Italian man changes tyre on moving car!

Here is another example of a fiction text.  I enjoy looking for interesting text that is up-to-date and catering for the diverse interests and needs of my target students.  This text came from KiwiKidNews.  

Quick Questioning SSR + Q

Today the target group of Year 9/10 students practised using the Highlight Tool in Google Docs.  Student Example:

SSR+Q Update

This term we have spilt the Year 9/10 students into two different groups of year 9/10's.  My English class consists of 12 students, from working at NZ Curriculum Level 2-3.  I teach seven English sessions over two weeks.   This term the students have started working on Core Power Up.  Along with this they have been practicing the SSR-Q with mainly current event articles.  I have started to introduce fiction texts; the areas being highlighting are characters. setting, plot, character, climax and conflict.  Here is an example of the article and non-fiction: 

Article:

Non-Fiction: 

Prototype testing - Part 1 Getting Started

Part 1 - Getting Started 

Firstly, I tested my prototype with a small group of students.  We ran through the process step by step.  I covered skim, scan, and read in this lesson.  In the next lesson with this group we recapped (skim, scan and read) and read and answered the questions.  Taking it slow was the go because I wanted the students to be successful and achieved the goal - with supported. 

For this very first trial I choose a Level 2 piece of text on Puanga.  The text was relevant to students in the group because one of the students had come from Hawera so he knew of the area and the others knew about Puanga because we celebrate it at school. The original text had a lot of visual information which I didn't want the students to see; this was not the focus.  I typed the text into a word document and shared this through Håpara Workspace - see the examples below. 

Before: 

After: 

Celebrating Puanga at Ramanui

Near the maunga (mountain) of Taranaki a small school is

celebrating a very special event. Every year, Ramanui School in

Hāwera honours the arrival of the star Puanga.  When Puanga

appears in the eastern sky just before dawn, it marks the start of

the Māori New Year in Taranaki. 

Puanga and Matariki 

In many parts of Aotearoa, people celebrate the Māori New Year

when Matariki (a group of stars also known as the Pleiades) appears. 

However, if you live in Taranaki, Matariki is hard to see because it’s

very low in the eastern sky.  Instead, the people of Taranaki look for

Punaga (also called Rigel).  Puanga is the very bright star that can be

seen above the three stars named Tautoru (or Orion’s Belt).

SSRQ:

Skim - down the text

Scan - across the text

Read  - the whole text 

Question - go back over the text to find the answer to the questions. 

Questions:

Where is this story set? 

Who is the story about?

When did the events take place?

What happened?

How do people of Ramanui celebrate Puanga?

Haratua Hui - KPMG # Rua

Living the corporate lifestyle for a day was a great opportunity of what working in an office space might look like for our tamariki.  The soundproof booth was a great addition to the workspace, I personally would benefit from a quiet breakout space during the day to reflect or connect. 

Listening to my MIT colleagues present where they were at gave me an opportunity to consider what I needed to do next and the steps to get there.  I still need to include student voice by interviewing individual students who want to share their understanding of how to answer questions.

Where am I at: 

• I need to do further investigation gaining student voice,
• Start using the digital tool - a google doc template, the highlighter tool and find tool.  
• Collect examples of written text from different curriculum subject areas to provide cross-curricula examples. 
• Connect with secondary staff who might be interested in trialing this digital tool in their space.
• Pull together/create/represent key points from the research I have read thus far. 

 

Thanks MIT team for a great hui.

Reflection - where am I at?

It was great meeting up in the City of Sails at a super venue, the KPMG buildings.  From student data I felt I needed to take a step back to consider how lower order questioning helps students gain a basic entry level for understanding the text.  The challenge has been changing my mindset from engaging with higher order thinking skills, to inference and/or lower order skills.  I feel I am still not there yet on the concept I want to tackle with my Year 9/10 learners.  I decided to research into bringing all my ideas together to analyse what might be happening.  Heres what I found out:  

When I analysed  The Pedagogy Wheel V5 against Sheena Cameron's Reading Comprehension Strategies (2009), most of these reading strategies sit at the lower level of Bloom's taxonomy:  remember and understand:

Where to next:  I feel I need to do further investigating, researching, synthesising of information into predict, synthesis and visualise to decide what reading strategy I will focus on.  Here is a brief overview of them:

• Predicting - can set the purpose for reading;
• Visualising  - can support self-monitoring (meta cognition); and 
• Synthesising - can create ownership of thinking.

Prototyping: going through the experience of prototyping was very beneficial for me.  I found working with other professionals who are also focused on raising student achievement was helpful. This experience may have to recreated with my new challenge statement.

Data Collection

 What data have you collected in Term 1, how did you collect it?

I have collected data from the PAT Reading Comprehension Results for Years 9 and 10 students at my kura.  I will also be considering if this data is reflected in the Data from EdPortal for my regional and national evidence from the Manaiakalani Research Team.  I have also completed some Probe reading tests. 

Empathise - how does the students feel?

 We continued with another role play to demonstrate what it is like for a child in the classroom who has my problem.  We worked in pairs,  I was acting out questioning a students using lower order questions and then higher order questions.  The student, could answer the lower order questions but shrugged their shoulders and grunted with the higher order question.  Here is the image of my Empathise Poster: 

How might we...

The How Might We... turned the problem into a solution, which was a fantastic way of reframing the problem.  I had already recorded some ideas of how to reframe the problem like how are teachers preparing students to become critical thinkers?  How will students recognise that they are being taught different concepts/higher order thinking (H.O.T) skills?   People at the hui contributed to each other's How Might We... by writing a prompt or question.  Here is my poster: 

The Who?

We then continued to discuss the Who... who would be able to support this project?  I included teachers that I currently have contact with and one teacher who in the past has supported our school.  The Manaiakalani Research team, and our facilitators Meryn and Fiona would also be great support. 

Manaiakalani Innovator Teachers 2022

Ideate the Crazy 8's

Ideate - Crazy 8's was a great exercise to complete.  Funnily enough I added the last one as a crazy idea, but have always thought of creating a YouTube channel and/or videos to support student learning.  This happened to be the most popular idea from the other teachers.  Here is my poster: 

Recounting Kuaotunu Hui

We landed in Auckland ready to pick up the rental car. Anna and I had been on a number of digital technology courses before so we were busily catching up when we missed our turn off, out of Auckland.  Once we arrived in the beautiful coastal town of Kuaotunu I knew this was going to be a special place to be able to take the time to think and reflect, and it was.

I was attending along with four other colleagues from around NZ the Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher initial hui in Kuaotunu, 24 - 26th February 2022. 

We started the Saturday with Dorothy (Board Chair)  and Jenny (the Principal) acting out our identified problems, we took on different roles representing the parent community.  This helped to clarify how different people viewed our individual problem.  For me I realised I was too critical of teachers and reframed my problem from the point of view of the students. 

This hui at Kuaotunu was a fantastic way to learn, create, share, connect, and reflect.