A Visit To Apii Te Uki Ou

 He taonga te mokopuna, kia whāngaia, kia tipu, kia rea.

A child is a treasure, to be nurtured, to grow, to flourish.

Apii Te Uki Ou, a small school on the island of Rarotonga. A school where confident students, strong in their identity, language, and culture grow and learn in a beautiful nurturing environment. 

I was extremely lucky to visit Apii Te Uki Ou on a Manaiakalani MIT trip to the Cook Islands. 

Welcomed onto the school grounds with an official welcome, the students then performed to us and their school oozing pride and talent. 

After Kaikai (beautiful food shared with us), we partook in set cultural activities presented by the students. These included making Partau, weaving flax, drumming, and husking a coconut. The student's confidence, knowledge, and understanding of their cultural practices were amazing and made me think of those students in my class that have experienced culture and language loss since moving to New Zealand and ways in which I can help them to grow their cultural identity.

A tour of the classes in the school highlighted students' engagement, wellbeing, and holistic development in their learning. The feel of the school was beautiful.

Educational environments as special as this don't just happen by chance. They are created. 

Thank you so much for your beautiful hospitality Apii Te Uki Ou You have made me reflect on cultural responsiveness, holistic models of education, and the importance of honoring cultural identity.

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.

CoL 2020: Evaluation Of The Intervention/ My Changes To Practice

Changes to teaching practice over the last two years have seen significant shifts in my student's oral language acquisition, extremely pleasing progress in reading and surprisingly huge shifts in my student writing data (surprising because I had intended to gain shifts in reading). All within the craziness of teaching and learning with the challenges of Covid-19.

What did I do differently?

• Two-week high-interest topics exposing the students to as much rich vocabulary within contexts that were outside of their day to day worlds or connected to wonderings about everyday phenomena that they didn't have the vocabulary to explain. Before this, we would teach whole school topics for the whole term. By making this change I saw the urgency in exposing students to as many different contexts as possible but still at a deep level. This also meant giving students hands-on engaging activities that they could connect new vocabulary to, and prior experiences and knowledge that they can build onto as they move through their schooling. Example Of Two Week Unit

• Shifted my two-week high-interest topics to a digital platform. For this, I had to be mindful that my young students were mainly learning independently without parent help. I videoed me taking through hands-on activities, using resources they may have at home and explaining, using, reusing and recycling rich vocabulary. Video evidence showed students doing the activities and using the vocabulary at home which was exciting. I kept this going via our class site after lockdown for those students who still had not returned to school and to follow the Manaiakalani Pedagogy of learning being ubiquitous Learning At Home

• Valued the use of students first language within the classroom. This allowed students to make connections to English through their heritage language. I created opportunities for students to learn in their first languages and share their language with others. I utilised the opportunity for families to help their children with their learning at home during lockdown by shifting to more culturally responsive teaching practices. I became aware that I needed to be cognitive about this as it was easy to slip into old habits, especially when faced with a different way of teaching and learning e.g. totally online teaching. A Shift To More Culturally Responsive Teaching

The Effects Of My Changed Practice/Intervention

Reading

Whole-Class Reading Graph Tracking Students From 0-120 Weeks At School

Target Student Reading Graphs For 0-120 weeks at school

Student 1

Student 2

Student 3


Student 4

Whole-Class Reading OTJ Data 

This data shows that those students that returned to school after lockdown made accelerated progress of expected progress. This surprised me as usually after time off school e.g. summer holidays their reading level drops back. Also, many of my students' families were going through difficult situations due to lockdown/covid and from my own experience, difficult situations at home can influence students learning at school. 

The Pie Graph shows that many of my students are still working below the expected level for their age but some of these students are just one colour wheel level of reaching the expected level. I, therefore, believe that with the continuation of this intervention they would quickly reach where they should be. 

Writing

EAsstle Results Term and Term 4 For Target Students

Results show where my target students sit against National Norm from Week 3 Term 4 EAsttle writing sample. Since this sample was taken my students started to make even greater progress, as shown on the below pie graphs.

Whole-Class Writing OTJ Data 

Their writing shows that they are now able to sequence their ideas. They have the vocabulary to express themselves and their sentence structures are becoming much more complete. Having engaging experiences to write about not only motivated them but they also had so much to share and the language to use that the writing became so much easier. They went from students who would say one or two-word utterances who found it difficult to say a sentence let alone write it....to students producing writing like the piece above. 

