Thinking deeply about primary education - key principles from Christopher Such (Reading)

 

Key principles shared by Christopher Such:

• Be guided by research - the process of teaching reading is exceptionally complicated. Know it and let it inform your practice.
• Teach phonics well - Essential that this is done to a high standard
• Consider language development as a key part of reading - reading stories, openly discussing things with children
• Developing fluency - know what it is, know how to assess it, encourage its development in children.
• Vocabulary - embed and teach this in a way that supports vocabulary development.
• Reading comprehension - understand and taught
• Teach the whole class as a default.

Feedback is a gift!

I have just encouraged the tauira (students) I work with to give me some feedback on my teaching craft using the traffic light strategy:

Green - What do you want me to start doing?
Orange - What do you want me to continue doing?
Red - What do you want me to stop doing?

Below is a summary of the points raised. Overall the feedback was positive! (Which is great). I am not surprised at all by the comments that I talk too fast. This is the very same feedback I got over a decade ago from a long time mentor and by my cousin (who I invited to critique me last year). After reflecting on my feedback with my husband, I think it's time to do something about it. I have added the following post-it note to my screen to give me a daily reminder to speak slowly.

 

3 Level Guide in a New Entrant Class

The Three-Level Guide is a reading strategy which supports students to read the text closely by providing:  

• clear purpose and direction for reading
• develop comprehension skills as LITERAL, INFERENTIAL and APPLIED KNOWLEDGE

The guide is a series of statements written by the teacher about a text, some are true and some false. Students/readers are asked to agree or disagree with these statements and justify their responses using text and their own understanding/prior knowledge.

Our team were challenged to create our own version of 3 Level Texts. Here's my version of a 3 Level Guide for my Year 0/1 class.

Everyone is advantaged by a structured literacy approach

Inquiry question: What strategies will best support students literacy learning in my class?

Bridging the gap between neuroscience, evidence-based research and classroom teaching

‘Structured Literacy approach’

Liz Kane Literacy

Tuesday 16th April 2019

Reading is like Tennis - Tennis is complex

• Specific skills that develop to a level of automaticity
• The strategy of how to play the game
• We wouldn’t teach children the whole game of tennis, rather specific skills

In the same manner, we shouldn’t go to the whole to teach children to read.

Children with good memories and guessing strategies can look as though they are reading. Then you present them with words they have never seen before.

Centre for Independent studies education researcher

Jennifer Buckingham

The English alphabet has 22 letters (44) sounds and (over 200) spellings of the sounds.

What does the last 20 years of research tell us?

What happens in the brain when we learn to read?

What implications does this have in how reading should be taught?

Phonemic awareness

• To learn the alphabet the brain first must learn to speak
• Brain not wired for reading
• We use circuits in the brain that we already use for recognising faces to start recognising letters
• The challenge is to turn the letters into sounds

Dr Stanislas Deheane

Phonemes - a set of motor movements that are encoded with the sound signal

explicitly showing the movements as well as hear the sound.

Phonemic awareness - Identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in words

is a strong predictor of reading success

David Kilpatrick

Aggressively teach the code to these kids. - orthographic mapping

http://www.multisensoryeducation.net.au

The English Alphabetic Code - the most complex code

Teach 5-year-olds the consonants and vowels of the word

Lesson sequence

Authors to follow up

• The Simple view of Reading (Gough and Tunmer 1986)
• Scarborough’s Reading Rope (2001)
• Excellence and Equity in Literacy Education James Chapman and Bill Tunmer
• Alison Arrow
• Canterbury University Literacy Education
• Maryanne Wolf

So what does this mean for me?

• In Term 2, I am going to be very intentional about teaching ‘the code’ explicitly.
• I am going to carry out a number of phonological awareness assessments.

Inquiry at WRS and my Inquiry

I've been put in charge of leading Inquiry at my school. I have some experience in inquiry from my experience in the International Baccalaureate programme and I've started to re-visit Kath Murdochs 'Power of Inquiry' book.

I'm really excited about stirring curiosity and wonder in our school, we're only a few weeks in and already our students are asking some awesome questions:

We took our kids on a Wonder Walk yesterday…that was super fun…amazing questions - had underestimated them “Why are the Pacific Islands so small? “How many hours to get to Hong Kong?” “Why is my b/day in Oct” #nzbfc630

— Robyn Wills (@flexie) February 4, 2019

Leading inquiry in a school that hasn't done it before is challenging but very exciting. So with this, much of my time will be spent 'facilitating, presenting, preparing' information to share with my colleagues. 

