Structured Literacy approach

 Structured Literacy Session #2

Homework from session #2-

PMI Some found it time-consuming to administer the assessment.  

4/5 is not mastery.

Reviewed Scarborough's Rope 

Decoding Strand

Students need to know the alphabetic principle which is:

Scope and Sequence:

What is it?  Used to teach the a alphabetic principle.  Scope is the breadth and depth of content and skills to be covered.

Sequence refers to how these skills and content are ordered and presented to learners over time. 

WHY? Provides a specific list of content and skills so teachers know what to teach.  I do, We do, You do.  Is systematic.  Keeps a cumulative record of what learners know.  Should be aligned to assessment.  Identifies needs and gaps.  Can measure progress over time.  

The sound is the thing to focus on.  If they don't know the letter, focus on the sound.  If learners can cope, teach both.

OPTIONS

Little Learners

Sunshine Phonics

MOE

The Code Liz Kane

Learning Matters 

How to Use in the Classroom:

Introduce groups of letters a week as per scope and sequence.

Be mindful of similar-looking letters.

Word blending is based on letters learned.

Explicit instruction followed. by guided reading.

Frequent monitoring and assessment.

Students learn at different rates.

Decode-read

Encode-spell and write

Create a sound pack and have daily practise of reading and writing.  Your sound pack will grow.  

Heart Words. 

All of these skills need to be worked on before getting to a book.  

Letter sounds to Word level then connected text...dictation, decodable.

Can send home words and phrases, games home etc.

Sound Packs

Decodable Books-contain the letter sounds that students have learned.  

Sight Vocabulary is when words pop off the page and readers do not have to make a conscious effort.  Orthograophic mapping is when it is automatic.  

If student have orthograpgically mapped words incorrectly, we need to go back to the phonemic awareness.

Parent workshops to support parents to understand what structured literacy is.  Rather than sending a book home, sentences can be printed and sent home.  

Stage 6 is equivalent to Green.  

When using decodable texts, still discuss and look at pictures.  Check out the video in the shared drive.

Structured Literacy Workshop #1

 Structured Literacy Session #1

With Jo Jessep and Lillian Dowd

Purpose:

Deepen knowledge of Structured Literacy and share tips and tricks.

Provide confidence, knowledge and resources.

Share a common goal.

Improve literacy teaching practice that is based on scientific research and evidence.

Focus:  What is Structured Literacy and the importance of phonemic awareness.

Why change?

Plummeting Literacy rates and a range of consequences because of this.  

The Power of Evidence-reasearch shows us how children learn to read.  We need to look at the Science of Reading and align that with the education of reading.  

How do children learn to read?  All children learn to read in the same way!

The Simple View Of Reading

Decoding X Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension

Ability to apply sound and symbol relationships X Ability to understand spoken language=

Helps to understand how children learn to read and what they need in order to be able to read.  

The Reading Brain:  It has been proven that learning to read is not just a visual process.  Learning to read is not a natural process and needs to be taught.  We need to make sure we are using the right parts in order to be able to teach reading. 

How do we encure all children are being taught to read....?

We use a structured, multisensory, literacy approach.

Explicit: Teaching is direct and intentional, teacher modelling I do, we do, you do).  Tecaher led instruction, learning is not implicit or assumed, multi sensory-auditory, visual, kinesthetic.  Reduction in cognitive load theory-take away the unessecary things so they can learn.  

Systematic: Planned in an organised way which moves from simple to complex.

Cumulative: Teaching builds on the previously learned concepts.  Review, move on, review.  

Diagnostic:  assessment, formal and informal, ongoing and informs teaching.  

This is an approach rather than a programme.

The Ladder of Reading:

For 60%, structured literacy is essential and for the other 40% will still benefit and it will be an advantage.  

Phonological Awareness:

Is a key strand and comes under word recognition.

What is phonoligical awareness, phonemic awareness and phonics.  

Add slide 28 here...this is really important and is the foundational information teachers need to know.  

Slide 30 needs to be learned.

My Next Steps:

I feel a little overwhelmed and like I have so much to learn.  My next step is to become more familiar with decodable texts and introduce these to my Literacy group students.  