Next Step:

My next step is to support my team to implement the intervention across the Junior school. I know implementing change across a team can be challenging, especially gaining buy-in however I hope this data shows that a rich oral language acquisition programme makes a difference to student learning and has the capability to accelerate student progress. 

Critically Thinking About Text

Here are two activities that I used with my students to get them thinking critically about texts.

The first introduces to the art of debating, taking a point of view as the reader based on your own personal experiences, values and connecting these to the information in the text.

The second uses both information in the story and creativity to change the ending of the fairytale.

My students found both activities extremely motivating and the activities created brilliant opportunities to talk and listen to the viewpoint of others. 

Debating; What Should Jack Do?

1. What is a debate? We talked about the election and how the different parties had to tell the people of New Zealand why they should vote for them. We discussed that in a debate you share your point of view and give a reason. 

2. I then asked if the students thought that Jake should give the cow to the man in exchange for the magic bean or take the cow to the market like his mother asked?

3. I got the students to sit at opposite sides of the mat depending on whether they were 'for' giving the cow to the man, or 'against'. Those students undecided sat in the middle with me.

4. I then told the children it was their job to get me and the other students to move to their side of the mat by giving their argument with justification. I also gave the expectation that they would need to take turns to talk.

5. The debate went backwards and forwards, students listened to each other and even added on to what others were saying and responding to others on the opposing team. 

6. Once all students had their turn at sharing their arguments. I said that I was still undecided as everyone's arguments were fantastic. I then asked them to write at least two different arguments for or against and that I would then choose the winner.

Talk about motivated learners!!!! This was the most animated, vocal and excited I have ever seen them during literacy. The oral language, turn-taking and listening were incredible as was their creative and critical ideas.

I think Jack should listen to his mum because the man must be lying. That bean is fake! It must be fake because he (the man) just wants the cow to eat it.

By Rakeena

I think Jack should give the cow to the man because it (the bean) looks like a plant and it is green (referring to a picture of the beanstalk later in the book)! I think he can sell the bean to customers at the market and the customers can give the money to Jack and he could go home and give the money to mum.

By Virginia in response to Rakeena's argument.

Change The Ending To This Fairytale

Using the sentence starter the students had to write a different ending to the story.

1. I began by reading the big book to the class, stopping at this page. The children had read this text many times over the week so the students were very familiar with the plot. 

2. What if we changed the ending to this story. What if something different happened next? Turn and talk, if you could change the story what would happen?

3. The students then went off to write their endings using the story starter ... 'He crept inside the castle...'.

Jack crept inside the castle and saw a giant sleeping with a goose. The goose laid a gold egg. Inside the egg was a dragon in the egg. Jack went to get the goose and the egg. he went down and down the beanstalk. He went to the market and sold the goose and the egg. Jack got some money. he went to the shop and got some food. he went back home.

By Toko

Monitoring, Recording and Tweaking During Lockdown

What did I plan to do?

My aim going into lockdown was to create culturally responsive, online learning opportunities utilising student's heritage languages. It was also to continue with the intensive oral language programme through high-interest topics outside of their daily worlds, hands-on experiences and exposing students to new vocabulary and using, and reusing this vocabulary.

What did I actually do?

• Sent home dual language books, a writing book and a pen.
• Created culturally responsive online learning activities to go with the dual language books.

• Created videos that took students outside of their daily lockdown worlds, using topics that were high interest. I knew my students loved learning about nature and our native creatures. I used these videos to introduce new vocabulary in context. I hoped they would then use these words in their writing.

•  

• Used hands-on activities related to the text we were reading, I was aware from the last lockdown of the limited resources that our students have available at home. So I tried to think of activities that they would have resources for. I was also aware that these activities really worked for some of our students last time.

• Used google hangouts as an opportunity to get the students writing.
• Used a facebook post to encourage whānau to help their child to write a story and read a book each day.

How did I monitor my implementation and student progress?

It was harder to monitor the implementation of changes of practice and to know whether it has had an impact on learning. for the main two factors. 

1. A third of my students came to hangouts and it was difficult to know if the other students were engaging with the learning activities at home. I will have a clearer picture of the home learning that has taken place once we are back to school next week.
2. I was difficult to see student's work as most have yet to master uploading learning to google drive.

However, here is a description of what I have noticed from my observations.

