A snail joins Room 2's online class

Today a snail joined our online class. I took the children (my computer) out to the vegetable garden to find a snail then brought him back inside. We looked carefully at him and used lots of fabulous words to describe him. While we had the snail right there we wrote stories about him. They had something right in front of them, something tangible that they could describe. 

This was the most effective online writing session so far. The best thing was that their stories contained multiple ideas. Up until now, I was finding it difficult to get more than a sentence from them. There was so much to say about the snail e.g., his shell, how he moved, the slime, the feelers...

We put him back outside but he didn't want to go and climbed back inside the door.

He wants to be in Room 2 too!

Here is the snail and our fabulous stories. 

Teaching During Lockdown; Ubiquitous Learning

During the lockdown, our students are learning in multiple ways. Some are learning independently, some with limited resources, some with help from whānau, and everyone at different times of the day.

This highlights the need for learning to be ubiquitous. 

Here are some ways I have adapted my teaching practice during this time to make sure children can access their learning anywhere at any time.

1. Making instructional videos. This is a fun way to create lessons that you would normally do in the classroom at home. Using materials takes the new abstract concepts easier to understand.

2. Using Jam Board and Screen Castify to make recordings of lessons, massive thanks to Matua Stefan for introducing us to this tool. Lessons like the one bellow allow you to make a visual representation as you explain concepts to your students.

Jam board has been such a great tool this lockdown. Having students talk to the Jamboard and explain their thinking as you record it is interactive and allows you make valuable formative assessment of where your students are at. You begin hearing things that would get missed within the busy classroom environment.

We have been using Jam board for online phonics lessons. We use the stickies to put the phonemes together in words or change the phoneses within a word to make new words.

3. Using Screen Castify to record shared reading books. This idea was gifted to me my colleage Whea Lee and I don't know why we hadn't thought of this last lockdown! It is always hard to get students to read texts at their level at home but how easy is it for them to follow along to a story read by the teacher. The teacher can use this opportunity to teach concepts about print and decoding strategies. They may not be reading the text independantly but hopefully they will be looking at the words and taking in some of those key concepts modeled.

4. Language Experience Videos gift students new vocabulary which is learnt in context, sentence structures and a range of new experiences. For these videos I have tried to slow my speech down and repeat language multiple times so that students hear it more than once. I have also explained some of the new vocabulary used.

These videos may not be the most well crafted but they hopefully do the trick and help my students connect to their learning. I hope this has inspired you to get creating and given you some new ideas for online learning during lockdown.

Changes to my Practice During Lockdown

 

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X655B4ISakg

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/home-learning-tv/episodes/sage-5-8-e148

Sport Auckland Health and PE resource

 

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. 

Using Old Telephones To Develop Oral Language

When our office received new telephones our wonderful Principal put the old ones aside for Room 2 knowing what a fantastic tool they would be for developing oral language.

T set up the experience, I did virtually nothing. All I did was put the 4 telephones on a table in pairs so that students could sit next to each other with a telephone between them and allow time for the children to explore using them when they saw them. 

What happened? 

Wow, what an amazing oral language activity;

Two of my students both with speech difficulties sat side by side. One of these students has amazing vocabulary and concept understanding, she oozes confidence and doesn't let her speech stop her from getting her message across. The other student has a lower level of vocabulary and will often sit quietly and let others share. 

Conversation 1

B- "I at the pool"

G- "What you doing there? (then corrects herself) What are you doing there? Are you swimming or something?"

B- Thinking... I dit (I did)

G- " At the school holidays I went to Granny's"

B- Copies sentence structure "At the school holidays I went to Inflatable World.

G- "I went to Gravity and it was a lot of fun and I can't even breathe when I'm jumping too fast."

B- "What?"

G- "I can't even breathe when I'm jumping"

B- "I can not breathe."

G- "Bye-bye"

Conversation 2

L-"Hi, who is this?

B- says their name

L-Stutters then says "Where do you live?"

B-" Somewhere. In the clean house."

L-Thinks... "What way does (pauses) it go to?" (meaning 'how do you get there?')

What oral language are students developing from this activity? 

Students modeling oral language for each other:

• Asking and answering questions
• Rephrasing  "I can't even breath when I'm jumping"
• Being cognitive of what they are saying, thinking about what they are saying and what they want to say to get their message across. L- Thinks... "What way does (pauses) it go to?" (meaning 'how do you get there?') It may not be correct but they are making conceted attempts
• Copying sentence structures G- " At the school holidays, I went to Granny's" B- Copies sentence structure "At the school holidays I went to Inflatable World.
• Extending their speech through listening to each other.

This is a great example of using props and role-play to facilitate oral language development. The cognitive process involved was evident and it gave an opportunity for multiple aspects of oral language to be developed in a hands-on real-life, social context.

What other props can I use for students to develop their oral language through role-playing such as this?

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. 

What happens when light hits an object?

