Assessment - Writing

Developmental Writing Scale

The students I work with are at various stages of learning to write.

To be able to plan the next learning steps and teaching strategies, we need to know exactly what the student can do and what they need to know to move forward.

Many of these students can not be assessed using the mainstream norm assessments eg AsTTle.

While working closely with Dr Sally Clendon, we were introduced to The Developmental Writing Scale. This has proved to be very helpful to the teachers I work with.

Definitions

To learn more read the article by 
The Developmental WritingScaleA New Progress Monitoring Tool for Beginning Writers Janet M. Sturm, Kathleen Cali, Nickola W. Nelson, and Maureen Staskowski


To see this in action follow my collegue and fellow COL teacher Devs Charles BLOG

How I may be able to help you.

Currently, in New Zealand Schools according to the MOE, there are 1 in 5 students who require additional support from support services.

We all know there are a lot of other students in our classes who require additional support and are not currently receiving any support.



In my role as Across Schools Teacher supporting students with Additional Needs
I might be able to help with some of the following things:

• Facilitate Professional Development for your Staff, tailored to your schools' needs.

In the last year, I have presented :

• Teacher Aide training on Oral language development, Early Reading and Writing skills.
• Supporting Neurodiverse students - How our brain works.
• Behaviour and Sensory needs

• Assessment of individual students using additional assessment tools

•  to gain baseline data
• to assist teachers to plan appropriately
• to check the meet criteria for additional support eg ORS, ICS
• to gather information for Welcome to school project

• Discussed School Special needs support registers      

• Supported COL teachers with inquiries and carried out observations.

• Provided adapted material and resources for students with Additional needs

I am here to help:   Book me through my Blog or email me donna@sommerville.school.nz
I am happy to help with any quick questions or come along and visit.

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.

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. 

Whanua involvement in the learning journey.

Sommerville school held an EXPO on Saturday 28th October , where we offered our families an opportunity to come along to school for an information day.

We had community organisations  run information sessions on relevant topics for our families included : Medical concerns, behaviour management , special needs funding etc.

We provided supervision and entertainment for their child ,while families/adults attended the information sessions. This was the fabulous idea of our Principal Diane Hankins. Our families are already asking about next year's Expo and offering ideas and suggestions for what they would like more information on.

I ran an hours session on how families can support the learning of their children at home.

My focus was to show families how they can get involved in fun, engaging ways that are enjoyable for everyone - adult and child.

Here is an example of some of the slides I presented.
Our parents are very keen to be involved in their child's learning, we just need to show them some ways of making it appropriate for their child in their home environment.

What am I learning ?

We have been focusing on how we can share our Learning Intentions with our students.
Students with special learning needs often need visual representation to help them remember their goals and targets or the strategies they need to learning.
Check out some of the examples from my fabulous colleagues at Sommerville.

Language development and Reading Comprehension

Are your students struggling with reading comprehension ?  
Do they have the language skills and vocabulary to answer the comprehension questions during reading?

We need to be offering our students opportunity and stimulation to help their Oral language development.

We need to teach the language and the skills of comprehension.

Gail Arriola-Bagayas  our speech therapist at Sommerville has shared this fabulous resources that makes it very  clear about the developmental steps in understanding questions.

Blank-handout.pdf

Check the great ideas in this handout.

Sometimes we need to unpack the learning goals.

Please get in touch with me if i can help with your reading programmes or helping develop your students comprehension skills. 

Book time with Donna 






Verbal reasoning -  the big picture.

Maths Assessment Progressions

Maths Assessment Progressions at Sommerville.

The Sommerville Maths curriculum team have created this overview of maths assessments.
Students at Sommerville who often can not be assessment using mainstream maths assessment are assessed against P levels. This is a series of leveled progression indicators. P 1 to P 7 are below  the Emergent maths levels.
As our students reach these  P level progression indicators we move them onto Mainstream assessments eg JAM and Gloss.

Sommerville Special school uses a fabulous maths resources called Numicon. 
Numicon has an assessment system that matches this maths resource.

Numicon is a distinctive multi-sensory approach to children's mathematical learning that emphasises three key aspects of doing mathematics:

• communicating mathematically
• exploring relationships
• solving problems in everyday life experiences (generalising)

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!

Developing Language Skills in our students.

All the research tells us our students are arriving at school with low oral language skills. The oral language children have when they start school directly impacts on their ability to think and to learn. Alison Burge presented findings from the "Welcome to school project" in Tamaki schools showing 53% of New Entrants assessed had significant concerns in Communication.

All students who enter the school environment need to learn about a variety of conventions and routines of talking and listening in a context that is unfamiliar to most of them. Students’ oral language improves through practice, that is, when students talk regularly for different purposes and with different partners.  (Ministry of Education. (2009). Learning Through Talk: Oral Language in Years 1 to 3. Wellington)


At Sommerville we extremely fortunate to employ our own Speech language therapists who work directly with students and provide on going Professional development to our staff.
Francesca Bierens SLT has shared her Verbal language development Summary for how language is developed and the progress

 'Assisting Students with Language Delays in the Classroom  - A Practical Language Programme'

                                Published:  In 2015 by Speechmark Publishing Ltd, London, UK,

I have attached Oral language resources from Francesca that are worth a read.

Oral language development and abilities have significant impact on our students ability to access the curriculum in all areas.

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.

New Zealand Sign Language week - 8 and 14 May

New Zealand Sign Language Week

It is NZ Sign Language week, time to celebrate Aotearoa’s third official language (since 2006).

New Zealand Sign Language Week provides an opportunity for schools to reflect on the inclusion principle and explore the values of diversity and respect. Students can make use of key competencies, especially using language, symbols, and text and relating to others.

Check out the great resources online

Have you checked out the fabulous songs on Youtube that have NZ Sign Language

How about learning our National anthem with all three of our official languages.

Collaboration - Manaiakalani in a statement!

                                  

How much do you share and collaborate with your colleagues?
Other perspectives help us reflect on our teaching and students learning.

Te Taiao o Tāmaki

Super proud of the amazing artwork the students at Sommerville special school produced to share with our community.