Suddenly we find ourselves in lockdown again.
This poses the question 'how can I continue to develop student's foundational skills during distance learning?'
What aspects of my teaching had I changed during class and how could I keep this practice going through lockdown?.
- Building memory; As much of junior early learning has an aspect of rote learning and repetition, I had been focusing on memory games and that would hopefully transfer to remembering letter sounds, sight words, basic facts. I have integrated memory games into their reading program such as playing memory with sight words at school and then tried to create similar experiences at home using an Engage game 'Card Memory and connecting it to the text Hannah's Game.
- Incorporating teaching of direction language into my daily program; the top slide shows another aspect of developing foundation skills, which is developing an understanding of directional/positional words. Experimenting with different ways to connect with students during lockdown I have found that videos of me doing activities is the most effective way of engaging students. They love seeing their teacher and seeing they can't read yet, seeing and hearing the 'how to's' allows them to easily access their learning tasks. This activity not only tells and shows directional language, they then have to use it to create a race themselves.
- Development of gross motor skills, balance, and stability, hand-eye coordination; at school my students love doing exercise circuits after they have finished their writing. We also incorporate fine motor skill activities into our daily program as some students haven't the muscle strength and control needed to write with a pencil or cut with scissors. We talk about what skill the exercise is teaching them. I know this is best not to teach skills in isolation (vs within a context such as a game) but my students love it and it works for this particular group of students. Therefore to take this into their homes I again set them the challenge of creating their own exercise circuit 'boot camp' for them and their whānau. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I used resources that were already available as well as videos I made myself. I also gave students a yoga video to do as they love doing yoga at school.
Some resources I have incorporated onto my site are:
As well as some homemade videos by me... nothing fancy and slightly cringy but the students love them.
- The last aspect is something I have carried over from my inquiry last year which is 'say, and do' language experiences. Using Dr Jannie Van Hees's technique of reusing and recycling vocabulary, say and do language experience activities related to a context outside of their daily worlds. This teaches them new vocabulary in context.
How will I measure if this change of practice has had a positive effect on student outcomes?
I will use whānau voice, student voice, and work samples to measure student outcomes. I will hopefully see student work samples and have feedback from my students on their return to school. Through talking to whānau, I have learned that students are using the site and videos and are engaged and motivated by them. They understand the learning tasks and are completing them. It will be interesting to see if the learning they are doing at home, transfers to learning in the classroom when back at school.
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