Organizing our presentation

Wednesday 24th October
Today we met to refine our projects and findings for our presentation. We have all been working on the theme of differentiation but using a wide variety of activites. My Year 6 students have been working on an intensive reading program that introduces the complex vocabulary that will be required in Year 7. It is based on specific phonic knowledge and encourages them to continually increase their scores in a simialr motivational style to DIBELS.The improvement has been amazing and they are beginning to see themselves that they can now read a wider range of words. Their confidence has grown and they now take home their word lists to practice in order to get a better score.The program is designed for Stage 3&4 students and runs for 5-10 weeks depending on need.
Many other programs were discussed as we have all tackled differentiation in a variety of ways. Lots of success stories which is great to hear.
HFS ws

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

Investigating the effects of vocabulary on the reading process

My work as part of the Learning Support unit has led me to a more realistic understanding of what it is that a reader needs to bring to the text to experience success. As I work in this area I am gaining a greater understanding of the both the expressive and receptive abilities of students and how these effect their reading and learning of literacy. Within my project I would like to further explore the use of vocabulary within the classroom. At the moment my ideas are around breaking open the talking and listening outcomes of the English syllabus using the backward mapping strategy. What do other people think? I am seeing evidence of talking and listening being the "poor cousin" of reading and writing.

MULTILIT - a method of supporting struggling readers

Through my studies and talking to other SPED teachers I have become aware of the value of MULTILIT - which is a programme devised at Macquarie Uni which helps students from Year 1 who are struggling with literacy. It is a step by step programme that you run for 30 minutes a day for a 10 week period. I am aware that St. Joseph's at Kingswood use MULTILIT and I am going to approach Ros Wheaton to see if I can go there and see the programme in action. It would be wonderful to have a specific programme that reinforces or re teaches those skills that some children need to have repeated frequently. I feel that by investigating this programme I can support those students who need more intervention than what we offer in reading groups.

Differentiation ... Trying to put some thoughts together

I am making my way through the readings given to our group (many thanks for those!) and I have come across the following ideas that are really standing out in my mind:

• meaningful participation of students
• student ability to access the curriculum
• active engagement in the curriculum
• all students do not learn in the one way
• active learning
• student connection with the subject matter

Much of what I've read reinforces the Quality Teaching Model and it's associated merits. I believe that many of us as teachers have in fact operated within a differentiated model of instruction for many years. However, the difference is that we have not had a model or concrete structure on which to base our work. What I would like to achieve throughout this project is not only an improvement in student outcomes but also a structure or model of differentiation that might be applied at the local level. This obviously means that we would need some sort of research base from which to operate and the collective wisdom of the group may enable this to be achieved. It would be good for us, once this project is completed, to have some model out of which we could operate and continue to improve learning outcomes for other students. Am I on a similar track of thinking to the rest of the team?

A Complete Turnaround!

I think I am going to have a complete 'turnaround' with the direction of my project! I still will focus on differentiation, but after attending a very interesting inservice on Monday, I think I'll try a different approach to the one I was going to take!

The inservice was on audio books & the methods a school has used for distributing these resources through their library. After hearing some of the teachers discussing the educational advantages of such a program, & realising that the cost and 'set up' are relatively 'cheap', I think I'll investigate the impact that such a system might have on improving student outcomes.... on students identified as reluctant readers (& most likely strugglers in this area).

For our school, I've been thinking of the best possible set up & so I purchased an MP3 player today & recorded a story myself. I also set up a 'Box.net' account & loaded the story onto the site. I'm thinking that if I can set it up so that the students can access the files as easily as possible, then some of the 'administrative' problems, (that generally take time), might not surface & the program will be off to a good start.

I think I'll only focus on a small group, maybe those seen to be most needy & I'll target boys as I have background research that supports the use of technology in Literacy activities, especially for boys.

What does the team think?
Frances

Differentiation

It was good brainstorming ideas this morning. Some professional reading in this area should clarify some issues for people. The 2 books I showed the group this morning I will leave on my desk and if anybody wants to borrow them feel free. This is my first attempt at posting a blog so I hope it works!!!!!!
Moira

Let's get started!

This blog is a way for our Project Team A to post and discuss the work we are doing for Professional Development in the area of Quality Teaching -specifically looking at differentiation. I think there will be a lot of overlap with the other Projects our staff are involved in and that's great.
After all, aren't we all simply working towards the same ultimate outcome....to improve student outcomes in their learning?

For myself, I'm struggling with what specifically I want to achieve. Working so closely with technology, and aware of it's possibilities in education at this time, I want our technology based lessons to be more relevant to individual students...and yet authentically addressing syllabus outcomes that the class are exploring.
Presently I'm still in the air...How do I do this? What direction do I take?

I watched a great video from Greg Whitby's 'Bluyonder' blog.

I put it on HFSconversations-it is worth a look...
I liked the way the groups in the class went in their own directions & used technology to both assist their discussions/ learning...and then it helped them to 'show' or present their learnings at the end. I'm really swayed towards this type of model....
What does the team think?
Frances