Final Data for ALL

The children in the ALL invention group have had their final "official" assessment marked and moderated and now I have to analyse the results.

THE GOOD
There has been movement in some areas of writing with the most achievement being 9 sub levels for one child in the area of structure and language features. The children have all had different areas of success. Confidence has grown, they now are wanting to write and record their ideas - where there was a reluctance before. They are more willing to plan and think about the sequence of their writing.

THE BAD
Some of the group did not make any movement in some areas at all. Some of the children went backwards in the areas of ideas. I was very disappointed with the children's attitude rating as we had really worked on this area - the videos I recorded earlier in the month were very positive.

THE UGLY
The results for the spelling component of eAsTTle  were very discouraging. There were not any changes in their results - the mark before the intervention being <2B and then at the end of the intervention <2B. I was very alarmed until I looked at the individual papers, before and after. Initially the children's results were very low, some words had only initial and ending sounds. For the second sample the children had made some improvements but still not enough to move them above <2B. I did try using a spelling programme as a component of the intervention but to no avail. In this group 4 out of the 6 children have been diagnosed with dyslexia, I need to do more to support these children with their processing of words.

Literacy Circles - Clarity In The Classrrom

This term we are working on writing and illustrating a picture book.  During reading I have been using narratives and articles from the School Journal to give the children background and scaffolding to assist their understanding how a narrative "works". The articles were about two New Zealand illustrations and what they do to illustrate - their inspiration, how their day works, what process is needed to get their drawings approved to use in books.

I can sometimes struggle to use the correct WALT - what do I want them to learn? Yes, they need to know the structure of a narrative, but what are the skills needed to identify that structure? From the PD I took part in earlier in the year with Jeff Anderson, the phrase "What do you notice about what the author has written?" - helps me to redefine this. I am asking the children to understand the author's purpose, finding the evidence within the text, using inference to understand the 'hidden message', make connections with they know, ask questions, use clues to work out unfamiliar words as well as skimming and scanning to identify the main idea. So do I need a WALT? Should it be WDYN - What do you notice? and How did you do that? Helping the children identify the skills they used is very important to improve their own understanding.

To teach reading when the children can 'decode', is all about the understanding/comprehension of the message. This can be fiction or non-fiction, the skills needed are the same and the children need to use a range of skills and strategies to fully understand what they are reading. They need to practice reading - ask questions when they don't understand and think - How can I understand this better? Good readers will use strategies confidently and without thought. How can I make my good readers more mindful of what they are doing?

I have chosen to use novels with my more able readers to motivate them to read with more intent and to extend them more with fictional genre. While discussing the progress so far with a colleague, I mentioned that one child was relying on his knowledge of the movie based on the book. She asked if I had used Literacy Circles before and she would send me the labels for the jobs to do this. So tonight I needed to do some research on what a Literacy Circle was and how it worked. I was quite excited when I realised that this just what I needed to make these children be more mindful of what they were reading and to take more ownership of their learning. So to make this work I will work with this group to teach them the skills for each role, use my guided sessions to gather them together and unpack their success.