I also need to do some assessments so I can get a clear picture of what the student needs are.

Accelerated Learning in Literacy

 Accelerated Learning in Literacy Introduction

PfS Programmes for Students

In 2021, I am embarking on a journey in Literacy through the ALL intervention.  This week I had the opportunity to attend a session for teachers who are in their second or third year of running ALL in their schools.

Initially, I wasn't too sure about going to this session and thought I would be better suited to attend the Year 1 session, however, we had our cluster teacher only day which Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey and didn't want to miss out on that.  As it turned out, it was really beneficial for me to be able to have discussions and hear about how things were at the different schools that were present.

My Notes~

Relationships and Connections:

Who are you?

Why are you here?

Why do you do what you do?

ALL is not a programme.  Find out about our students and start with them at the centre.  

Teachers talk a lot.  This year, see if you can talk less and get kids doing more.  

Reggie Routman...check out her 10 ways to be a better writer.

Have a look at the professional readings folder. 

Why ALL? 

1. Lack of pedagogical content knowledge in teachers.  Share and build content knowledge of teachers.  

National Leader Messages 2021 Chris Henderson

Reflections on 2020

• Relationships with whānau improved.

• Lockdown exacerbated existing inequities.  

• Post lockdown, increased focus on integration, key competencies, wellbeing and differentiated teaching.

• Progress in reading and math but not in writing.

Tiers of intervention...levels thing

National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement

About 80+% of teachers would say their focus is on writing.  The others say reading.  Need to ask ourselves why that is.  Is it us?

• The more students read, the better readers they became.

• Reading at home is linked to achievement.

• If students lack confidence are more likely to be below.

• Some can’t see the links between stories/books and life.

• Students report they didn’t have opportunities to share their writing.  If we are going to write, what is our purpose for writing?

• If you read, greater life expectancy.

What Can We Do More Of, in Literacy?

• Accurate information that identifies student needs

• Reading with and to children.  Offers an escape.

• High-quality dialogue within the classroom.  How do we allow opportunities for high-quality dialogue? How can we ensure children connect? 

• Telling and retelling stories.

• A more holistic approach.  Focus on oral language, reading and writing.

• Read and write different texts.  When writers write, they use elements from a range of text types/formats.  Sometimes we get bogged down with text types.  

• Involving whānau schooling and in breaks from school.

• Valuing each child’s identity and what they value.

• Developing critical literacy skills and collaborative reasoning.  Go back to the Literacy Framework.  

• High levels of collaboration across teachers with sharing knowledge and resources.

Key Competencies

Are a focus of ALL.  How can we develop all of these together rather than just alone.  

The Book Whisperer  Pg 51 Donalyn Miller  Sounds like a book we should have.  

WHY PfS ALL?

Change from the current state to the desired outcome.  Start at the WHY

1. Equity-Task:  Read page 6-9 of Sarah Bolton’s Fulbright scholarship paper.  Why do we need equity? Is it fair? Is providing equal education to all students the same as providing an equitable education?  

Encourage students to read like a writer.  What has the author done to keep me interested?  

2. Focus on a Tiered System-

3. Improvement of: student learning, Teachers Pedagogical Content Knowledge, Leadership

4. Lifelong learners.

The How:

Knowledge of learner

Letting students see themselves in the learning

The What:

Selection of students

Knowing the learner beyond the classroom

Connecting with whānau

Valuing prior knowledge student brings to learning

Frontloading

Core and More

Let Adie know about the 19th March Year 1 day

The Tiered System

Tier 1-Majority of children

Tier 2-Need a bit extra-this is where ALL sits.

Tier 3- Few children needing intensive support.

The one shown in the workshop was the other way up/down.

Series of books being released in March and will form part of reading for lower level students.  Decodable texts.  

The Place of Data:

With an intervention we are trying to correct something.  If not all staff are involved in ALL, decisions need to be made about where to put this intervention.  Ideally, the whole school should do this and throw the ALL part out.  This way, it would be an intervention across the school.  If it’s urgent, we need it.  The further through schooling kids are, the more difficult it is to make up that lost time and knowledge.  The target level needs to be the level with the most need.  

