Improving Writing for those who are struggling

This coming term, I am looking forward to teaching writing. During our planning day the Team analysed their data for writing and looked at what our needs were for writing in our cohort. There is a trend of content and ideas as well as language features being an area of concern. One of the teachers in the syndicate had found a link in tki about creating success for boys.

After sharing the link with the Team, we agreed this would be a way we could engage our boys and in turn improve the quality of the writing in our cohort. As I read through our planning I am feeling excited and engaged myself...hope I can instill these feeling of enthusiasm with my children.

There are some very important research I need to be mindful of as I teach these struggling writers which happen to be boys.

Except from Story Starters - Teacher Support Materials - HOW BOYS LEARN

RESEARCH
Learners, irrespective of their gender, ethnicity, age or any other characteristic only learn when they are motivated to learn and are engaged with what is to be learnt. The evidence is that boys are not achieving as well as girls in reading and writing. The issue then, is how best to engineer learning environments that they find motivating and engaging. There is much research available that provides guidance with this.

The Best Evidence Synthesis Diverse Students1 (2003) was designed to provide a collation of the evidence of what works within the context of diverse classes of students which is the reality for New Zealand teachers. Ensuring that boys learn and achieve as well as girls is one of the problems of diversity that teachers face.

This resource specifically draws on many of the aspects listed in the Best Evidence Synthesis:
• Teaching and tasks are structured to support students’ active learning orientations.
• Students help each other with resource access and provide elaborated explanations.
• Pedagogical practice is appropriately responsive to the interdependence of socio-cultural and cognitive dimensions.
• Relevance is made transparent to students.
• Ways of taking meaning from text, discourse, numbers or experience are made explicit.
• Teaching builds on students’ prior experiences and knowledge.
• Student diversity is utilised effectively as a pedagogical resource.
• Teaching is responsive to all learners • Students have opportunities to resolve cognitive conflict.
• Optimal use is made of complementary combinations of teacher-directed groupings, co-operative groups, structured peer interaction and individual work (including homework) to facilitate learning cycles.
• Tasks and classroom interactions provide scaffolds to facilitate student learning
• Students receive effective, specific, appropriately frequent, positive and responsive feedback.
• Teaching promotes metacognitive strategy use (e.g. mental strategies in numeracy) by all students.
• Teaching scaffolds reciprocal or alternating tuakana teina roles in student group, or interactive work. • Teaching promotes sustained thoughtfulness (e.g. through questioning approaches, wait-time, and the provision of opportunities for application and invention).

Additional research has provided practical strategies for teaching boys that we have used to critique and shape the resources.

An international study by Richard Hawley and Michael Reichert2 examined the narratives submitted by teachers and boys from 18 schools representing the United States, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa of specific lessons and practices that they deemed especially effective.
“The successful lessons fell into the following eight general categories, each of which expresses a dominant feature of the lesson’s reported success:
• Lessons that produced products
• Lessons structured as games
• Lessons requiring vigorous motor activity
• Lessons requiring boys to assume a role or responsibility for promoting the learning of others
• Lessons that required boys to address “open,” unsolved problems
• Lessons that required a combination of teamwork and competition
• Lessons that focused on boys’ personal realization (their masculinity, their values, their present and future social roles)
• Lessons that introduced dramatic novelties and surprises

Nearly every reported lesson included multiple elements, as when a teacher devises a game in which boys form teams to create a product that will be judged competitively. It appeared increasingly clear to us as we reviewed the teacher responses that these lessons had a distinct for-boys cast, a finding roundly confirmed by the boys themselves.” Story Starters is a resource that is specifically designed to be used in ways that tick the majority of these features.

In summary, these resources are designed to engage and motivate boys because:
• Content has been designed by boys for boys
• The content is fun – in a boyish sort of way
• They involve videos that require the boys to address open, unsolved problems
• They involve team work
• They enable teachers to engage with humour with the boys sense of fun and drama So with
• They enable boys to connect with the teacher as relational learners (Wayne Martino, 20083 )

Story Starters is not a panacea for boys’ underachievement but, in the hands of a teacher who is keen to adjust his or her teaching to be responsive and to motivate and engage boys, it will prove a useful and fun resource.

