Reflection on Recent Home School Learning Conversations, (Parent Interviews)

In week 5 of this term we had our first formal interviews with our family members to discuss students current achievement and our next learning focuses for each of them.

I try to get all parents and caregivers in for this interview, as it help our families to get an understanding of where their children are currently achieving and is a lead into the student led conferences which happen in Term 3.  This is where the students are able to say this is where I was in Term 2 but look how far I have come with the goals that my teacher shared with you back then.  It also helps parents and caregivers to get a better understanding of the report as I am there to explain each part and can show the evidence from testing and book work that has led me to make the decision about where their child is currently achieving.  This is definitely preferable to parents just receiving the report in the mail and reading it by themselves.  The other reason is that meeting with parents they are able to get a clear understanding of where their students are currently sitting in terms of the national standards, and how they can support at home so that the learning continues at home.  Parents can see that they also play a vital part in their child's learning.

I was really pleased this year that all of my families turned up at the allotted time over the 2 interview days and I made myself flexible so I could also meet with parents who were unable to make the two days.  This meant I could meet face to face with 90% of my families.  The other 2 families I could not meet with I had discussions with about their child's learning via a phone call.

I felt that all discussions we constructive and honest, and that parents went away feeling well informed and with a clear picture of where their child is currently achieving and where thier next steps are.

I listened carefully to parents questions and demands, and their perspectives on different things I had noticed in their child, and things they had noticed from school.

From the parent interviews, a change that I have made in my practice is to do with students personal reading that they do at home for home learning.  For home learning in my class, one task i set night is 15 minutes of personal reading time.  In previous years, my students have been avid readers and would diligently choose books from the library to take home and read with.  However at the recent parent interviews, quite a few parents asked me about reading material for this personal reading session, commenting that their child was not bringing any reading material home from class or the school library.  Now I think it is important that parents play a part in providing reading material for their child, not nesscerely purchasing books for children to read, but providing family trips to the local library and issuing books out that they can read as a family or for children to read independently.  However I know that this is not achievable for some families and/or it doesn't happen.  So because of this, I have decided that each reading group will take home the reader/school journal their group is reading either each day or every second day to share with families.  This will ensure that they are not only reading each day, but that they are also practicing reading at home at their instructional reading level.  The stories in the journals are shortish, so it's not too much of an hard task.  sometimes what they are reading for their group guided reading sessions is a novel, and in these situations, they can bring their novels home and read a chapter either together with someone or independently.

To support with this, I sent a letter home to parents explaining the change, and the reasons for it.  I also sent home activities and comprehension 'teacher-like' questions that they could use to support their child's reading of the text if they wished.

It was really wonderful to be able to come up with such a simple solution to a problem quite a few parents were having difficulties with, and it will have such a positive effect on students reading habits and hopefully their levels too.

One goal I would like to work on for the next home-school learning conversation session (which is the student led conferences in Term 3) is structuring the interviews so that it works  for the parents of children whose mother tongue is not English.  so they understand completely where their child is currently achieving and what his learning clearly shows.

Newsboard... or Current Events

Newsboard... or Current Events

Many moons ago I went to a literacy course run by Jill Eggleton.  One of the many things she showed us to improve literacy in our class was the Newsboard, aka, Current Events.  

And this is not the old fashioned getting the kids to bring in a newspaper cutting - although that does have it's place.  

No, this Newsboard not only endeavours to widen children's minds of what is happening in the world, but to develop thinking, visual and oral language skills, as well as cover many specific teaching points of writing and reading literacy.  I also find that the Newsboard gets the children initiating conversations at home on the topics we cover and taking greater interest in the 6 o'clock news or the newspapers that come into their homes.  Ever since I have always used this in my class.

I use this for the following reasons to improve literacy:

Current Events awareness it is important for the children to become aware that there is more to the world than their family and their school.  Through Current Events they can learn about important people in their community, country and the world.  In the example illustrated to the right, I took this opportunity to discuss the passing of one of New Zealand's fore most artist and the kind of art he was involved in.  I normally only reserve colour pictures for really important events, but you can not look at art in black and white... hence the colour.

