TIA20 Academic Reading; Krashen

S. Krashen

Facilitating language comprehension; what we do as teachers naturally and what we should actually focus on.

Slowed down speech, clearer articulation, use of more high-frequency words, syntactic simplification, shorter sentences and the use of fewer idioms may appear to promote language comprehension however this limits students to minimal language input. Secondly, we actually tend to make these changes naturally when speaking to a second language speaker, therefore, this is not what we as teachers need to focus on.

Instead, it is important to focus on comprehension and communication and if we do this then the syntactic requirements will follow suit. (Krashen, 1982)

"Believe that your child can understand more than he or she can say, and seek, above all, to
communicate... "If you concentrate on communicating, everything else will follow." (Brown,
1977, p. 26. in Krashen, 1982)

Krashen highlights these strategies as effective methods of teaching language acquisition.

• Check students comprehension by monitoring their verbal and non-verbal responses.

• Use pictures and objects to encourage language acquisition. This helps students to understand concepts outside of what they know.

• Take advantage of what student's know about in the world however, be aware that if the context is too familiar they may have little or no interset and uptake will be minimal. Utilize their curiosity of contexts outside their known worlds whilst helping them make connections to what they already understand.

• Share the process of language acquisition with the students so that they can continue to progress and be aware of their progress independently.

These points affirm the work of Dr Jannie Van Hees and the intensive oral language acquisition work I have currently been doing. I want to be much more open with my students about the process of language acquisition. This is something I remember Jannie discussing with students on one of her modelling sessions for us teachers. This will help them to be metacognitive and add value to what we are doing. It will also help them to continue with their language acquisition when they are not in the class situation.

Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition.

TAI20 Professional Reading; The Oral Language Book by Sheena Camaron and Louise Dempsey

The Oral Language Book; Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey

Traits of Effective Teachers of Oral Language

• Explicitly teach speaking skills
• Engage in dialogue not monologue
• Model, scaffold support and guide speaking and listening learning in the classroom
• Create a safe respectful talking environment
• Explicitly teach listening skills
• Explicitly teach vocabulary

What am I doing already? What can I do differently?

What am I already doing?	What can I do differently?  Ideas are taken from Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey's The Oral Language Book
Explicitly teach speaking skills
Encourage students to speak in sentences, not one-word answers.	Modelled and shared, guided and independent speaking and listening approach gradually releasing responsibility (Pearson and Gallagher, 1983)
Engage in dialogue not monologue
Say and do activities	Think-pair-share instead of hands up…. I still need to work on ‘no hands up’ Think, pair, walk and talk
Model, scaffold support and guide speaking and listening learning in the classroom
Provide devices and opportunities for students to record and listen back to themselves speaking. Model correct sentence structures, encourage students to use correct sentence structures.	Scaffold speaking and listening using talking strips  Doughnut circles
Create a safe respectful talking environment
Really listen to students and encourage students to really listen to each other. Value and encourage the use of heritage language in the classroom. Allow for think time and allow students to work with a partner or in small groups.
Explicitly teach listening skills
Engage Games with focus on listening carefully	Barrier Games Construct charts describing what good listeners do
Explicitly teach vocabulary
Drama and role play Retelling	Word pictures

Cameron, C & Dempsey, L (2016). The Oral Language Book, Auckland: S&L Publishing Ltd.

TAI20 Revisiting my Hypothesis

This graph shows me how my students are tracking in reading over time using Term 2 running record reading data. I can identify students whose progress has plateaued as well as those students that are making slower than expected progress. 

As I am able to identify the students, it is interesting to note that results plateaued for many of the students that didn't connect during the lockdown. Whereas, those students that did connect have all continued to make progress (this is with exception to one student). This data was collected 3 weeks after returning to school.

This is my second year teaching this group of students, and my second year of inquiring into my practice in order to raise these the achievement outcomes of these students. 

Last year I identified that most students didn't begin to make progress through the reading levels until around their first year at school. It is my hunch that factors contributing to this could be the extremely low levels of the oral language they have at school entry, the social, economic and health factors influencing their readiness to learn and the acquisition of English as a second language within their first year at school. These were the factors influencing my hypothesis during the first year of this inquiry and informed my changes of practice up until this point.

