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

Current assessments in Manaiakalani COL schools

To gain knowledge about what is currently happening in our Manaiakalani schools around assessment I  meet with  Roseanne Gibson the manager of   RTLB Cluster 8.
They have generously shared me into the RTLB Response to Intervention framework survey results. I appreciate RTLB Cluster 8 for their willingness to share this information with me.

Nine of the 13 schools in Manaiakalani Kahui Ako have completed the RTI survey with
their liaison RTLB to date. Eight of the nine responding schools were familiar with the
Response to Intervention Framework.



         

How learning progress is tracked in classrooms across Manaiakalani Kahui Ako  Schools Assessments: • Pre and post assessments • asTTle,(Reading, Writing, Maths), easTTle • IKAN, Gloss • PATs • Running records • Curriculum assessments • School based - base line testing -ongoing formative assessment in       classroom, summative as per cluster agreed protocols • Beginning, middle and end year assessments

       

Cumulative Records and Reports • E-Tap records • Student reports which go to parents • Parent/Teacher interviews • Online tracking shared across staff • School Talk (this is a a customised software package that teachers use for everything. Planning, assessment, uploading evidence against learning outcomes -students do this, timetables for the day, modelling books etc) Teacher Tracking: • OTI's by class teachers • Learning groups • Differentiating curriculum • Anecdotal notes

My goal now is to work with our Manaiakalani school and introduce them to a range of alternative assessments.