Snap shot - Learning data

Time to get a snapshot of where the target group of students I am supporting at Panmure Bridge are at the end of Term One.

I carried out the phonics assessment in the Criterion Assessment and Robyn Anderson has kindly shared her results from Term  One.

After looking at this data there is a need to continue with the  Phonics programme that Robyn has carefully crafted.  It is also interesting to note the other factors that are impacting on student progress including self-esteem, attitude. confidence and self-esteem.

Robyn is using the data to create a Needs focused 'Phonics programme" to cater for her year 7/8 students who still need to grasp a full understanding of phonics.

Robyn Anderson blogged about our meeting. Across school teacher support.

Knowing your learner , digging a little deeper.

Supporting our students to acquire literacy skills can look very different, according to the context, the desired outcomes and most of all, our learners. Knowing your learners is vital to teaching and learning. Once we know each learner, we can scaffold their learning and put in place for most appropriate programmes and teaching strategies that will help our learners stretch to reach new levels and gain appropriate necessary skills.

When I work with teachers, I have noticed how challenging it is for these teachers to identify exactly what the learner needs to learn when they are well below their chronological peers. To be a competent reader we need a range of skills, it’s like a big jigsaw puzzle. For some of our learners, there are pieces of this puzzle missing which means they are not able to use this knowledge to be competent literacy learners.

Recently, I have noticed the need to go back to basics. Our learners need explicit teaching of strategies and knowledge. One common area seems to be a need more focus on Phonological awareness such as rhyming, word families and onset rime.

eg :     The "onset" is the initial phonological unit of any word (e.g. c in cat) and the term "rime" refers to the string of letters that follow, usually a vowel and final consonants (e.g. at in cat).

• ·       They help our learners learn about word families, which can lay the foundation for future spelling strategies
• ·       Teaching our learners to attend to onset and rime will have a positive effect on their literacy skills
• ·       Learning these components of phonological awareness is strongly predictive of reading and spelling acquisition

Update and thanks

Achievement Challenge 5

Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/key competency using language symbols and texts


My Inquiry


Will using fine-grained assessments improve teacher capacity for setting appropriate goals for students who fail to register on standardised tests?


This year :
I have had the opportunity to assess student with additional needs in several COL schools using a variety of assessment tools not normally used in mainstream classes.


A lot of our students with additional needs often dont measure on normal assessment tools eg Asttle, Running records


We need detailed information to identify our students needs and strengths.


This year I have found some interesting common themes across several student I have assessed


These common themes include:


Auditory sequential and visual sequential improved sequential memory can help improve your child’s reading skills.
Auditory sequential and visual sequential memory skills are the ability to remember things seen and heard in sequence.

Visual Sequential Memory is the ability to remember visual details in the correct sequence.


Auditory memory involves being able to take in information that is presented orally, to process that information, store it in one's mind and then recall what one has heard. Involves the skills of attending, listening, processing, storing, and recalling.


Visual Tracking – The ability to look at something and follow it as it moves or the ability to track a line, such as in reading. Visual tracking issues may also cause difficulty in math. Students may have difficulty lining up numbers vertically or horizontally.


My observations

• Teachers are working extremely hard out there ! 
• More of the same “stuff” won’t work 
• What's the goal - learning the student needs 
• We need to be working smarter not harder – and the way to do that is to know what the strengthen and gaps are of our students and so we can support these. 

My inquiry continues ; to look at best practise to support these learners with their specific goals.


One of the aspects I believe will have a significant impact on these learners is to:


Learn - create  -share : The Create aspect needs to be more of a focus especially for our students with additional needs eg hands on manipulative materials, fine motor skills
And the ARTS curriculum is often where these students flourish. 

If I could encourage one additional skill for all our students

· Asking for help or admitting you don't know or don’t understand
- this is for our students and our teachers.