So with this in mind, roll on Monday!!!

Dyslexia Staff Meeting

The first activity involved the staff discussing their weekend and then writing about it for 1 minute. After the minute, there was a word count. the next part of the activity was to discuss favourite take away and why you liked it for 30 seconds.  Another minute to write, but this time to write using the less dominant hand. This was a quick activity to show us the problems that children in our class have processing writing in an every day situation.

We were asked to share our feelings -
- frustrated
- too slow
- too hard
- messy
- poor quality
- distracting
- putdowns

This activity was to help us to walk in the shoes of the individuals in our school. I realise that I need to cater for my dyslexia in my class more.

What does mean for my class?
I need to enable my children with dyslexia by:

• Getting a 10 minute unassisted writing sample and then type this to have a screening as part of their file.
• Use memorized words of singing - from Production as a regular part of the week.
• Use clapping games to build memory
• Use funny rhymes to help the build spelling memory
• Use colour to help these children recognise words and ideas
• Repeat ideas
• Be patient
• Seat the child fairly near the teacher base so that I am available to help if necessary, or they can be supported by a well-motivated and sympathetic classmate.

Dyscalculic children are already spending a lot of mental energy trying to understand the maths, the last thing they need is to have to memorise the instructions at the same time.

I need to enable my children with dyscalculia by:

• Giving children own set of work to complete, which is at their level.
• Allowing extra time - even with problems they can do, dyscalculic children are much slower.
• Using written rather than verbal instructions and questions. 
• Focus on understanding (especially of quantity)
• Use concrete materials to help link mathematical symbols to quantity
• Start at a level which the child is comfortable at, so that they experience some success, and slowly move to more difficult areas
• Provide a lot of practice for new skills/concepts
• Reduce the need for memorisation, especially initially
• Ask a lot of questions to get the child engaged and thinking about their own thinking
• Make learning as active and fun as possible - a positive experience

TAI and ALiM

I have always loved everything about Maths and sometimes have not understood the difficulties people have understanding MATHS.

At the moment my Teacher Action Inquiry is on how an intervention can make a impact for the struggling mathematicians in my class. This has made me unpack what maths is, how it is taught (by myself and the school's protocols) and why don't these children "get it". These children have been failing in Maths for sometime and have been on the radar as children needing help. Of the 5 children in the intervention, 1 was part of an intervention last year.

What I first noticed of these children, was their lack of confidence and willingness to try to solve problems. Even when the problem was at their level they need more encouragement to use what they did know such as skip counting, making tidy tens and counting through 10s, 100s, 1000s. These children said out loud to me, " I can't do maths" "I don't get it" "Is the answer..." " I'm not sure, could it be.."

So how do you get children to take risks when they have always got the answer wrong? The approach needs to be about the learning not so much the answer.

• How will you find the answer? 
• What do you know and how can you use that?

I also decided that these children needed some of the fundamentals of how numbers work, what they look like and the unpacking of the language of maths. To do this I work with these children every day for an extra 15mins after lunch. They are doing the thinking and I am recording their thoughts, and materials to manipulate are used. I have used a range of number knowledge problems as well as taught them new strategies before the rest of the class (front loading) and their confidence has improved. Also at the end of the week, I teach them a game using counters, cards, dice and photocopied and laminated game boards to take home and play with their families and friends. The game reinforces the learning of the week. The children are required at the end of each session to tell me what they have learnt and how they can use the strategy or knowledge in the real world.

As part of the intervention (funded by the Ministry) parent contact is a requirement and the ALiM mentor ran a parent night to informing the parents of why their child had been chosen, what we hoped to achieve and what they could expect during the 15 weeks. I have used my class dojo to regularly inform the parents of the children's efforts and how they are progressing. Also when those parents come to class, I make an effort to reinforce the progress the child is making in maths and asking them what they have noticed.