Different activities and learning resources appeal and are used by different students. What works for one family doesn't necessarily work for another. Having a range of learning opportunities, resources and multimodel options allows all students to access their learning in different ways. Having a writing book, pen and ready to read reading books including dual language books, in a learning pack meant that all families were able to connect to learning at home. The uptake of this we will find out next week when back at school. More of the students that connected were reading and writing each day using these resources than the first lockdown. Was this because I clearly set the expectation this time using my facebook message, and were having writing sessions each day online?

The writing response and quality of writing from the videos I made were fantastic. All students were able to write facts. They were writing with fluency and were able to clearly articulate what they wanted to write and had lots to say. The vocabulary they used was directly from the videos. This showed uptake of the new language.

Having whānau helping was really effective and a great way to build that home/school partnership and whānau involvement in their learning. Some whānau that were not connecting during the last lockdown were joining in every day this time. I want to put out a survey for parents to find out whānau voice and how they experienced online learning. 

Student voice told me the hands-on activities were a hit with some students. It will be interesting to see learning outcomes next week when back at school, as I currently don't have work samples of this.

Below is a sample of an on-line writing session. It shows Cohen sounding out his words and the increased amount of writing these students have been doing, and the engagement of the students.

It was hard to monitor the effect of culturally responsive activities and resources. Return to school next week will hopefully give me a clearer picture of the effectiveness of this change of practice.

Next Steps:

• Send out a survey for whanau to record their experiences with on-line learning and to gain whānau voice regarding the effectiveness of my change of practice and how it impacted student learning at home.
• Gather and assess work samples from students returning to school to gain a better understanding of the impact of the implementation of changes of practice during the lockdown.

Changes To My Teaching Practice During Lockdown

Although I feel I effectively created online lessons that mirrored the intensive oral language programme I was delivering at school, Self-analysis of my teaching practice showed how easy it was to revert back to old teaching habits during difficult and busy times like during the last lockdown. I noticed how I reverting to how I used to teach before I gained a greater understanding of cultural responsiveness and the power of placing immense value on students heritage language and culture.

Looking back at my slides from the previous lockdown I observed

What Worked Well

I was using the learning I had gained from the intensive oral language programme to created online, digital versions of the types of oral language lessons I would have previously taught in class.

 

What Was Lacking in My Teaching Practice

A flip back to non-culturally responsive teaching was evident in the content I was delivering online. I wasn't harnessing the opportunities for students to learn at home in their first language with whānau. I wasn't providing them with the resources to do this or making the content culturally responsive.

The 2nd Lockdown

Going into Lockdown a second time has given me the opportunity to do things differently. I created learning activities that can be completed in the student's heritage language and that provide opportunities for whānau to share stories and culture. My hope is that having the reading resources in the student's heritage languages allows parents to help them with their learning during this time and allow for students to make connections between the languages they speak at home and English. It is my hypothesis that this will help their language acquisition in both their first language and English.  

Manaiakalani Create Staff Meeting Workshop

Lovely to see my Manaiakalani Junior Colleagues at the workshop I presented today. Great to hear your creative ways of using Beebots in the classroom. How lucky are we to have such a wonderful bunch of passionate teachers to share ideas with!

Here is the slide deck to today's presentation.

Manaiakalani Digital Student Teacher Practicum

I have been lucky enough to be a part of the Manaiakalai Digital Teacher Practicum 2020.  Gabriel Francis, Eugene Kim, Luke Xia and Rachel Ernst, Graduate Diploma of Education Students from The University of Auckland were given the task of creating an online learning site to meet the needs of our students.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of being an online tutor teacher, especially after just going through the lockdown journey. Sharing some of my own learning with others about to embark on their teaching career and reflecting on what has been effective for my students learning online at home has strengthened my beliefs about effective teaching online.

Here is our journey over the last few weeks:

Designing The Brief

First I set about creating a brief for my student teachers. This process in itself was a great opportunity for me to reflect on what has worked for me and my students over the COVID period learning online at home. Summarising the needs of my students gave me the opportunity to really think about where they are right now with their learning and what I would like them to achieve next.
I have had my students for a year and a half and know them and their needs extremely well. However, articulating these needs to my students in the brief was so important as knowing your students allows you to create effective learning tasks that are just right for the individual learner. The students hadn't met the learners and I really had to think "What do these teachers need to know about my children in order to create a successful learning opportunity?"

