Last week at staff meeting we discussed the Te Kāhui Tai Kura o Te Hiku Achievement Challenge 2021, in relationship to our own school vision and teacher inquiries for this year. As a school we have been discussing  our local environment, and our location within Ngaitakoto as being the platform for meaningful learning for our students. Our waiata, school pepeha, and pou have historical significance and provide connection to our locality and culture.  

Te Kāhui Tai Kura o Te Hiku Achievement Challenge 2021

Our shared vision: A genuine commitment is evident to removing barriers and forging partnerships connecting iwi, whānau, and kura under a shared purpose. We value the upholding of te ao Māori through te reo me ona tikanga Māori and are driven by thoughtful understanding of the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We will create a community that:

● puts our ākonga at the centre and is focussed explicitly on cultivating student agency and ownership

● develops ākonga who are confident in Te reo me ōna tikanga Māori .

● seeks to improve the hauora of our ākonga, both within our kura and our wider hapori

● develops resources that are localized, culturally relevant, and foster understanding of the histories, traditions and languages of Te Hiku o te Ika.

● ensures authentic collaboration and partnership around our shared goals and outcomes. That all involved feel respected, valued and listened to.

● develops quality kaiako and kaimahi who are culturally competent, relational, and highly capable in Te reo me ona tikanga Māori .

● ensures that the process of all mahi completed by the Kāhui Ako is informed by reflection and analysis.

Our aims- Kia tu tangata o Te Hiku o Te Ika

● Tu Tangata Ora: The physical, mental, spiritual and whānau wellbeing of ākonga are protected and nurtured.

● Tu Tangata Kaha: Ākonga have ownership of their learning and future direction through agentic participation in the learning process.

● Tu Tangata Marama: Ākonga are inspired to learn and engaged in quality learning experiences that are rich in the culture, environment and heritage of Te Hiku o Te Ika 

My Teaching Inquiry

My Inquiry question

Will an increased emphasis in a small group setting, on ‘concepts about print,’ basic sight words, letter sounds and vocabulary meaning, improve the oral language skills, and raise achievement in reading and writing for my priority learners?

Scanning: What’s going on for my learners?

My priority learners: All children need language enrichment, vocabulary development and conversational skills. In a reduced class size after returning to school post Covid-19 lockdown it was noticeable that those priority students who had returned were more engaged and happy to give new learning a go than they had been in a full class situation prior to lockdown. Now that all students have returned they are finding it more difficult to engage and manage independent learning. They appeared to thrive in the smaller group with more 1 on 1 teacher support.

My observations [these are the same as for 2019] 

Students who are making slow progress in reading, writing and oral language :

• have difficulty tuning in and noticing detail in what they hear and see

• have difficulty distinguishing between letter-sounds

• communicate with gestures only or incomplete sentences 

• use incorrect grammar

• have difficulty forming letter sounds which makes it hard for the listener to understand what is being said

• have limited vocabulary which affects their understanding of what they are hearing and also makes reading for meaning difficult

• make little or no connection between spoken ideas, reading and writing

• do not understand terms like first, last, next

• are slow to develop a memory for text

All of the above points impact on a healthy self-esteem and growth mindset required for learning. Based on these observations my inquiry question is:  

‘What strategies and resources can I use to increase/improve/develop the oral language skills, and raise achievement in reading and writing for my priority learners? I want to continue my 2019 inquiry in order to discover strategies to accelerate literacy learning for my students who have limited print awareness.‘  

Focusing: Marie Clay calls concepts about print “the rules of the road,” and writes, “teachers must teach so that all children become knowledgeable about these essential concepts so they open doors to literacy.”  I

‘Children who have print awareness can begin to understand the link between written and oral language. Children who lack print awareness are unlikely to become successful readers. Children's performance on print awareness tasks is a predictor of their future reading achievement.