It is a great way to introduce the children to new vocabulary.  You are teaching them to read new words and the meanings of them.  It is also a great way to reinforce dictionary skills.  Really important stuff like using guide words, identifying which definition (if there is more than one) applies to the sentence, root words, prefixes, suffixes.....

As you can see here I have looked at prefixes (pink) and the differences between English English and American English, as well as the meanings of some new vocabulary.

 

My focus on this page was looking at why we can use capital letters - in this case for the names of Awards, authors/names and book titles.  We were also reading as a read-to book My Brother's War so it was quite timely that these awards came out.  By the way I do recommend My Brother's War.  It is set during WWI and tells the story of two brothers, one who volunteered and one who was a conscientious objector, and their expriences of WWI.  I read it to my class of 8-13 year old children (Years 4-8).  One of the great things about this book is how it uses letters and switches between the two brothers stories.  One of the girls in my class even asked her mum to buy her the book so she could read it for herself and another is now reading my copy in her down time.

In the above example, not only have I looked at new vocabulary, but I have also looked at how brackets can be used to give more information.

The Newsbook is a great way to model using thinking tools.  Above you can see how I have used Tony Ryan's Thinkers Keys, in particular the "What if?" key to get the children thinking about what they would save first if their home caught on fire, due to government Minister Paula Bennett saving her cabinet papers when her house caught on fire.

In this example you can see I am using De Bono's Thinking Hats and Gardner's Multiple Intelligences to generate the childrens' thinking.  In this case we looked at the benefits (yellow hat) of having running water in public loos and explored all the names we could think of for a toilet.

In this example I've used De Bono's Thinking Hats again.  I choose this topic for the day as we allow scooters and skateboards at our school, but don't enforce the use of helmets or other protective gear.  We used our judgement (black) hat to say whether or not we should used helmets and protective gear at school and then the children justified the benefits (yellow hat) of having said gear at school or not.  Afterwards we rang my mother who is the Trauma Nurse Co-ordinator at Waikato Hospital to find out what sort of injuries we could get from scooter crashes.  You will note that we all looked at how we use letters to shorten the names of things, i.e. ACC for Accident Compensation Corporation.  By the way, the kids did not come around to my way of thinking for wearing protective gear at school.

As you can see in this example I introduced the idea of Blooms Taxonomy into our thinking about the very contentious topic of Ask.FM.  Ask.FM has been in the media a lot over the last few months due to worries by young people, parents, educators and internet guardians over the way this social media can be used to bully.  My class (hopefully) are too young to be interested in this social media, but I wanted to introduce it to them like this to reinforce some notions on cyber safety and to hopefully get them to start a conversation at home.  In the example above you can see I have used the skillsanalyse, evaluate and understand from Blooms Taxonomy to get the children thinking about the implications of bullying and social media together.

Where in the world are we?  Where is that place they're talking about - is it in the South Island?  Why do American's think New Zealand is part of Australia and that kangaroos live here?  One of the visual literacy skills I think is really important for children to learn is how to read a map.  I personally love maps, and I think that was instilled in me by the teacher I had from Standard 2-4 (years 4-6).  The example above was from when our Prime Minister John Key went to visit the leaders of several Central and South American countries.  I wanted my class to see and understand where those places were.  There are a few simple map reading skills I think are important:

• find New Zealand on a world map.
• find key places in New Zealand on a New Zealand map, e.g. important cities (Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin...), identify the main islands (North, South and Stewart), identify major water ways (Pacific Ocean, Tasman Sea, Cooks Strait, Waikato River, Lake Taupo...), find our significant mountains (Mt Ruapehu, Mt Cook...).
• know where the place they come from is.
• be able to know where some key countries in the world are that are important to New Zealand, e.g. Australia, USA, Canada, Japan, China, UK, France, South Africa and Argentina (after all the All Blacks play those last three countries fairly regularly).
• know how to identify the capital city of a country.