If we want to encourage our students to recognise when they don’t know something or they need to ask for help or know how to find the answer


– then as teachers we need to model the same thing – we as teachers can’t know everything!!Also remember we are all life long learners so remember ask for help and support from our Colleagues 


I would like to take this opportunity to thank the teachers and Senior Management of the Manaiakalani school I have worked with and those who allowed me to assess their awesome students.

Thanks.

Asking for help!

A vital skill for our students  to learn is how and when to ask for help.

The best way to model this is to show them that even as teachers we need to find out answers to things we don’t know and ask for help too.

In order to improve our own knowledge we need to ask for help from others or learn where to find the answers.

Isn’t that one of the reasons our COL exist, to share and learn from each other.

When was the last time you asked for help or talked to your students about this very important skill?

Be a life long learner and ask for help!

Effective in teaching.

My latest professional reading has lead me to:

"What Really Works in Special and Inclusive Education : Using evidence-based teaching strategies. Using evidence-based teaching strategies. David Mitchell.

In the Introduction David Mitchell talks about the  UK evidence that  shows teachers who are effective in teaching disadvantaged learners demonstrate skills in a 'bundle' of strategies.

At Sommerville Special School we talk about having "lots of tools in our tool box". Students with additional needs are still unique individuals with their own complex learning needs. While there is a lot more research around on best teaching practice for students with specific identified disabilities, each student is still individual learner.

The strategies mentioned in this book  include:

• Excellent organisational skills.
• Positive classroom climate.
• Personalised their teaching.
• Use of dialogic teaching and learning.

The effectiveness of your teaching is judged by:

• the value you add to your learners' store of information, concepts, skills and values:
• the degree of independence your learners are able to exercise in managing their own learning now and in the future;
• the extent to which you develop a sense of well-being in learners.

Understanding our students

Knowing Our Students.

This term I have been focusing on understanding more about the students I work with and their current skill level. Our students often present themselves in a certain way - so many these days with complex behaviours or learning needs.  

To truly understand our students and plan appropriate programmes to meet their individual needs we need to dig a little deeper to understand them more , not just rely on what we see.

I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to listen to Dr Jannie van Hees

discuss Language Acquisition & Development , this has made me think alot about the cultural aspects of our students.

I found this diagram and found it very thought provoking.

Time to steep back and take a deeper look and get to know my families and students through a different lense. 

Inquiry Focus for 2018

 I have selected the following CoL achievement challenge:

#5 Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/key competency using language symbols and texts.

Questions

Will using fine-grained assessments improve teacher capacity for setting appropriate goals for students who fail to register on standardised tests?

This year I hope to get into more Manaiakalani classrooms and support teachers with assessment of students with additional needs. Then planning appropriate goals and programmes to support the students learning.

Please book time with me if you would like help with a student.

This year my personal learning focus will be to continue to develop my skills and knowledge around language acquisition and how we can support students who have communications difficulties. This was a very common challenge for our students identified by many of my COL colleagues in 2017.

I hope to share my Inquiry and my learning journey with my blog posts.

Please feel free to ask questions and let me know what you would like more information on.

My Inquiry - My story so far.

Alternative Assessments for Students with Additional needs.

As part of my on going Inquiry into appropriate assessment tools to use with students who have additional needs I have investigated the following tools.

Literacy	Maths
Narrative assessment Expanded English Framework (Fuel and Launch) -         Listening , reading,  viewing framework -         Speaking, writing, viewing framework Developmental Writing scale Developmental Spelling  Assessment	Narrative assessment Extended Number framework and matrix (Fuel and Launch) Bracken - School Readiness  (cost to purchase or may be available RTLB)

I have tried these assessments with a range of students at Sommerville special school and several students within the Manaiakalani schools.
These assessments have given more detailed assessment information for students who can not be assessed using standardised school assessments.

Narrative assessment, Expanded Framework and Bracken - school readiness are all recognised assessment with the Ministry of Education. These assessments cater for students with very complex learning needs.

