RPI 2: Know Your Learners as Readers

We know that to know and understand our reader's needs, we need to be aware of their COGNITIVE and EMOTIVE sides. We can't just focus on one part of the equation. Today we began to build on this understanding by exploring the Pillars of Practice - Know Your Learners as Readers and creating Assessment Capable Learners.

Drawing on John Hattie's research around the 7 Characteristics of Expert Teachers we focused on the parts that create the greatest shift.

Assessment is key and we as teachers need to think about formal and informal assessment, as well as formative and summative assessment. Using a range of assessments helps to support the idea of knowing our reader's cognitive and emotional needs around reading. 

By creating students who are 'Assessment Capable Learners' we help them to understand where they are at with their learning, and what they need to do to move forward with their learning. For example, knowing they are at 9 - 9.5 years in reading helps them to understand what they need to do to become a reader at 10 - 10.5 years. Assessment Capable Learners also need to understand what the task they are being given is trying to teach them (learning intention) and what they need to do to achieve in that task (success criteria).

When I think back to my time in the classroom I worked hard to help my students understand both of these things and what I noticed is that what I did the majority really began to take ownership of their learning and wanted to focus on things because they knew it would help them progress with their learning. Even students who were 'below' found that by thinking about the steps they were making in their own learning (away from the 'average student') they felt empowered to work hard on their next steps. 

Formal Assessment - PAT Assessments

Drilling down into PAT Assessment reminded me of my University days going to tutorials for weeks on PATs and not really understanding what the point was until I was using them. It surprises me that this isn't covered anymore in teacher training. 

It is important to understand that there are three types of questions in PAT Reading Comprehension; Retrieval, Local Inference and Global Inference. This diagram helped to clarify the difference for the group.

Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

The final part of our day was looking at where these come from (Achievement Objectives), how we make them relevant for our students and how we help to develop co-constructed success criteria. Something that stood out to me was the idea that we want to think about three areas of learning when we work on designing tasks for students. These areas are the process (of learning), the product (being created by the learning) and the disposition students must take as they look back at the process and the product. I notice that sometimes as teachers we forget that there are these three parts to learning and we end up focusing on one part a lot more than another. If we are truly thinking about the Learn Create Share process then all three of these parts should be easily included in learning a lot of the time. 

Summary

Today has been a full day with a lot to take in. I find I wear two types of hats with the RPI; the first one is coach and the second is learner. I find that I am learning things as we guide our learners through the day. The learning is around the content but also as a coach. 

Today's learning as a coach is that I need to have better questions and tools up my sleeve to help draw people out with what they are thinking and being challenged on. It is hard online but I know it is possible. Having a screen between you and the people does make reading some of the 'cues' harder, but I know that I have the skills to be able to do this. Something I will try next time is giving the ownership of the discussion over to the group and sit back a bit more. 

As a learner I was happy to have a number of things I did as a teacher confirmed as correct. I had a teacher workbook that had a lot of the data I was gathering about students in it. Something I would add to this is the more informal gatherings. It also made me wonder about how you would use this for writing and maths. I am keen to play around with it to create a 'writing' version.

Reading Practice Intensive: Session 1 - Reading is Core to Learning - A solid foundation

 Today began my coaching journey with the Reading Practise Intensive. I was a little nervous about the parts I had to present. 

I notice that I am someone that needs lots of reassurance that I am doing the right thing. A personal development for me is trusting myself and my own capabilities. Easy written than done. 

Profile of a Good Reader

Early on we covered what the profile of a good reader looks like. The task required thinking about what we think this looks and then connecting it with what research tells us a good reader profile has. 

My list of a profile of a good reader:

• Enjoys reading
• Thinks about what they read and talks about it
• Able to decode
• Self-motivated to read
• Reads a wide range of texts
• Understands what they read
• Good oral language
• Able to write because of their reading ability

This is what has been highlighted. Many of my points are covered by most of these, so it is good to know I can identify what makes a good reader. 

Note: Reads to Learn includes their knowledge of the world + their vocabulary knowledge. 

Whanaungatanga is part of this too - we want to foster connections to learners’ identities, languages, cultures, and each other.

The Pillars of Practice 

The Manaiakalani Research Team have pulled together what the research says to create 'Designing Learning with the End in Mind to help our Network think about what grows good readers.

