Our Happy Place

Here is the Green Team creating sunbathing rocks for the butterflies in our pollination garden. 

There is nothing more beautiful than our children learning in and about nature. 

Over the last few years, Tāmaki's school garden has become the children's happy place. They go there to explore, dig, plant, look for insects, write stories and play. It may look like an overgrown jungle at times, but the vegies are left to go to seed and then the seeds are collected and replanted. The children decide what to plant and are the ones who look after the plants. For some of our children, this is the only place they get to explore nature. 

Our children are so naturally curious about the natural world, how important is it that they have opportunities to explore those curiosities?

 

Was my hypothesis correct?

Was my hypothesis correct?

My hypothesis is that progress plateaus as students make sense of and consolidate new learning. It's almost as if they are close to cognitive overload. 

Mid-year running record data showed that my target students' progress had plateaued even though they in class were using and showing an understanding of new learning. Also, my class was excited about their learning, engaged, and working hard. I predicted that this plateau in running record data was due to the consolidation of skills and knowledge and that they were making sense of this information. 

And sure enough.... their new running record data a term later, shows that progress has definitely spiked with many now reading at or above the expected level. A massive accomplishment as they have now made 3 years of progress in just 2 years.  This is what we call accelerative progress. 

Of course, there are exceptions, the data highlights these exceptions and lets me analyze the possible factors influencing these student's achievement.

Two students have 20% attendance which means that retaining learning is challenging. 

Two students have high learning needs, It is equally exciting to see these students progress at their own rate and celebrate huge achievements as they happen. 

For a couple of students, progress isn't quite as fast as the majority. What is going on for these students? What can I do differently to help them with their learning... These students will receive extra support from me so that I can hone in on what works and what doesn't for them.

So what does my teaching of reading look like?

-A solid phonics session each day (Yolanda Soryl)

-Teaching decoding strategies; skipping over the word, rereading on and then rereading (Skippy Frog), breaking words up into chunks (Chunky Monkey), Re-reading the sentence when it doesn't make sense (Trying Lion). This comes from Beanie Babies, I use puppets to teach and model the strategies.

-Explicitly teaching comprehension strategies

-Reading, reading, and more reading in class (school is the only place most of my students experience books)

-Integration of writing and reading (teaching literacy)

-Fostering a love for reading and writing

I'm so proud of my students. They work so hard, love learning, and love reading. The magic of teaching and learning that was happening in Room 3 is now represented in qualitative data as well as the quantitative data that I see each day. For my students, many of whom have challenges outside of school that many adults can't even begin to imagine, school is their happy place. They love learning, strive for excellence, and connect their amazing experiences and knowledge with new learning. 

Having students a solid foundation to build future learning has been my aim. I can't wait to see where their learning takes them.

The Learner First PLD

My inquiry this year is into changing the way I teach maths to accelerate students' achievement and grow my own knowledge, skill, and love for maths.

My school's decision to engage in The Learner First PLD this year was perfect timing and just the inspiration I was looking for.

Over the last few years, my team has discussed our uncertainty about how to successfully cover the wide mathematics curriculum and how is it best taught. With so much to cover, it has always felt that coverage seemed almost impossible. 

Added to this was a lack of confidence in my own mathematical knowledge which stretches back to my own school experiences. 

TLF showed us how to use the NZ Maths unit planner to create coverage across the year and then add rapid routines and rich learning tasks to it to flesh it out. The introduction of Rapid Routines made me see how fun maths could be and put me in the shoes of the learner. 

What a transformation! 

I'm loving maths and love teaching it! Even more important is that my students are also now loving maths!

I'm not sure what it is that has brought about this shift... 

Is it that maths is now super fun? 

Is it that I can now stop stressing about covering the breadth of the curriculum?

Is it because I'm growing my own understanding along with my students?

I actually think it's all three. 

I'm seeing a massive acceleration, especially in student's number knowledge. I'm seeing excited faces and total engagement. What a win!

