DFI Reflections - Workflow

Today in DFI we started by looking closely at the Manaiakalani Pedagogy: Learn Create Share, with a close focus on Learn/Ako. I came away thinking about the knowledge and skills I gained in my years of teaching both in the classroom and small group literacy and how in the last 2 years I have taken that knowledge and increased my effectiveness as a teacher by integrating digital technologies. My planning and monitoring of the children's progress is already more effective and with the DFI skills taught I believe I will see an impact on the achievement outcomes.  

We spent some time looking at new ways to manage our workflow. We looked in depth at Google Meet, Keep, Gmail, Calendar and Tabs.  These are tools I have explored myself as a teacher with limited digital skills and used lightly and sometimes inefficiently. I feel now I will use them far more effectively and this will benefit my students and their teachers greatly. 

Using Google Meet to discuss a blog post, I was able to practice a new way of collaborating with a colleague, I would like to practice this to develop the skill more, I was concerned I didn't have my screen shared and if I needed to read the work aloud, but that is something I think I can develop more confidence in using and see potential in using this in the future. I would like to use this with the students I teach so that they can record their reading aloud and talk about their learning with a buddy.

I am looking forward to learning more about these tools that I have only lightly used in the past and seeing how they will benefit the students I teach.

DFI Reflections - Core Business

Today I began my DFI journey!

I have taught Reading Recovery and Quick60 at Pt England School for the last six years and I love being part of the incredible learning environment that makes Pt England special; Manaiakalani.  However, sometimes I have had to call on my talented colleagues or students to help me with the digital side of things. It is my hope that this course will increase my understanding of the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy that make my learning environment so special and give me the digital skills to improve my teaching in my specialist context.

Hearing the Manaiakalani story told this morning gave me much to think about.  Teaching at a Decile1 school was not new to me, I taught in Porirua East for 15 years before making the move north so I was well aware of the needs my students and families had, however, learning about how the area I teach in grew in the middle of a very affluent area made me think about how different their needs actually are.

Today I learned what the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy might mean to me and the programme I teach, how I can use the Learn - Create - Share pedagogy in my own teaching to extend the children's learning and be a more effective teacher. I gained new skills for organising myself in my workspace, using Google Groups, Drive and Docs in a way that is efficient. I am looking forward to using these skills in my teaching soon, in particular working in Google Docs to improve reading mileage, fluency and accuracy with my higher level groups.

Making it accessible

One of my goals this year was to have a really useful and accessible site for my colleagues, students and families to use.  I wanted to have resources on my site that would inspire a lesson or meet a need. Planning that was digital so that if children changed groups it was easy to slot them in and continue their learning.  I used an online site that allowed me to create simple and effective buttons so that my links were clear. I have been using Lockdown time to create a more user friendly site!

Change of Practice

I wanted to see if by changing the emphasis in some parts of my lessons I could encourage more conversation and richer language.  When the children arrive in my room at the start of their lessons they read their known books from their book boxes.  There is just a short time available to discuss the books because Quick 60 requires a new book every day.

I have decided that this year I will change the programme up slightly to give myself more time to encourage these discussions.  I will introduce two new books each week, giving the lessons a longer time slot for reading the previous books and discussing them.

My hope is that by doing this the children will develop a greater understanding of the texts, better fluency and phrasing and strengthen their comprehension through conversation.

Oral Language and Reading

While taking the 6Year Nets survey, I noticed that low oral language scores sit alongside low levels in reading.  There is a significant link between oral language and reading.

The everyday talk children use is often repetitive and simple in vocabulary.  Instructions such as "sit down", "get up", "eat up" don't actually promote brain development. The vocabulary in books is often far more complex than everyday speech.

Quick 60 texts are rich in vocabulary but are also based on real life.  They promote discussions that can encourage rich conversation. Using these texts with my small groups the children will be encouraged to contribute and will have opportunities to extend their vocabulary.

Success!

My clever group of Yr 6 children all made gains this year in their reading, some quite significant! I hope they continue to make this progress next year and that they develop a love of reading!

Slides and Tasks!

I had this idea that the children would be able to use Google Docs and that I could make them a worksheet type task sheet to use in between their lessons with me, but the children had bigger and better ideas about that and encouraged me to use Slides instead!

What started out as a simple worksheet became a complex slide with links to tasks, planning and the option to add their learning goals each week.  Using images of each of the books in the series I started creating slides with links to the planning that could then be easily added to their task slides each week.  Suddenly my planning became so much easier! 

Using slides I am able to add tasks and adapt them to the groups needs and abilities as they automatically update every time I save changes.

Using the comprehension tasks from the planning I can see how each child interprets the texts and this helps me plan for their needs.