My hypothesis has been...

Utilising the student's strengths in their first language, working in bilingual and multilingual ways, creating Talanoa, and working in partnership with families will help build students English language and literacy.

Developing oral language through short high-interest topics and real-life experiences, with a focus on intensive oral language acquisition, will create an environment of language in abundance.

A collaborative inquiry across the junior school (Years 1-3) will grow professional capital across the school. The shared inquiry will allow all students across the junior school to benefit from the effectiveness of changed practice and allow teachers to learn from and with each other. It will hopefully also enable an effective changed practice to become sustainable.

ENGAGE games were introduced towards the end of the first year in response to students inability to self-regulate and the effect this was having on their ability to listen and engage in learning.


I feel it is important to keep the same hypothesis however I have seen significant shifts in many of my students, however, I now want to shift my focus away from those students that this has worked for (as I hope that me continuing with methods that have worked will keep on working for these students) towards those students that are not making the expected progress. What can I do differently so that those achieving keep on achieving and those that aren't making the progress do too!For me, certain aspects of this hypothesis have been explored more than others...The standout area that last year I didn't explore was 'working in partnership with families will help build students English language and literacy.' Lockdown has made me realise that even though I thought up until that point I had developed strong home-school partnerships, I really hadn't. How can I use the strong relationships that I formed over lockdown to make a difference to the outcomes of those students that are not making the expected progress?
If I work in partnership with families then student learning will flow across home-school contexts and the student, whānau and school will have a greater common understanding of learning needs and the best ways to meet those learning needs.
Although I will be collecting and analysing data across my class. I will form a new focus group consisting of students that are not making the same progress as others within my class.

TAI20 The Nature and Extent of the Student Challenge: Whānau Voice

I have been collecting parent voice through the method of Talanoa. This method allows whānau to speak openly without the expectation to answer questions in a forced and directed way. These conversations are a way to listen to whānau and the messages they are sharing in a comfortable natural way.
All three pieces of whānau voice were collected through long comfortable conversations in natural environments with other whānau members present. This information was given by them without prompting or questioning. 

One mum talked about the impact of helping her children do their learning during the lockdown:
"I wasn't aware of the impact of what was going on at home was having on the children's achievement. They didn't use to be like this. (This is referring to an extremely difficult situation the family has been through).

They are at a 5-year-old level. I don't want them falling further behind. It wasn't only me it was the older siblings helping them.

I'm glad all the growling at them to do their work has paid off. It was hard work.

I have noticed they have changed. They are happy kids. They come home from school all talking at once wanting to tell me about their day."

Another mum discussed how she loved working with her daughter during the lockdown: 

"I want to keep working with her. I can see the progress she is making. We don't do the projects as we don't have the things you need but we do reading, writing and maths. I haven't paid much attention to their leaning before but now I'm reading and doing things with my younger children too."

Discussion during a home visit with Samoan whānau: 
"We don't feel safe coming back to school yet. We are learning through our bible studies and the church band. We are doing things together as a small family group. I am teaching them about God's ways. The children use my hotspot to go on their site in the evening after they have done their jobs." As we were talking the children were playing doctors with a toy medical kit.

My reflection of whānau voice is 

• The impact high levels of stress in the home setting has on students self-regulation and uptake of new learning at school. As illustrated above whānau may not be aware of the impact stressful home situations have on children's learning. Once made aware of this whanau made changes to their family interactions and gave more support with their children's learning.
• Families have limited resources at home however during the lockdown, having learning visible on the class site allowed whānau to become more involved in their child's learning and they could see the progress their child was making. This was a motivating factor for some whānau and they wanted to continue helping their child with their learning after the lockdown.
• It is easy to look at education and views of success through a Pakeha lense. However, it is important to step out of our cultural world view into the world views of our students. I need to gain a deeper understanding of  Māori and Pasifika beliefs of success, values and education if I am to truly look at achievement and what we measure as success.