Mid Year Reflection

My Vosaic report gave me some solid insights into my small group reading instruction. It highlighted my strengths in creating a supportive and engaging space for comprehension, which is something I work hard at. It also clearly pointed out where I can improve my explicit instruction, especially when it comes to helping my students make meaning from text in a more structured way.

I can see from the report that I have strengths in leading discussions about the content of a story. My next big step is to make the strategies for understanding that content much more visible for the students. This is where BSLA and its focus on structured teaching comes in.

The report shows me that while I am asking good follow-up questions, I need to challenge myself to make them even deeper. I am aiming for more inferential thinking from my students so this will be my next step.

Manaiakalani Cluster Teacher Only Day - Hanga | Create

The creation process requires students to actively manipulate information rather than passively receive it. This involves:

• Decomposing complex ideas into component parts

• Reorganising information in new ways

• Making explicit decisions about what to include or exclude

• Testing their understanding by attempting to explain or represent it

Today we were set the challenge to create and share using 21st Century skills and to think what current and future technologies we might utilise to empower our students creativity.

2025 Inquiry

As a school we began the year with new learning using the structured Maths approach. We would be using the Numicon resource and programme with our Year 1s to 3s. This was our team intended inquiry but beginning our teaching using the Numicon resource was delayed due to a delay in receiving our equipment and we felt we needed time to get to know the new resource.

As a team we decided to look at the comprehension aspect of our literacy programme, using the BSLA teaching tool with our classes as we were all trained the previous year.

BSLA provides a clear scope and sequence for teaching phonological awareness, phonics and high frequency words. We follow and use this systematically with our small groups to ensure a strong foundation. As part of this programme we also have a strong "reading to" programme. Reading aloud to akonga and engaging in rich and complex texts builds vocabulary and listening comprehension which is the precursor to reading comprehension.

However we felt that while there is a strong focus on the decoding of texts with the Phonics Plus texts that once the students move on to the Ready to Read texts there would be quite a shift in terms of story and theme and perhaps the children would not have the skills required for these texts.  

Talking to my team, we felt that while we would be limited by time constraints, that incorporating a more intentional comprehension focus to our small reading group sessions would be the goal for our inquiry. 

The groups of children I have decided to focus on have good sound to letter knowledge and are able to blend simple 2 and three letter words. They do however lack fluency and spend a lot of time decoding words. This means that they are working just below where they should be on the BSLA programme. 

I will be recording the discussion part of my reading lesson using Vosaic. I will have a focus on comprehension and be reflecting on the effectiveness of my questioning, observing my interactions with my students as they answer literal and inferential comprehension questions about a text. 

End of year reflection - Inquiry 2024

As we come to the end of the year I have reflected on another very interesting year in my professional learning. 

I began the year with a focus on Numeracy with my class of Year 2's I share with Ms Squires. I had some big ideas as it was the first time I had taught Mathematics in many years due to having had a focus on small literacy groups. 

I began therefor with JAM data and a big question; How do I best build retention of facts and support children to apply these in multiple contexts? This stemmed from what I believed was a lack of understanding around maths concepts; Did the children know what they were trying to find out? What was the best strategy to use? What facts did they know that would help them with the problem?

I began with JAM data and moved swiftly into Reading data with the exciting news I was to begin BSLA training mid year. I would be enrolled in the University of Canterbury Micro-credentials course. This course supports teachers to understand the research behind the approach and help them scaffold changes to their teaching practise.  

So at the start of term 3, I changed my inquiry focus to match my new role as the BSLA teacher for small groups. I am now focused solely on teaching the Better Structured Literacy Approach (BSLA) with two classes, Rooms 11 and 13, as well as teaching the Taumata in Room 23.

This is just the start of my learning on the structured literacy journey but I can already see the changes in my students confidence, their growth in understanding of how to apply their knowledge of spelling patterns and phonics to their reading.

Teaching as Inquiry 2024

This year, as well as taking my small literacy groups, I am also back in a Year 2 class team teaching with Ms Squires in Room 23. I am teaching Maths to the whole class and will be undertaking the BSLA training in Term 3. I am really looking forward to learning this approach to literacy and seeing what benefits it can have for both my class and my literacy groups.

I am excited to see what the intervention can achieve over the ten weeks in terms of improvement in both areas of reading and writing for both my small groups and my Taumata group in Room 23.

Teacher Inquiry 2024

This year my area of focus for Inquiry is Mathematics.  This is the first year in many years that I have taught Mathematics in the classroom and I am excited about this new focus.

I have chosen to focus on a small group of six students, two male and five female. These students have all had one full year at school and are working around Early Level1 for their Additive Strategies.

My initial data for this group has been gathered from their JAM test taken in Term 4 last year. The data tells me what they have achieved on Level one of the curriculum. What I need to discover next is what they understand about maths concepts and the strategies they have been taught. This I believe is the key for this group of students.

My inquiry question; How do I best build retention of facts and support children to apply these in multiple contexts? stems from what I believe is a lack of understanding around maths concepts; Do the children know what they are trying to find out? What is the best strategy to use? What facts do they know that will help them with the problem?

My first step is to find out just what they understand about Math concepts!

Teacher Only Day Refelction

We began our Teacher Only Day by taking a look at the data collected across the cluster on reading, maths, and writing.  After breaking into small groups we looked closely at which student groups had made progress, acceleration, showed a shift and those that had gaps. 

The highlight of this very interesting and informative teacher only day with our Manaiakalani colleagues was the Little Mad Scientists Create workshop hosted by the very clever and talented teachers from Glen Taylor School. This was divided into three areas; the Living World, the Material World and the Physical World. We broke into three groups and did a hands on Create activity promoting young children's fine motor skills, creativity, cognitive development and language accumulation. They used provocations to promote student interest and then provided a range of hands on activities for us to participate in reminiscent of early childhood activities that are well set up and structured so children can learn by doing.