below are some of the things we took away from this lesson. 

We have noticed ...

...with practice I will get faster at this and more confident with making judgements

…need to change year levels of some students, classes have been set up with names to use now, look at notifications

… writing LPF is good to use. Want to use instead of asstle this year as doubling up. Maybe can for yr1-2??

...… would be really valuable to go to experts on staff to moderate with my tricky judgements

… PaCT tool - taken lots away. Talking with others about what our kids are doing at different levels, useful to collaborate

… Feel confident with it and I want to finish putting them in

… just get it in! You know more than you think you do with your first sense.  Calm the farm a bit - you can’t teach it all

… after so long thinking about it, procrastinating and not doing it. Getting stuff in has been beneficial. SO many opportunities to double check and triple check, so it’s robust and thorough.

 Tuesday 10th August, 2021

Working with Su Arrowsmith on learning how to break down the aspects and sets on the PACT tool. was a really informative workshop that got us preparing a mini lesson plan for reading.

Focus on WALT's and Success criteria.  and explanation as to why we are doing what we are doing. We also addressed having questions prepared prior to lessons. 

Example:

Learning Intention: Kei te ako matou ki te….

Why? TIB it helps us to understand what a text is about and to quickly see if it has the information we need to find for research or for pleasure, or to find exactly where the information is, saving us time when reading. 

Success criteria: WILF

1. I can find sentences or words that talk about things:

1. in the past

2. In the present

3. In the future

2. I can find dates that help me to work out when things happened

3. I can place events in the correct order

TASKS:

1. Round Robin  - words that give us clues to things happening in the past; present; future

2. Pairs - read and highlight 

3. Reciprocal reading (a - dates, b - past words, c - present words, d - future words)

4. Timeline (draw pics/ dates and words/ poem)

5. Individual practise

6. Peer assessment and feedback

Tulevai and the sea

Which things do you know will be happening in the future and how do you know this?

On page 4 what word tells you that the sea wants to do something to Tulevai in the future?

On page 12 how many words are there that show things happening in the past?

Reflection: PACT is a really useful tool to make OTJs. It is also helpful to ensure that you are looking at all aspects of a curriculum area when making OTJs and therefore ensure that you teach those specific aspects throughout the year.

Digital Learning Objects- MK lead teacher meeting 18/9

Maniakilani Meeting 18/9
Student Design for Learning Presenter: Dr Naomi Rosedale
In this presentation we looked at what was a DLO.

I now understand that it is not just a digital presentation of a child's learning but to think of it as a student created teaching tool. It is something to learn from and it is rewindable. Students to be the experts.

There has been a big reliance on Google Slides as DLOs thus far. Often teacher templates are used. 

It would be more engaging and meaningful if students had more agency in what/how they shared their learning. Often they will create objects with learners in mind which are more powerful than teacher created templates.

To ensure that the DLO's are quality think about:

developing a S/C 

It is important to ensure that students understand the purpose of their DLO, why are they creating it? They need to think about their purpose and audience.

A takeaway for me it to think about developing a pedagogy within the class/school where DLO are respected and students understand the use of them. If they become comfortable recording themselves and blogging these could be powerful learning tools.

It would be great to develop this within our syndicate. I think it could marry well with our moderation/Pact focus for digital examples. They will provide valuable examples for our digital reports as well.

Deb from Paparore School mentioned doing a "Blogging Blitz" on Fridays where students can look at other classes blogs, might be something our syndicate could think about. This would develop students fluency in how to present in a variety of ways as they would see ideas from other students.

Inquiry Focus for 2020 (Update Term 2)

At the beginning of Term 1 we had a PD session with Su Arrowsmith around where our we thought about what was on top for us and our inquiries for this year. There were a few of us (including myself) who were interested in how we could adapt our school reporting system.
There were a few reasons which had lead us in this direction:
- as teachers we felt that we spent a lot of time writing reports and that these comments were not necessarily being read by whanau. We felt that whanau were more interested in the teacher's general comment at the end of the report.
-we felt like our students were completely removed from our reporting system and that our current reports had minimal influence on student learning and achievement.
-we knew from the results of our "Student agency Survey" that our learners were still not confident to articulate/demonstrate what they were learning and were unsure of their next learning steps.
-part of our strategic goal is to strengthen our communication and engagement with our whanau (in particularly by utilising our digital platforms: class blogs, seesaw)

Some teachers had tried a self assessment type tool with learners in 2019 and found this to be useful when coming to report writing time. As a staff we discussed how this could be formalised and potentially strengthened to use as a way of reporting to families.

