Create Staff Meeting

I'm super proud of my students tonight. Today was the Manaiakalani Create Staff Meeting lead by our students. 

Room 2 student's taught our teachers how to make catapults. We took the teachers through the same lesson we did in class unpacking the read-aloud picture book 'The Bomb' by Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan. Then we solved a technology problem by enabling a toy person to do a 'manu' into a swimming pool of water (container of water) by making catapults. 

One aspect of the rationale for choosing a read-aloud picture book was that I really wanted to work with this fantastic book, as the students could connect to the text and illustrations in so many ways. Secondly to share the power of read-aloud stories, role play, and storytelling to build comprehension strategies and open a gateway to exploration and new learning. 

When the difficulty of decoding is removed the brain can focus on imagining the story, making connections to text, and gaining meaning of the text itself. I’m not saying that decoding isn’t important, it is equally as important but how can we be thinking about the meaning of the story when we are using all our brainpower to decode? Giving students time to enjoy a text and equitability in accessing the text, is something of value to add to learning design. Reading to your students allows this to happen. Also, a read aloud story is such a fabulous way to launch a new topic and take students on a journey of discovery and learning. The opportunities and ideas linked to a text are endless.

The opportunity afforded by the create staff meeting, to teach adults being Tuakana, was so empowering. The students were increadably excited by the opportunity of being taken to another school to share their learning and weren't at all nervous. They explained their thinking beautifully. One of my favourite moments was when Trevor carefully thought about what he was going to say and perfectly articulated a sentence, you could see the concentration on his face as he carefully chose his words. 

The experience made me reflect on how few opportunities I give students to share their learning face to face with others and the powerful effects this has on the learner and their self-esteem. 

The experience was topped off by a trip to Mc Donalds which the children loved. 

"I'm going to write a story about this tomorrow. I'm going to say I went to McDonald's with my teacher" Trevor in the car on the way back. 

A big thank you to Manaiakalani for giving our students this opportunity, our school for letting us go, the other teachers for being great students and encouraging our little ones and Mrs Jalili for coming with us to McD's. 

What Assessment Data Shows In Terms Of Oral Language Acquisition

I have the most amazing group of learners in my class. They love learning and are 100% engaged and excited about whatever exciting learning experience is in front of them. Already we have created a culture of writing to share our learning and ideas and thirst to want to learn. 

The feel in our class is one of happiness, positive relationships, and trust. The students were quick to form relationships with me and each other. 

The class is extremely inclusive of each other and happy to be at school each day. 

What a great position to start an inquiry into changing my practice to better meet the needs of these beautiful little learners that have incredible potential within and ahead of them. 

My target group consists of 9 Year 1 and 2 students. I sampled these 9 students based on my teacher judgment and assessment data of those students with the lowest levels of oral language and foundation skills. 

With a focus on developing foundation skills in our student's first few years at school, a key element is oral language.

To assess the areas of challenge students had in terms of oral language acquisition I used the Dr Jannie van Hees CombiList (2013). 

Only two out of the nine students showed competence in any of the factors of language development described in the combilist. The other 7 students all only demonstrated these factors sometimes or not at all. 

The greatest areas of the challenge were: 

-Giving elaborate responses to open-ended questions from the teacher.

Open ended questions are met with shoulder-shrugging, "I dunno." or silience. Students look uncomfortable and at times will freeze rather than give a response. It is hard to know if they don't understand, don't have the words, are not used to thinking at a more critical level, or are not confident speaking.

-Sustaining expression of their meaning, ideas, and intentions.

One or two words are shared when expressing their thoughts. The vocabulary is low-level and directly linked to their own direct experiences with very few content-driven vocabulary. Sentence structures short and missing structural words. Ideas are not elaborate and very few details are given.

Video snap snots of students show that some students use one or two-word utterances in play situations with the use of very little concept vocabulary.

Two boys playing with dinosaurs showed them hitting the dinosaurs together shouting "arggggggh, arggggggh, die, die, argggggh, argggggh" with no other vocabulary used.

-Thinking before they speak so as to express at a higher cognitive level.

My hunch is that thinking before they speak ties in with low impulse control, saying the first thing that comes into their head or repeating something someone else has called out. These students also have difficulties with impulse control in the physical sense. They quickly 'do' without stopping and thinking. Would improving the physical improve the verbal aspect of impulse control or vice versa? 

-Continuing their meaning and intentions, and picking up and using teacher examples and models.

The difficulty students have listening to the teacher or each other is obvious through their body language and questing them as a response to what has been shared verbally. Also, 4 of the nine students lack confidence speaking if they feel they may get it wrong and have moments of shutting down. 

-Talking to others, not only the teacher.

I have observed the reluctance of students to speak in group situations during mat time e.g. group discussions. It is common for them to sit back and let the more confident students speak. This, however, isn't the case when they have physical activities to do as they seem engaged in the doing and talking comes more naturally.

All students are reading at Level 1 or Pre Level 1 and Writing at Pre Level 1 of the New Zealand curriculum. and writing at pre 1B. 

Analysis of Student's Writing Samples

I have used an analysis of my student's writing samples as baseline data to measure progress over the course of my inquiry. This analysis also includes the picture plan which gives clues to the developmental stages in terms of body awareness (drawing of people), fine motor skill development, and spatial awareness. 

