Breakout group discussion on Homework
I had been feeling a bit down about my class survey results, but others reported similar results, so I can see that my students are not alone in not enjoying reading. One thing which I want to ask students about is the data from the question about connecting what they read to their culture. At the moment, students are reading self-chosen library books in class, so if they are not finding their culture reflected, there could be different reasons for this, including student choice of book.
Dorothy Burt – Shared Pedagogy and Kaupapa in the Context of Reading
We began by recapping our learning from Day 1, including the Valued Reading Outcomes and the Learn-Create-Share pedagogy.
Literacy has been a key focus for Manaiakalani from the start. The common practice model was designed by the Manaiakalani teachers and was where the Learn-Create-Share pedagogy originated. Teachers were asked to design their own model for literacy teaching and share it with their colleagues. It was during the discussion of these models that teachers began to refer to the ‘Learn’, the ‘Share’ and the ‘Create’ – saying things like, “It was during the Create that…” An example of one of these models is the following one from Karen Fergusen at Tamaki College:
Learning is social: we need to include others in our learning. Students’ learning blogs are key in providing an audience outside the immediate classroom. To make the audience authentic, we need to engage with learners’ blogs, get students to comment on each others’ blogs, and also interact with other Manaiakalani schools.
Dorothy also emphasised the importance of podcasting – students need to have the opportunity to orally record what they have written and/or record themselves reading other texts. This encourages students to work on fluency in their reading.
Naomi – Backwards Mapping from Ambitious Reading Outcomes
Backwards mapping from ambitious reading outcomes (Unit Std 32403). This session took a look at the Reading CAA as the ultimate destination, and the need for us to plan for our students to meet that standard. As with the PD session Kiri ran with us last year here at ŌC, my main takeaway is that the assessment questions are not straightforward and require quite complex inferences – I actually got one question wrong in the sample text we looked at in my group!
Naomi said that response to text is going to be one of the main strategies suggested – I understood this to mean teaching comprehension strategies explicitly through a guided reading programme.
Kiri – Assessment 101 and Janet – Deep Dive into Assessment Data
Interpreting PAT data:
“Being able to compare a learner’s achievement level with the difficulty level of questions can be useful when examining which questions were answered correctly. For instance, when a learner has not correctly answered a question located well below their scale score, this could indicate an area of need in their future learning.” – PAT Pānui Kaiako Guide
“Reflective questions kaiako can ask about the data include:
• What patterns can you see—for instance, across questions representing the different comprehension attributes or the options selected for a particular question?
• What types of text genres and questions do your ākonga cope with well?
• What texts and question types are your ākonga finding difficult? • Are there common themes across groups of ākonga who did or did not excel?
• How have ākonga experiences and opportunities to read in the classroom and at home affected achievement?”
– PAT Pānui Kaiako Guide
I found these two sessions really helpful in identifying precise learning targets for students. I had known that the PATs gave good formative data, but have never really used it or understood where to find and interpret what I needed. I found that the data was a lot more accessible and practical than I had believed. I had no idea that the assessment data had handy links to the ARBs which provide curriculum level texts to use.
The following slide summarised the five key skills the PAT Reading Comprehension test is assessing:
Naomi – Keeping Track of Learning
Naomi introduced us to the teacher workbook. I like the way it provides a really useful way of identifying the curriculum objectives (the new English Y0-6 and current English Y7-13) relevant to any reading focus identified from the PAT data.
Kiri – Developing Assessment-Capable Learners: Using Learning Intentions and Success Criteria
The LIs should connect to the Know-Understand-Do in the curriculum. Take the context out and focus on the transferrable skill. The LI can be about the process rather than the product.
Not all tasks need detailed success criteria and not all tasks lend themselves to co-construction e.g. where students do not have a certain level of understanding of the skill or terminology.
Follow-up back at College – ‘Homework’
I chose a focus group of students from my Y10 Humanities class. These 5 students are working at curriculum level 4 for reading. I analysed their individual PAT item reports and the errors they had made, to identify the three key skills they need to develop:
- Local Inference
- Interpret & Integrate
- Critique & Evaluate
Of these, I identified Local Inference as the most important skill to focus on for this group initially, as the other two are dependent on it. I chose the following Achievement Objective from English curriculum level 4:
Inferring: independently predict, interpret and analyse text, ‘reading between the lines’ to gain a deeper meaning.
From this AO, I developed the following Learning Goal to share with the group:
Making inferences, drawing conclusions and getting meaning from the text by ‘reading between the lines’ (infer; inferring; inference) to understand the author’s purpose.
The success criteria I shared with the students for them to self-assess whether they have met the Learning Goal were:
I can:
-
- Explain what ‘infer’ or ‘reading between the lines’ means;
- Use clues to “read between the lines”
- Find examples of “reading between the lines” in the text.
- Explain the difference between reading “on the line” and “between the lines”
I created the following Response to Text guided reading task which I shared with my target group via their class workspace. The text I used was from the ARBs linked on the NZCER Assist PAT website for “Local Inference” at Curriculum Level 4.
I then videoed myself running the guided reading session with the target group. My mentor, Megan, viewed the video and, based on our coaching discussion, I have identified the following next steps for this group and the class:
- Get choice boards sorted for every reading group for next week. For this first session with my target group, I set other work for the rest of the class, but ideally, I want to run a rotation system, so I see every group for guided reading while the other groups are working on their choice board activities.
- I need to have a discussion with the target reading group around when to help another student and when to give them time to work things out for themselves. For example, I asked a student to sound out a word which he was having trouble with, but other group members jumped in and told him how to pronounce it.
I have also made a resolution to get my blogpost from Day 3 published on the day!