Term 1 started to take momentum at the chalk face and our personal Inquiries were only just starting to develop when Covid 19 hit and all schools were forced into lockdown for 8 weeks.
As teachers came to terms with this new style of teaching and communicating with students the recording of our inquiries was put on the back burner.

However, some interesting conversations were starting to occur. As a lot of our staff are also parents we were in a position to understand how our children were learning from both perspectives. Could we capture the knowledge that our whanau had about what their children were learning, what they found challenging and what successes they had, and use this to contribute to our reports that were due to come out in a few weeks? Why are we reporting to them, when they could quite possibly know more about their child's learning than we do at this unique time?

During our staff google meets we discussed this a length. We knew reporting was coming up in the mid year and decided that this might be a great time to trial a different type of reporting. We have decided to share a document with students and then whanau which they will contribute to about what their child has been learning and what their next steps may be and we will use this document as a basis of discussion in a 3 way conference at the beginning of term 3.

How will this impact on student achievement?
How will this support us to meet this strategic goal?

Strategic Goal:

1. To plan programmes to lift the achievement of all priority learners. 

With particular attention being paid to Maori students.


Hunch:
Since returning to school we have noticed acceleration in some learners who have worked closely with their whanau during distance learning. Rob has seen acceleration with his learners due to "Whanau Kauri". Our hope is that a clear understanding between teachers, whanau and learners about what and how tamariki are learning at school will develop student agency and ultimately lift student achievement.

My role as WSL.
We are well on our way to rolling out this trial reporting system for the mid year.
As WSL my role is to lead inquiry. I think it is important for me to ensure we have a system of reflecting on how this trial goes. Ensuring that teachers are thinking about how this reporting system is impacting on student achievement. What worked? What didnt? How do we improve it as we move towards the next reporting cycle.
Our staff is very reflective as a group and open to new ideas so it will be exciting to see how the next step of our Inquiry plays out.

Distance Learning Term 2

Due to the Covid 19 Lockdown we have spent the past 2 weeks teaching online from home. To begin with it was much more difficult that I thought it would be. This was mainly because although I had been using my Class Site with my class for over a year, I realised that I rely a lot of being able to talk to the site when instructing the students on what to do.
I had some feedback from parents that they and their child were feeling a little bit our of their depth with all of the linking, sharing and storing documents. I took this feed back on board and started to use a lot more screen castify videos. Previously I had been going through my class site during my class hangout but my doing it through a video it allows me to add more detail and more importantly students and their whanau can rewind and watch the instructions in their own time. I am able to explain other things as they come up with whanau as well using screen castify. Initially, I felt very self conscious about making videos but in these circumstances it is necessary and now I dont worry about it. I can tell that it is working as well as I am getting much fewer questions and confusion.
 I find the process really simple and it is something that I will definitely continue using it even when school returns to normal.

The challenging thing I am finding is creating tasks that are simple to follow but that will cater to the wide range of learning needs and levels with in my class. I have started to introduce a few more leveled tasks this week and I try to add extension tasks where I can as well.

I have been really impressed with how well our class has connected through Google Hangouts/meet and it is great to chat with the class via chat. It is interesting how some students feel more confident communicating in this way compared to face to face. Some of my relationships with students are improving by working this way.

I still find it challenging to meet the diverse needs of all of our whanau but communication is key and this experience has definitely has a positive impact on my communication lines with families (something I always find challenging). I think the biggest positive outcome from this experience will be that parents have a better understanding of school expectations and how and what their children are learning. It would be great if this experience lead to some accelerated progress from some students.

Coaching Session with Su 22/8

Today's coaching session with Su was helpful for me to come up with an action plan for all of the things I would like to achieve this term.
Here are the notes for my reference: Coaching Notes 2019

Ultimately here are my next steps:
- Create Visual aid for  quality blog posts to be put on classroom wall and on class blog
(end of week 6)
- Timetable in weekly blogging session to ensure students are publishing a quality blog post once a week. Week 6= Maths
- Share self assessment report format with students, they will reflect on what they have been learning, how confident they felt about it, if they enjoyed etc etc. This will be shared on Monday, Week 6.
- Alim group will continue to articulate goals, I need to ensure they can post about goal also, this will need to take place during an Alim session.
-Target writing students will make writing goal in Week 7 after they have been exposed to Explanation exemplars and been given the chance to write one draft sample.

