Where we at?

Just to remind you here's what I set out this term to investigate and provide support around for my learners. Group 1 Background. Higher order thinking to extend (focus on improving evaluation in Comp) using Solo model 12 kids reading at 14+. These students have reasonable demand on their time with the roles of student leadership for most. They are often called upon to be spokespersons for the school for a range of professionals that visit our school. They have a high standard of the key competencies which allows for good collaboration as well as independent achievement.

 Challenge - area needing strengthening: Stuck on 'Evaluative' questioning and thought processes in probe tests. Ability to infer needs to be pushed further to make conclusions and summaries more easily. Action to support: Drawing conclusions across range of texts to prompt the thinking process further than the text in front of them. Adding also their own experience and knowledge.

 Action: The texts I have selected have connections in ideas and themes. One example in particular I will share here was the reading of the entire journal, Level 3, June 2014. All 7 texts in this journal link to each other - some more obvious than others.

Here is the presentation the students needed to work through. Go to slides 5 - 8 in particular. This has the students evaluating and linking the texts they have read.
 Findings:
1. Children needed diagram/visual to begin to make links
2. The aide of the whiteboard with a similar layout was important to repeat the process
3. To embed the process the using of titles written on card and students making links this way - picking up titles and sharing themes worked well. See this in action here and here.
4. Provision of tools to capture their 'summary' or 'conclusion' of learning from across texts was a welcome aide BUT not necessary for some as they were happy to simply use text to communicate this.

 Note to self: 
a. A push for target audience next time may prompt a more robust use of different media to communicate?
b. Keep to themes and ideas rather than the big task of synthesising each article, this job became more distracting rather than supporting the focus.
 c. How do I do this again AND promote vocabulary - felt this was a weak point of learning sequence.