An Acceleration Plan:

• Was known as a Curriculum and Achievement plan.  Used to be committed to writing which is still a good idea.  

• What is its purpose?

• Clearly articulates what each of the tiers look like in our school

• Investigate what interventions we have in the school and the process for identifying which tier students are in.  The ideal is for all teachers to be ALL teachers.

• Outlines a process when a ‘good’ idea is suggested as an intervention

• How is Literacy knowledge being built in your school?

Monitoring Progress

A pathway of progress..ask yourself:

• Where do I want this group to be at and the end of intervention?

• How will I plan my teaching to get there? You will perform at this level, what will I do as a teacher to help you get there?  A school statement would be good.

• How often will I monitor the students' progress?

• When I have a sense that what I am doing is not working, what will I do?

• Where do I record this?

• How well can the student te

Teach/Learn/Assess

For the children who are not where they need to be, every second, minute, hour...is important.  We need to move them on.  

Read Developing Assessment Capable Learners.  

What will happen next for my school?

Another Why of PfS ALL:

Improvement of:

• Student achievement

• Teacher Pedagogical Content KNowledge PCK

• Leadership

With the budget provided.  Create a plan for when to take the release and what I will do with the budget.  Use this in the first half of the year due to June changeover.  

Julia Gillard podcast about inequity.  Important qualities of leadership:  1) self-doubt 2) curiosity 3) preparedness to ask questions.  4) developing a high performing team.

UC edPLUS is closed and most are working with Learning Solutions.

Ideas:

• The novel study...kids choose books.  In guided reading, the teacher didn’t need to talk too much.  

• Reading for pleasure.

• The pathway of progress is in the folder.  Literacy learning progressions are also in there and could use a template as an assess and plan document.  

• Core and More...ideas from the group:  All takes place in place of something like Steps/Word Study.  Tuahiwi-play and eat time.  While kids were eating, they would do this together.  Think of what teacher interaction kids get now, and how can you improve that.  SSR time.  TA to work with other students while the class teacher is with them.  Don’t be talked into letting someone else do it.

Acceleration vs remediation-Suzie Pepper Rollins

High Impact Teaching strategies

Notice, recognise, respond

Enact your plan

Include the student in planning.

Knowledge of learner and literacy skills.  See, say do...modelling book

Exemplars

Choice, context, Pathway, the reason for doing what we do.

If such and such can just…

Connection to family.

I do, we do, we do, you do. Cups and ARMS and CUPS.  Creating a school newspaper/flier.  Digital newspaper.

Frontloading is the number one successful strategy.  Some front load prior to the class lesson.  Co-teacher with the class and teacher focus with this group.  

The day before, do something about the following day’s lesson.

Reporting required. Initial data 26 march and interim on 11 June.  BOT for ALL intervention.  This form is in the shared folder.

My Next Steps:

Select the group of students with who I will work on this intervention.

Make contact with whānau to explain the plan and intervention.

Start creating opportunities to spend time getting to know more about the students.

Reading with Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey

Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey March 2021

Aims:  

To review the modelled, shared and guided independent reading approaches.

To share practical ideas for planning a realistic and manageable reading programme.

 

Explicit teaching of reading is important for all levels.  We need to know exactly what our kids need and teaching to these needs.  Student agency can take place as long as we know exactly where our teaching is happening throughout the day.  

Mini-lessons.  Skills can overlap as they support learning in reading and writing.

Reasons For Reading:

• Reading for pleasure.
• Reading to support writing.
• Reading to learn...reading across the curriculum.  

Q. Do I have enough time in my day to ensure children can read for pleasure?  

Development of Reading Skills and Strategies

Developing a love of reading

Developing oral language and vocabulary.

Getting ready for reading...Learning to read...Developing independence as a reader...Becoming a proficient reader.

Early years...school entry...junior primary years...middle years...senior primary years.

Reading Levels, reader characteristics and text characteristics.