They certainly didn't have an easy task. Our student's needs are complex...




Delivering The Brief

It was really exciting meeting Gabriel Francis, Eugene Kim, Luke Xia and Rachel Ernst over Google Hangouts. Their enthusiasm and passion for what they are doing was instantly evident. As I started going through my brief I was sure I was overloading them with info.
I was on a release that day so took my laptop into my classroom and airplayed the hangout so my class could introduce themselves. This was brilliant as the class remembered this when it came to introducing them to the learning site. I left the hangout thinking what a huge task this was for our student teachers and at the same time super excited to see what the results would be.
I also invited them to school to see for themselves the effectiveness of the site as I delivered it to my students two weeks later.

Receiving The Site and Giving Initial Feedback

Fun With Fractions Learning Site

Wow! I was completely blown away. These guys had totally nailed the brief. Every element was covered from making hands-on learning activity videos to creating tasks whereby students could work together in groups. They understood that my students working at home may have limited resources and valued my oral language focus across the curriculum. They even made a video using some Samoan. The learning tasks are rich activities that build on students prior knowledge and the whole site scaffolds the students learning and allows for multiple entry and exit points. They also hit the nail on the head in terms of pitching the site at the correct level. This is hard to do when you don't know the learners and have limited classroom experience.

Sharing The Learning Site With My Students

Luke, Gabby and Eugene came to school to see the learning in action

Summary

Gabriel Francis, Eugene Kim, Luke Xia and Rachel Ernst met the brief to an exceptional standard. It is an engaging and fun site that allows our students to explore fractions through hands-on language experience activities. The videos were amazing. They gave clear and simple instructions including the use of new vocabulary reused and recycled throughout the site. The children were then able to independently do the activities and revisit the learning over and over again if needed. They thought about the brief and showed a clear understanding of my students and their learning needs and how to create rich ‘hands-on’ learning activities online using video. 

They took into account the limited resources that many of my students have at home (including making sure they can access learning without having one on one support from parents), their culture and language, the fact that our students learn best working together.

I loved how they acknowledge our focus on accelerating oral language acquisition by explicitly teaching new vocabulary and concepts. 

The games are a fantastic resource for teachers to use and the lesson plan is a great extra.

The children loved the site. They were extremely engaged and it was pitched at exactly the right level. The activities challenged them and scaffolded the learning perfectly.

There is so much content on the site that we will be exploring it for weeks after the holidays. I have also left it on our class site so they can continue to access it over the holidays if they wish to. 

It was wonderful to have Luke, Gabby, and Eugine join us to introduce the site to my class. They were able to see how fantastically it worked in reality. They instantly built a rapport with the students and the children thought they were wonderful.

We have been very lucky to be given this fantastic teaching and learning resource and I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of working with Gabby, Luke, Eugene and Rachel. Your site really does fit the brief perfectly!

I wish you all the best with the rest of your year and the beginnings of an exciting teaching career ahead. 

CoL: Evaluation Of My Intervention After The First Year

This Evaluation looks at the different parts of our inquiry into creating a culturally responsive intensive oral language programme across the Junior School. It reflects on the three hypotheses developed at the beginning of this inquiry. 

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.

Student Voice

Student voice shows that there has been a shift in students feeling comfortable using their first language at school and that the target students see their heritage language as a way to communicate effectively with their peers and family and value themselves as experts when it comes to teaching their teachers their first language. Whereas previously the target students said that they just spoke their first language at home and with friends. They also see changes in my teaching practice such as collaborative learning opportunities, turn taking when talking and using language acquisition activities as ways in which they learn best.

Comparison of student voice survey Term 1-4 

Pasifika Early Intervention Programme (PELP)

After one Term of the Pasifika Early Literacy Programme (PELP) our Target Students made significant progress in the number of words spoken during the PELP oral language assessment, with the exception of Student 3 who already had a higher English oral language level than the other students. Student 4 didn't speak their heritage language at home which accounts for there low level of heritage language pre and post intervention.

This data shows the increase of students confidence speaking their first language at school alongside the increased acquisition of English within that one term.

The above graph shows the average amount of words spoken during the Pasifika Early Literacy Programme language test pre PELP intervention and post intervention (one school term).

The graph indicates that on average Junior students increased their oral language after one term of PELP. During this time we changed our teaching practice to incorporate students first language into our teaching programmes, encouraged students to use their first language, used dual language books in class and at home, and connected with families about the importance of students using and learning their first language.

