Developing Vocabulary

I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by Jill Ritchie Literacy Consultant from Impact Learning Consulting.

Jill had some fabulous ideas about embedding vocabulary into our teaching programmes.

The teaching of vocabulary is a vital part of our Literacy programmes but must be all taught in all curriculum areas.

We need to review, reteach and checking in regularly that our Learners have the required vocabulary and the correct definition.

Explicit acts of teaching vocabulary is vital for our learners.
We need to reference this new vocabulary in multi contexts through out the week to ensure our learners understand this new vocabulary especially specialised specific vocabulary.

I saw a fabulous example of this when working with Robyn Anderson from Panmure Bridge when we discussed her maths lesson introducing new maths language to her learners.

Explicit acts of teaching - making the biggest difference

During our COL PLG we were discussing how can we replicate the accelerated progress we achieve in writing and our other focused areas, maths and reading.

There seems to be an overwhelming need to ensure we are using explicit acts of teaching.

Deliberate acts of teaching instructional strategies are the tools of effective practice. They are the deliberate acts of teaching that focus learning in order to meet a particular purpose. Instructional strategies are effective only when they impact positively on students' learning.

Teachers need to be able to use a range of deliberate acts of teaching inflexible and integrated ways within learning activities to meet the diverse literacy learning needs of our students.

These deliberate acts may include modelling, prompting, questioning, giving feedback, telling, explaining, and directing in your class programme.

Giving students explicit instruction about learning strategies will help them take control of their own learning. Deliberate acts of teaching showing our students how to make clear explicit links to prior knowledge and connection to their environment must impact student achievement as well as building new learning.

Sometimes i think we confuse implicit and explicit in our teaching. Our students with language or learning difficulties need very explicit acts of teaching.

Something is implicit when it is implied but not directly stated. Something is explicit when it is directly stated and leaves no room for uncertainty. Our students need EXPLICIT teaching.

Wanting reminders of what explicit acts of teaching look like in Literacy check out: 

Deliberate acts of teaching 

I found this an interesting read around mathematical strategies:

Keeping children engaged and achieving in mathematics

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.