So now, given this extra responsibility and my desire to grow in my teaching craft, I am curious to have my own 'Teaching as Inquiry' blend 'inquiry-based learning' and 'reading and writing' together.

Here is my draft inquiry:

What role do systemic phonics and our handwriting programme play in inquiry-based learning?

My Read-aloud challenge 2019

I've read this book a number of times now and totally agree with the underlying message, which I interpret to be:

Read-aloud to your children, no matter what age, it's good for them!

This year, I am challenging myself to read 3 books to my class every day! Sounds easy right?! It's so not. I tried last year and really struggled to squeeze it in. However, what I did notice was that when I read to my 5-year-olds a few times a day their 'reading stamina' - for want of a better phrase - got better and better! They were often engrossed in what I was reading and as I read some more than once, twice or even thrice, they started reading with me.

To keep myself accountable, I am going to try and document the books I read here. I am hoping to gather data on children's 'reading stamina' through weekly reflections and record their oral language development using JOST. Wish me luck!

Spiral of Inquiry: Another day with Jannie van Hees (Oral Language)

Relationships with all key stakeholders takes time.

If you hope it happens, it won't!

Have a look at all of the children across your school that need extra support - identify the patterns and the trends? 

Phonological understanding of children is based on the quality of the oral language interactions of children and their engagement in talk accompanied print.

We've got no idea how capable their brain is, we need to have high expectations and keep believing. We have to see an unsung potential here and we need to see what that is! Every child has potential - Jannie Van Hees

A young child's brain development

Growing our children's language potential

Rich social interaction 

Responsible caregivers

Quality talk with child

Reading with talk support

SHAPES the CIRCUITRY of a child's brain

Conversational teaching and learning?

Dialogic teaching and learning?

What do high-quality conversations look like? and what does it do?

If you just listen to a story, you won't get as much out of as if you stopped and talked about it e.g. text accompanied print.

Instead of saying "listen" say "Victoria is talking, let's focus and notice so that we can respond". Paraphrase what Victoria says and invite more dialogue from students.


TAKEAWAYS

• Be intentional in choosing books 
• Develop a list of high-quality stories for Book talk
• Can books be organized into themes?
• It's never too early to read to a child
• The quality and quantity of language counts
• Put the time and effort in if you want outcomes
• Reading to children is a skill, use it as an opportunity to have a conversation
• Read for enjoyment!
• You don't have to DO a book, experience a book!
• Small group sizes are optimal
• Children's knowledge is gained through language, and in particular 
• Choose word groups rather than single words (the more we bring it to the foreground, the more children will)
• Teach children to hunt for 'word groups'
• Children thrive when they are taken to new learning
• How do we lead children to new knowledge?
• Play-based learning - how can we ensure deliberate acts of teaching and learning and provide new learning opportunities for ALL children.

ANALYSING TEXTS

Today in our workshop we looked at Perky the Pukeko and analysed for concepts and high-vocabulary.

WOW!! What an amazing experience and an exciting way to really look at how we might bring vocabulary and concepts to the fore for our students. You can see examples of how this played out for us today, below:

ACTIONS

• Explore possibilities to develop a stronger relationship with local early childhood centres e.g. cross-collaboration between school/early childhood education centre.
• What might whānau workshops look like at Wymondley in relation to oral language?
• Identify Goals for 2019! with dates and plan of action.
• Ensure everyone is on board with this!
• Diary dates in with all of the key stakeholders, this year for next year.
• Analyse books and look for opportunities to bring to the fore vocabulary and concepts for students.

Spiral of Inquiry: Analysing an oral language session.

As mentioned earlier, I have been enjoying Oral Language PD with Jannie Van Hees. In my last post, New learning about oral language I wrote a list of actions that I wanted to achieve by the end of the year. 

The first of these was to video a session of me working with a group of children. I then wanted to use the Vocab Profiler https://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/to analyse the vocabulary I used with my students.

Today I recorded a session with my class, 16 students in a multi-cultural class (many of which are emerging bilinguals). You can read the full transcript here.

Here is a summary of that analysis:

The data shows that in this 12-minute children were exposed to 1393 words and 314 different words. 