Consequently maps of New Zealand, the world and specific parts of the world will feature to help give my students context of the event that has happened.  This example above was quite fun, figuring out how a Chihuahua got from Avondale to Whangarei on her own (De Bono's red hat - using our intuitions) combined with identifying where Auckland and Whangarei are (map reading).

And another combination of map reading skills and De Bono's black thinking hat to make judgements on how a life threatening situation was handled so poorly by a health worker.

One very fun part of visual literacy is cartoons.  I love bringing cartoons into the situations and discussing the humour behind them, how the cartoonist has enhanced specific physical features of individuals involved to give them character, how different objects in the cartoon can be used to illustrate or symbolise other ideas, and how pictures can symbolise some classic language features - such as the foot in mouth in the top cartoon above and the scraping the bottom of the barrel in the bottom cartoon.

And one of the greatest mysteries to us in the weather.  In New Zealand we are obsessed with the weather.  When's it going to rain?  When will this rain stop?  Why is it so cold?  Why is it so windy?  So being able to understand weather symbols and the weather maps are another important visual literacy skill.

Maori Lesson - Observation

Today i was lucky enough to have my colleague Lorelei McIntrye come into class today to take a 45 minute lesson with my class to show me how the IRDPX lesson structure works that she and others ran a PD session on a few weeks ago.

She began with a game to get the kids up and moving and in the reight head space.  It was a Fly swat game where the children in small teams had to run out and hit the piece of paper with the Maori vowel sounds that she was saying.  It was a race to see who could hit the card first.


Input
Next she asked the class to sit into a circle for the colours lesson.

Explained the phrase:

Whakarongo mai - listen
Korero mai - talk/repeat
Use pictures to orally give new words
only do 3-4 at a time and then she added in new colours
Use the sandwich method Maori - Repeat - English - Maori- Repeat
Lorelei took the time to explain the connection for the Maori word for pink - which is the Maori word for red and pink together

Recognition
Whakaatu mai (point)  

Hand out the cards - visualization and remembrance comes in here
Hand out cards saying anei 'anay' and children reply keroa - (thank you)
Explained the three commands and then went around the circle and students pointed to the student who had the colour


Give back - anei and Kia ora

Discrimination (choice making)
Lorelei then went onto the choose part of lesson.  She explained the term Whiriwhiria (choose)

Show/give two options
kids choose Ae (yes) (i) thumbs up or Kaore (no) (kauri) thumbs down
i with thumbs up
kauri with thumbs down

Production
Because of time constraints - Lorelei didn't get to this part, however in my lessons this is what should of happened next:
introduce the written words
spread out the pictures and ask children to place the correct word on the picture
Ask questions
is it right?
which one is the odd one out?
how are they the same?

Then Lorelei asked the students to tell her the word while she held up the picture

Talking turtle - ping ponging - she through out the turtle and asked students to tell her the name of the colour she was holding.  Explained to the class to count to 5 in your head and if they need help you can whisper it.

To finish, the students now send the talking turtle around the circle and asked the question 'He aha tetai' and the student who catches the talking turtle responds with the colour in Maori.

Peke game
1 person in the middle they ask He aha tetai

Children in a circle with eyes closed.  One student is in the middle.  While all students eyes are closed, the teacher goes around the circle and secretly tap someone in the circle.  This is the person who will say peke if the middle student asks them the phrase 'he aha tetai'.  Student in middle goes around the circle asking the question to find the peke person.  If students are not the peke person they respond with a colour.  When the person in the center finds the peke person the whole group scrambles, trying to not be last in the middle.

In reflection:
I don't think I or the class could physically cope with doing the whole IRDPX structured lesson in one 30 minute lesson, it would be too much too soon, but is definitely something that we could work up too.  The kids caught on really quick - and the games and competition aspect was really great for the kids.  I liked that Lorelei and in turn myself encouraged the other children to support classmates when they forgot a word, or said a word incorrectly.  It fostered the idea that it is not just about one person succeeding, it's about us all succeeding when we are learning Te Reo.