The graph also shows that those students who were also in the Target Group, participating in small group oral language acquisition activities  (Dr Jannie Van Hees) went from having a below average oral language level below level to an above average level. These students participated in all Dr Van Hees modelling sessions and classroom sessions lead by the teachers exploring hands on oral language activities, insisting on use of new oral language, picture talk and shared writing sessions using new vocabulary. This shift is far greater than those students not participating in the programme.

It is therefore my conclusion that although we would probably see shift in students oral language through the use of PELP alone we see a far greater shift when we combine this programme with the teaching strategies that make up the Oral Language Intervention Programme designed by Dr Jannie Van Hees.

Combilist Data

The Combilist was used to measure language development factors of all students within my class.
Factors important in language development are rated below using the scale Yes/Sometimes/No.

C1-2 indicates willingness to communicate
C3-4 indicates communication with teacher/adults
C5-9 indicates participation in discourse
C10-13 indicates contribution to the discussion or discourse
C14-16 indicates benefits from feedback

Areas that target students made the most gains where: 

C2 Keen to express meaningfully and well.

C4 Expresses responses as clearly as he/she can.

C5 Takes the opportunity to speak.

C8 Gives elaborate responses to open-ended questions from the teacher/adult

C9 Reacts and responds spontaneously and on own initiative to teacher.

C12 Thinks before he/she speaks so as to express at a higher cognitive level.

C14 Continues his/her meaning and intentions, and picks up and uses teacher examples and models later.

Areas for continued development are:

C10 Sustains expression of his/her meaning, ideas and intentions.

C15 Meanings and ideas logically developed and expressed.

The rest of the class still struggle with giving elaborate responses and thinking before they speak to express at a higher cognitive level. The gains the target group made in this areas I feel is reflective of my change in practice, pushing students to use more words, new vocabulary, modelling responses and to think before they speak. The graphs show that those students that were 'No' in many categories all shifted to 'Sometimes'. This was not the case for many of the other students within the class that made comparatively little gain in these areas.

These results show that Dr Jannie Van Hees programme does have a substantial impact on oral language acquisition and using Dr Van Hees teaching strategies across the Junior school would benefit all students.

Transference Into Reading

The below graphs show the little progress students made within their first year at school (40 weeks). The graph also shows the progress that was made during the last 20 weeks of which these interventions took place. Although three of the students are working well below the expected level, all have made progress. However, it is hard to say whether this progress would have been made due to changed oral language programme or whether it is due to the normal classroom reading programme.  

Student 1

Student 2

Student 3

Student 4

Collaborative Inquiry Into Changed Practice Across The Junior School

The collaborative nature of this inquiry is harder to evaluate however a survey completed by the Junior teachers showed that they all had a clear understanding of the 'why' behind the change in practice and held a shared vision. As a team, we have undertaken a vast amount of PLD this year with DR Jannie Van Hees, the Pasifika Early Literacy Programme and ENGAGE, and shared our new learning with the rest of the school Staff meeting slide deck. 

We soon realised that creating changed practice across the Junior school would take longer than anticipated and extended the length of the inquiry from 1 year to 2 years, dedicating the first year to professional development and exploring changes in teaching practice. Teachers were at differing stages of uptake of this new learning due to two teachers being beginning teachers and experiencing all the new learning that comes with teaching your first class. What was important to me was the openness all teachers had to the PLD and that all teachers tried some of the teaching strategies learned.

We began collecting data on all junior students but then realised that it would be more significant to focus on a target group that would participate in all small group intensive oral language activities  (Dr Van Hees), PELP and ENGAGE taught by me. Next year as we all implement the new learning we will take data across the Junior School.

During the second year,  the aim is for all Junior teachers to fully implement the changes to practice, creating a Junior curriculum that focuses on a culturally responsive intensive oral language acquisition programme.

The Introduction Of ENGAGE

One of the factors that became apparent throughout the inquiry was the impact students low levels of regulation had on students ability to uptake new oral language. 

ENGAGE seemed to be the missing piece and when offered the opportunity to participate in the programme starting Term 4 we as a team jumped at the chance. 

It is hoped that through the games based programme students will develop self-regulation skills that will help them to uptake new learning. 

Data will be used from this programme to support our inquiry moving into its second year. 