Kahui Ako/Manaiakalani Lead Teachers Mtg 16/8

Main points from today's meetings:

Manaiakalani
- Cybersmart Wall: area in class rooms to promote quality blog posts/comments, cybersmart. I will need to follow this up. Get students to compete these posters. Share with staff.
- Visible Professional blogs- Te Hiku. It was decided that it will be an expectation for lead teachers to have their blog links on the Te Hiku site.
- Tui Mai tui atu: Pilot teachers from the previous year will be encouraged to share blogs with another classroom within our cluster.
- T Shaped learning- this was brought up again today, it may be something that we want to look into as we reflect on our reading practice (as this came through in our data). I wonder if this may be something that we look at with Rhona?
T Shaped Literacy Slides


Kahui Ako
- I need to reintroduce blogging time at staff meetings again to encourage more reflection on professional blogs.
- Story Hui- some schools are using this as a part of their Inquiry. I think the way we use coaching conversations is similar to this and I am feeling appreciative that we have acquired these skills from Susan.

We discussed how our Inquiries are working in our school. I reported back on how our Inquiry sat well under the the student agency results. I think the 1:1 meeting with staff members went well and I will set another day for Term 4. The focus will be on checking, set goals with teachers on how they can gather evidence as to weather they have made a difference.

Writing was discussed again as this is a constant issue. How can Inquiries focus on writing in a new and innovative way as this is something that we are constantly faced with?

Goal Setting Term 3

Goal Setting

Teacher Only Day- Manaiakilani 22/7

We have discussed goal setting in relation to our Inquiry focus. The results from my student agency results showed that students understanding their next steps was an area I need to reflect on and think about how I can improve this in my practice.

Following are some slides from today's presentation that relate to this:

Sharing with whanau allows them to understand what are common goals for each age group. How can they help at home? Small/specific tasks e.g. 7 times tables, spelling words. This reminds me of our ALIM Inquiry which we discussed with Jenna. This may be an area we need to address again as a staff.

My SMART goal for this term in relation to my Inquiry will be:

My ALIM students and target writing group will have a learning goal for the term.
I will need to:

Writing
Give writing group an exemplar (narrative) to read a discuss. (WEEK 3)
They will then co construct success criteria and develop goal together based on exemplar.
Goal will be displayed/shared with class.
During writing we will be referring to goal. They will self/peer assess against goal. They will reflect on goal on blogs at end of writing.

ALIM
Provide ALIM group with elabouration of AOs around fractions, decimals, percentages (WEEK 3)
Group to self assess where they are and what they need to learn next.
As a group choose a goal, my teachings will come from the goal.
Once we have met the goal we will discuss/ show evidence of being successful. Share on blogs.

Demonstrate vs Articulate

Inquiry Update 14/5

After our TOD we set a goal to scan with our learners, to gather information on whether they could articulate their leaning.
I asked my students:
What are we learning to do?
What was the most challenging part for you today?
What do you need to learn to more successful (find this easier)?  I asked my students this in a variety of ways: to discuss with a partner/group, report back on a post it and electronically.
I discovered a few things:
-when the LI was written on the board, they students could generally rattle it off
-when it wasn't their answers were generally task driven
-when I was confident of the intention for learning and the PURPOSE for it my learners found it easier to articulate their learning.

This left me with a few questions:
- How useful is it for students to read the LI off the board? Does that demonstrate that they understand what they are learning? Are there other ways that students can DEMONSTRATE their learning rather than just ARTICULATE it?
- How can ensure that more learning in our class room has real purpose so that learners can understand what they are learning and why it is necessary?

My coaching session with Susan  (14/5/19) looked at this.
We discussed how gaining a better understanding of the Manaiakilani Kaupapa of Learn, Create, Share will help me to focus on thinking carefully about my learning intentions if I am thinking about how it will lead to Creating and Sharing and that being the purpose for learning and vice versa.

How can I incorporate Learn, Create, Share into my classroom practice?

The following staff meeting allowed us to discuss further. What is more important? Articulating or Demonstrating?
Moving forward with the spiral of Inquiry we looked at:

Focusing : Where do I think concentrating my energy will make the most difference?
- I will be focusing on finding purpose to learning. Why is what they are learning is important? Can I give learning a real life context?
- I will continue to co constructing S/C with students but begin to record this digitally on the class site.
- I will be looking for evidence of how learners demonstrate their understanding of learning. How can I record this? Blog?