Data Boards - Tracking Student Achievement Throughout the Year

Monitoring Student Achievement 2015

RTC

Criterion 1: establish and maintain effective professional relationships focused on the learning and well-being of akonga

Criterion 4: Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice

Criterion 5: Show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning

Criterion 6: Conceptualize, plan and implement an appropriate learning programme

Criterion 11: analyse and appropriately use assessment information, which has been gathered formally and informally

Criterion 12: use critical inquiry and problem-solving effectively in my professional practice

Tataiako:

Ako:  Takes responsibility for their own learning and that of Maori learners 

specifically named the Maori students from the charter goals

Appropriately conducted quantitative analysis of assessment data is one of the most powerful methods of using information to improve teaching and learning for students, both individually and collectively.  We know how essential it is to accurately read and interpret data, so that we know where students are in their learning, and are able to best set goals and plan for optimum teaching and learning.  

We know that test scores should not be used in isolation to calculate the achievement level of a student. We use a range of resources to make our decisions about where students are place as any test is just a snapshot, and our student’s results should be considered along with a wide range of other evidence.

Overall teacher judgments of achievement and progress involve combining information from a variety of sources, using a range of approaches. Evidence is gathered in the following three ways:

• Observing the process a student uses to complete a learning task.

• Conversing with the student to find out what they know, understand and can do.

• Gathering results from formal assessments, including standardised tools.

At Vardon this year we have changed the way we use our assessment data. We now are monitoring student’s levels at three key times throughout the year via visual data boards to monitor progress and to make us aware of where students are currently achieving.  (Criterion 4) Previously this was done through spread sheets and tables on the computer.  The data boards are a very visual indicator, and are something that is easily shared and discussed during our team meetings.  (Criterion 5), (Criterion 1)We are now using these more effectively for planning units of work than we have done with the previous version.  They are also used to inform our next steps in our inquiry project we are currently undertaking (Criterion 12)We can look at these and describe things we notice, students who are moving, and possibly students who haven't moved and why this is.  We can also discuss together different strategies we are using in class to move our students learning, so other teachers in the team can try these ideas with their own learners to see if this has a positive effect on their progress too.  

It also helps teachers to be more aware when perhaps students are not progressing as they should.  For example, recently when i completed my year 6 reading data, I realized there are two students who haven't moved.  It has keyed me into their learning and made me aware that they may need a bit more focused instruction and DAT to ensure that for the next data board entry, I can confidently move their names and show their progress along the levels. (Criterion 6), (Criterion 11)  

These boards are also a useful tool for the teaching staff to show student achievement to our BOT at key times throughout the year.

Below are some photos of our year 5 and 6 reading data boards:

Professional Development - Our Maori School Vision

Professional Development - Maori Vision

Venue:  Vardon School Staffroom
Date: 02/6/15

IRDPX

Methodology behind teaching a second language

Input
Recognition
Discrimination (choice making)
Production
Extension

teaching 1 half an hour lesson per week - a progression of the steps

Input
Whakarongo mai - listen
Korero mai - talk/repeat

Use pictures to orally give new words
only do 3-4 at a time

Use the sandwich method

Children repeat many times so their pronunciation matches yours.

Recognition
Whakaatu mai (point)  comes in here now too

Hand out the cards - visualization and remembrance comes in here
Hand out cards saying anei 'anay' and children reply keroa - (thank you)

Discrimination (choice making)
Whiriwhiria (choose)

Show/give two options
kids choose Ae (yes) (i) thumbs up or Kaore (no) (kauri) thumbs down

Production
introduce the written words
spread out the pictures and ask children to place the correct word on the picture

Ask questions
is it right?
which one is the odd one out?
how are they the same?

There is no correct answer

Ping pong game

Extension

interactive learning opportunities

differentiated learning

fun games

fly swats whispers

noughts and crosses

splats

sing songs - he aha te tae - colours song