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?