Today I have completed running records with the two lowest reading groups in my class. Based on my guided reading during week one and two I felt that a few students may need to be shifted groups. The groups I had formed were based on the data that I received from their 2012 teachers. It seems that some students have moved down at least one level over the summer holidays. This is always to be expected and is one of the main reasons I decided to complete these running records today.
Thursday 21st February:
Professional Reading
Effective teaching strategies for Maori students in an English-medium Numeracy Classroom
- Joanna Higgins.
The intention of group work is for teachers to work specifically with a group of students to develop knowledge and strategies at their stage on the framework. According to Fraivillig, Murphy & Fuson’s (1999) model, the role of the teacher with a group is when emphasis is given to eliciting, supporting, and extending concepts in response to students’ actions and explanations. I agree with the inquiry based approach to group work in which power-sharing interactions between teachers and students are promoted, where the culture of the child rather than the culture of the teacher are central to the interactions, where learners are taught to critically reflect on their own learning, and where there is active engagement of students.
It is suggested to think of your groups like a ‘waka’ – it is about “groups within a group”. Everyone should know what everybody else is doing. “That’s a whanau thing”. You should build up the lead group as a starting point of co-construction of understanding, that is, that “knowing” and understanding of learning can be passed on. One group should be helping out another group, not just a one-on-one… that’s a concept that Maori students are comfortable with… they understand that it’s my responsibility to help someone… Tuakana teina is because of age, but maths is because of knowledge and strategy. So it’s a responsibility thing… They’re quite happy to take it on and they like it because from the learner, the less able learner gets a new version of it. The ‘lead group’ can become a tool of instruction. This creates a co-construction dynamic by which the class’s understanding of mathematical ideas is shared. It brings the students all together and helps them all in the end. It is important that the teacher defines the nature of the activity that will occur in the mathematics classroom. Students must have expectations of the activity. The actions of the teacher are critical. The teacher should check with all the members of the group even if they are not expecting an answer. The students should also retain the right to ‘tell the teacher’ what they need. This is a way of protecting the mana of the students when taking a risk of being wrong appears to be a pivotal point for many students.
As teachers we should not be afraid to hand the teaching reigns over to the kids. If a student looks like they are really lost get one of the students that do understand to explain. “Maori kids love that, they love having that role, they love being able to work with other kids. When deciding on the ‘teacher-student – student’ relationship it is important to team them up with someone they get on really well with, but won’t be silly, but that person is responsible. This helps to break down the risk taking barrier of being wrong.
“Maori kids can do it but it’s the style you do it in… It’s the way you do it, you can’t isolate them, you can’t make them feel bad for not knowing… That’s the trick… you know… keeping them on board.”
I feel inspired by this article and research and will am to implement it in to my maths programme to the best of my ability. Most of the Maori students in my class are struggling with mathematics so I feel they could really stand to benefit from this approach. I may set aside a time on Fridays to do ‘buddy maths’ so the students have a chance to learn from each other and have that time exploring and investigating together rather than too much teacher direction.
Thursday 28th February 2013
7.45am this morning I met with RTLB Moni Donaldson regarding Jacob Thorburn's progress in my classroom. Our aim is to put his parents mind at ease in regards to Jacob's progress. We discussed his classroom behaviour and talked about the systems I have in place to get the most out of Jacob. I am pleased with the progress he is making in his reading. I have been encouraging him to physically make the sounds of tricky words whilst reading as I feel this helps him make more sense of what the sentence might sound like as a whole. I also prompt him to look at and talk about what it is in the pictures prior to reading the text as often many of the tricky words are verbalised before we start reading. I have also set up a daily check list which encourages him to stay on task and work to the best of his ability. So far this is proving to have a very positive influence as he is increasingly following instructions the first time and the quantity of his writing is increasing. These two aspects are both included on his chart. Moni reassured me that the steps I have taken seem to be working well for Jacob and will report this to his parents. It is good to know that I have someone to support and guide me with these issues as it is the first time I have had a student with such learning difficulties in my classroom
Professional Reading to improve Maori achievement in the classroom and how I plan to put this in to practise. Sabbatical Report:
Sabbatical Purpose:
To investigate programmes and practises that enhance the relationships between families, communities, schools – in particular those that improve the achievement and engagement of Maori children and their Whanau.