’https://www.readingrockets.org/article/print-awareness-introduction

Developing a hunch: 

1. My priority students need to establish the concepts about print, develop an understanding about everyday words used in literacy teaching/learning [letter sound, first, last, next, start, finish, word, letter, sentence]. They need to have a larger bank of basic sight words and have instant recall when identifying letter sounds.

2. Children need a language rich environment where they are constantly hunting for word knowledge and enriching their own vocabulary. 

3. Children need to speak in whole, correctly structured  sentences and therefore a good basic sight word knowledge must be learned and used in everyday speech, reading and writing.

Baseline data: 

• Oral language testing end 2019/Term 1 2020

• Marie Clay Early Observation Survey results completed in students’ first six weeks of school.

Taking action: 

1. For each child to increase their Oral Language test score by at least six months.

2. For each student to improve their ‘Concepts about Print’ stanine . Concepts of print are important because they teach children how reading "works" (Holdgreve-Resendez, 2010a) . It can be viewed as the foundation to reading and writing. Concepts of print teach children at an early age how to orient themselves in terms of reading. Many times fluent readers can take concepts of print for granted, because they are second nature to the reader. These concepts are foreign to beginning readers (Stahl & McKenna, 2009).

3. To practise concepts about print daily with weekly shared book, poem and instructional readers. Students will demonstrate and talk about their knowledge of  concepts.

4. For each child to move on to the next colour set of Basic Sight Words (BSWs). Daily practice of reading and writing BSWs .

5. To create an oral language page on our Te Whare Kiwi Junior Site,  jointly with the Te Pihi teachers who share our class site. The Oral Language page will include activities to help parents and children initiate interesting discussions. The page/slide on the site will be introduced in class on Mondays.

6. Word Hunters: Add our class interest words to the site. 5 new words per week. Students are to tell parents the meaning of the words and use each word in a sentence. Words will be displayed in class and reviewed/referred to often in class during the week to check for understanding.

7. Home  - school connections:  Communicate with parents of my students and explain that they are at risk in literacy, ask them to support learning at school by reading books sent home daily by the teacher, basic sight word learning and letter sound learning. The challenge will be to get the message across to the parents of my priority students, that everyday activities supported by interesting talk with lots of new vocabulary words, can play an important part in their children's language and literacy development.  https://www.readingrockets.org/article/early-literacy-policy-and-practice-preschool-years

The group of students will work in a group each morning with me, following a structured programme of :

• letter sound learning starting with the vowels [reciting Letter Land alphabet, match sounds to characters and  written letters, collecting items beginning with the focus letter, cvc writing. Students to share their learning with the class on Fridays.

• basic sight word learning [reading, identifying, matching, memory game, writing]. Basic sight words will be checked 2-3 times a week.

• Concepts of print [using the week’s shared book]. Priority students to share their learning [re shared book] with the class during shared book reading

Reflections on Distance Learning during Covid-19 Lockdown and Level 3.

During the Term 1 holidays which were brought forward due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I along with most teachers across New Zealand began planning with trepidation for an up-coming, indefinite period of distance learning with my new entrant class.

Why the trepidation you may well ask? My class Te Kakano did have an existing online learning site which they share with the next class up Te Pihi, however this was not fully utilised and students were just learning about handling devices and how to access and use some learning programmes. From the isolation of our homes the two teachers from Te Pihi and myself sort to create a site which would be easy to navigate as well as reflect the nature of our in-class learning. The three of us met through hangouts and conversed often as we organised and sorted out errors. It continued to be an eight week learning curve in which I applied knowledge gained throughout the Manaiakalani  Digital Fluency Intensive training and new skills I developed through online research and youtube videos. It was great to be able to have access to Manaiakalani Trust tutors who were invaluable with their help. Here is the link to the Te Whare Kiwi learning site.

