Intervention COL inquiry #7A: Using the SQ3R Model

 In our learning, we used the SQ3R model to help guide students through their reading.  I have taught the specific model before and today I wanted my kids to see if they could use it without too much prompting.

Here is the teaching powerpoint I designed.

After a bit of twoing and froing, students eventually got the hang of it and from what they wrote, I could see their understanding of the text.  Most of them did really well in drawing out the answers to the the prompts, with some of the higher level students writing really well.

Celebrating 'Cultural Visibility' #1: Te Wiki O Te Reo Māori Language Week

This week our school celebrated Te Wiki O Te Reo Māori Language Week.  We have been entrenched in Haka Waiata preparations for our end of week assembly where will see each house compete for the Top House Award. I enjoyed helping a few of the different whanau groups behind the scenes to get ready.  I also had the honour of videoing the event below.

The fact that the Reo empowered our students to be part of something great is quite something to see.  I was so proud of some of my year 9 boys who were centre stage and I made sure that next time I had them for class, I elevated their involvement to the next level.

 

Intervention COL Inquiry#7: Sounding out key words

Phonetics is a great way to reinforce a key concept and today our class were practicing with concepts around Government.  Here is an example of us learning about the 3 branches of the government:  legislative, judicial and executive.  

It was a good exercise in reminding students about the way we sound out words and how important the beat is.

Structured Literacy PLD with Dr Jannie

Today we were honoured to have Dr Jannie Van Hees lead us through a PLD around Structured Literacy. 

With my inquiry around reading it is timely and relevant. Here are my notes from her presentation:

This language is tricky, so many layers in focus.  Systems of English.  The Morphology of words.

Knowing how to read and for writing structure is important.

Words are made of sounds.  Language is culture.  K, s, t, o.  Raising awareness of the trickiness of English.

Sounds written down. /e/ -ai- ou

This is very helpful for decoding and spelling.

Comprehension is different:  Noun, verb, adverb, adjective, pronouns.

Metaphorical words are word groups.  Eg. holey - full of holes, holy-devine, wholly.

Question:  when would we find the time to do this? How can A.I help with this?  What are the primary schools doing.

Bite size.  It’s the language that’s tricky, not you.  Eg. Government Concepts.

Make no assumptions that students can read.  And they can’t pronounce it.  

To know a word, say it, read it, write it is the easy bit.  Knowing and explaining the meaning of words is the powerhouse of reading and writing English. 

Context: using the word in utterance and sentences - appropriate and detailed usage.

Explanation ready:  explaining the word’s meaning without using the word.

Create vocab list relevant lists for each subject at the start of the unit (Key concepts and vocab).  

Team Implementation:  Discuss and review, make no assumptions, plan and start now, increase your knowledge and awareness.

Primary school level. More preventive on top of what we already do. Confidence.  Self-efficacy and fixed mindset coming into secondary school with this, it will be harder to unlearn.  The blame should be on the language not the student.  It’s all catch-up the workload it puts teacher on us, in a perfect environment. We are relieving subject areas and I want are relieving.

Streaming kids is important to support structured literacy for that stream. 

Supporting our students in the Literacy Reading Co-requisites

One of the challenges we are having this year is how to best support students to pass the Literacy reading co-requisite.  In May of this year, our first group sat it and of the 148 students tested, 122 were Stanine 5 and below.  As a result of those chosen to sit the corequisite reading assessment only 5 of the 30 who sat the test succeeded which is very low. To support students before their next attempt in September, our level up crew ran a number of intensives where a core group of Heads of Learning provided time during their non-contacts to guide students through revision. We pitched our idea to our curriculum meeting.

In my session today, I decided I would be a fia poto (know it all) and read aloud the co-requisite text and guide the students through the questions. Below are two example of the texts and questions I read aloud.

Straight away, I could see and hear the complexities of the text in them not understanding the context or words that were unfamiliar to them.  I asked students to think about replacing the word with another word that they would know to try and make it make sense.  I also asked them think of the sound the word made.  I was trying to pull out all the strategies.

At the end of the session, I discussed the challenges with Marc who shared his updated literacy plan and he agreed with the challenges saying 'The texts and questions above highlight the need for our students to experience a wide variety of texts during their junior years at secondary school. Many of our junior students do not distinguish between fiction and non-fiction'.

Similarly, the text on Polynesian food, although relatable still remained a challenge for some students because they rushed ahead thinking they could answer it without reading the text. This was a challenge that Marc also identified as a "lack of engagement with the texts in this practice test is symptomatic of their comprehension skills. These skills need to be taught systematically". (Marc Literacy @ T.C doc)

This experience has reminded me about the need to be prepare my year 9's with their reading by going wide and deep and ensuring creater care is taken by the students to engage with the reading fully before answering the questions.

COL Inquiry #9: My casual chain

Explain in detail your theories about why that intervention would positively impact on the problem of student learning (i.e. explain the causal chain you theorised).

