Some Observations ...

As the term comes to a close I am in a position where I am able to reflect on the learning of my colleagues over the term. I have the great task of perusing through people's programs and I now take a totally different view of them. I am able to see the learning that has occurred through evaluations. I am also able to observe the development of teacher understanding and how their prfessional development has led to a change in practice. The movements that are occurring in thinking are small but significant shifts which enable the engagement of students at a much more productive level. I suppose the goal now is how to sustain such significant learning across the school.

An Exciting Time!

It is with great excitement that I make this post about what happened in Learning Support today. It was a combination of differentiation with web2 tools and what I saw as a result was high engagement of the learner!

How did I do it?

I set up both a Voicethread and a Wiki for each of the boys in my group. Understanding that 3 of the boys are reading at the same level, hence reading the same book and one of the boys is reading at a lower level, hence an easier text. Each boy was able to listen to the text and then complete the task that I had created for them on their own wiki. One child who, if given pen and paper, would never have cared about spelling was asking me how to spell each of the unknown words that he wanted to write and then double checking those words he did know but had spelt incorrectly! The boy who reads at a lower level multi tasked in that he listened to the story, returned to the wiki, identified words from the story to complete the task in the wiki, returned to the voicethread to listen again.

At one stage I stood there thinking "OK now what do I do?" !!!

What were the drawbacks of the lesson?

It took a bit of setting up (the voicethread, the Wiki) but really probably no more than would have been given to finding a task out of a text book. It took time to set the computers up and to help the boys navigate the sites - probably about 15mins. But now that they know how to do it next time should be easier.

Does this mean that I would do this type of lesson all of the time?

No I don't think it would suit every lesson and the variety of what is done is just as important.

How does this fit with differentiation?

Now that is easy to answer. Every boy worked at his own pace and was able to complete the work at the level of which he was capable of. I was able to clearly see the responses and the differences between them. It gave me a good indication of what each boy was capable of and how I could further adapt tasks for them in the future.

I'd love to share this learning at one of our meetings! - TMS

Sydney Morning Herald

Last Saturday there was an article in the herald that outlined the importance of oral language within the English curriculum. I believe that differentiation can begin very simply at this level. With all that happens in a school day, term or year we tend to find ourselves rushed in our work and forget about the quality of the oral engagement that is essential for students to have. This engagement allows them to bring another dimension to the text and their writing. We almost treat it incidentally in our classes. As part of my project I am going to look carefully at what the English syllabus and its support documents say about the teaching of oral language. I will also investigate the work of Love and Rielly. My research will include some PENS that I have from PETA as well as some of the texts published by this association.

Differentiation

Attending a recent inservice conducted by Sarah McDonagh from CSU provided some great ideas in the areas of Comprehension, Fluency and Vocabulary. She outlined the concept of a comprehensive approach to the teaching of reading that is designed to improve student outcomes in literacy. Her handouts contain ideas for reading groups and websites that can be accessed to give more ideas of intensive instruction for struggling readers.All information is available from learning support.
Wendy

MULTILIT

Wendy and I made a very useful visit to our colleague Suzanne in St. Nick's at Penrith yesterday afternoon and she showed us the MULTILIT programme and we saw what it entailed and I certainly think it would be a very good programme for our struggling readers in Primary. We also got an opportunity to look at STARS & CARS which is a new programme from Hawker Brownlow and this had some wonderful ideas that we will share at our next meeting on comprehension. The books contained wonderful lessons that might help teachers in Reading Groups. Suzannes gave us the loan of one of the books so we will show them at our next meeting. I think MULTILIT maybe a goer because it is so reasonably priced so when we do our feedback to the staff we can speak about both these programmes.

Frustrating beginnings!!

Well I have to admit...I've had a pretty frustrating time trying to get my project started. I had a great idea....but I ended up having 'technical problems' that took the luster out of my endeavours for a while. How is everyone else going?

I'm happy to say that I'm back on track...but my 'research time' has sort of taken a back seat. I happened to mention the idea of audio recordings to a student & his parent...the pressure is on to now to record & send home stories immediately...I didn't get time to do my preliminary data gathering!! This is the reality of school sometimes...action first...research later, (if ever ...)

I wonder if I chose a different 'target student' whether I could just use the same recordings & books with them...after a proper data gathering exercise?

I suppose this is a real example of 'trial and error' ...
Frances

Where we are up to in Week 4

After our meeting on Wednesday, we've agreed that we are all up to obtaining data from students that will act as our 'pre-project' data.

Each of us has done some reading & have found a real emphasis on spoken language, modeling and conversation as being essential components of successful reading /literacy programs. Reading seems to be an area of interest for some of us, (particularly focussing on the strugglers) & we discussed the need to encourage and model good language & vocabulary in the infants grades especially. We also talked about using our projects to help in suggesting strategies and activities in Reading Groups throughout the school.

Next week will be a time to 'really get into it'!
Frances