Four or five days a week I made myself available to meet my students and their whanau via Google Hangouts. I enjoyed these times although student attendance varied from between 2 and 7. On an average only 4 students would attend despite numerous emails and messages to parents. We organised devices for students who didn't have them but this did not increase the rate of participation. Those students who had ongoing whanau support continued to grow their learning which is evident on their return to school. These students read the weekly PM online books chosen at appropriate levels and parents read the individual goals that had been set up for each child, and encouraged this learning.  The learning site worked well for these students only.

The Positives

Online learning provided

• opportunity for learning to continue at home in a real life context
• parents got the opportunity to be engaged with their children and see what they were learning
• the opportunity to observes learning interests, strengths, weaknesses and progress, and to see where support was needed
• me the opportunity to explore the possibilities of online teaching/learning, some of which can continue in the classroom to develop independence and student agency
• me the opportunity to discover what works well and what doesn't with early learners

The Negatives

• the frustrations of getting and staying connected with young learners. This required much communication with whanau, who for a variety of reasons had difficulty connecting regularly to class hangouts and supporting their tamariki with learning activities provided on the learning site.
• On return to school a large gap is evident between those students who were being supported at home with online learning and those that weren't.  
• Parents who never or rarely connected with online learning had problems with learning packs not arriving or the content being too difficult.

Moving Forward

• Parent eduction around connecting and usage of class site to access learning. There is a need for parents to feel confident about connecting, navigating the class site and blog, and helping students with online learning.
• Better use of the site to share and support in-class learning and home learning
• Better use of the class blog to share learning on a regular basis

Managing Change to Achieve Improvement

Managing Change to Achieve Improvement - a two day workshop facilitated by Brian Hinchco

 Purpose: 

To develop an alignment between the work of each school leadership team with that of the Across Kāhui Ako leaders, and the Kāhui Ako vision for Te Hiku.

The Kāhui Ako initiative covered 

• The role of DPs and APs as change managers within their kura including unpacking the barriers that come with this work
• The vision for Te Kāhui Tai Kura o Hiku as well as its strategic implementation plan
•  Change theory and models of change
•   Implementing change in our schools to achieve improvement
• Aligning the current Kāhui Workstreams; Wellbeing, Te Reo ono Tikinga Maori, and Spiral of Inquiry
• Meeting the competing drivers of the Kāhui Ako, The Iwi, The Ministry and our own school needs
• An opportunity to work professionally with others across the rohe with similar responsibilities and challenges as themselves.

The Power Point presented by Brian Hinchco.

Creating High Expectation Classrooms #2

“The curriculum encourages all students to reflect on their own learning processes and to learn how to learn.” 

The New Zealand Curriculum

Pupils’ learning is more productive if it is reflective, intentional, and collaborative, practices which may not come naturally but can be taught and can lead to pupils taking responsibility for their own learning. 

Black et al., 2006, page 126

It is important that teachers acknowledge, and set High Expectations for, abilities and talents of all students. These should reflect New Zealand's bi-cultural heritage and the it's increasing cultural diversity.

Today's workshop had me reflecting on how I personally set and maintain a culture of high expectations in my classroom.
Do I:

1. plan for goal setting and mixed ability groupings across the curriculum?
2. establish a positive culture of care?
3. promote student autonomy/agency?

To ensure a culture of high expectations I must:

• avoid bias when setting goals for/with students
• know my students really well through accurate monitoring and relationship
• set high expectations for all students regardless of race
• display/embed culturally responsive pedagogy i.e. acknowledge the Maori world view (te ao Maori) if there is a high percentage of Maori students

How do I see this working in the New Entrant classroom?

In my New Entrant classroom I want to ensure a positive learning culture therefore the classroom environment must firstly feel a safe place for all students. I want all the children who start off school life under my guidance to see themselves as great learners. Growth Mindset will be embedded into teaching/learning. Developing student autonomy or student agency starts with the knowledge of "I am a learner" and "I love learning." It also means developing the language about learning so there is a focus on oral language development which includes vocabulary development, talking about our learning, listening, noticing and understanding [comprehension]. Making learning models visible in the classroom has helped to develop student understanding about goal setting for e.g.   'What does good writing look like?' There are examples of student writing and visuals of what we need to do when writing. We visit the writing wall and students are learning to identify what they can currently do independently and what they need to do to improve [next steps]. We are at the beginning stage of learning to set goals.