Rex Allot
Purpose: To investigate programmes and practises that enhance the relationship between families, communities, schools – in particular those that improve the achievement and engagement of Maori children and their Whanau.
It has been established that schools and student learning are strongly influenced by ‘trust’. There is also solid evidence to demonstrate the impact of families and communities on student learning and achievement. This is why I have encouraged an open door policy in my classroom. I have re-evaluated my writing plan so that the groups are mixed during the initial planning stage of writing so that ideally the top students will support the lower students and help them develop confidence in their writing. The students need to know that I trust them to work together and that I have faith in their own abilities. It should not always be me teaching them, they have plenty to learn off each other. This supports Field’s (2003) belief that “by managing connections with one another and keeping them going over time, people are able to work together to achieve things that they either could not achieve by themselves or could only achieve with great difficulty.”
I feel to get a child fully engaged it is important to identify those children who are not engaged and find out why. Again this explains my reasoning to try mixed ability writing groups at the planning stage to see if the ‘higher knowledge’ students provide some support to the less abled students.
The regular emails I send home informing the students’ parents of their child’s progress meets one of the criteria according to the research that helps bridge the gap between home and school to promote Maori achievement.
Overall I feel I need to develop and cherish the bond between home and school. I will look in to organising an ‘open day’ or Grandparents evening to encouraging the link between home and school. If the parents / wider family members begin to feel more comfortable in the school environment they should become more willing to help their child with their education.
Thursday 21st March
The majority of my day today was spent organizing my teacher inquiry with Caroline. My inquiry focus for this year is writing, and I have chosen two students in my class who are struggling with their sentence structure. Caroline and I came up with a variety of different strategies to engage Jacob and Natalia in writing. Natalia really struggles with sentence structure so I plan to give her a variety of sentences that have been constructed incorrectly to see if she can put them back together herself. My main focus for Jacob is to get him to write independently. I aim to set Jacob a variety of incentives if he reaches a certain goal of writing independently I realise that this will take time so I plan to start with a goal for him to write 3 sentences by himself and further it as need be.
I feel with some specific teacher to meet the needs of these students they can make steady progress throughout the year. I will make regular reflections on how my inquiry and the progress of these students is going.
Thursday 23rd May 2013
This morning I observed Julianne's writing lesson. Her focus was on writing two sentences using 'and' or 'but' to combine them. I liked the way that she didn't get them to write an entire story using this concept but instead just got them to write at least four sentences. To me this seems like a very effective way to get the students really focused on achieving the learning intention as opposed to getting lost in the all the other concepts of story writing also.
In addition, I was very impressed with her independent activities. The students that were not working with her in a group were all on task and doing relevant work. She uses a range of spelling, grammar, writing activities that keep the students engaged. I think the key to the kids staying on task is that the independent activities do not to too long to complete so there is not too much time for them to get bored or off task. Next term when I go back to my writing groups I may try so of these new activities.
Thursday 30th May 2013
This morning I observed Judy Easton taking a 6 year net assessment. I found it really interesting learn in more detail at what level the students should be at before they come to Team 2. I liked the way that in the dictation part of the test, the student does not loose marks if they have spelt a word wrong but they only reason they have spelt the word wrong is because they have not include a letter that they can not hear when we sound words out. For example - Hom for Home would still be marked as correct because when you sound the word out you can not hear the 'e' on the end. So really the student is just responding to the sounds that they can hear.