Of these 1393 words, 86.07% of the words were in the first 1-1000 frequency words, and 4.95% were in the 1001-2000 words. Only 0.50% of these words from the Academic Word List (AWL) which appear with high frequency in English-language academic texts. As you can see in the image below these words are analysis_[1] author_[2] contact_[1] demonstrate_[1] partner_[2] There were 8.47% in the Off-List Words these were allen_[3] alright_[1] ch_[1] cheep_[7] chicks_[2] chirped_[1] clues_[1] cock_[2] cockle_[3] crowed_[1] disrupting_[1] disruptive_[1] distracting_[1] doo_[5] doodle_[5] fluffy_[1] gingers_[3] hen_[10] hens_[3] ikihele_[4] illustrator_[1] leghorn_[12] leghorns_[2] neighbouring_[1] nikau_[2] nooooo_[1] okay_[17] oral_[2] pamela_[3] preened_[2] preening_[4] redhead_[1] rooster_[1] session_[1] shed_[3] sided_[1] sill_[1] ta_[2] um_[2] yeah_[3]. Children were exposed to many of these words through the read-aloud story. Our Junior team has committed to reading aloud to children every day, and you can see in the transcript this is having significant benefits to children's understanding of various words. For example;

Teacher: So the little red hen carefully stretched and preened one wing, then carefully stretched and preened the other wing and when she was quite sure she was neat and tidy. Remember what preening looks like? Child T: Yeah. Teacher: Show me, show me with your body preening when the Little Red Hen is preening. What's she doing? She's doing it like this….preening.Child Ta: She’s covering it.Teacher:  Yeah, it looks like this.That’s  a great way to demonstrate that for us D.

Reflections:

• What can I do to ensure that ALL children a contributing to dialogue?
• The most common word in this text is "and, are, a" - what do I need to do to introduce a range of other words?
• What makes some children more confident to speak up than others?

Spiral of Inquiry: New Learning about Oral Language

I had the great pleasure of attending a day long PD with Janie Van Hees today. While my brain is absolutely overloaded, I will attempt to share my key takeaways and actions from the day.

What is the role of talk?

• More ideas shared
• More words used
• Greater quality words
• more ‘to and fro’ talk with your child

Quotes that provoke!Its never too late! Be relentlessHigh expectations and delicious learning available to all tamariki.Surfing to comprehend, and surfing them back again…

Talk accompanied print is the difference maker

Why does spoken language matter? And what does it offer?

60-70% of my environment has to have ‘others’ language available to me

30% me trying it out

The role of talk

• More ideas shared
• More words used
• Greater quality words
• more ‘to and fro’ talk with your child

Your child hearing and saying reading and talking about reading with you and other sets them up for literacy and learning.

• Knowledge gap - language is a critical contributor to the knowledge gap.
• Oral language is a way to grow your thinking.
• Lived experiences: fluffy sheep or smelly cow
• Extended daily conversations

Teacher Attention

• Attention to and noticing
• Effortful and purposeful engagement and interaction
• all participating
• Triggering the ‘known’ to connect to the ‘new’
• Stretching the learners current language repertoire
• Multiple encounters
• Context relevant
• Facilitated through engaging mediating tools - persons, tasks, activities, sources.

Learner Attention

• Focus and Notice
• Put in the effort
• Take part (participate) fully
• Push myself to the edge
• Dig deep for what I already know
• Learn from others - notice and focus
• I share - others gain from me
• Think and talk; think and read
• Wondering and asking opens up possibilities to know

Classroom talk

• More time to process
• Think to yourself, share with someone else and then share with someone else
• First, second, third

A dialogic gifting exchange might go like this:

Lets all look carefully at the photo, really closely and think and look for details. Dig deep and notice whats going on…use your brain and your eyes to see and think about what the photo is telling us

Ill give you a good amount of think and look with all your brain. Get your ideas ready for sharing. So thinking and looking deeply as much as your bring can AND getting some of your ideas ready to tell someone else. Use gestures

Okay everybody, let's make sure we have on fabulous idea ready to tell another person. Remember how we get a fabulous idea ready.

Children show they know by putting their thumb up.

Teacher: Oh…so many of you remember. Tiaki, you tell us what we need to do to get a fabulous idea ready to tell someone.

Tiaki: We need to use words so they can know what we mean.

During teaching and learning/Dialogic gifting in class

Why do we keep asking so many questions? We should be in dialogue with our children

Example of dialogic gifting

Teacher: Sea horses are amazing animals. Remember how we read that they propel themselves through the water with the tiny fin on their back

Child: The fin flutters really quickly. It uses it for steering.

Teacher: Yes, I used the word propelling and you used the word steering, the fin helps it go left and right.

Teacher: It does, it has some other fins too. I wonder who can remember the name of those fins. We read that word.