These have been broken into pillars, with specific things targeted under each. We are going to cover all of them over the 9 weeks but today we are focussing on the overview and then drilling down into Knowing our Learners as Readers.

Part of the focus of today has been looking at research that supports what creates a Good Reader. I read the article Reading Motivation: What the Research Says by Linda Gambrell & Barbara Marinak.

• Motivation = Success
• To have success in reading you have to be able to motivate yourself, this term is called self-efficacy.
• Self-efficacy = self-belief
• Self-belief = your choices, the effort you put in and persistence when things get hard
• The most powerful source of self-efficacy is Mastery Experience (this occurs when a child evaluates their own competence after learning and believes their efforts have been successful)
• Beliefs and behaviours of teachers and peers help to build a student's self-efficacy

There are a number of factors important to reading motivation. This article highlighted the following factors:

• Self-concepts and the value they place on reading. Gender plays a big role in this, especially for boys.
• Choice helps motivation. Allowing students to make their own choices about reading material makes a big difference to their motivation.
• Read-Alouds and Discussions are effective in engaging motivation. Read-aloud allow teachers to model reading strategies and behaviours. Discussion helps invite students into active learning. 
• Balance of books collections and text types
• Rewards can be used but need to be well thought through in terms of motivating further reading. 

The rest of the session focussed on how things we have talked about could be covered in a reading group through out a week. It was challenging to see all that was included but also powerful to see how easily you could 'tick off' many of the things we had covered in the few examples. It is good to know that my methods of teaching reading have been on the right path.

I am looking forward to building on the knowledge that I already have and seeing how my group journey through this PD. 

Reading Observation Hui conversation

Hui - Dr Rebecca Jenson 

Talk about change to making the change.

We know that we are going to be judging the teaching, we know this implicitly. The teachers we view also know that they are being judged, even if we say we aren't. It is implicit. 

A way of thinking is about taking the snapshot and having those professional conversations.

Snapshot - 'taking a photograph' of what is happening and then comparing it to what it looked like before. (Summative) This is what has always been done by Woolf Fisher but now moving towards us doing this.

When you see something you code it as ... i.e. when you moderate writing it gets coded as ...

Formative Leadership functions to have professional conversations to make a change. 

In terms of the snapshot, we are looking for what we have seen and what we haven't seen. 

Is it a vase or a cup? = when we see an item with flowers but has a handle, we need to know if we are deciding if it is a vase or a cup.

Diverse Texts:

Windows & Mirrors - our students need both when learning.

Teach Learners to Think and Question:

It is the ako part - working with the learners to shape this.

Discussion around the question: What do we see is the strength in our classrooms around these 5 things?

• When teachers are working with learners are they creating learners who think and answer, not think and question. 
• The variance between teachers/schools is huge, so it is hard to answer the question "what do we do well already"
• What barriers do cultures create around the idea of questions?
• Do we teach the skills to disagree with each other?
• Saying to students  - How does talk help you learn? Write down the rules for your classroom around talk. These two questions/thinking can create a picture of the realities of talking in the classroom
• One member reflected on the energy put into the create tasks as opposed to the teaching of the task. Perhaps this isn't the best for students. 

The observation tool is built around the 5 areas above. 

One way to think about it in terms of observations: We are looking at how much pollen is in the hive, so if one bee only brings back a small amount it doesn't matter. 

Why? Our reading data  - principals have looked at the data are wanting to focus on improving reading 

Identify trends to improve student outcomes 

Wide range of snapshots across the country 

Identify the good oil 

School leaders PLG - ask them to summarise the why? Why are we doing these observations?

Manaiakalani TOD Workshop 1 & 2

Workshop 1

Surfing Semantic Waves 
Dr Jannie van Hawes

Semantic - meaning-making

We want to take students from text simple to text complex.

Newsela Max - you can change the level of complexity of the texts to fit with your students.

We want to surf our students down and then up again in the complexity of text. 

When we put together the 'learning' we need to start with the nugget of the learning, the key to what we want the students to walk away with and then moving onto what we need to do to create support in order to help them get to the complex. 

The workshop did leave me with some questions around how taking texts, rewriting it for the learners supports the high leverage practise of authentic texts? I also wonder if we as educators set glass ceilings for our students because we 'know' where they are at? Finally, I wondered about how, with many of these things being focussed on ESOL, this concept sits after our morning session looking at valuing the first languages of our learners?

Many questions to ponder and discuss with others that attended this session. 

