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

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.

Why are our students not getting the support they need.

This year I have been working with the Team from the Welcome to School project to gather assessment information on the students they assessed two years ago.

Moira Nelson SLT has reassessed these students on their Core language skills including Receptive and Expressive language. Some students have made great progress, for example, a student moving from 1st percentile to the 63rd!!
However, she also found several students who are significantly below in Language.
We were interested to see if the students who were still significantly below have been identified by the school and receiving additional support from the Ministry or RTLB.

Very few of the students were receiving additional support from an outside agency and those that were seemed to have support mostly due to social and behavioural needs.

Why are our students not getting the support they need?

I have identified the following hypothesis

1.  When you have a large number of students in your classroom with language and learning delays you are less likely to identify the students that are significantly below.

2. There is no official MOE provided assessment or screening tool for teachers or Senco's to use to easily identify these students.

3. Most of our Manaiakalani schools do not have a designated Senco person who has the time and expertise to identify and assess these students. Our Sencos are often the Principals or Senior Management, who have this responsibility on top of an already extensive workload.
Schools in higher decile areas often have a designated teacher with responsibility for Special needs and release time to carry out this role.

This impacts on schools abilities to assess students and once identified have time to complete the required paperwork to request additional support needed from outside agencies.


In class support:
 I  had the opportunity to be part of an allocation meeting. Students receive points under different criteria. The first criteria is whether a student has had previous intervention or assessments etc from other agencies or professionals eg SLT, Paediatrician, Occupational therapist etc.
As we are all aware currently the easiest way to access these is private, a cost our families can not afford.  Some students had seen multiple professionals so gained several points towards receiving in-class support funding. In one case a student received 6 points before we looked at his academic results.
Students in our COL may have been academically lower than these students but did not gain enough points to receive funding.  This puts our students at a significant disadvantage.

RTlit

There are projects being run in the community by the RTlit that would benefit our students significantly. Currently, the allocation of these projects has gone to schools in higher decile areas within our immediate community.
Is this because they have Senco who can be released to find out about these projects, attend meetings in school time and assess the students and complete the applications before our COL schools have even heard about these projects?



I wonder if the new Learning Support Coordinators that have been promised for 2020 will be allocated to our schools?

Our students deserve better !

Our working memory

Encouraging reading

Visual Sequential Memory

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

• This is essential for spelling and reading, where your child needs to remember the sequence of letters in order to spell the word correctly.
• When doing multiple digit addition and subtraction, visual sequential memory is essential to help your child copy the numbers in the correct order.

Visual sequential memory is the ability to remember forms (including shape, orientation, size, and colour) or characters in the correct order. This skill is particularly important in spelling. Missing, added or jumbled letters within words are common for people who struggle with this skill, and they will often whisper or talk aloud as they write. Recognising and remembering patterns may also be a problem.

Improved sequential memory can help improve your child’s reading skills. To do this effectively, both auditory sequential and visual sequential memory skills need to be developed. Auditory sequential and visual sequential memory skills are the ability to remember things seen and heard in sequence. This plays an important role in learning to remember the difference between words such as on and no and being able to complete tasks in the order they were given.

This is not only vital for reading, but for spelling and mathematics as well. As you can imagine, saying 91 + 1 or 19 + 1 , spelling t-a-r instead of r-a-t, or reading dog instead of god could completely change the meaning of a situation.

My Inquiry half way checkpoint

As part of the Manaiakalani Hui I got to present where is am up to in my Inquiry.
I have been trialing a range of different assessments with student at Sommerville and in our COL schools.

Teacher's receiving feedback.

Receiving Feedback on our teaching practice can be difficult. We need to change how we react to feedback from others and use this feedback as a great opportunity to learn and grow as teachers.

We give feedback to our learners in our classroom everyday. We expect them to use this feedback to develop new skills - new learning.

Why as an adult is it hard to receive feedback?

Watch this TED talk  by  Sheila, I found it interesting.

How to use others' feedback to learn and grow | Sheila Heen

Storyline online

Online reading resource
check it out   https://www.storylineonline.net/
storylineonline

Great selection of books that are read by celebrities and has the story written across the screen.

Good opportunity for our students to hear and see literacy.

                                                                                                               

Reading strategies

Guiding our learners through Reading

Reading strategies for our students.

Here is a copy of some of the planned strategies I am using with students working at Blue level (5 1/2 to 6 years) based on ideas from Sally Clendon. We are reading the same book each day for four days but for a different purpose. The students have other opportunities to read different reading material at other times during the day.

Come along and learn about How Visuals can help our students

Come along and learn about  How Visuals can help our students Manage their own behaviour and access the curriculum.

Link to this doc https://goo.gl/TvV7rr
Book you attendance here.

Thursday 10 th May

Facilitator: Donna Ryan

Venue: Sommerville 80a Tripoli Rd

Using visuals to support learners with additional needs.

How to help our students access the curriculum using a variety
of visual strategies and supports.

Suitable for teachers working with all age groups.

Behaviour and learning

Student’s behaviour can create barriers to learning and inhibit wellbeing for both the student and for those around them.

This is a growing concern of the teachers I visit. 

Behaviour is defined as the way one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards others. It is often a response to a particular situation or stimulus.

Totally agree with this :

"If students are learning successfully, if they are feeling connected, if they know that people care, they are less likely to behave in ways that jeopardise their opportunities to be part of that".

