Phonological Awareness

 

Thank you Helen for posting these questions to think about! Here's what I think!

HA: Will be interested to see how today's Phonological Awareness training sits with prior knowledge...
Did it:
- Confirm what you already knew?
- Build on some of your base understanding?
- Get you to think in a new way about language development?

Confirm what I already knew?

With a background in linguistics and a general interest in language (particularly phonology and oral language), it was great to have some self-confirmation that I was doing ok - even now that I'm working with an entirely different age level and even a stage level I have not yet experienced.

Build on understanding?

Yes, it was good to be reminded of a few things that are crucial to language development at certain stages. I had completely forgotten about syllables! They are now in my plan. It was also good to be reminded of the importance of scaffolding - no wonder the children struggled at literacy time to generate rhyming words straight off the top of their heads!

Thinking about language development?

It's probably not new thinking for me - it has concerned me for some time that an increasing number of children seem to be starting school without good oral language and phonological awareness. ECE is going to become a integral part of this language development, and it wasn't until today that I found out that most ECE teachers are not trained in phonological awareness. 

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague the other day regarding the 'state' of children's language. As an ex-linguist my argument was that language is constantly evolving. I'm sure those who spoke Old English were just as aghast as we are about what was happening to language. I have to admit though - the 'development' (or is it regression?) does worry me - I do have that natural tendency to want to protect the perfectly good version of English we've got!

Noise

When I tell people I work in an open learning space, usually their first reaction is something about "the noise".

I have always had a noisy classroom. Part of my philosophy is that learning is social and that children love to talk about about their learning (and everything else too....). However, I do believe it has to be a good working noise for the task given. 

I thought going into a Modern Learning Environment, that noise would not be a bother for me. Generally it is not...

There are those times though when you have your group doing a nice, reasonably quiet activity and there's another group who are creating dramatic plays, or practising their music, even watching a short film can distract other groups. (Have you noticed children have amazing ability to pick up computer/TV noise, no matter how quiet, and immediately be distracted from whatever they are doing!)

How do I cope? The best I can - sometimes it's me that's being the noisy one, or has a noisy group. It comes back to the learning mentors making sure we are setting those expectations, having those conversations, developing a plan to ensure our learners can stay focussed. Some of it will come down to timetabling or making sure a quiet space is available. And I'm sure once our school facilities expand, some of those noisier lessons can be taken elsewhere!

What will reading look like?

Previously I have taught Years 4-6 and this year with Year 1-4s has been quite a learning curve. I was ready for the move and have found the first few weeks insightful and I am beginning to understand now the development of the full child - mainly the social and the fundamental skills. Now it is time for us all to dive fully into the reading programme. I have taught some very low readers before and have been fortunate enough to have worked with and guided by some great RTLBs and literacy experts. My background in linguistics and affiliation with the Canterbury Literacy association has led me to put my hand up to work with the very emergent readers in our habitat. It's a challenge I'm really looking forward to.

I had heard a lot about Daily 5, but had not read the book or followed the programme. I knew a colleague had tried it before, so I asked to borrow her book. She was more than happy to oblige, however gave it to me with a warning. She said something along the lines of, "I'm sure much of it you're doing already without even noticing. This is very prescriptive - it's worth a read, but I don't think it's necessary to follow it completely." 

She was absolutely right - especially for the environment we are working in where flexibility plays a big part in our day. 

The Daily 5 principles are: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Work on Writing, and Word Work.

How might this work for me? I envisage some stations set up each week, based on the 5 principles. Each day children have to complete at least three. They have to complete each one at least once over the week. Self-direction is key to engagement, so I believe the children should be given some choice. They could be given a sheet at the beginning of each week with the names on it. Each activity has some smiley faces beside it. Every time a child completes that activity, they colour in a smily face. As long as they are spending some time on each of the key literacy principles through quality activities, I'm a happy teacher.

Ideas for stations

Read to Self
big books
poetry
picture books
browsing box

Read to Someone
stuffed toys
buddy
iPads
poem on stage

Listen to reading
sunshine online
other online stories (two for week)
buddy
music with words

Work on Writing
letter formation hair gel bags
handwriting iPads
creating words from letters
self-planning (prior to workshop)
choice writing

Word work
sight words games
letter/sound of the week activities
word finds
spelling challenges


Will this be a reality? I will only know after spending some time with the learners.

Is there really a gender gap?

TVNZ's Sunday programme has presented a story claiming a gender gap between NZ boys and girls. 

Sunday: Oh Boy!

Lisa Rodgers from the Ministry of Education is interviewed near the end of the video and points out that the gender gap has not grown over time (according to the MOE???). Boys are mathematicians and scientists, girls are readers and writers. In general, and in my opinion, I would lean slightly towards saying this is true. However, I truly do not believe, from my experience, and what I've seen in my classrooms, that it is totally right.

Children are born with the potential to excel in anything. I think there are a combination of factors contributes to a child's strengths in the end (and these are not limited to): individual wiring of a child's brain (some will just not get it!), genes, childhood experiences, parental pressure/expectation, parental strengths, and teachers - passion for teaching and learning, attitude, encouragement, subject strengths. 

I agree that boys are usually more active. I believe a good teacher can cater for that throughout the day and develop strategies with the students that empowers them to take control of their own learning and learning breaks. I'm not saying that boys classes are not the answer - but I do agree with Lisa Rodgers again, when she says that if it's working for that community, in that school, great! It's not necessarily the answer.

