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.

Deliberate, systematic and explicit of Teaching Phonetics

Are we being deliberate and explicit enough?

Jill Ritchie Literacy Consultant from Impact Learning Consulting presented an information session on Supporting Students with Dyslexia.

Many of the students I  have been out to observe or test in my Across schools role seems to have a deficit in their Phonetics knowledge.   This impacts their progress in Reading and writing.

Once again my research leads me to the knowledge that we must be deliberate, explicit teaching of Phonics and Phonemic awareness.

I am wondering is there needs to be a greater emphasis on Phonetics in our Junior classes and a programme designed for our older students that meets their needs and interests.

I am working on a programme with a fellow COL teacher. Stay tuned for further updates.

Change to learning support by MOE

The Ministry of Education is using the following model when working with schools to support learners with additional needs.

The new Learning Support  Delivery model process.

Associate Education Minister Tracey Martin will be making an announcement about the learning support Co-ordinators role sometime over the next month.
There will be 600 Learning Support Co-ordinators across the country - MOE is saying one Learning support co-ordinator per 500 students - this is a paid position in addition to normal staffing allocation.

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.

Catering for the many needs in your classroom.

All Teachers have a large range of student needs in their classrooms and this makes for an ever-increasing workload.
We need to start working smarter as we just don't have any more hours in the day.

I have talked to a few teachers about thinking of simple things we can put in place in our classroom to support a range of students.
For example, if you have a visual timetable or instructions available this will support your special needs learners, your students with English as a second language, students that just weren't listening to the teacher.


Universal design for learning   check out tki for more information

As every student learns differently, schools must create flexible, barrier-free learning environments if all students are to become successful, lifelong learners. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can help schools and kura design learning environments that are flexible, and where there are no barriers in the way. It is a framework that enables equitable access and participation in education.

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.

Auditory discrimination

Auditory discrimination is the ability to recognise differences between sounds. Particularly, auditory discrimination allows people to distinguish between phonemes in words. Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in any given language.

Phonological awareness is often referred to as phonemic awareness, but there is a crucial difference between these terms. 

The term ‘phonemic awareness’ comes from the word ‘phoneme’, which is a single sound in language.   This includes the following individual skills:

·        Identification of initial, final and medial sounds in word

·        Segmentation (breaking words into individual sounds)

·        Blending (blending individual sounds to make words)

·        Phoneme transposition (ability to ‘swap’ sounds)

The term ‘phonological awareness’ comes from the word ‘phonology’, which is the sounds and sound patterns of language.  Phonological awareness is therefore a broader term than phonemic awareness and encompasses the following:

All of the above aspects of phonemic awareness   PLUS

·        Onset + rime

·        Rhyme

·        Syllabification

·        Word Retrieval

·        Auditory discrimination

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.

Is lack of visual tracking skills getting in the way of your learners progress?

I have recently been testing some students who are struggling in reading and writing.
My detailed testing has shown that they struggle with visual tracking and scanning.

Vision and visual tracking are activities that happen automatically without us really focusing on it.  The brain recognises our eyes are moving, tracking, scanning, focusing, pursuing, and accommodating without us even realising.  

What is Visual Tracking?

Visual tracking is often defined as the ability to efficiently move the eyes from left to right (or right to left, up and down, and circular motions) OR focusing on an object as it moves across a person’s visual field. This  is important for lots  of our daily activities, including reading, writing, using scissors, drawing, and playing.  

Researchers says that the  typical development of visual processing, the ability to visually track objects emerges in children around the age of five.  

Difficulties in Visual Tracking

Your learning might have difficulties in some of the following areas if they have challenges with visual tracking:

• Losing place when reading.  Re-reads or skips words or lines.  
• Omits, substitutes, repeats, or confuses similar words when reading.
• Must use finger to keep place when reading.
• Poor reading comprehension.
• Short attention span.
• Difficulty comprehending or remembering what is read.
• Confusion with interpreting or following written directions.
• Writing on a slat, up or down hill, spacing letters and words irregularly.
• Confusion with left/right directions.
• Persistent reversals of letters (b, d, p, q) when naming letters.
• Errors when copying from the board or book to paper.

Formal testing is required to determine if they is a visual tracking or scanning issue.



Visual perceptual skills require the ability to see, organize and interpret visual information.  Visual tracking is one type of visual perceptual skills.  Visual tracking is the ability to control the eye movements using the oculomotor system (vision and eye muscles working together). There are two types of visual tracking: maintaining your focus on a moving object and switching your focus between two objects.

Possible activities to support our learners:

Activities to promote eye tracking:

• Complete puzzles.
• Word finds
• Find as many things as you can see of a certain shape (circle, square, rectangle, triangle) in the room.
• Copy a series of motor movements made by someone else.
• Perform dot-to-dot pictures.
• Find the mistakes in “What’s Wrong with this Picture?” pictures.
• Sort playing cards in different ways (color, suit, number), or use playing cards to find two with matching numbers.
• Solve mazes.
• Play “I Spy.”
• Play balloon toss.
• Use tracing paper to trace and color simple pictures.
• Perceptual motor programmes 

Reading support - what is the goal?

Reading Support

I am currently supporting a 10 year boy with Autism and Attention Deficit disorder who is reading at a 6 year old level. He enjoys reading but does not like any written follow up task as he has limited fine motor skills.

I have made a range of activities to give him the opportunity to work on his specific reading goals without causing him too much anxiety.

The stories we have been reading have compound words . He is now very proud he can in his words read "big words" by recognise smaller words.

Word endings to encourage this young man to look at the ends of words and recognise they change eg looked, looking and read then appropriately.














     I created these to support his understanding of the new vocabulary in his new books.









I have created a book with enough pages that he can
recreate the book in sequence.
This allows us to sequence  the pictures
and discuss the story line. We can make up our own words verbally to go with the pictures.
He can match the sentence to the picture.
He can also underline the words that show answers to our questions on our laminted words.

Our sensory system

I have had several people ask me about some of their students and why they react to certain smells, sounds and textures or have limited body awareness.

Are you aware our body has 7 sensory systems that help us understand the world around us? Some of our students have sensory ways give mixed messages.


We have 7 different sensory systems that our brain must integrate in order to interact appropriately with our environment. These sensory systems include: proprioception (muscle-joint awareness), vestibular (orientation in space), tactile (touch), auditory (sound), visual (sight), gustatory (taste), and olfactory (smell). Our brain works hard to integrate all of those sensations without becoming too overwhelmed, distracted, or disengaged.

Even things that don’t seem “sensory” actually are. Take handwriting, for example. In order to write, your brain must integrate a huge amount of sensory information: to remain upright in the chair (proprioceptive sense), to hold the pencil with an appropriate grasp using the appropriate force (tactile and proprioceptive senses), to form the letters appropriately with adequate spacing (visual and vestibular senses), to sustain endurance throughout the activity (vestibular and proprioceptive senses), to filter out distracting input (auditory senses).


Children (and adults) with sensory processing disorders (SPD) manage sensory input in ways that are not functional, meaning they interfere with their daily activities.

http://momentousinstitute.org/blog/making-sense-of-sensory-processing

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.

Autism - Look for the positives - Autism awareness month

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.

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.