Structured Language Approach to Literacy

In Term One we had an introduction to the Structured Language Approach to Literacy. We will be eventually all teaching reading in a different way. Some of the keys points I took out of the introduction from Maire were:
-this was once a programme for people with dyslexia but it benefits all
-taught step by step
-20 minute lessons
-phonics will lead into reading
-you can only go as fast as your group can cope
-sound/letter formation solid before moving on
-explicit teaching of handwriting
-follow up very specific
-teacher aid available for extra practise
-concepts about print will need to be taught in Big Book time

The key ideas in the teaching lessons are:
-creating sound correctly
-writing sound correctly
-write the sound without seeing it
-be able to recognise, hear, write it
-explicit teaching of handwriting

I also got to observe a lesson taken by Miss Clark with her New Entrant children. Then we went through the introductory test. I later got to test some of the children in our hub. I started to change up my planning for the older children in my literacy groups based on some of the ideas from the Structured Language Approach. This seemed to work well. I think this will be a good way to teach the children. It is very structured and the lessons incorporate handwriting, phonics, reading altogether. This will save us alot of time in the school day. I look forward to implementing it more in the future.

Swimming Lessons

Kakano Hub had Swimming lessons for Weeks 4 and 5 of Term 1. This was a great learning opportunity for the children. It was fantaastic to see their improvements each day. The children all became more confident in the water. They learnt about water safety each day. The last few days involved learning how to correctly fit and use a lifejacket, how to safely exit a boat into water and find the pocket of air in an upturned boat to breathe. These were all vital skills that the children learnt. As we live in New Zealand we have access to many water activities and these lessons helped developed the children's confidence around water. I look forward to our time at QE2 each year. 

Māori

Bex and Mrs Earl have started coming on Fridays to the hub to teach the children Maori. I have found this very beneficial to my own learning. It has been a great time to practise the correct pronounciation of words and phrases. The children have enjoyed participating in the songs, actions and games. I have been joining the Distance Learning Friday Fun Day sessions online. It is great to learn alongside the children. I have also had a session online with Bexs myself to work on my Mihi pronounciation. I have been grateful for the learning opportunities offered by the school. Lately I have downloaded the Tipu app on my phone and have been working my way through the levels. It is great to have easy access to a tutor online. Bex showed me the Maori Dictionary online which I have added to my favourites bar. It's a great way of looking up Maori words and being able to hear the correct pronouciation. I think this will come in very handy at school. On the 10th March the teachers visited a Marae. This was a very interesting experience. We completed our own Mihi's and had to stand up and say them twice infront of a group of our peers. Our Mihi's got critiqued the second time through and it was good to get some help with the correct pronouciation. I also enjoyed participating and learning about a Powhiri on a Marae. I think it would be great to take the children for a Marae visit one day. I will continue to incorporate what I have learnt into the daily routines of the school day.

Role of the coach

The role of the coach is what we have been working on this year. I feel I have a better understanding of this through the research, courses and teacher discussions we have had. I like the template that Maire introduced that we fill in when we are the coach. We observe the children and write down the urges we see in the Learning Through Play room. This then helps us decide what activities we will put out in our planning the next week. We need to make time to look at all the coaches observations each week to inform our planning and make sure we are seeing all the children included in the notes. I like the Learning Through Play spreadsheet for planning. It is great how we are free to choose any activity we want. The resources sometimes makes me hesitant, but we have brought this up and discussed in team meetings about a Learning Through Play budget (also making use of the natural resources and asking our community). Lately the rotation urge is the biggest at the moment. The children are making bey blades out of mobilo and spinning them on the lino and tables. I will introduce paper spinners as a rotation activity and think about more activities around this urge. The coach also observes in the challenge room. I like the planning spreadsheet we have in place for the Challenge room. The activities are linked to the curriculum achievement objectives. The children can explore activities in the Learning Through Play room and then be challenged with an activity around those objects/materials etc in this room (deeper understanding/critically thinking). I think we have to be careful that the activities we choose lend themselves to be ticked off on the literacy/maths progressions. We have learnt through the Longworth course when to intervene in the play and when to observe which has been very helpful. The coach also oversees the follow up room making sure the children are on task completing their activities. The language the coach uses is very important, it needs to lift the play (high order play), involve open ended questioning, ignite and challenge the play. The coach needs to model play and then retreat when the children are happily involved. The coach needs to use just in time teaching when the children need their play to be lifted, knowing what they need to be exposed to next so they can develop furthur (scaffoldding). Soft skills/key competencies/conflict resolution need to be taught and modelled in this environment as well. The coach has a very important role which we are continuing to define.

