One lockdown, year 8 prize giving down and a new year to look to!

Hoorays and Halleluah's on the highest! What a way to end 2021. A few weeks with local schools being closed for a bit due to covid, uncertainty grew! We are so thankful that we have made it this far, got through a prize giving - 'Awards Assembly', Year 8 Graduation 'Year 8 Farewell Assembly'. Our thanks can be heard in this himene that we learned this year during our leadership camp earlier in the year. When one of our students fell ill, it was what we sang daily along with our student led karakia. Thanks to ALL who have supported the Team 5 whanau this year. We sing this with you all in mind. Fa'afetai Iesu, Fa'afetai!

Lockdown in the life of Team 5 2021

 

A lockdown in the life of Team 5! Nau mai haere mai! Here's a quick capture of our fantastic team of learners and teachers. Lockdown saw our teachers and students travel through different themes and language weeks to enhance our learning online. A big big KIA ORA to Team 5 for showing 'Karawhiua' everyday! Turning up and DOING the mahi - Karawhiua! We know that this lockdown has brought us many fun days of learning together online. We look forward to the days ahead where we will be able to sit together, reflect and share of all the good!

Reading Inquiry - Strip it back

 

10 years plus into the online world of sharing our student and teacher learning online.  Where are we now?  Time for a stocktake I say!

Sitting with my mentor I had the opportunity to look through my teaching team and our provisions on line from planning through to the learner and whanau.   It became very clear that the baseline of these provisions were somewhat murky...hard to see.    An example: WALTS were stated, it took travelling to slides 3-4 before arriving at a task that focused on WALT.   

While likely the students knew where to find the basics of:

1. WALT: what we are learning today

2. TEXT SET: what we are reading/watching/listening to this week

3. FEEDBACK & FEED FORWARD: for/from student, teacher and whanau

It was not clear enough with my lense of 'Team Leader', 'Mum' hat on.   Time to reset.

At a recent PD for PES staff and also a cluster PD with Rebecca this was a list that my team came up as definite work-ons, must haves for our weekly delivery in reading.  We decided to make a real effort of providing for the following in a limited number of slides.  Explicit teaching also about why we are having more than one text - explaining T shaped literacy.  Trying for 5-6 slides at the most with the following:

*1. Summary (story web, back plan - give a word count)

2. Word work (focus on vocabulary)

3. Comprehension (literal/inferential)

*4. WALT - the problem area (reorganisation/evaluation type questions)

5. Create - mindful of gear and length of time to complete 

6. Showing of additional texts found by reader 

As a team we are sharing fortnightly on a single WALT, text set and follow up activities.  This has been really helpful for the team. Not only are we sharing but picking up ideas from one another that are successful so far this term.  We are trying the same with our maths.   Goal: to get back to a baseline that covers the basics of good quality learning and teaching for our students, teachers and whanau.

Jenny Salesa@PES

 

In today's assembly we had the joy of having MP Jenny Salesa join us.  She shared briefly about her journey to parliament.   She was very encouraging about working hard to achieve roles and careers that would support and help our people.

Malo aupito for today.

This is report was created by Faith-Rose of Room 3, May 28th 2021.

Noi'ia from Rotuma! Rotuman language week

Noa’ia! That’s hello in the Rotuman language. My information report today will share with you some important facts about Rotuma. 

 Rotuma is located in the Southern hemisphere. To the north of Rotuma is Tuvalu, the east is Samoa, south is Fiji. West of Rotuma is Vanuatu. There are less than 2,000 people who live on Rotuma. Many more live on the local island of Fiji. Maybe this is due to more opportunities for work and education. 

 The languages spoken on Rotuma are english and rotuman. Sadly the Rotuman language is classified as endangered. There are now only 15,000 speakers of the Rotuman language in the world. 

 Rotuma and it’s language can teach us how important it is to hold onto what is our culture, language and heritage. Rotuman people are showing the need to keep our language and cultures alive. Join a club or start a group where you can practice using the language of your whanau more often. Are there already places that are using your language - join them! Create and make space for these precious opportunities to keep our languages and cultures alive.

Go here for more information on our language weeks in Aotearoa.

Finding and Fixing: next steps to work on with my target group

 

These three slides have been very helpful in reinforcing the good practice of being consistent and repetitive when working with students who are often appealing to the teacher to help find and fix errors.   At first I must admit that after only a few go's I'd decide it wasn't working.

Using these prompts repeatedly, especially those found in the first two frames has been important in returning the ownership of finding what the error is on the student. I have too easily and very often given hints/clues that have not made enough difference to have these particular students developing good strategies of their own.   I can see that repeating of prompts will have students soon if not already realise the area in which they are needed to improve.  Missing middle parts of words, endings, sense making etc.

I've found to stop and work on word families, starts - middles - ends of words needs to be the norm with this particular group of readers.  The sense of urgency I have due to these students being in their final years before college, I need to yes remember but NOT have it rush me through these fundamental strategies of finding and then fixing errors in the texts these students are reading.  

Just a reminder of my target group: 1 x year 8, 3 x year 7 reading at 9.5 year level.  Very soon we will be re-testing and hopefully reporting back a lift in levels and/or reading strategies.

 

Guided reading = Instructional reading

Apologies I'm not going to be explaining what this is or isn't.  Rather I hope to draw your attention the beginning of our reading PD journey @pes for 2020.

This was a point raised...we have different names for often the same thing in NZ around reading!  One myth we've put to rest is that my title here - are different things.  Moving forward at PES we've decided they are one in the same.  We're going with INSTRUCTIONAL READING to describe what some teachers have been practicing as guided reading.





All teachers have a target group to observe closely.
a. What are these children doing when they come across an unknown word?
b. What behaviours do you notice while they are reading?
c. What strategies do they have?
d. What do you do to help next?

These are some of the questions I will be exploring with my group of 4 students.  3 of the 4 are year 7 boys, 1 year 8 girl.  Here poses another challenge.  What texts do I select that will be appealing to 3 very active year 7 boys and a very mature year 8 girl.   Looking forward to this challenge.

So far I've noticed the following:
Student A: is nervous to try out new words, knows his limitations and does not know what to do with a new word
Student B: very confident even though says many words incorrectly, will read through any word and not stop until asked to, continues without concern for making meaning
Student C: confident reader, knows to break up word to try and sound out new word.  Will often give the words others in group are stuck with
Student D: seems confident however any word will appeal to the teacher for support. No other strategies.
All students do not practice reading from beginning of sentence or earlier/on after to make meaning of an unknown word.

I need observe more and research what to do next in terms of teaching strategies to these year 7 & 8 students who are reading at the 9 and 9.5 year level.