"A causal chain is when a cause leads to an effect and that effect becomes the cause of another effect.  A leads to B. B leads to C. C leads to D.  Any intervention you design will (consciously or not) be based on a causal chain you have in mind - this is your theory of action." (Link here)

Reading strategies and frameworks with Marc Milford

Our literacy expert Marc Milford shared a literacy framework that he had researched as one that could potentially support our learners in their journey to become better readers.  Green Bay High School had been identified by the Ministry as a school that had effective practices that got kids ready for CAA and had supportive teacher practices that caused shifts in their practice (link here for the Green Bay High example).

They seemed really on to it and the Science of Learning and Reading has been embedded in their school like our RISE values are at our school.

One of the strategies that students have identified as helping them was called 'a literacy system' that has been embedded across the school.  Below is one of their posters and also a copy of Marc's notes that he has shared with staff.

NCEA Common Assessment Tasks 

Green Bay High School’s structured literacy approach

Key Points:

• the Green Bay example is looking for teacher consistency in conveying reading skills.

• Students ask, how do I approach a text, what do I do next.

• Teachers asked, how can our strategies be inclusive of all students

• how can our approach be informed by the science of learning and the science of 

reading

• how can we engage in deliberate acts of reading instruction

What I want to do is use a few of the interventions as strategies to support my year 9 learners.

COL Inquiry #6: Academic/professional reading and hypothesis

Find 3 Pieces of academic/professional reading. Explain how they and other sources helped you form hypotheses about aspects of teaching that might contribute to current patterns of learning.

Reading ONE: The Reading apprenticeship
The  Reading Practice Intensive (R.P.I) is a programme that was being run in terms 2 and 3 for those staff who were interested in the support to meet the demands and changes to new policy mandates, which they had built into the Year 7-10 RPI design.  The aims of the programme were to:
Building readiness for the reading and writing co-requisite unit standards and the common literacy assessment activities; dText set approaches to teaching reading strategies, skills and dispositions to support deep learning and ākonga literacy improvement;
A shared ‘pillars of reading’ framework that can be used to scale practices across teams and departments, in line with cross curricula (Te Mātaiaho), cross-subject and Common Practice Model approaches;
Draws on research based practices from Reading Apprenticeship in the secondary subject disciples and Secondary Literacy: A Teacher Handbook.
I clicked on Reading Apprenticeship and watched a video showing a Science teacher teaching and reading aloud supporting the students with a text.

Teacher modelling to the class:
I noticed that this is exactly what I do with my students but I see we could spend more time asking the questions.  One of the techniques was breaking down the title of the article.  The teacher models breaking down the title then asks the questions and writes it around the article.   Then she asked the students if there was anything they missed and to add to it.
Individual tasks:
Student then practiced on their own the same technique.
Group:  Then students got into groups and discussed the text together.
Class:  Students reported the questions/queries back to teacher as a whole class.  Teacher repeated the question back to the students and a shared understanding of the text was gathered.
The approach looks at 4 key dimensions below:

What Does a Reading Apprenticeship Classroom Look Like?  This I read through this document outlining some basics.  Here are some (mainly Science) curriculum specific units and I liked the History one. 
I found heaps of good accessible resources on this site and I am interested in learning more about rubric’s like this one; Rubric-for-Student-Self-Assessment-of-Collaborative-Work.pdf

Reading TWO:  Nicola Wells CoL Teacher Report 2019 - Discussion Points, Conclusions and Suggestions

In 2019, Nicola Wells who was an across school COL teachers wrote a comprehensive report on her inquiry called 'Accelerated reading comprehension in students arriving at Tamaki College from Manaiakalani cluster Primary schools'.

Some of her key findings that I found interesting were:

Reading mileage - suggestion

To improve reading comprehension I propose that reading mileage - time spent actively reading a wide range of texts for a range of reasons, engaging in repeated reading of the same text, or engaging in supplementary comprehension strategies - should be increased. 

In the Secondary school additional reading mileage could be implemented during one of the single, 50-minute periods for many of the core subjects such as Science, Social Studies, Health and History, as it already is in English. Question generation and comprehension could be tailored to suit reading comprehension in each subject. For example, reading in History and Social Studies would suit the Questioning the Author package/routine while question generation targeting fact recognition and reliability would suit Science. 

Summarisation is supported as a reading comprehension strategy by multiple studies. Sencibaugh (2005) reported that some auditory/language-dependent strategies had a great impact on reading comprehension for students with reading disabilities, including ‘paragraph restatement’ and ‘summarisation.’

Reading THREE: Understanding the Science of Reading in the 'Reading League' (notes here)

How these readings helped me to form a hypothesis.

My hunch at the start of the year was that my learners were struggled to read because they were in the right learning environment and this has distracted them from their learning. Our students arrive at our school well below the national norm and this leads to a lack in engagement and motivation to engage in learning about reading.