The student understands that marks on a page represent writing and is beginning to form some letter shapes, however, is unable to retell their story. The people in the picture have separate heads and bodies and the drawing of a cat is discernable.

They use strings of letters to tell a story. They could say the sentence that they wanted to write. With support could record 3 letter sounds. This was with prompting and support from the teacher to find the sound on their ABC card. Drawing of people shows arms and legs coming out from the head with no separate body. This type of picture is common in children between 3-4 years of age. 

This student uses the picture box for text and picture. Marks on the page are beginning to look like letters (symbolic mock letters). Although the 3 people in their picture are basic each looks different. They are able to retell their story to the teacher. 

They were unable to hold their pencil correctly and the picture and text resembled scribbles without the fine motor skill control to create a discernable shape (The circle was drawn by the teacher). This includes a scribble for the picture of themselves inside the bubble. This may indicate a lack of body awareness. This stage is called controlled scribbling and is usually seen in children between 2-3 years of age. This student without prompting will use a cylindrical grasp of the pencil (developmental stage 1-2 years)

Spatial awareness is challenging for this student. Even with prompting and modeling from the teacher is unable to draw the picture in the box. Arms and legs come out from the head however, hands do have five fingers. Is able to articulate a simple sentence and with support from the teacher can find some basic words on the word card and copy them. This student has an understanding of the directionality of print.

These students are all within their first year at school. So what does the above data look like in terms of the Literacy Learning Progressions?

According to the literacy progressions at school entry children enjoy writing for a variety of purposes and can hold a story in their heads long enough to retell it. They may write marks on the page that represent letters or words. We also expect some children to be able to write their names, form some letters correctly and hold a pencil correctly. These student's writing shows some of these features, however, it also indicates some features of earlier developmental stages.

The progressions also indicate that from this 'entry point' there is then a high level of scaffolding by teachers to help students to develop the ability to: 

• hold an idea in their heads long enough to write it down (oral language/memory)
• say, hear and record the dominant sounds in words (phonological awareness), 
• write from left to right, leaving spaces between words (directionality, spatial awareness, concepts about print)
• form letters correctly (fine motor skill, directionality). 

My wondering is that is it possible to work on pre-literacy developmental stages whilst still teaching the progressions that are expected within a child's first year at school? Can we strengthen those foundation skills alongside exposure to the skills other students at the same age are developing? 

Tools, Measures and Approaches To Gain A Detailed and Accurate Profile Of My Student's Learning

In this blog post, I will outline the tools, measures, and approaches I will use to gain an accurate and detailed profile of my students' learning in relation to their 'school-readiness as I begin and move through my inquiry.

There are such a vast array of skills needed to acquire to be school-ready and students will have varying strengths and skill development needs. Therefore, adopting a vast range of methods will hopefully allow me to measure progress and give me a more detailed profile of my learners across all the foundation skill domains. The skills children needed to acquire in the early years in order to build formal learning upon are; reflexes, senses, motor development, language skills, auditory skills, and visual skills.

I have chosen the following tools/measures and approaches to gain a detailed and accurate profile of my students' learning in relation to the challenge of the acquisition of developmental skills needed for school readiness.

Data will be analyzed from the assessments that we already do within our school:

Running Records- Providing a score for word reading accuracy, analysis of readers' errors and self-corrections, and reading strategies used. This assessment is a requirement of all junior students and is used to formative inform teacher practice. This assessment measures the progress of students once they start reading.

Concepts About Print- This assessment is used to assess students' acquisition of the knowledge of the conventions of print. This assessment is conducted on entry to school and again at age six.

E-asTTle- Writing assessment used in Term 1 and Term 4, moderated within the school and across Manaiakalani schools.

Engage/Leap Assessment; SDQR Self Regulation Assessment Form- Our school is taking part in the ENGAGE/Leap initiative to help students develop self-regulation skills through 30-minute game playing daily. This assessment is used for those students whose whānau have agreed to take part in the program.

In addition to these assessments, I will be using

Dr Jannie van Hees CombiList (Dr Jannie van Hees © 2013)- This is an oral language acquisition assessment tool. This tool measures the learner's willingness to communicate, communication with adults, participation in discourse, contribution to discussion, and benefits from feedback. From my previous inquiry in oral language acquisition, this tool gave a clear picture of areas of challenge, and the progress of learners is broken down into specific areas.

A Foundation Skills Assessment- Measuring reflexes, senses, motor development, language skills, auditory skills, and visual skills. This will be a tick sheet to record students' progress in acquiring these skills within the daily program.

Phonological Awareness Assessment- Yolanda Soryl phonological awareness assessment. As teaching phonics is a part of my program I will be continuing to do daily I think it is important to track its effectiveness as part of a wider foundation skill program.

Student Voice and Whanau Voice- Gathering student voice through creating student profiles will give me an understanding of student's preferred ways of learning, it will give students an opportunity to express who they are, have a say about what goes on for them at school, and in their learning. Talking with whānau gives whānau the important opportunity to partner with whānau to build on strategies at home, value the knowledge of the whānau and utilize parents expertise.

I will assess my whole class and from here take a focus group of students with the greatest need for developing foundation skills. These students I will track throughout the inquiry process to measure progress. This information will allow me to formative adapt my program to meet my student's needs.