RPI Day 3
– Reflection on past two weeks in relation to this kaupapa.
What am I proud of? How well the task board activities were received by students. Check them out if you wish.
I also had students who had been fast finishers, go back and complete multiple activities within the ‘Choose One’ section.
What was challenging? Only having my BPL crew for 4 hours a week I found it tough to design a task board for only this time that provides meaningful options to the kiddos.
What helped me achieve my goals (homework)? – the resources and templates and also the time of the term where we are looking towards showcase presentations. It meant that students are able to pick the tasks which were best suited towards their showcase in Week 9 and work towards them.
What do I need help with? – linking specifically to reading specific learning outcomes when I’ve only got 4hrs p/w with the class. So much to try cram in!
Main mahi of the day. Selection of appropriate texts and als othe development of “text sets”.
I think I could try the following text progression in my class and see how they do with engaging with what I have selected.
The Anchor Text: “The Making of a Māori Town: Ōtaki” by Tainui Stephens (E-Tangata)
https://e-tangata.co.nz/reo/the-making-of-a-maori-town-otaki/
**High visual layout online, but vocabulary can be dense. It requires heavy scaffolding.**
Then “On-Ramp” Text: “The Māoriland Story” (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxkxmHFIA3s
Grow inference skills: Students watch the body language and faces of the youth as they talk about their town. How do they feel about Ōtaki?
Contemporary Māori Waiata
https://folksong.org.nz/tangaroa_whakamautai/index.html
Short-form text. For dyslexic learners.
Break down the dong for inferencing skills. Play just the first minute. Ask students about where they think of etc when listening.
Then introduce lyrics – extract powerful statements and focus on what the intention of them is within the song itself.
The one that ties it all together
“Summer is for swimming. But what’s in the water?” (by Shanti Mathias)
http://thespinoff.co.nz/society/15-12-2023/summer-is-for-swimming-but-whats-in-the-water
A researcher who uses the Ōtaki River (awa) to teach swimming and well-being. Discusses the concept of “kauora” and the understanding that swimming in our local rivers isn’t just a sport, it’s about providing, playing, protecting, and enhancing the well-being of the whole whānau.
One really cool and useful skill that was covered was…
Summarising!!
Start with a piece of text
Model – ‘deleting’ all the irrelevant information (the opposite of the old school ‘highlight the important stuff’).
From here, collect groups of ideas that fit together.
This then shows you ‘What is left’ which if done correctly gives you appropriately summarised text.
Through the whole session though (and a common trend with these whole day DP opportunities) I was left with a big revolving question lurking in my pea brain.
I kept thinking about how digital heavy our schooling is becoming and wondering if leaning so heavily on digital was actually having a positive impact on the reading (and learning in general) abilities of our kiddos.
It led me to wondering – what evidence is there about the effectiveness of physical book reading compared to digital text options?
I want to look in to this further but currently I think that we are far too digitally reliant and this is taking away from the teaching and learning of our kids. Might have to collect some student voice about this before end of term and scientific journals too. Plenty out there!