 I have discovered that the children are now more willing to share ideas with their peers when first challenged with a new problem. They want to record their thinking and will challenge others when they think/know they are wrong. The children are often ready before myself after lunch and want to learn new maths. Also some of the other children in the class have joined in the group as they see themselves not doing as well as the selected group.

My challenge is to sustain the confidence and knowledge for these children for the rest of the year as the problems become more challenging and without the intervention. Maybe I need to set aside time for these children to come for help/ next steps when working with the normal rotations.


Here is the link to my updated Inquiry template so far. SH - 2016

Student Lead Learning - Student Agency

This subject has been on my radar since my appraisal last year and since the new DP has come to our school. Many times this year during 'Walk throughs' with him, I have begun to question my own teaching practice.

Am I moving with the times? What does student lead learning look like in my class? How am I guided the learning? Or am I still driving all the learning in my class? Do my children understand what they need to learn or am I telling them?

A profession development was run in our school early this week,about using learning in the 21st century and the use of Google clssrooms. The first session was full of questions around what will the children who have just begun school, 5 year olds need when they hit the work force and how the technology in the world maybe used and what as educators are we doing to set up these children for success. The presentation was all questions, which resonated with me, made me feel uncomfortable and excited at the same time. Are the children in my class compliant or passionate about learning?

Earlier in the same day I had conducted observations of 2 colleagues teaching Mathematics  with the DP and we discovered a common need in the classes. It was the learning process, parts were missing. There were WALTs and success criteria and the children could verbalise what they were learning but when asked they asked why they were learning the concept, the children were unable to answer. Also where was the application of the strategy and what did they do when they "got it" and how did they know.

The DP has a strong belief that in Mathematics we should start with a problem- solving approach and ask the children to share ideas to solve the problem, then discuss what we did to solve the problem and construct the WALT and SC from there. Once the strategy (Teacher Guided) is shared and unpacked then the children, discuss the why (which would be more evident using a problem to start) and give the children an opportunity to practice the new strategy. During this practice time the children should be marking and reflecting on their progress. If the children "get it" then they should be given a "real life" problem to solve applying the learning.

So as part of my discovery into changing my pedagogy I have been reading about The Learning Pit and learning in the 21st century. My brain is full of ideas, and I am mindful of what the facilitator said that it is a journey, start small and think what is in place already in your class to make this work. Maths is my strength but I feel the children have a better idea of what they need to learn in writing from the assessment I have shared with them. I'm going to try and have go at guiding the learning using a opt in approach- the children will on Monday, plan their writing timetable for the week. I will make time for them to reflect and evaluate their learning after each session. The children will need to understand what their writing needs.

My task now is to create a template of the writing plan, I will need to make provision for those children who will need more support, maybe even a checklist that the children can mark themselves on when they have "got it". So Monday's planning will need to be about using a timetable and about what we as a class hope to achieve. Excited and nervous at the same time!

Teaching Writing

Writing is not my strength and I have been working on improving my practice. My planning has changed as I am trying to implement ideas that I learnt during my ALL Teacher Action Inquiry last year. This year the teaching is all about the purpose - the WHY?
I have been using the Writing Learning goals to shape my lessons and what I have seen in the children's independent writing books. I have also used next learning steps when I mark and use peer evaluation in response to the Literacy Progressions of children shaping their writing in response to feedback. I found this most helpful in developing Student Agency.
As a Team Leader I have had the opportunity to observe the teachers in my team although this has been to improve their practic,e I have found the discussion with My DP most informative and has made me reflect on my own practice.
So when I was send an email this morning to ask if The DP and another teacher could observe me to show her how to complete an observation I was quite looking forward to being able to reflect from the "inside out" as apposed the looking in from the "Outside".

