Margaret- Deliberate Acts of Teaching - Writing

Writing in Room 4

Link to Standards

Design for Learning 

Design learning based on curriculum and pedagogical knowledge,
assessment information and an understanding of each learner’s strengths,
interests, needs, identities, languages and cultures.

Elaboration

• Select teaching approaches, resources, and learning and assessment activities based on a thorough knowledge of curriculum content, pedagogy, progressions in learning and the learners. 

Harness the rich capital that learners bring by providing culturally responsive and engaging contexts for learners.

One of our targets is to lift the achievement in Year 8 Writing.  As part of our strategy to do this, we are again running the ALL program with a small number of students in Room 4.  Alongside this, we also aim for daily journal writing where students choose to write about whatever they are interested in without worrying about spelling, punctuations, etc.  The aim is to have students choose at least 2 pieces of writing from their journal each term to edit and publish with support from the teacher.

The context for learning: Learning how to summarise using newspaper articles in preparation for writing our own articles related to our Japan topic.

Wednesday 12 February 2020
Mel/ALL group:  Mel took a group of 4 out including our Year 8 student to discuss the activity of reading the news article/highlighting main words in each paragraph and then summarising orally.
Back as a whole class we then read through the article altogether.  We highlighted the main words in the first two paragraphs together as a class.  The class was then asked to read through the next paragraphs in their groups and record the words. Mel worked with the ALL group for 10 minutes while I worked with others needing support.  When Mel left we moved that needed support together and read through paragraphs one at a time.  Students had to come up with 20 words to summarise the article. We finished by going around the groups sharing what we thought the article was about.

What worked well?  The ALL students showed a good understanding of what was expected with some needing support to stay on task. 2 manages to do this independently 3 still needing support.

Next Steps:  We will do another article next time again scaffolded before letting students complete independently.  More time to discuss unknown words to develop comprehension.  Review who needs to be in the group as 2  seemed very capable but will try them out on a few different activities first.

Wednesday 26 February 2020
After looking at who actually needs to go out with Mel we chose our 4 who need that extra support.  Today we began our Get NZ writing topic which was writing a poem of our naughtiest moment.  The discussion time with Mel beforehand meant that the group came in ready to start immediately after our introduction.  They had their idea.  I did get them to write out the questions to answer which took a lot longer than I had hoped so perhaps for this group have the questions printed up to simply answer.  Some had lots to say verbally but did not get much written down.  Could we record their ideas for some of them and they write out the final copy just to get ideas started.

Links to Standards

• How am I planning my learning programmes and selecting appropriate teaching strategies to best meet the needs of my ākonga?  I think about what skills are needed for the end product eg a newspaper report advertisiing Japan and structure each lesson around this skill unitl they can do this independently
• How can I improve my pedagogical content knowledge in areas where my ākonga struggle to master new skills or knowledge?
• How can my knowledge of human development, especially cognitive and social development, inform my planning and teaching?
• Do I effectively analyse and use assessment data to inform my teaching and planning?
• Do my own and the school’s systems generate the formal and informal assessment information that I need to plan for and effectively support my ākonga? 
• How can I use the schoolwide assessment data effectively to inform my practice?
• What other formal and informal sources of data could I be using?
• How do I know that my ākonga are progressing?

TBCS -All Strategy - Margaret-Steve - 5 June 2019

Using the ALL strategy in the classroom to improve writing outcomes for struggling writers

 https://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/School/Inclusive-education/SuccessForAllEnglish.pdf


Myself and Steve have begun using this process in class with the support of Mel.  We send the group out for 'pre loading' so when they come back to class they are pre prepared or primed to begin the task.  So far it has been a positive response from the students as they seem very keen to go out with Mel and are excited when they know the 'answers' or can contribute to the discussion.  This is especially important for those who dont listen so well as they get that repetition so they are clear on what the task is.

Reflection
Though positive experience it is very hard to keep this time consistent and we need to make sure we know exactly what Mel is prepping them with before hand.  It is too soon to tell how it is making a difference to their writing - we will know this when we test but the overall attitude and quantity of their writing is definately obvious.

Next Steps:  Get research from Steve and Mel on this as they attended the course.  Continue conferencing with all students one on one to check and help edit.  This has been working well as I can give them immediate feedback from them either sharing their work with me or have them sitting beside me and going through it together.  Brainstorming together - writing those ideas down for some of the students just to get them started.  Finding when they have free choice what to write they are more engaged also like in Room 1 though they still need help structuring and making sense.

Links to Standards

• Strategies used
• Structuring learning tasks so that all ākonga experience a degree of success, but also ensuring that they are required to stretch themselves to fully succeed.
• Providing constructive feedback and useful feedforward information.
• Helping ākonga to effectively set goals and self-assess

Margaret - Problem Solving in real life

Measuring out distance throw for athletics

Digging and weeding out the long jump pit

Measuring out weed mat to place on the garden before covering it with bark.