DFI# 7 Maps, Forms, Sheets

What did I learn that increased my understanding of being connected with Manaiakalani’s kaupapa and pedagogy?
My homework is to look at the explore the following links to become more connected to the Manaiakilani community and make better use of these resources:

• Manaiakilani Toolkits
• Google + community

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
I have always shyed away from using Google Sheets as I have never known how to use them well. I have picked up a lot of basic tips to make my data collection more streamline. I should try to start using it now, so I dont forget! Here is a link for me to refer back to:

Spreadsheets and forms to support teaching and learning

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

I am looking forward to integrating Google Forms into our classroom. They can be used for the following purposes:quizzes, reflections, preview of learning and also to upload files as a way of handing in assignments
Alicia introduced us to Breakouts as an interesting idea for students to record their learning. These could be used to prepare students for online testing preparation as well.
Following are links for my reference to examples of these:

• Number Knowledge
• ANZAC Breakout using a Google Form
• Reading and Answering Comp Questions
• Mark Maddren’s Pick a Path
• Digital Breakouts

Here's my example of a Break out.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
Use My Google Maps.

Below I have been practising how to embed maps and active charts.

Teaching as Inquiry TOD 26/4

This morning we broke down and summarised the Spiral of Inquiry with Susan. 
As a staff we had rich discussion on what each stage of Inquiry means and how we can incorporate this into our
practice. We then established a direction for our collaborative inquiry that worked underneath the
Ka Hui Ako overarching question:
How can I use rich tasks and flexible groupings to promote critical thinking?

Oruaiti School focus:
How can learners use a range of ways to demonstrate their learning?

Why? 
We have noticed a school wide gap in students not being confident to articulate the direction of their learning.

Seven principles of learning.
We identified Learners at the centre as our areas of focus.
These reflective questions are what we are focusing on:


We understand that there can be a range of ways that learners can demonstrate their learning.
We are interested in discovering which ways learners can currently articulate their learning goals,
needs and next steps and how we can support them to do this better.

Week 1 Scanning:
We will collect student voice
We plan to teach lessons and ask students to demonstrate what they have learnt
(we will try 5 different methods e.g: discuss verbally, write, draw, song/poem/rap, blog reflection, drama, p.e)
We will record data and be prepared to share our findings at our staff meeting in Week 3, this will also be recorded
on our blogs.
What was the most successful method? 
Where do I think focusing my attention would be most useful?

DEVICES

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

I am thinking critically about blogging for students. I understand the benefits; being constructive feedback, feed forward and sharing to a wider audience.
I am aware of whanau concerns with privacy and a lack of understanding of the importance of blogging. I think as a staff we need to have a very clear understanding of how blogging will enhance our students learning so we can best educate our communities' understanding of the Manaiakalani kaupapa that we are investing in.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
Things to remember with Hapara:
-filter and focused searching times
-using it to check blog posts/comments
I will be encouraging our Junior teachers to look into Explain Everything and hope that Professional Development will become available to them so they can utilise this great app in their classrooms.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  
I will try to remember to use the Cyber smart curriculum resources which are available to use and modify in my classroom. I will use my presentation below with staff to assist them as an introduction to professional blogging.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

I will be exploring Explain everything with own children at home.

Here is my slide presentation that I will share with staff to get them started on their professional blogs.

Sharing is Caring

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Share within the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy?

"Work with learners to establish an authentic audience for their learning outcomes"

Providing my learners with authentic learning experiences is something that I try to consider when preparing learning. I find that learners respond well when they have a real life purpose for their writing in particular. I am starting to see how blogging and sharing learning will motivate and encourage learners.

It is great to provide a local and global audience to our learners who live in a globally remote location.

I will continue to reflect on engaging students so that they have the motivation to stay focused on learning rather than being distracted by device, as this a issue that I have faced ever since having 1:1 devices.

I can also see how sharing will be a  great motivation to finish work, another issue I would like to resolve.

I look forward to developing a strong understanding of supportive commenting to provide feed-forward and feedback from a range of people rather than just the teacher.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

As we use our professional blogs more I am starting to become more comfortable with sharing reflections with an audience.

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

I now understand how the use of Google Sites can provide an interesting and interactive way to present units of work to our learners.

Here is an example

that I will refer to when I prepare for my next thematic unit or Inquiry.

Sustainability Unit Site PESch

I am pleased to see how this could be used to implement project based/cross curricular units as this is another area I would like to develop.

I hope that by using a site similar to this example can be used as a visual unit plan for myself as well as a resource center for students.

Here is a link to the example site I made today: Gardening example

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

I will definitely be using Google Keep to streamline my sticky notes on my PC and my notes on my phone.

Buddy Coaching, T1

Today I had a coaching session with my critical friend, Petrina.
We established a goal for me for the next weeks: 
My Literacy Programme will be delivered through my class site by the end of the term.
See the photo for notes, steps, barriers and enablers.
I love having coaching conversations to nut out what is on top for me and my learners and figure out steps needed to achieve my goals.
I feel pretty confident about this goals as I am really enjoying what I am learning at DFI and I am trying new things with my class site all the time.

Coaching Notes