Thursday 11th May 2013
This morning I completed running records with my second to top reading group. I was pleased to see that two of the five of them are now ready to move from Junior Journals to Part 1 Journals so I have added them in to my top reading group. The other three students that didn't quite manage to go up a level all have very simple things to work towards. Things like, reading the words correctly, responding to punctuation and using a variety of strategies to unpack tricky words.
This morning Maggie showed me how to sign my students up to the Internet sight 'Sumdog' which is a maths sight for the students to practise their number knowledge skills. I plan to use this as a homework task and an in class task. I have used their latest knowledge test results to determine what skills they need to practise as the website allows you to specifically choose the / restrict what skills you want the students to learn. I am excited to see at what rate this helps to improve the students number knowledge abilities. I have been using worksheets both in class and for homework but I think this is a more exciting way for them to practise their maths.
Thursday 27th June 2013
This morning I observed a running record lesson of Judy Easton (Reading Recovery Teacher at DSS). The student had just recently completed reading recovery. I found it very helpful to see how she interacted with the student once the running record was complete. She asked him to read over the sentences that he had made a mistake on to see if he could identify his mistake. I believe this is a useful thing to do as it helps to identify the next teaching points for the students as both the teacher and student become aware of what the focus of their reading should be.
Thursday 1st August 2013
Chunk Check Cheer
Today I have been reading about the integrating the 'Chunk, Check, Cheer' spelling programme into the classroom. My reasoning for this is that I have found my students are doing very well on their weekly spelling tests but often struggle to transfer their knowledge of these words in to their everyday writing. For this reason I have decided to put more of a focus on Phonics this term to check the students understanding of word sounds, blends and families.
After a discussion with Liz (who currently uses the 'Chunk, Check, Cheer' spelling programme) I have decided to introduce this into my own classroom so that the students are not only furthering their spelling knowledge, but they are also developing their understanding of word families, blends and chunks. I struggle to see the relevance of learning words from a list if they are not able to transfer and use their knowledge of the make up of these words in everyday life.
Thursday 21 November 2013
Today I observed Dale's reading lesson as I will be teaching Year 5 and 6's next year. The first thing that struck me was the increased level of independence the students displayed. My students (Year 3's) are very good but they tend to need a lot of direction and reassurance to stay on task.
I liked the way Dale had a variety of activities for the students to do based on the text they are reading.
She gets lots of her follow up reading material from the 'Reading Comprehension Box'. This provides the students with a variety of material (different texts) and different activities to complete at the end of it.
I liked the way she used modelling books with her reading that focused on Sheena Cameron's Reading Strategies. At this age, reading aloud, focusing on fluency and expression is not the main importance but digging deaper in to the students understanding of the text eg. different types of text, persuasion, topic related words, questioning, summarising.
This is something I am really interested in focusing on next year as it is one thing to be able to read a text well with expression, but if the students are not understanding (or able to relate the new knowledge to their prior knowledge) there is not much point in reading at all.
CRT 4th December 2013
Today is my CRT day as a part of Team 2. I am feeling a bit nervous about moving on to Y5/6 next year but I know it will be a good experience. I have just seen my class list for next year and many of the students I had last year are on it so this is some comfort to me as I am familiar with them and them with me. The thing I am looking forward to the most about starting in this new age group as it gives me a chance to really try new techniques and routines in the classroom. My main goal for the beginning of next year is to set clear expectations, not only for behaviour but bookwork also. This is one thing that I feel I was not clear enough about at the beginning of the year with my Y3's and so I found it quite difficult to try and reinforce it throughout the year, as I didn't feel I had even set the right foundations for this expectation to be met.
Seemingly simple things such as book presentation can seem trivial but I feel these kinds of expectations and placing a high standard on them displays to the students that quality work and high expectations will be expected and set from day one. I hope that this approach will encourage the students to realise that they can achieve to a high level in every area of the curriculum if they set their minds to it. I really want to instil this belief in them and have them understand that as their teacher I will do anything I can to help them achieve their goals.
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