Target group mid year spotlight

 How are we going?

I started the year very excited about picking up my Inquiry focus from the previous year, this was meant to be the tidy year! No more lockdowns to interrupt the learning, better attendance, and better health! So far the only part of this that has happened is the lack of lockdowns.  

Poor attendance and health have been a huge obstacle for both myself and my students. Two bouts of COVID, an injury and frequently needing to be an emergency cover for other staff members has meant my programme has not been consistent at all. 

However, despite all this, the children have made fantastic gains! Discussing their progress both in class and on the programme with their class teachers has been very positive. The challenges we are all facing are the same but the children are making wonderful gains.

The graph shows the gains made between February and May. It shows that all children have made gains, the green bar showing the reading level gain is very exciting! Two of my focus children left before May.

Inquiry 2022

 My 2022 Inquiry Focus:

Using the Quick 60 programme, specific teaching prompts, and the use of oral language to strengthen comprehension, will I see a significant improvement in scores for both Running Record levels and comprehension question scores for the identified students?

The Manaiakalani CoL Achievement Challenge that I am basing my inquiry around is;

Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/key competency using language symbols and texts

End of year Inquiry Data and Success!

Many students made significant gains in their mid-year PM test. 

There were significant gains made by children who began at Level 14 (Reading age 6 years) (Chron age 8 years) who at their mid year test were reading at Level 21 (Reading age 8 years)

I have designed tasks that are specifically re-tell, prediction and making connections to the text as well as learning about specific parts of words.

In the middle of Term 3 we went into a long lockdown online learning period. This halted most of the progress these children made and many did not return in Term 4 for me to test. I can only use the mid year data and any running records I took in Term 3 to form a picture of where the children are now at.

I am happy with the progress they made and can only imagine how successful they would have been without the lockdown interruption.

Inquiry 2021

I have a group of children who didn't achieve as they should on their end of year running records due to the comprehension. They have very good decoding skills so I plan to use the Quick 60 programme and specific teaching prompts to encourage the use of rich vocabulary and conversational oral language to strengthen comprehension by introducing follow up conversations to my lessons. 

At the start of the lesson children will repeatedly read their known books to help them become familiar with text and develop fluency. 

They will do tasks after reading that develop skills in looking for information in their text and answering both inferential and literal questions. 

DFI Reflections - Reflections

Today was our final day learning online together in our DFI group. The last 9 weeks have been an incredible learning journey for me, all the things I have wondered "how do they do that?" I now know how to do and my students are definitely benefitting from my new found knowledge! 

I am proud of how much I have up-skilled myself, I am really excited to keep up-skilling and have so much more confidence to join in online learning where I would never have before. I regret not trying Toolkits before now, I see so much future learning for me using this platform. 

Moving forward I know I will be much more able to support and engage my learners online using my site as a learning place where before it was purely a tool for storing my planning.

My new word for the day is Ubiquitous and my goal is to be able to say this as well as Mrs Burt! Ubiquitous - Anytime, Anywhere, Anypace! 

So today was Exam day! I couldn't get stressed about this, my son was sitting his Level 2 mocks today and I had to be a good role model for him!  Now we wait for the results! I found that I finished with a really good amount of time to spare..if that is a good thing or not we will see! The knowledge I had from our time together learning really did give me the confidence I needed and all the scenarios seemed to be from things I had experienced with a little new learning thrown in to test me!

I have loved learning with our Bubble Group, I want to say a massive thanks to our facilitator Vicki Archer, you answered all our questions regardless of what they were, you supported us and helped us de-bug when we needed that too! Thanks to our lovely supportive bubble, I loved "meeting" you all and hope we stay in touch! What an amazing group of talented individuals we are!

DFI Reflections - Computational Thinking

Today in DFI we began by looking closely at the Manaiakalani kaupapa of Empowerment, the advancing of Rangatiratanga; of taking back control of their own lives. 

Thinking about how we use devices and that devices are not "just a tool." It is about overcoming barriers of distance and time (NCZ) We have spent the past 8 weeks unlocking the digital tools required to make learning more engaging to the students. 

The things that disempower families and our students; money, rental properties, landlords, health, education etc. All these things are out of our control as teachers, what things can we control to make the difference? 

Becoming digital for our families was in a sense giving them the tools to take control and be empowered.

This week we looked very closely at computational thinking. The way we looked at different digital tools made me realise how much scope there is in both literacy and numeracy for student engagement. 

I had a play using Lightbot which I can immediately see many benefits in both literacy and numeracy; following or giving instructions, using direction.

Next I used Gamefroot to help create my mihi. I enjoyed this very much, I was able to troubleshoot when the game would not go any further, it was interesting seeing how one tiny mistake could cause the whole game to cease working and to find where I had gone wrong and fix it myself. Troubleshooting as a complete novice gave me a sense of accomplishment that the students would enjoy I think.

Lightbot

Gamefroot - Mihi Maker

DFI Reflections - Devices

Today focused on the devices our young people use in their classrooms and we experienced Learn Create Share using Chromebooks and iPads.

The use of devices from the student's view helped me understand some of the frustrations the students could be feeling when using their devices to complete tasks. A lack of visibility due to the small screen or different brightness would affect how much learning they experienced and it made me mindful when designing my learning tasks of avoiding the moving of small objects, filling in of small boxes, low quality or small images.

Utilising the device I don't normally use from the teacher's view, helped me gain new knowledge about shortcuts, and how I could make use of those myself. 

Today's task was to develop an activity around Cybersmart using Explain Everything or Screencastify.

Having not used iPad's myself before for learning I decided to have a look at using Explain Everything. I quickly realised there is huge scope for designing activities using this format. I am looking forward to having a closer look at what can be created here!