The Developmental Writing scale and Developmental Spelling assessment were recommended by 
                                   

  

Dr Sally Clendon PhD Univ North Carolina Chapel Hill

Senior Lecturer in Speech and Language Therapy, Massey University NZ.

I have found that these assessments are very informative for establishing what the  student  can do  and what their next learning steps should be.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like some more information.

Raising Student Achievement Throught Targeted Action

How do I know that the programmes , professional development are making a difference?

When making changes within a school around curriculum development , assessment and student achievement I think we need to look at four important areas:

• What do our students need, what we doing for our students?
• What do our teachers need, what are we doing to help our teachers?
• How are we supporting our Whanau to be on this learning journey with us?
• What is our assessment data telling us?

I am responsible for Literacy and Numeracy across Sommerville Special School, including arranging professional development and gathering school wide data.

I wanted to review  what actions we are taking and who was responsible for what areas. This has proved to be very insightful and allowed my to review and plan for the future. 

Manaiakalani Outreach Wananga Sharing time

Spreading the Word

Today I had the opportunity to attend part of the 2nd annual Wananga with our Manaiakalani Principals, Outreach Principals, Researchers and School Leaders.
It is so exciting to hear the successes and pedagogy of Manaiakalani Glen Innes are going to be duplicated in even more areas of NZ.

I had the opportunity to share my Inquiry :

Questions

Will using fine-grained assessments improve teacher capacity for setting appropriate goals for students who fail to register on standardised tests?

As we head into testing and data collecting time - it's a good time to reflect on the information our assessments give us. A fail or not achieved results tells us what they can't do , we need to know what they can do to help plan our next teaching steps and to have baseline data.

We need to be able to identify the fine grained progress of all our students even ones with complex learning needs.

Lets celebrate progress no matter how small! Every step is a move in the right direction!

Supporting our Colleagues - Sharing

Language is a vital part of communication

How can we support oral learning and development:

ERO publishes evaluation reports - there report on language say:

  giving greater attention to oral language learning of new entrants within a rich curriculum
  developing formal expectations for monitoring oral language progress or development across               Years 1 to 3 and beyond, across all key learning areas
 taking a formalised approach to identifying students’ oral language strengths (including       capabilities in languages other than English), needs and concerns, rather than relying on           informal observation and ‘gut feeling’
 systematically planning for interventions, where particular concerns or needs for oral language learning and development are identified
  teachers building on the advantage linguistically diverse learners bring to language learning
 building and strengthening teacher capability to support oral language teaching and learning.



What can we be doing in our classrooms daily to support our students? 

The right assessment for the right purpose.

In education, the term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students.

Educators should use a diverse array of assessment tools ,and methods to measure/assess our students. Assessments have different functions - assessments are typically designed to measure specific elements of learning—e.g., the level of knowledge a student already has about the concept or skill the teacher is planning to teach , or what they have learnt from recent learning opportunities.  Ideally, assessments  are used to identify individual student weaknesses and strengths so that educators can provide the most appropriate educational programmes. 

Are we using the right assessments to give us the most relevant information on our students to help us provide the most appropriate educational programmes? 

Do our students know what we want them to do, and how to do it ?

Are we  doing too much testing and not  enough teaching?

Everytime we ask a student a questions it is a form of testing, unless we have already given lots of input first.

A common theme - our students' language.

Manaiakalani Boards' Forum

At the BOT forum tonight 6 Col teachers presented their Inquiries. Well done to our presenters you were very informative.

Common theme: - The limited oral language and vocabulary of our students.

Each COL teacher presented on their Achievement challenge - everyone of us talked about how our Inquiries had lead us to realise that our students language levels were significantly impacting their progress across all curriculum areas.

Raising achievement in Maths - students did not understand the maths vocabulary
or could not follow instructions with positional concepts.

Lift the achievement for boys' writing -  students do not have  the vocab to describe and explain.