From these readings, it is clear that the science of reading and structured literacy is an important approach to achieving success.  A key factor to succeed in Senior Social Sciences is the ability to critically think and comprehensively describe and understand key concepts and unpacking meaning of language is important.  Teacher modelling and reading mileage is another way to improve reading comprehension.

My biggest takeaway being the amount of time I need to spend focusing on modelling the understanding of key words through phonetic sounding out of words, something which I have done in the past, but can work if used in more frequency.  Developing and utilising a simple framework that would deepen their understanding of the text their reading is another area I want to explore further.

Staff PLD: Informing our Staff about our Inquiries

Today we presented our inquiries to our staff to take stock of where we were at.

My inquiry:

Can understanding PAT testing better support our year 9 readers.

Do I kids know their learning and can they articulate it?  

• Gathered Evidence through survey’s and PAT’s.  

• Scanned using my own teacher judgement and discussions with some of the other teachers of these classes.

• Created hypothesis about my own teaching eg. If I really unpacked the PAT tests and understood the gaps, I can help my learners.  If they could understand the tests, they will know why they are important.

Research suggests a whole lot of things eg. like creating communities of readers and a school with a culture of reading.  I remember we did Accelerated readers and we used once a day pick up a box in here with a class set of different books for students to read because research showed that if they read for a least 20 mins a day, that would accelerate their literacy rate.  What are we doing now?

Research in a secondary school found Huntly College 

Vision Huntly College is associated with reading; leaders are readers

Mission Working together to support staff and the student leaders to promote and inspire Huntly College students to read for pleasure and wellbeing

Our knowledge of reading at Huntly College comes from research over several years by two different groups in the school using different methods. The first investigation of the reading culture at Huntly College was carried out in 2019 when a curious teacher new to the school wanted to find out if and what students at Huntly College were reading. What was found out was that the reading culture at Huntly College was minimal with few students reading and one parent specifically saying not to teach Māori boys to read. To quote, "Don't teach Māori boys to read, all they need to do is know how to dig holes on my farm".

I’m interested in finding out what is our current reading culture at Tamaki, do we need a refresh and what becomes of our school library and reading programmes now that our lovely Librarian Ebenezer is gone.

NEXT STAGES we are currently looking at is our Plan stages:

What is a PAT test?

Identifying key gaps and using the data more effectively to create strategies to shift achievement

Know your learners! Knowledge & skills in making meaning (reading), relevant to all learning areas. Your learners in comparison to other learners in Tamaki College, as well as in comparison to national learners. Grouping of your learners.  Use the range, highest to lowest. Identify gaps & needs. Help to use differentiated teaching strategies. ‘No one size fit all’ No one is left behind

Draft unit plan for ESOL here

Create a teaching template fit for Sos using the Literacy matrix for reading around the 3 Big Ideas:

• Make sense of written text 

• Read critically 

• Read for different purposes

Working with Graeme Ball who is our NCEA facilitator

Steps Web programme with Mary-Ann

Working with the Level Up team to support a school wide approach to literacy and numeracy

Survey of students ‘what are you reading?’

Survey of staff 

Intervention:  Trying these strategies

Research for reading

An inquiry into building a culture of reading at Huntly College

Hands up if in the last week you have read a book (non-fiction, fiction).  Did you know that research shows that if teachers read and share a love of reading so we should take into account reading role model

COL Inquiry #5: Summarise your key findings

1. Summarise your key findings about the nature and extent of the student problem

After gathering data from PAT results, discussing how to identify struggling readers with a literacy expert and gathering student voice as well as my own observations, I have summarised some key findings to the nature and extent of the student problem.

• Most students want to read but there are some barriers which push it to the background, like trying to get used to new classmates, new systems, new ways of teaching.
• The Science of reading needs to be explored better through structured literacy so that kids who are feeling forced to read and don't understand the mechanics and the why of reading.
• Boys would rather play sport then sit and read.
• Regular reading needs to be a learnt habit.
• Reading in short bursts works best because kids become distracted.

In summary, my hunch is that my year 9's are still transitioning and moving into specialist curriculum areas that all have different approaches to reading is a struggle.  They tell me that time constraints may not allow them time they want to process information, even though we had moved to one hour periods.  

I need the students to be critical thinkers which is an important social science skill to have and this needs to be built through understanding the why of reading better. Unfortunately, the reality for the majority of my year 9 kids right now is that they struggle to get one task completed during our class time.  This is leading to a lack of engagement by the less able students and a lack of motivation by the more able.  By making things like their PAT tests more transparent and understandable, students may be more likely to feel invested in their learning.

2. Explain how some of the data you have used to build a profile of the students’ learning will be used as baseline data at the end of the year.

The data I will look at will be PAT reading results to compare test 1 to test 2 as well as mid-term exams.

COL Inquiry #4C: Discussions to identify our struggling readers with Marc Milford

One of the key ways to understand the challenge of reading for our juniors is to see how departments across our school are unpacking the problem to help solve it.  I sat with Marc to talk about one of the main challenges around reading in his many hours of trying to understand our learners needs.  Here are the notes I took from our meeting.