COL- Teaching as Inquiry New Learning From Jannie Van Hees

Hypothesis 2: 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.

Our Junior Team has been fortunate enough to enlist the help of Dr Jannie van Hees to help us develop an effective intensive oral language programme throughout our Junior School. 

Our Goal: For our children to have a large vocabulary and to be able to express their ideas in detail fluently.

Jannie has delivered both an initial theory session and workshop to train teachers and teacher-aides to conduct a hands-on language experience session which will become the basis for a three-day oral language intensive programme. The programme is designed to be used in small groups of 6-8 children.

Key Points from Dr Jannie van Hees Sessions which we will implement within our oral language programme:

• Tell the children why we are doing this and what it's about. Create a culture of talking in the classroom so that children understand that in our classroom we use lots of words.

Example:

“Our brain needs to be used, your voice and brain need to talk with each other - In our safe place, we push ourselves to talk because talking is your job. We need to push ourselves to use our brain and talk and to value that of others." -Jannie

"You have a clever brain. You need to think and think but there is something else you need to do and that's talking." - Jannie

• Give the meaning of new vocabulary.

Example:

"You are gardeners. Gardeners are people that grow and care for plants."

• Repetition! Students repeat new phrases and vocabulary multiple times over multiple days. This is the uptake. They need to hear it multiple times and use it multiple times for uptake to happen. Students are doing something with the new vocabulary pushing them to extend their language. Repetition and recycling of new words and phrases pushing them to the edge using complex language that they don't hear at home.

• Do it and say it. Children use new phrases and language in a hands-on context. Foster and encourage self-talk. Self-talk is a safe place to try out the language.

Example: 

The children put on each other's gardening aprons to get ready to do gardening explaining what they are doing as they are doing it. The teacher models "Here is your apron. I'm going to put it over your head. I'm going to flatten out the front and tie it at the back" The children then copy the teacher 'doing it and say it' to their partner. The teacher insists that they talk as they do it.

• Insist on connected speech. Many of our students don't use connected speech. They don't have the word groups (also illustrated through our work with PELP), students are used to using cryptic talk. Supporting them to use connected speech through gifting, modelling then insisting they use complete sentences is really important. They are used to using a few words then letting us complete their sentence. If we don't insist on them using connected speech they will continue to get away with broken speech patterns. This may feel extremely uncomfortable for the student and the teacher as it doesn't feel natural. 

Example: 

Teacher models: We need the...(bean seed)...to put in the ...(soil)...so the seed can grow into a ...(little bean plant).

Students: Each student has a turn in saying the sentence. They repeat it with help until they are able to say it fluently.

• No questions from the teacher, no hands up. 

Example: 

Students choose equipment to use for planting seeds.

Teacher: "We are all going to pick something and say what it is and say why it is important."

Teacher models: "I'm going to pick a pair of scissors because we may need to cut something."

"We are going to give it a go and if you don't have the words we will help each other."

"Ben you go first."

How and why will this changed practice impact the specific learning outcome?

It is believed that this intervention will give our students the vocabulary and sentence structures that will allow them to express their ideas in detail fluently. We hope that this will transfer into reading and written language.  

What is different from what we were doing before?

Personally, although I have always tried to explain the meaning of new vocabulary and given them hands-on activities to connect new language to, I have not insisted on them using connected speech. I have modelled how complete sentences would sound but not insisted that they repeat it back or use it multiple times. As a teacher you are always in a rush to move on, slowing it down and taking the time to get students to talk in complex sentences is going to mean letting go of the rushing. Finishing students sentences or accepting broken speech is also something I need to let go of and accept that it is going to feel uncomfortable 'discomforting' the students through pushing them to extend their language instead of jumping in to save them. 

Tasks are going to have to be thought out ahead of time and well planned. Instead of giving children a hands-on activity to explore away from the teacher, with the notion that students will share their ideas, knowledge and vocab with each other, activities will need to be done with a teacher and expected vocabulary and prepositional noun groups will have to be anticipated, planned for and modelled. This is far more teacher-directed than the 'play-based learning' approach I have used in the passed.

How will we monitor the effects of our changed practice?

Each teacher will take notes anecdotally on the oral language uptake of their students. The combi list and ELLP forms will be a way of recording progress made by students and teachers will reflect on their own teaching of this programme in terms of what is working and what needs tweaking. These aspects will be shared at team meetings.