Maths: Flexible Grouping

I have really enjoyed teaching maths this year. We come together each term and decide on groups for the children. During the term we focus on the learning needs of the group. I find this easy to find on the digital progressions. I start with the big gaps that everyone needs and then focus on others. Not everyone in the group needs the same goals, so I extend the children who know more and help the children who are struggling to achieve the goal. The aim is to have these updated regularly. I feel we need to be more flexible when doing these goals and look more at others planning. Then we can swap around children more when this happens to a group doing a goal they need. I look forward to trying this in term four when needed. I have been shown how to have two screens open at once and think this will help. I will have my planning and the digital progressions open and this will be easier to mark down a 1,2,3 for the children as we go. The goals are specific to what the children need to learn. I find the digital progressions are more of a working document and the Linc Ed goals are updated after. The children are aware of their learning goals and understand the concept of evidence, showing the teacher three times they have mastered the skill. I like flexible grouping, I think we need to work on being more flexible ourselves in changing around children in groups more regularly.

Swimming

We went to the Graham Condon Swimming Pool for two weeks every day in Term Three. Most children enjoyed the swimming lessons. They learnt about entering the water correctly, balance, buoyancy, water safety and water survival skills. They learnt about boat safetly and how to use a life jacket correctly. These are all very important life skills. Some parents came to watch and they commented how much the children had learnt since their first visit. The bus timetable was well organised and we were always on time for our lessons. I enjoyed the change to our daily programme, we got to have more contact time with our own Homebases. It was great to have these lessons in the lead up to Summer. It was also great to see the children more confident in the water. The instructors were amazing with the children, they quickly picked up on the ones who were nervous and needed some extra one on one time.

Teckie Breakie

Beebots
It was great to see again how the Beebots worked and to actually have a go with them. I think the children would love using these. Kath gave us some great ideas and we had a chat about all the things we could use the Beebots for:

Beebot Activities Ideas:
-Treasure Hunt
-Map
-Build a lego town and move around it
-Matching English to Maori e.g words, colours, numbers, body parts, food
-Simple maths sums
-Ordering a Maori Legend, fairytale story
-Ordering a timeline of events e.g morning routines, the Easter Story
-Counting in 2's, 5's, 10's
-Ordering biggest to smallest
-Planet order closest to the sun
-Time, matching analogue to digital
-Classifying 2D/3D shapes
-Position/orientation
-Obstacle courses
-Lifecycles
-CVC words, spelling, HF words
-Sentence structure
-Putting dance steps together
-Days of the week
-Months of the year

I think the list is endless, you could find a way to incorporate Beebots in whatever you are learning. I look forward to having a go with a group in class.

Network Meeting: Showcasing our Learning

Louise organised a Network Meeting with the Preschools that was held at our school on the 27th September. The focus this time was Showcasing your Learning. All the Preschools talked about their Learning Stories. I like the idea of Learning Stories for the children, I think we are using Linc Ed well to report on snapshots of learning at the moment. One of the Preschools mentioned they used an Ipad that the parents could access and look at what their children had been learning about that day. I thought this would be a good idea or even if we had a tv going every morning with a slideshow on it of what our children have been learning. This would be a good conversation starter with the parents and the children are so proud of their work and always want to share. Louise shared how we use Linc Ed to Showcase our learning and talked about our Maori Legend Production Showcase. She also summarised our Learning through Play Journey. As she was talking it dawned on me how far we have come and how many schools are at their beginning stages of Learning through Play like we were. We have had many visits from other schools to see our Learning through Play in action and I feel proud of what we have achieved. I realise this is a long journey but I am happy to be on this ride! I have learnt so much already and am looking forward to the next stage of the process.

Linc Ed

I have found Linc Ed to be easy to use. It was great to have professional learning as a whole school at our staff meetings. I have found the roll easy to complete for your own Homebase and learnt how to complete others in our Hub too when the need arises. I have enjoyed collecting evidence to show how the children are progressing e.g photos, videos. I would like to look at other ways of showing evidence as well. I liked reporting in this way, we set ourselves a timeline at the beginning of the term and know what evidence we have to collect and how we are going to do it. We collaborate as a team looking at comments to support the evidence. We will make sure all the curriculum areas are covered over time. The parents are getting regular updates about their children which is great! I have also found the List Builder to be very helpful, sometimes it takes awhile to choose your list just because their are so many options that you can look through.