Lift the achievement in Reading for all students, - students need the confidence and language to share their ideas and the language vocabulary to understand what they are reading.

Here is the next challenge team - how do we accelerate our students language skills?

Watch out for some exciting professional development Sommerville will be offering next term.                            

Update on my Inquiry.

Update.

I had the opportunity to present to the BOT from Manaiakalani school tonight.

This was a great opportunity for me to reflect on what i have been up to.

Differentiating our Assessments in Literacy

Literacy Assessments at Sommerville.

Sommerville Literacy assessment

As part of my on going Inquiry into using appropriate assessments

Questions

Will using fine-grained assessments improve teacher capacity for setting appropriate goals for students who fail to register on standardised tests?

I have put together a overview of assessments we are currently using at Sommerville to help us establish exactly what our students know and inform how we set appropriate learning targets and goals for the students next steps.

The teachers at Sommerville now have a range assessment to chose from . It is important that the assessments used give the teacher as much information as possible not just a pass or fail!

Inclusive School Curriculum - A Curriculum for ALL !

NZC- A Curriculum for all.

Framework for an Inclusive School Curriculum.

This framework embodies the key elements of an inclusive school curriculum that together ensure progress and achievement for all students.

"The New Zealand Curriculum is a clear statement of what we deem important in education. It takes as its starting point a vision of our young people as lifelong learners who are confident and creative, connected, and actively involved."

The New Zealand Curriculum, 2007, page 4

A flexible framework

"The New Zealand Curriculum, together with the Qualifications Framework, gives schools the flexibility to design and deliver programmes that will engage all students and offer them appropriate learning pathways."

The New Zealand Curriculum, 2007, page 41

The New Zealand Curriculum supports schools to ensure that teaching and learning are effective and engaging for all. When teaching, learning, and assessment recognise and respond to the unique differences of individuals, all students can learn.

The New Zealand Curriculum is not prescriptive. Its learning areas provide a flexible foundation for exploring, evaluating, integrating, and enhancing knowledge. Its key competencies, which capture learning capabilities and dispositions, strengthen the learning areas by supporting students to value curiosity, thinking, self-management, perseverance, collaboration, and caring for others.

Example of English differentiated planning 

Early writing levels

While researching my  USLT Inquiry I have observed students whose  writing levels are too low to be assessed by NZ standardised testing.

At Sommerville we are currently using a Developmental Writing Scale which is helping us identify what level our students are at and what their next learning targets are.

I thought I would share this with our Mainstream colleagues.

Developmental Writing Scale

Check out this great one page  visual snapshot of children's writing development.

Reminder to Manaiakalani COL schools that you can book time with me to discuss your literacy programmes for students with additional needs.

My Inquiry .. My scanning .. My hunch

Scanning

I have been visiting classrooms and talking to teachers and reviewing current assessment practices in the mainstream classes from new entrants to year 7 and Sommerville Special school classes year 1 - year 11. There are several incidences of students who struggle with reading who fail the current assessments and do not meet National Standards.  The difficulty being faced by some teachers is that the currently used assessments gauge the students as having failed and give no indication of next steps and current skills. Teachers are left with limited information and are therefore continuing with more of the same strategies that have been unsuccessful.

Hunch

By using a range of assessments that focus on fine grained steps and achievements in reading, teachers will be able to use the information to create appropriate programs and goals for students who are currently failing in their reading. If teachers use this information well then reading levels should improve for those students.

Questions

Will using fine-grained assessments improve teacher capacity for setting appropriate goals for students who fail to register on standardised tests?

Risk taker - trying something new!

After listening to Graeme Aitken at the Manaiakalani leaders PLG I have been reflecting on my willingness to take action and try something new based on my hunch and research.

Teachers need to work through their teaching inquiry and develop some hunches, gain some new knowledge, but most importantly be willing to take action.
What new learning or teaching strategy have you tried or implemented? Have you taken any action this year ?