I have one other small problem with this report.... The part when it says boys can't learn because there is not the resources to engage them. For as long as I've been teaching (so at least the last five years), there has been talk around engagement of boys. Both of my previous schools had excellent resources to engage boys and as a teacher, it was my job to make sure I sourced resources and activities to actively engage ALL students.

In fact, I would go as far as saying, there has almost been too much of a swing! I don't think I have ever had a guided reading session using books about ponies and princesses.  For the past two years I have had classes that have been two thirds girls. At times I have struggled to find resources that would engage them. 

The story presented by Sunday was a great way to get people talking about some of the issues in education, and I hope they continue to present similar stories. I think the part of the story that was missing though was the individuality of each child. Each child needs to be engaged and the teacher has to find that spark and help to ignite it in any way they can.

Assessment

Tomorrow we have a teacher Professional Learning meeting about our assessment procedures and practices. We have been asked to think about the following questions:

• What is it for?
• Why do we assess?
• When do we assess?
• What are examples of great assessment?
• What are examples of poor assessment?

So what do I think?

What is it for?

I believe assessment is for real time guidance about future learning for any independent child, in any particular area. It is important to track progress over time as well.

Why do we assess?

Students are here to learn. Learning is new information or skills that that child didn't know before. Therefore, we assess for information about if they have achieved what we were teaching them AND for what they don't know - yet!
Assessment is only useful if it is analysed and used for the purpose of guiding future learning - a number generally won't tell you that.

When do we assess?

Actually, all the time. I think the most critical of assessment is the informal observations that we, as mentors make continuously. Of course formal assessment needs to happen regularly, but it depends on what it is. E.g. Running Records should be done when you think they are ready to move up a level (guided by observation though). Some assessments need to be made annually, or bi-annually to meet team/school/national/exteranal service expectations. 

What are examples of great assessment?

Continuing informal assessment of processes and strategies across learning areas. Some assessment of knowledge that relates to strategies - i.e. Knowing your times tables will make a difference to a student working at Stages 5-7 in Numeracy.
Children need to be involved in assessment, after all it is their learning. This can be done by talking to their results and next steps or involving them in developing rubrics for the stages of learning. Assessment is part of the learning process, not separate from it.

What are examples of poor assessment?

Assessing knowledge of content areas - e.g. How many wings does a penguin have? (You may however ask 'How does a penguin use it's wings?' to gain understanding of thinking strategies). 

Week One

We made it! We opened the classrooms for formal teaching on Monday after a somewhat tear-ier start than we anticipated. 

Otago Daily Times: School's In

It has been a truly tiring, but one of the best, experiences ever! It has been so great to be working with the children in their purpose-designed learning space. My group has activated all but one area in the habitat so far and the children are already beginning to respond to how those spaces have been activated. (There is one space I will definitely be making an effort to 're-activate' in a more positive way!)

There has been so much learning happening for me - getting to know the children and their caregivers, beginning to understand the stage-age relationship, being more adaptable than ever, working with and by the team during learning time, working with the team after-school, recognising strengths in others, dealing with issues as they arise and at rare times learning to be tactical in approaching possible difficult situations. 

What I have really enjoyed is spending time getting to know my mentor group - their interests, their abilities, their personalities and what drives them. I have also really enjoyed our afternoon rotations working with the other mentor groups. I love that within our habitat ALL the students are 'mine', and all the other teachers. I believe having that flexibility to intra-change is going to be a powerful practice to support learning.

What am I looking forward in the week approaching? I'm looking forward to spending a bit more time with other groups and developing a deeper understanding, not only of my group, but of the other children. I look forward to the focus we are going to have around collaboration and enabling those students to have the ability to strengthen their working relationships with others.

Praising for Progress

There is so much literature on giving praise to children. I do not wish to regurgitate that but after watching this video I do want to consider some of my practices that do not reflect my beliefs.



I believe in focussing on progress with children. I think this is easiest to do (and I probably do it best) with writing, because you can use the last piece of writing to form the focus for the next. I also think it's reasonably easy to do with reading and maths - within small groups you're always making mini group and individual goals in order to progress. It seems that when students can compare pieces of work, like start of the unit/term/year and end, progress is more obvious and can be commented on easily.

Then I started thinking about the surface/knowledge features. Things like spelling and basic facts. Now spelling, I can tick off and say that my practice was to pretest - therefore, I was collecting progress scores rather than just a number. Basic Facts on the other hand, I have traditionally run a tables ladder then a challenge board. Once students have passed all their tables, then they move onto the challenge board and try to work their way up. James Nottingham would classify this as a practice that classifies low, mid and high ability, and yes, that is true. However, I have also seen it's merits where 'low' students can recognise their starting point (the bottom) and their progress and were determined to get to a certain place by a given time. Visually my tables ladder was probably not a good idea. I did do lots of talking around my expectations, "All I want to see is you improving, it doesn't matter how many levels, as long as you improve each week." (I should note that support and provisions were put in place for students not achieving or with processing difficulties). With both sides of the argument about even, would I still continue this practice? I think it would depend entirely on the group - it has worked in the past, but actually it may not one day!

This video also raised another important aspect, that I had never really considered, in our Professional Learning Meeting - what is the ratio of praise we give? Sometimes, as teachers, we do need build confidence in children and the type of praise we give for that is often going to be entirely different praise of progress. Is saying, "what a great job you've done!" such a bad thing some of the time?