Longworth-Playing in the Classroom

A Foundation Workshop, West Melton School

Main points that I took from the workshop:

* There is extensive research behind the value of play.
* When engaged in authentic play more likely to develop higher order cognitive and socio-emotional skills then if exposed to direct teaching and adult structured learning opportunities.
* The children must have the freedom to quit (intrinsic motivation)
* Strong sense of self efficacy and resiliency result through peer interaction and negotiation.
* ''Play is the vehicle for the learning."
*The need to understand children's urges 'skema'. Urges underpinn learning for everyone.
* Quality of Learning through Play, role of the teacher, balance self directed and teacher directed.
* Conflict Resolution, strategies to cope
* Zone of proximal development-moment to teach in play
*Socio-dramatic play-most important part of play
* Teacher's Role: watch, observe, extend play, resources, model/scaffold, introduce language, give more information, direct, recognise where children are in their learning, invite children to think differently
* Three times a week share e.g slideshow, photos, models etc
* Five year journey to get Playbased established
* Planning: flexible, anticipation, reflective, observation-data driven (key competencies, urges, observation-greatest tool in playbased.
* Playbased Learning: 1Developmental stage-2 Current urges-3 Functional types of play-4 Provocations with loose parts (resourcing of play, preparing)-5 Authentic play (teaching through play)-6 Documented learning through assessment of play-7 Observation. Then start back at number 1.
* Document what seen (observation/urges), respond, connect to the curriculum.
*Take time to teach: sharing, turn taking etc to manage themselves in play.


''An environment which is rich in open-ended materials and real materials, invokes children to experiment, engage, construct and invent, invites them to tinker, to manipulate and to play."
Nicholson 1972

I thought these were all very good interesting points about Learning through Play. It is great that we have lots of research to fall back on and support us that a Learning through Play environment is so valuable and how big a role authentic play takes. It is a challenge for me to think that the children should be able to quit the task they are working on as we see perseverance and the success of completing a task a very valuable lesson too. It is important to give the children the opportunity to develop resilience themselves through peer interactions, so the role of the teacher sometimes needs to step back and be more like a coach at times. We have learnt how big a role urges have to play in Learning through Play and now have to work on using these to extend the child's learning. I see a need for time to share what they have been doing in Learning through Play but it is finding the time in the classroom programme to include it daily. I also agree we need to take time to teach the skills of conflict resolution, turn taking, sharing, constructive feedback etc so the children can collaboratively play and self manage themselves in this environment. The role of the teacher is always changing in this environment, I am learning when I am needed in play and when to observe. I also see how important questioning is through my inquiry to extend the children and get them to think deeper. I think we need more open ended, real materials. We have started with some loose parts which are very popular on the construction table. We now have a beach themed table and a play dough making table. I can't wait until we get into wet play. We have come along way but theres still a long way to go and I'm excited about the journey! Definately some great ideas to think about.

PBL with Thom Markham

I found this professional development to be very beneficial. It was great to have Thom here in person to answer our questions. It was great to look at our term 1 idea for PBL and get some planning completed. I'm excited about our final product (dreamboard) and how PBL will look next year in our hub. I enjoyed looking through the toolbox and getting some great ideas that we can use in our planning. The critical friends protocol was very positive. It was great to get other peoples views on our PBL project so far. I really liked the questions that we can use with our children e.g I like.. I wonder...I suggest... for feedback. I feel more confident going forward in PBL and I am looking forward to working more on PBL Global. I think it is great that we will be keeping intouch with Thom and skyping. I also think the rubrics are a good idea to have across the school.

PBL Global

I am enjoying working on the PBL Global professional development. I find it very motivating to have points you can earn and follow a leaderboard. I like how each tile is broken up into clips, readings, examples and short exercises. I have been slowly working my way through the tiles taking notes as I go. I like that you can work with others as well as independently complete tiles. I am grateful for the time at meetings to work on PBL Global as I find this is a good motivator too, talking to teammates finding out where they are up too, how they are going and discussing answers to the exercises. I really like this form of PD online that I can easily access and complete in my own time. I like that you can always go back and refresh what you have learned the following day. It is good to have a goal to reach tile six by week 5 as this keeps me on track. I am learning a lot about PBL and I am keen to put it all into practise.

Train the Brain N.Z.E.I Professional Development

I attended the Train the Brain professional development presentation hosted by N.Z.E.I in July. I was surprised by how many specific learning disabilities that children could have. I learnt that only last year an assessment by Woodcock-Johnson IV was standardised to diagnose specific learning difficulties. It is the only tool worldwide that compares the three -cognitive (ability and processing) oral language and achievement (reading, writing, maths, spelling) to give a comprehensive test. We analysised statements and decided if they were a myth or truth about dyslexia. Some of the answers surprised me and I had to change my way of thinking about the disorder.