Here is my observation notes -

What was seen:  

Description of lesson:

• Writing lesson includes rotations (guided, follow up, independent writing, computers)
• Use of ALL strategies evident (purple pen in guided etc)
• Students all engaged in learning tasks which manages behaviour in class
• Context of guided writing connected to Science unit - water cycle

Guided teaching

• Use of IWB for WALT and co-constructed SC. WALT - write an introductory paragraph using clear and specific language/vocab
• Teacher selecting a range of students for ideas and explaining.
• Used resources for assisting constructing SC.
• IWB used before students write. This allowed oral dialogue.
• Shared construction for a starter (hook). Teacher then revisited the SC with the group for collaborative peer assessment.
• Computer students were writing a letter. They are aware of the process but not necessarily following it through (e.g. planning)
• Some students using Writing Fun to publish their explanation. Not sure of visual language features being used.
• Independent writing allows for free choice of writing but with a skill focus
• Teacher roved at appropriate times for assisting other students
• Teacher built on students current level by being positive about students
• Feedback/feedforward frequent in independent writing books.
• Routines well established for student agency - resources available for student success
• Students worked in guided circle, at desks, on mat (less engagement from one boy), and at computers

Student Voice:

What are you learning?

Student - In my independent or guided? We are looking at using specific language in an organised way.

Why?

Student - So the reader can understand what a water cycle is and how it works

How successful were you with your learning?

Student - pretty good as I have organised my idea using specific language. I could change my full stops to create complex sentences. The plan was good to organise my ideas. I would use it again to write about how things happen.

What does your teacher do to support you with your learning?

Student - She provides a focus for our learning and gives us ideas and planning templates. She gives ideas when she teaches or marks my book.

Is there anything else your teacher could be doing to further support you?

Student - Nothing really because she explains things in a way that I understand.

My Strengths

• Learning is engaging and provides a great climate of learning
• Good use of technology for teacher and students
• Positive learning routines that encourages student agency supported by students appropriate resources
• The use of student voice in the guided session promoted positive learning and ownership. This was also used formatively by the teacher. This allowed the teacher to provide appropriate scaffolds for student thinking and contribution to the writing lesson.

So where to next

• How can clarity be built for all students where all students are connecting between  strategies from guided learning to applying them in independent activities. (Most students showed strong connections but there were a couple of students that lacked depth of application due to not using the strategies that have been developed)

• How do you differentiate learning for all of your students in Writing and track the achievement of this learning?

• How will you go about sharing the positive practice in teaching Writing across your team?

New Team 2016

This year I am leading a new team for my syndicate. After our first meeting and one of the team not arriving on time...2 hours late. I realized that I need to do some Team Building and create more trust within the group.

What went wrong

• I was away for the planning day at the end of 2015 but as a team we had begun our planning earlier in the month and had got some ideas together. Only 3 present out of 4 present - one sick.
• Planning day - I wasn't there but had booked a date with the others but had not specified the time.
• Sent an email the day before for the time of the planning meeting.

What have I found out since

• After reading the "10 Truths about building school teams by Elena Aguilar", in point 7 she says "The health of a meeting reflects the health of the team.
  You can take the pulse of a team's overall health by observing ten minutes of any meeting. If you want to strengthen a team you lead, focus on designing engaging, reflective, and meaningful meetings. Make sure that what happens is relevant. Make sure that you get feedback on your leadership. Make sure that people know what they're doing there and why they're meeting. For every hour of meeting time, you should spend two to three hours planning. (Yes, that much planning time -- that's what it takes.) " That the planning for the meeting takes time!
• I spoke to my team member, who came late to find out that she tends to avoid everything when she is under pressure. (She is currently working to complete an assignment for an out-of-school course, she has had an extension to this as well). She had been reading (avoiding) and wasn't reading emails etc. A colleague within school was able to contact her and she did come to the planning meeting. She was apologetic and contributed to ideas for the rest of the meeting.

What to do next time

• Send out agenda for meeting well ahead of time, spend time to ensure it works for all, especially the children
• Make sure when the pressure gets too much that all team members are supported and given enough time to complete what is expected of them.
• From the "10 Truths about building school teams by Elena Aguilar", she says "Learning is the primary work of all teams. Whether you're in a leadership team, a data team, or a curriculum design team, your work is to learn. The only way we'll make a dent in the mountain of challenges that we face in schools is if we, the educators, never stop learning.

So as I get ready for the year ahead I am looking forward to meeting the challenges of a new team and to keep on learning.

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” 
― William Arthur Ward