My most valued take-home reminders from today's workshop: 

• The need to display unconditional warmth
• The need to build self-esteem for some students
• Teachers are role models. Teachers are central figures to some students.
• Students reflect teacher behaviour [ being calm, polite, sensitive, responsibile for own behaviour]
• Teachers need to know the family background of students
• The language teachers use is very important
• To seriously think about which students are most vulnerable and what actions I can take to help them develop a healthy self-esteem and become positive class members.
• I need to focus on the positive for each student
• I need to be aware of my non-verbal communications and what I am indicating by facial expressions and body language
• Is my behaviour management with some students preventive or reactive? 

Yolanda Soryl Phonics and Early Words Workshops

The best single predictor of future reading achievement at school entry is phonological awareness.Gillon (2004); Pressley (2002); Elhri et al (2001); Goswami (2001); Blachman (2000)

Today 3 colleagues and myself participated in Phonics and Early Word workshops taken by Yolanda Soryl. As a New Entrant teacher I am noticing year-by year a decline in oral language skills [listening, speaking, understanding] of children starting school. Low level oral language skills impact on learning to read and write. As a junior syndicate we are interested in addressing this issue in as many ways as possible. Phonics has always been a foundation to literacy learning at our school however we need to change teaching practice to make learning more effective. Attending these sessions was the next step on our phonics learning journey.

Our Observations prior to attending

Students who are making slow progress in reading and writing:

• have difficulty tuning in and noticing detail in what what they hear and see
• have difficulty distinguishing between letter-sounds
• communicate with gestures only or incomplete sentences 
• use incorrect grammar
• have difficulty forming letter sounds which makes it hard for the listener to understand what is being said
• have limited vocabulary which affects their understanding of what they are hearing and also makes reading for meaning difficult
• make little or no connection between spoken ideas, reading and writing

All of the above points impact on a healthy self-esteem and growth mindset required for learning. Based on these observations my inquiry question is:  

What strategies and resources can we use to increase/improve/develop the oral language skills, and raise achievement in reading and writing for our priority learners?

'Phonemic awareness is fundamental to early success in reading and writing … An understanding of phonics also underpins children's literacy learning. Children need to learn, through deliberate, focused instruction, which letters represent which sounds.' — Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1–4, (2003, p.32), Ministry of Education, Wellington.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of phonics and the teaching of phonics?

Phonics Workshop
Reading requires:

• Knowing letter sounds
• Knowing how to blend sounds together
• Graphic knowledge and memory [e.g. for high frequency words]
• Comprehension
• Fluency
• That when faced with a new word, a child can use graphic knowledge (word chunks i.e. ing; gr-a-ph etc) and phonics (letter sounds).

Writing requires:

• Knowing letter sounds
• Knowing how to blend sounds together
• Graphic knowledge and memory (e.g. for high frequency words
• Segmentation
• Re-reading

Terminology
Phoneme: The smallest sound you can hear in a word
Grapheme: The written form of a word. A grapheme can have 1 letter, 2 letters [digraph e.g. th], or 3 letters [trigraph e.g. thr]. The number of graphemes in a word will match the number of phonemes.

Stages for teaching phonics

Key points for teachers:

• Clap rhythms for children to repeat, so they can hear and hold structures (e.g. first line of Humpty Dumpty). This is critical for holding a sentence in their heads during writing.
• Music and movement is fundamental for learning. Bring it in as much as possible, e.g. sing instructions and have the children sing them back. Singing lights up the left side of the brain, the same area required for reading. Therefore it is a great warm up
• Schedule daily poetry & story reading to strengthen children’s phonological listening and enjoyment of reading, and train the brain for fluency by using triggers e.g. ‘on your marks’.
• Teach the five rhyming families: cat, pet, fin, dog, bug
• Be explicit about knowledge transfer i.e. tell children ‘you can use this in your reading. When you come to a word you don’t know, you can use this letter…’
• ‘You can use this when you are trying to spell a new word.’
• Have children re-read their writing after every word and sentence
• At Stage 2 teach a new phoneme everyday.
• Separate handwriting and phonics lessons - phonics lesson first

What did I learn that I could use with my learners?

