Manaiakalani TOD

On the last day of Term 1, we had a Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day with a focus on literacy. The inspiring Keynote speaker; Dr Rae Si'ilata talked about “What is effective practice when it comes to reading, and what is effective practice for our communities?” She talked about culturally responsive pedagogy and effective bilingual/biliteracy practice for our Pasifika learners. Throughout her presentation, she shared personal experiences and anecdotes which really hit home and gave me some perspective. My biggest takeaways were to always privilege the native speaker in the room, include more bilingual texts and texts need to act as mirrors, not windows! Get the learners to write their own stories and then read them! What is their story?

I also attended three workshops led by other Manaiakalani teachers where I reflected on my practice and learnt some new strategies that I can implement.

Workshop 1 = Shared Reading & Integrated Learning
Workshop 2 = Better Start Literacy

Workshop 3 = Deep Diving into the text

Dr Shawn Hawthorne: ‘What works for teaching ‘reluctant’ writers?’

In Term 1 we were lucky enough to have Dr Shawn Hawthorne share a presentation around ‘What works for teaching ‘reluctant’ writers?’

Here are my takeaways: 

The data:
- By Year 4, 25% of students are achieving below level 2 

- Girls score better than boys on most writing tasks 

- Attitude towards writing declines with age

- Maori and PI students have lower scores than Pakeha students

Engagement can be considered to have 3 key elements:
1. Behavioural 

2. Cognitive 

3. Emotional 

Researchers have recently added ‘ agency’ as a 4th element.

Sometimes children fail to engage because they do not see themselves as writers, they don’t see a need for writing, writing is too hard and it will end in mistakes to correct. Engagement is essential for other conditions to ‘click’. 

Factors that affect engagement:

Something that stood out to me was the Key Belief of ‘all students are able to improve their writing.’ One way we can help these students improve is by giving them strategic knowledge which involves developing their knowledge and skill, in using strategies that help them to effectively manage the demands of the writing process. 

Shawn Hawthorne’s Effective pedagogy for teaching writing closely links with the information I shared in the Writing Process PLD which I co-presented with Anita and Gina at Stonefields School. He believes there are 8 effective practices for teaching writing:

Practises 5 and 7 closely align to The Writing Process I have been implementing in my learning design to teach writing.

Delving deeper into the challenge of student learning: Preliminary findings

After our last PLG we were asked to frame our focus around the desired change we wanted to see in student learning NOT a change in teaching (as yet!). As teachers, we naturally try to think of what tools we can use to help students first. But before I do that I need to really understand the nature and extent of the challenges the learners are facing when writing.
For example, when learners come and show me their writing after self and peer feedback - they still don’t have full stops/capital letters. They are unable to feedback in writing.. Why is this?  Learner Voice and Writing Samples
This is what the learners said:

e-asTTle Writing scores

This graph shows e-asTTle data from my Year 2 target learners from the beginning of the year. As shared in a previous blog post the learners School Talk gap analysis shares similar findings with this other data.

My reflection of this baseline data is the learners don’t know
what their next steps are in writing and they are unaware
they have multiple tools/supports to help them.
It is clear they have gaps in:

- Punctuation: learners are not including the basics such as
capital letters and full stops.
- Spelling: high-frequency words are spelt incorrectly and
they are unaware they have tools/supports to help them
with their spelling.

How can I create explicit tools/supports that promote feedback
and create a greater shift in their writing?

Target Learner 1: Male, Year 1
Sri Lankan

 

Target Learner 2: Female, Year 2
NZ European

  Target Learner 3:   Male, Year 1 Chinese

Target Learner 4: Female, Year 1 Sri Lankan Target Learner 5: Male, Year 2 Russian

Target Learner 6: Male, Year 1 Polish