CHild: P…. Pec… Pec Oh I can't say it

Teacher: Pectoral fins, clever, good remembering now let's talk about the tail and how 

The point is: When we have exchanges of ideas in the classroom, could we better at being responsive and adding to the kaupapa and the meaning.

High level vocabulary: Groups of words e.g. feeds no plankton, steady itself to eat, curly, scaly tail, fin flutters, seahorse is a fish

There have been some amazing words that we’ve used, lets remember some of them.

Lets explain that word - vocabulary

Like …. is an example.

Actions:

• Meaning making ready and explain ready rather than reading and writing ready
• JOST in different languages e.g. Tongan/Samoan
• Toy Library @ Wymondley
• Re-word testing: gathering information
• Video myself 
• Create a framework of things to look for in my video analysis.
• We choose best words to say what we mean, really say what we mean
• Acknowledge what the child says and open it up for further comment
• Students to do the heavy lifting
• Provide quantity and quality in the schooling environment
• Visuals: Ask what's going on in the photo, what else are you thinking?

Spiral of Inquiry: Taking action with Oral Language

Taking action
What can we do differently to make enough of a difference? "Genuine inquiry needs space to take risks, make mistakes, and try again – and again". Changing things can also feel risky for some learners who then resist change, and in turn, bring concerned parents. We need to build understanding for all, right from the outset.

So I've had a bit of a lull with my inquiry, mostly because I have been somewhat resentful about having to explicitly teach Oral Language in my classroom. I know I'm not the only one, as we've discussed this at a recent OCoL but the fact of the matter is that oral language is the foundation to reading and writing, and it is vital that children have the oral language to support their ongoing learning.

So, I have been using Time to Talk to guide my 'oral language sessions' and have adapted this to suit my class. Some of our lessons include explicit modelling of conversations and rules for listening (among other things). I am repeating the lesson several times so that children are getting repetition and lots of practice.

I have really played up the idea of 'respectful listening'. What does this mean? Well, Gingers rules for listening are:

1. Look with your eyes
2. Listen with your ears
3. Keep still
4. Be quiet

As a class, we have added 'Be respectful'. Which means focus on the speaker and listen intently.

It seems contradictory to have such a structured oral language programme in a play-based classroom but the role modelling of explicit language conventions seems to support our language in all areas of our classroom. The evidence is quite fascinating.
I have been using JOST (Junior Oral Language Assessment) to measure progress in oral language. Below is an example of the shifts made in an oral story with picture prompt:

May 2018 "The boy is wet".
September 2018 "The girls in the window she's angry at the boy because he took his shoes off and jumped in the water".

In addition to a rich language focussed, play-based programme and lots of 'read aloud' opportunities, the Time to Talk programme has been a good reminder to me of the importance of oral language.

Below are samples of progress in oral language of children in my class.

The areas in which I need to really focus on are:

* All body parts (chin, elbow and little finger) seem to be a struggle for new students.
* Plurals - 1 boat - 2 boats, 1 bus - 2 buses, 1 mouse - 2 mice
* Prepositions - in, under, beside, behind etc
* Tense - jump|ed, fall|fell, find|found, clap|clapped.

So while lots of action has been taken I am looking at ways to support children with specific aspects of their oral language development.

This week I am at a professional development session with Jannie Van Hees and I look forward to implementing my new learning into my classroom.

Spiral of Inquiry: More learning about Phonemic awareness

Yesterday I came across a Facebook post in the Learning through Play page that asked about 'readiness for reading' in a play-based classroom. There was a range of really useful information and most confirmed my hunch around phonemic awareness. I really enjoyed seeing how the teachers in the following video integrated the phoneme levels into their everyday routines like reading.

Phoneme level is the most important level of phonological awareness, the four aspects of these are:

Phoneme Identity: Helping children identify single sounds in words

Phoneme Segmentation: Break a word up into all of its individuals sounds

Phoneme Blending: Blending individual sounds together to form a word

Phoneme Manipulation: Playing with sounds and words.

The diagram below shows the building blocks of reading success: 

Reading is not creating something completely novel, reading consists of connection and creating an interface between vision and the spoken language system.

There are parts of the brain that are only activated by those who know how to read e.g. visual recognition of letters.

And perhaps the biggest message of all by Prof. Sanislas Dehaene...

Phonics is superior to whole-world training!

Making Phonics Stick! - Professional Learning Webinar

Build It example from Marnie Ginsberg on Vimeo.