Activities with real purpose

As a teacher I sometimes get a bit overwhelmed by what needs to be organised for lessons or activities and tend to forget that organising the students to do this gives them a real chance to take responsibility, apply learning, develop leadership and learn some valuable life lessons that are not necessarily academic.  Steve had organised the playground to be re barked so as part of this he arranged for students to go out in small groups to do this along with having some of the more capable maths students work out how to place the weed mat down.  This involved measuring the area and working this out as a group.  Athletics provided another opportunity for students to set up stations for ball throw, sprints and relays which involved maths and team work again.  It was interesting to watch them getting on with the task.  Usually a leader came out, those with more gardening skills taught the others such as how to use a shovel effectively, weeding.

Next steps:  Continue using these opportunities of "caretaking" around the school as they come up either as whole class, small groups, energisers for those needing a break from class work

Margaret - Ways of Learning - Standard 5 Design for Learning

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• After identifying the need for students to learn their timetables well to help them as they move onto more challenging maths tasks such as long division, myself and Steve have been testing students daily and giving them time during maths to learn these by rote.  We have emphasised the importance of learning these to help them with maths, become better at maths and to help them in the future.  I tested Aatea, she had good speed and accuracy but when she went to complete her maths she was unable to transfer her knowledge while working out long multiplication.  After a discussion with Steve about this, he pointed out that Aatea and some of the others learn more successfully with audio rather than written, which the multiplication was.  This made me think of how I am assessing and teaching children.  Am I assessing them equally and taking into consideration their styles of learning?  Audio or visual?  When planning activities have I got all the elements in there?  Oral instructions, written on the board or drive, videos, practical tasks.
• When testing timestables at least I will now use a mix of audio and visual (saying it and seeing it written) to help students learn both ways and take note if this helps Aatea and others transfer their skills to the actual problems.
• Links to Standard 5 - Design for Learning
• Developing ākonga metacognitive awareness by examining why particular strategies are effective or less effective in different learning contexts.
• Adapting lessons to ensure they address ākonga needs and interests as they arise.
• Helping ākonga appreciate the value or importance of what they are learning.

From Kidspot

https://kidspot.co.nz/school-age/learning-styles-in-children/

Learning styles explained

Auditory or language learners

These types learn through listening to what others have to say and talking about what they’re learning. They’re also more likely to:

• remember information by talking aloud
• need to have things explained orally
• may have trouble with written instructions
• talk to themselves while learning something new
• enjoy discussion groups over working alone

Worth noting: auditory learners might look like they’re not paying attention when you talk to them but their listening skills are more developed than their visual skills.

Visual learners

As their name suggests, these people learn through watching. It’s believed to be the most dominant learning style and many traditional classrooms are geared towards the visual learner. For their learning to make sense they need to be able to see, visualise and illustrate their knowledge skills and concepts. Visual learning characteristics include:

• remembering visual details
• preferring to see what they are learning
• needing to have paper and pens handy
• doodling while listening
• liking to write down instructions or see them demonstrated

Worth noting: Telling these learners how to do something may not make sense to them at all – they need to see it.

• Find out more about visual learners

Kinaesthetic/tactile learners

These learners like to be actively involved in the learning process, and learn best through hands-on activities and movement. Other kinaesthetic characteristics are they:

• want to actually do whatever is being talked about or learned
• like to move around while listening or talking
• often ‘talk’ with their hands
• like to touch things in order to learn about them
• remember events by recalling who did what rather than who said what

Worth noting: These types of learners can be misdiagnosed as ADHD or troublemakers because the more tradition visual or auditory learning styles just don’t work for them.

• Find out more about kinaesthetic learners

Is there a fourth style?

While the above three are the major styles discussed, some experts talk about logical or ‘analytical’ learners. These learn through exploring patterns and understanding how things relate to each other. These learners also:

• love knowing how things work
• are capable of quite logical thinking at a very young age
• ask a lot of questions so they can understand how things interrelate
• show an early aptitude at solving mathematical problems
• can grasp strategy games at a young age

Steve - Standard Criteria - Student Learning design 31 July 2018

• Adapting lessons to ensure they address ākonga needs and interests as they arise.

A student was having an issue in her diagnostic lessons. We identified the area of concern. Then looking at how to practise this area it was decided to go back a year level to the lessons most applicable (maths times tables x 4). She has continued to practise these lessons in preparation of going back to the original year level lessons, using the information she has now transferred into her long term memory.

reflection - steve

Reading.
I observed a student reading by sounding out each letter of each word. I was a bit confused as I had heard her reading before. I decided to investigate.
I paid direct attention and her reading was stilted, letter sounds, no recognition of sight words.
I was then distracted by another student, and from the corner of my eye and ear I heard her reading less stilted again. After discussion with the teacher aide working with her, i decided to try an experiment.
I sat her down and before reading asked her to explain what she does when she reads. After the usual "I just read" she advised that when she gets to a word she isn't sure of she sounds out, and then continues for each word after that.
We talked about blends not individual letter sounds, and endings. She agreed to try it.
With direction and coaching we started reading. When a word confused we worked it out and when we got to the end of the sentence we went back and reread the whole sentence.
Action Step: confer with the teacher aide and support this process on each occasion. The teacher aide is going to talk to the parent to explain our process so it can be used at home.