Ngaire Ashmore, Principal, Tangaroa College

Check out the TKI site for supporting guidelines

Over the next few weeks I will be adding some strategies to help support our students to access their learning while managing themselves.

Often our students do not know what is 'good behaviour " we need to show them what we want.

Inclusion

Kristin Wiens, is an educator and inclusion coach from Victoria, British Columbia.

Kristin specializes in visual graphics to get important inclusive messages out there.
This is a list of best practices in teaching...these aren't just feel good messages...there is a ton of good teaching happening in this list.

Visual aids to enhance learning.

As part of my inquiry I have been researching my belief that Visuals aids help students to learn and retain information.

I found this interesting article.
Impact of Visual Aids in Enhancing the Learning Process CaseResearch: District Dera Ghazi Khan

It states:
Visual aids are the devices that help the teacher to clarify, establish, and correlate and co-ordinate precise conceptions, understandings and appreciations and support him to make learning more actual, active, motivating, encouraging, significant and glowing.

 Research tells us:
Every individual has the tendency to forget. 
Proper use of visual aids helps to retain more concept permanently.

Students can study well when they are inspired properly through different visual aids. 

Visual aids grow the accurate image when the students see and hear properly. 

Visual aids provide complete example for conceptual thinking. 

Visual aids create the environment of interest for the students. 

Visual aids helps to increase the vocabulary of the students. 

Visual aids helps the teacher to get sometime and make learning permanent. 

Visual aids provide direct experience to the students. 


Learning can be reinforced with different teaching/learning resources because they stimulate, motivate as well as focus learners’ attention for a while during the instructional process. Visual aids arouse the interest of learners and help the teachers to explain the concepts easily. Visual aids are those instructional aids which are used in the classroom to encourage teaching learning process.

 As Singh (2005) defines: “Any device which by sight and sound increase the individual s' practice, outside that attained through read labeled as an audio visual aids”. Visual aids are those instructional devices which are used in the classroom to encourage learning and make it easier and motivating. The material like models, charts, film strip, projectors, radio, television, maps etc called instructional aids. (Rather, 2004).
Visual aids are effective tool that “invest the past with an air of actuality.” Visual aids distribute the learners with true knowledge, which detention their devotion and help in the understanding of the ancient marvels. They demand to the mind through the visual auditory senses. When we use visual aids as teaching aid, it is one of the aspects which root participation of students in the lesson because when students look at visual model or aid, it is measured as a kind of contribution.


 CONCLUSIONS
From this research following conclusions have been drawn;
 1- The research concluded that using visuals aids as a teaching method stimulates thinking and improves learning environment in a classroom.
2- Effective use of visual aids substitutes monotonous learning environments.
3- Students develop and increase personal understanding of the areas of learning when they experience a successful and pleasant learning in the classroom.
 4- Students find visual aids sessions useful and relevant when it has some direct relation to the course content. 


So what visual aides are you using to enhance student learning ?

This research also showed links between improved vocabulary and the use of Visual aides - which is a major focus for Manaiakalani schools.

The Power of Key Competencies

What skills do our students need to be capable confident members of society?

Sometimes I think we get so tied up in student achievement and measuring their progress we run out of time for some very important skills and learning opportunities.

As a successful learner we need skills to relate or others and manage our own behaviours - The Key Competencies are a vital part of our NZ Curriculum. They should be incorporated into every aspect of our class programme.

Dear Teacher - Something to think about.

Visual learning and autism spectrum disorder

Visual learning and autism spectrum disorder

Visual thinking can be a strength for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

These good visual skills might be because children with ASD tend to focus on details, rather than the whole – for example, specific details in a picture, rather than the whole picture.

Also, children with ASD can be visual learners. This might be because visual information lasts longer and is more concrete than spoken and heard information. This might help children with ASD – who often need longer than typically developing children – to process information and choose what they’re going to say.

Creating classroom Rules

 Establishing classroom rules and routines are very important at the beginning of the year.
We need to make sure our student understands the concepts of the rules and the language used.
The language concepts of DON'T is a challenging one for many of our students.
It is a negative language concept. Refer to the chart below to the see the language concepts student need to understand

Give our students rules and routines that show them what you want them to do.

Leading Change - What are our priorities?

I had the opportunity to listen to Bek Galloway present on "Leading my team".
Bex talked about having a clear vision and purpose then everything you do should then work towards that goal.

She has a great visual that resonates with me.  
I think all teachers need to take stock of our class programmes and visions to ensure we are doing what we need to do.

As term four begins and we are all reflecting we need to think about our students needs.

What parts of my programme , plans do we need to Start, Stop, Limit and Continue for my vision to be a priority.

I think as a teacher all the demands placed on us sometimes distract us from our key task - Educating our students to the best  of our ability to ensure they achieve the most they possibly can !

The Next Generation

Tony Ryan Educational consultant spoke at the APPA conference about the future of the next generation.
What skills will we need?

 

Are we preparing our students for the future? What can we do as educators ?

There seems to be a common  theme from several presenters today  around the importance of the

  Key Competencies.

How do we increase the inclusion of the important competencies in our daily class programmes.

Tony Ryan also talked about the vital skill for our future being  Oracy.

This is a major concern considering the low levels of our students oral language skills.

Tony suggested we teach our students about how to self-talk, the beginning of thinking our thoughts through and problem solving.

Thanks Tony lots to consider.