I intend to make an immediate change to my phonics programme by teaching a different phoneme four days a week. In term 3 I will follow Yolanda's programme more explicitly. I will also use/teach more nursery rhymes and rhyming games, and intentionally focus on listening for sounds in our environment.

Early Words Workshop

This was the second workshop of the day. The Early Words programme is set out clearly in Yolanda Soryl's handbook which I purchased for the school. The programme helps lower level students to achieve success in word recognition and graphic knowledge of high frequency words. The programme takes 5 minutes per child, per day. It involves simple home learning activities related to that day's learning. My intention is to train two teacher aides to use this programme daily with our struggling readers. 

The structure of each 5 minute lesson:

•  Probe test – gives the score from the word learnt yesterday. Students are given the words and then the teacher tests the errors and the time taken to complete and then scores them accordingly.

• Teacher decision – after testing with the probe the teacher decides whether the student goes up a word or remains at the same for another day.

• Word cards – this is the time spent teaching the student the word using a range or games and having the word in isolation (out of text).

• Worksheet – this is either a reading or writing worksheet where the word is transferred into text.

•  Probe test – as above, gives the score from the word learnt.

•  Revision – an activity not needing adult supervision usually completed for home learning.

As part of her commitment to providing clear and valuable information to teachers and parents, Yolanda has produced a collection of lesson videos. These cover varying techniques and stages of Phonics, Early Words and Developing Phonological Awareness. 

Free resource downloads from Yolanda Soryl

Teacher Appraisals Workshop - Moving on with 'Our Code' and 'Our Standards' 2019

Workshop aims:

1. Review your use of the Code of Professional Responsibility and identify next steps
2. Deepen your understanding of the Standards for the Teaching Profession 
3. Share experiences and findings from goal, inquiry or standards focused appraisal
4. Extend knowledge of effective use of of observation and conversations

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?

1. I gained a better perspective on the Code. It is the VALUES belonging to the teaching profession.
2. Appraisal benefits learners, the appraisee, the appraiser, the school, whanau, the community and the teaching profession.
3. Appraisal should be robust, evidence based, growth focused, goal oriented, accountable to the Standards and the Strategic plan, include self-appraisal
4. The purpose of  Appraisal should be clear, involve trust and be focused on equity.
5. That what evidence looks like for an appraisal is up to each school to decide.

Key understandings

1. The Teaching Council will no longer ask teachers to send in evidence
2. Teachers do not have to have a professional blog to share their evidence. Each school will decide on what constitutes evidence and how this is recorded.
3. Teacher inquiry is mandatory as required by the NZC. How evidence of this is recorded is up to individual schools.
4. An emphasis should be placed on professional conversations between appraiser and appraisee with a focus on teacher goals re. the inquiry.

Spiral of Inquiry

Quality Practice Template

The following template was shared with us as an example of an appraisal document. 

"This template is not for individual teachers to complete as an appraisal record! It should be 

completed with colleagues. It is about knowing the standards and having a shared understanding of what they look like at your school. It allows you to focus your appraisal attention around your goals or inquiry. Completing the Quality Practice Template together means you, together with colleagues identify the Standards as practices in your context. It makes it easier to see the naturally occurring evidence available for discussion/analysis."

There are templates available for each of the six Professional Standards on the Teachers Council Website https://teachingcouncil.nz/content/our-code-our-standards

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?

I think a streamlined, less time-consuming appraisal system would benefit all teachers.