Tracking the progress of my students; When will I see progress spike?

I'm interested in what happens to progress as students acquire new skills and knowledge.

As mid-year reporting takes place I am fascinated by those students that attend school regularly, are busy acquiring so many new skills, and gaining new knowledge on a daily basis but are yet to show progress through assessments such as running records or JAM maths assessment.

My hypothesis is that progress plateaus as they make sense of and consolidate this new learning. It's almost as if they are close to cognitive overload.

The dose and density of learning that they experience in my class this year is intense however, seeing that they are loving it and they have an understanding of the learning progress I don't want the foot to be taken off the accelerator. 

I predict that once this new learning is consolidated then I will see a peak in progress by the end of the year. 

• My students have a great understanding of the learning process; that learning is uncomfortable and that success comes through practice. They talk about this process on a daily basis and reflect on which part of the learning process they are currently at.
• I also ensure that learning is kept fun with as much as possible coming from the student's own wonderings and areas of interest. There is obvious engagement happening.
• It can be frustrating at times as a teacher, to see students taking onboard new learning during class and then not demonstrating it when it comes to an assessment task. 
• Students that don't attend school regularly are showing little progress in class as well as through assessment tasks, compared to those students that are not yet transferring learning to assessment tasks but can demonstrate it with support during class.

I'm reflecting that they need scaffolding, multiple exposures of the skill being modeled, then multiple opportunities to practice with scaffolds and supports being reduced. This will then lead to being able to use the skill independently, and then finally being able to transfer it to new situations. 

Do many of our assessment tasks expect students to be extended abstract thinkers, transferring the skill to a new situation? Students would therefore have to have worked through the entire learning process for this to happen. When it does is when I think we will see that assessment data spike.

Cuisenaire Rods

For years a box of cuisenaire rods has been gathering dust among my maths resources. The students occasionally get them out to make patterns with and I have used them to learn about place value but I had never understood their true potential.

That was until I discovered this NZ Maths Unit!

Students assign a value to each rod based on the assumption that the white block's value is one. This was done through play and exploration.

The students then explored the relationship between the rods. Working together sharing their discoveries and then sharing back to the class was super powerful!

Students were then given a number e.g., 10, and asked to create a train to represent that value and then from there a mat of combinations that all hold that value.

This is an activity that can be used time and again with different numbers and adapted to suit different learning intentions. 

Now that I have unlocked the power of this resource I'm kicking myself that I never asked someone how to use this resource. Such a hands-on resource and perfect for creating open-ended learning activities!

 

Using Beebots With Juniors

 

Col Presentation- Reflection of my 2022 Inquiry into how to catch students up with foundation learning after Covid 19 and students missing their first year of schooling

Many of our Year 2 students started school this year at new entrant level. 

Data showed they didn’t know any words or letter sounds or have key concepts about print. The catalytic change was to build the foundations as quickly as we could in the first two terms (something that would usually take a year) so we could then have a basis to build the Year Two curriculum upon. 

A foundation skills programme on steroids! I felt that changing practice in my room alone was not enough and that the sharing of effective practice would lead to change across our school. So what did this look like? 

A balanced literacy programme; consisting of a strong Yolanda Soryl phonics based programme, alongside explicit teaching of decoding strategies like rereading and reading on, explicit teaching of Comprehension Strategies from the work of Alison Davis and hands on language experiences to build oral language and ignite a love of writing with the purpose of sharing their ideas. 

Knowing this was contradictory to the current trend of a structured literacy approach, I wanted to see if my hunch as having phonics be an important piece of a complex jigsaw puzzle of skills and knowledge needed to learn to read, not the whole approach, would catch our students up to be working within the expected level. 

After analysing my own teaching what I was doing well and what I wasn’t… I created steadfast daily routines, I used modeling books for the first time in years, this focused my teaching and gave the students a visual. 

