Term 3 inquiry Presentation

Love of reading

Somewhere in the excitement, frustration and enthusiasm of starting up my class of 1-1 iPads, I have forgotten something which is fundamental to children's success and enjoyment of reading.

I have forgotten to be an enthusiastic reader myself.

I used to read often and widely, however life has taken over that time for me and I very rarely sit down to read a book for enjoyment. While I may not be able to grab that time back at this stage of my life for my own personal enjoyment of reading, I need to continue to explicitly model this to my students.

My inquiry has edged away from what my iPads offer me, and it has focused back on what I do as a teacher. Here are my current foci:

Read to my students, at least once a day. Read quality picture books that extend vocabulary, engage the students, and take them on a journey.

Encourage my students to read silently or in a quiet whisper voice from Level 15 and above. Allow them to read at their own pace without always having to wait for others. Instigate discussions around the book where learning is extended beyond that one story.

Foster a love of books, reading, writing, and listening.

Already, my students read to big buddies once a week. They come in to the class in the morning and read to one another. We read in small, guided reading groups almost every day, and share big books or picture books with the class.

Reading should not be a chore - it should be passtime which gives us pleasure and furthers our thoughts, interests and ideas of the world.

My teaching has been changing and evolving during the year. It has been influenced by the professional development we have received as a staff. However the biggest influence has been the children in my class.

Helen Timperley reminds us that when we make pedagogical change, we must make sure that the changes are based on evidence. We must look at the factors that make a difference in acquisition of learning, and the shift in progress of the child. We can get caught up in new ways of teaching and assume that they are making a difference when in fact sometimes they are not.

I have come from an Year 4 extension class who were independent and motivated. They worked confidently with GAFE to learn, create and share. This year my class of Year 2 students have some high learning and behavioural needs. My expectations for them have consequently been very high, but this has at times caused tension between what I expect of them and what they are reasonably able to produce. 

In many ways, these students have taken like ducks to water with the introduction of iPads. However many activities that I have diligently created to extend their learning and help achieve accelerated progress have been too difficult for an independent task.

I have found a tension not only with my expectations of the children, but a tension between the desire and need to give the children activities that are highly cognitively engaging and the absolute necessity to have some quiet time to teach my groups. 

Consequently, I have been spending a lot more time teaching with the Explain Everything activities. This has changed the way I teach as I am spending more quality time on the follow up activities. This has become part of my micro teaching programme.

Quality not Quantity

There is a partially perceived, partially real pressure to push students through the curriculum as quickly as possible. The National Standards of course take much of the blame for this, however while I am a "National Standards Native", I'm sure this pressure existed well before the National Standards took force.

As a school, we are about to embark on some professional development around teaching reading with Dr. Rebecca Jesson. I sense that this will head towards the "quality not quantity" end of the scale too.

While there is a definite need for students in the junior years to read as much as possible, I have been thinking about how to make the learning tasks around these junior books more independent, creative and challenging - looking at the quality of the tasks not the quantity. Our PD this year to date has included SOLO Taxonomy as well as the SAMR Ladder - so the theme of high cognitive engagement is very apparent.

Here are some examples from recent Explain Everything follow up projects:

Using Explain Everything in Maths

I have been thinking about different ways I can use Explain Everything in maths time. I have got many ideas from other teachers, and now I am trying to put some things together to create interesting, motivating, cognitively engaging maths follow up activities.

Heres is where I am at at the moment:

Where am I up to? Term 2 - SLOW DOWN!

Ok, so there has been a lot of thinking going on recently, but not a lot of blogging. I reflect constantly on what I am doing in the classroom, as many teachers do. My reflections sometimes result in a change of practice, sometimes in a conversation with a colleague, sometimes with some research or investigation.

I have been looking at how to create Explain Everything activities that provide high cognitive engagement, specifically in reading. I have come up with some concepts that have worked and I will continue to include in follow up activities, but I have also realised that I am too time poor to change the world in a day. While this sounds overly dramatic, in all seriousness I need to slow down with my changes as it is going to drive myself and my kids batty. My students are never going to be independent if I keep changing what they do. When I think about the greatest need in my class this year, it is to develop some level of independence.

Fortunately, a couple of amazing teachers (Michelle George and Karen Belt) paved the way for this roll out of iPads with an iPad pilot class in 2014. They created a fantastic bank of Explain Everything activities for a number of PM readers and these have become the basis of a lot of the follow up work we are giving our children. The beauty of this is that we can slowly develop our own style of Explain Everything follow up tasks in reading, while having a bank of very good activities to use at the same time. I sometimes use these activities as they are, I sometimes add to them before I give them to the students, and I sometimes create my own from scratch.

Over the holidays I pondered the cognitive engagement of my students in maths time. I hadn't felt like maths had been ticking along particularly well in term one - there seemed to be many interruptions, the students appeared to be even less independent in maths than in literacy, and I was finding it hard to give them things that would extend their knowledge as well as practice essential skills needed for Stages 0-4.

So.... where to next? I'm looking more at maths as well as reading, keeping on sharing ideas with colleagues, and using what is already made and making adaptations to them.

My most recent word of the moment was TEMPLATES. My new words are COLLABORATE and ADAPT.

Keep it real Laura and stop ordering a combo when you really only need the fries.

Inquiry Reflection - Term 1