Workshop 2

Engage the high school reader with Multimodal Resources

Maria Krausse and Kerry Boyde-Preece from MET

Presentation Link

When using Multi-Modal are looking at two types of engagement - behavioural (the hook) and cognitive (T-shaped/text sets).

Many different places you can find content. 

There are some practical suggestions for high school teachers to make it more engaging.

I really liked the idea of using a snapshot from a student's blog and then linking to the actual blog. 

The presentation was really practical and allowed for teachers to see many examples of how they could take multi-modal and fit it within a high school context. 

Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day - Key Note - Dr Rae Si'ilata and Kayla Hansell

 Link to Presentation

Rae and Kayla began by sharing their pepeha, helping to establish where they have come from, who stands behind them and who helped to shape where they are today. 

Rae shared how she started a school in Samoa but that she would do it again by coming at learning from the place of language ... using bilingualism to shape learning. Language revitalisation is the key to connecting to our learners and their whānau. This is directly linked to culture and language and revitalisation.

Pikipiki hama kae vaevae manava - Join the outriggers to share life

Privilege the native speaker in the room!

High Leverage Practises are underpinning why were are focussing on Reading. 

In second language spaces, we do not separate the reading, writing, listening and speaking. We integrate.

Listening reading viewing - input channels

Speaking writing presenting - output channels

6 modes of communication we need to be integrating. 

What are Māori medium doing that isn't happening in English medium - they are achieving much better in Māori than in English medium. 

ESOL = English for Speakers of Other Languages - they are NOT ESOL children - we need to add English not replace other languages with English.

The government gives some system-level support for 5 languages but not all Pacifika languages. We need to give support for ALL Pacifika languages. Due to the colonisation of Pacifika places, New Zealand has the constitutional responsibility to care for these places. 

Bilingual = On top it looks like one tree but underneath the ground, it is many roots combined. Input one language - make meaning in main language - output in 

School English isn't the only English 

"Each learning area has its own language or languages."

An anecdotal story of a Science Teacher who was a Mandarin speaker, who allowed her mandarin speaking students to unpack the learning in mandarin and then output in English and their English understanding went through the roof. 

We want our tamariki to be critical of power.

We all carry our own worlds around in our heads ... we make predictions based on our own context.

Fill in the blanks:

What do you read here? Was it close to what is below?

Kayla Hansell shared some practical things to consider as we plan for our classrooms.

Blog post

Slide 68 and 69 from the slide presentation have specific links to examples of reo being used to encourage engagement and amplification through a non-english worldview. 

Facilitator Day - Hui (Day 3)

An overview of our Facilitator Day

Pat Sneedon

Pat, the Chair of the Manaiakalani Trust, came along and shared today. He discussed what a treasure we are, how our rolls allow us to move our kaupapa forward. We are here to give support our low deciles schools to move our learners forward. To bring equity to the education sector. 

Pat was compelling and rousing, bringing reality and vision to the room. As a colleague said, it is always great to hear from Pat.

Makaore 

If Māori and Pacifica aren't achieving then it isn't them, it is us!

Demographics = 40 kura are Rumaki/Immersion and 33 Ruareo/Bi-lingual within the wider Manaiakalani Programme Outreach

Level 1 = 80% or more in Reo

Level 2/3/4 = Bi-lingual

Lesson in Ngā tūkapi - Pronouns

Makaore took us through some work on using pronouns. It was a great session, with Mak using some 'friends' to help explain. With support from Vicki and Amie I was able to understand how to use them. It does feel a little confusing and I think it will take more than one session to get my head around it. 

I created a drawing based on Makaore's explanation and our activity. Thankfully it was a 'get up and move' activity which helped to understand what it was all about. 

DFI - Vicki Archer

Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu and Cybersmart Curriculum

 Cybersmart overview 

Dare to Lead Podcast

Brenē with Abby Wambach on the New Rules of Leadership

Wolfpack by Abby Wambach 

Abby and Brenē break down the 8 rules that Abby has written in order to turn around the rules that women in leadership often live by. 

Leadership based in honour is so important. 

Failure: Making failure fuel, you have three choices to make - blame, shame or claim. 

Angel City Women's Football Club

What a challenging kōrero these two women had. I was really inspired by the way Abby talked about how we as women need to be less afraid to put ourselves forward. I find that hard to do at times. Something to continue to mull over.