We created a ½ hour dynamic phonics program each day which you could hear singing out of the classrooms as you walk through the hallways. 

We explicitly taught comprehension strategies to get our students thinking about the texts and used puppets to explicitly teach decoding strategies to help students when they got stuck on words. 

The easiest thing to change was our daily routines, having the PLC as a team, and setting aside time in our team huis to discuss our Literacy programme meant we could share the journey, supporting and bounce ideas of each other. 

The hardest thing was that we were all at different rates of change and coming at different entry points. The acceptance that change of teacher practice takes time is the hardest thing for me, who wants it to happen with urgency, to accept. 

My big takeaways from our programme is that it took just one term for our students to go from not knowing any sounds to knowing all initial letter sounds, being sound out CVC words and to manipulate the sounds within words and to be moving on to learning diagraphs. This was amazing and at the same time, the students also gained a memory of high frequency words.

They could also not only explain what visualising, inference and retelling were but could totally use these strategies to understand text. These comprehension skills they can build upon throughout their education.

They also love writing to share their learning gained through the hands on vocabulary activities. This has spread through our Junior school. It is a whole approach which I believe will give students a solid foundation to build future literacy learning upon. 

We as a team have worked super hard, it was relentless but we have so many of our students move from pre-level 1 to working within the expected level the hard work has paid off big time.

Stage 1 Phonics Session

Building Oral Language - Student Inquiry PLC Session

 

Monitoring Effectiveness Of Our Interventions

My Inquiry Question: How can we effectively grow literacy practice across our school, developing a balanced literacy program that accelerates our students to where they need to be and builds a solid foundation for future literacy learning.

My Theory Of Action:

-To undergo PLC (Yolanda Soryl Phonics and Alison Davis Building Comprehension Strategies) as a team and share how we are transferring the PLC to our own classroom environments. Keeping the PLC alive within our Junior school environment.

-Creating a Team wide balanced literacy program that incorporates phonics, decoding strategies, comprehension strategies, oral language hands-on activities, and solid literacy routines. Ensuring quality literacy practice is happening across our team.

How am I collecting information about my changed practices/interventions? How am I collecting information about the changes that are happening across my team?

Monitoring Informally:

During guided reading sessions I am recording in modeling books how students feel about the lesson, and whether they understand or need more practice, as well as recording students' responses and a few little notes to myself. This helps me track the effects of my changed practice and monitor changes in progress in real-time.

I'm finding the use of modeling books is really focusing my teaching each session, students are able to see their responses and seem to be more aware of what it is exactly they are learning to do. The use of modeling books is a changed practice across our team. Although the teachers feel it is a little more work planning they feel the shift is a positive in terms of directing their teaching and having something the students can refer back to.

Having students working on whiteboards right in front of me during phonics allows me to monitor progress each session as well as address the things I can see happening and scaffold where needed.

Monitoring informally the transference of taught literacy skills and knowledge is monitored on a day-to-day basis during writing time. I am aware of whether transference is happening as I rove the room helping my students. I will usually write a little comment in their books that reflects the skills and knowledge I am seeing them use as well as a next step for them to work towards.

Monitoring Formally:

Using running record information:

What are they doing? What are they not yet doing?

Using this to inform my teaching, for example, students were not recognising word endings so this then became the next focus for my lessons.

Also, to find out if what we have already taught has been effective and if transference is happening.

What is happening across our team?

We are informally having more impromptu talks about what we are doing (changes to our teaching practice) and talking about what we are noticing our students doing/not yet doing, on a day-to-day basis.

Formally I have set aside a section of Team hui to

1) discuss how we are implementing the PLC we have received, and how this looks in our classes.

2) Share changes we are making to our practice that are working. This sharing of ideas and success is a great way to keep our programs alive, gain motivation from each other and celebrate the successes.

3) Discuss challenges we or our students are facing so we can share ideas and problem-solve together.

This is recorded in our Team Hui minutes so we can track our professional growth and refer back to it when needed.