What happens when light hits an object?

My CoL inquiry has been looking into developing student's oral language using two week, high interest topics hands-on learning tasks. 

This weeks topic has been light.

This has been my lesson sequence:

1) Look at our shadows outside in the play ground. Why do we have a shadow? Does anything else have a shadow. Introduce the words; shadow, opaque, the concept of light coming from a source (the sun) and an object blocking the light's path. 

2) Read in dual language book 'Shadow Sleeps' . Students listen to audio in their first language and take the book home to share with their family.

3. Introduce the concept of reflection e.g. like light bouncing off. Discuss that some objects reflect light. Sit in a circle and students role play light traveling in waves to another person and bouncing off of them. Students take turns to walk across the circle and pretend to bounce off someone. 

4. Give students a torch, mirror, paper plate and magnifying glass.students make a prediction what the light will do when it hits the object. Gift students the words penetrate (meaning the light goes through it), reflect (meaning the light bounces off it), or block (if the object is opaque). Students ten experiment to see what happens. 

5. Explore making rainbows. students say and do as they 

Say And Do Activity

Students say and do as they

• Fill up a glass of water.
• Put the glass of water at the edge of a table.
• Balance it slightly over the edge of the table.
• Put a piece of paper on the floor next to the table.
• Shine the light through the water to make a rainbow.

The students then write what they have learnt about light.

Evidence of student learning:

The hand-on activities allowed students to use the new vocabulary in context. Me modelling simple and correct sentence structures using new vocabulary resulted in students themselves copying these structures. For some this was challenging and took effort, however all achieved this. The amount of talking during these sessions was awesome. There were questions being asked and problem solving (critical thinking) happening everywhere you looked.

The student's writing showed the increased fluency due to having 'lots to say' and engagement. Sequencing of ideas and use of new vocabulary. I have also noticed a marked improvement of sentence structures. 

Learning About The Water Cycle

When asked the question where does rain come from the only answer my students could give me was that it came from God or "I don't know", with a shrug of their shoulders.

Their amazement during our first activity of simply painting water pictures on the concrete and watching the water evaporate showed that this was a new experience and something they hadn't thought of. Because previous to the experiment we had talked about the sun heating up water and evaporating it, this language transferred easily. 

"Look the water is evaporating...it's going up to the clouds!"

Such simple everyday phenomena brought such amazement and when given the words my students could put these words to an experience that although they had witnessed many times before had never contemplated or understood. 

The second activity we learned about condensation by making a water cycle in a bag. Here the students could see the condensation on the side of the bag as the water heated up and then turned to water vapour and then cooled. We made lots of connections to steam around their house and why the mirror was wet after a shower. We gifted and gifted and gifted more vocabulary!

The third activity was creating a cloud in a jar to show what happens when clouds become heavy with water droplets. This was incredibly exciting and a great way for the students to see what happens. Explaining what words mean is a norm within our classroom therefore if the students didn't know what a word I used meant they would ask. I would take my time to explain the word sometimes using pictures, diagrams as I talked or role play.

The last activity was creating a water filter to understand what happens to water as it runs off the land into our streams and lakes. They were then able to make connections to our drinking water and water conservation that we had touched on earlier on in the year. 

The discussions and writing that resulted from this topic were incredible. All students understood the basics of the water cycle and concepts of evaporation, condensation and precipitation. They loved using the terms and extremely easily explained how their water filters worked.

To collect comparative data I compared an EASTTle writing sample recounting doing one of the experiments to writing about something they did in the weekend. Nearly all the students in my class wrote better quality recounts about doing the experiments than their weekend experiences (bearing in mind it was Halloween). In particular, the organisation of their writing and ideas noticeably improved. I feel this is because they had a lot to say and their ideas flowed naturally in a clear sequence. 

Earlier in the year many of my students struggled to put anything onto paper so this change is huge.

I also believe that these concepts and experiences are now able to be built on throughout their schooling. When my students come across content related to water they will be able to draw on these experiences and have the foundational knowledge that can be built upon. We may not see the benefits of building oral language now but I believe that results will be seen further in their schooling.

Evidence of Student Achievement

In the water cycle, the sun heats the water to do evaporation. It goes up to the cloud to be condensation and if the cloud gets too much water it's going to rain. That's called precipitation. 

By Elijah

The Unit Plan

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

Learning Vocabulary Through Creating A Beebot World

Below is an example of the two-week topic that I used with my class. 

As I worked through the unit my focus was on vocabulary and giving multiple opportunities for students to use and reuse through hands-on experiences, and opportunities to talk with peers using that vocabulary. This is now always at the forefront of my mind as I teach. At the beginning of my inquiry, I found this was more of an effort....with practice it has now become automatic and something that has come through on observations of my practice. 

The result is that the students are talking more using the new vocab through multiple opportunities and the vocabulary and concepts attached to that vocabulary is coming through in their writing.

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.