The Reading Process...Chapter Two of The Reading Book

Critical thinking can happen when we make time to talk.  Conversation Cards form the Oral Language Book support listening, talking and being able to elaborate on ideas. 

One card we tried was using the proverb, No matter how many times you wash a goat, it will still smell like a goat.  Ethiopia

Prompt:  What is the author trying to tell us?

Using all of the visual language information available to us.

All three decoding skills are important and can be taught in mini-lessons.

A balanced programme will include all of these.

Important for kids to know about word parts.  

Website:  The Literacy Place

Rhyme lists help support reading development.  HIgh-frequency word development.  Use a whiteboard to write as many high-frequency words and share.  

Self-Monitoring Strategies

Can pick and choose your own fix-up strategies that suit your learners.   

A Balanced Reading Programme

Model and teach a skill on a Monday and revisit this in instructional groups.  Practice skills and strategies with a focus on the main skill.  Four-day timetable with the Friday being about finishing work, teaching a certain type of od activity and developing a joy for reading.  

Reading to kids and reading parts too, gives kids more confidence and can be more engaging.  Reading aloud to kids can be within different approaches.  

Why we read to students:  

Modelling how to read and respond to texts.

Enjoyment.

Relationships and connections.  

Broadening experiences and insights.

New vocabulary.

Variety of contexts.  

Connections.

Fostering a love of reading.

Exposure to different text structures, organisation and language features.  

Extend general knowledge and understanding of the world.

What Can We Read?

Love the idea of reading stories from the cultures that our kids are from.  Also need to read more of the writing students create.  

Develop more of a culture where we read together a lot.  The Literacy Place

Have a look here for links to some great online reading that we can share in the class.  

Shared Reading

If we include shared reading, what we learn there can be included in guided reading.  A shared reading programme will help your reading programme become better.  

Texts we can use:

Big books, fiction and non-fiction

Poems

Songs

Picture Books (projected)

Sections from novels (projected)

Articles

Visual texta, comics, graphic novels, videos with texts)

Variety is needed.

KidsNews is a cool site and is organised into levels.  Literacy Online has a range of reading material with listening files.  

Catering to a wide range of needs.  Quality over quantity.  For shared reading, the same book throughout the week.  Repeated reading is really valuable.  The first time is on a superficial level and throughout the week going deeper.  Read shared books at a level that is higher than the level of the students.  

Focus 1: Book Introduction

Focus 2: Zooming In-Looking at words, sentences and decoding.

Focus 3: Zooming Out-Comprehension and thinking critically about texts.

Vocabulary

From the shared text, select words that might be challenging for the kids.  Word on a card in groups.  Decode the word, talk about phonics, discuss their meaning, predict what the text may be about.  

PHONICS

CHUNKING

ANALOGY 

This activity can be used in shared reading but also in guided reading.  Anything available in shared reading, also enable students to access this in guided reading.  

Using whiteboards during reading lessons supports their writing.  Walk and talk to share and change/add to your ideas. 

Introduce Fix-Up strategies.  

Tick and check 

Word building activities and looking at the text in more detail. 

Resources in Oral Language Book can help discussions around comprehension. Using thought bubbles to talk about what characters might be thinking.  Use it in your big book so you can model it to students.  Could laminate the thought bubbles and children could write what the thoughts might be.  Can also use a Question.  

Drama

There are ten drama cards on Page 160.  Act out the story.  Shows retelling and helps kids to remember the story.  

Hot seating:  One student takes on the role of a character and students ask questions to the character.  Asking questions of the student in role helps them infer.  

Dice have been created to help with asking questions.  

Freeze frame-Create a scene, one student goes around and asks each character what they are thinking.  great inferring actib=viyt and looking really deeply into the text. 

Teacher talk less, kids talk more.  

Guided Reading

Intro

Components of a guided reading lesson

Opportunities for talk

10-20 minutes for each group.

The teacher guides a group

Other students engage in reading activities (collaborative or independent)

Guided reading shouldn't be about getting through the book or reading a certain number.  Aim for quality over quantity.

Planning and Assessing Progress

Flexible approach to grouping, can some kids go into another group if theirs is a small group?  Keep the same learning goal and work on that across a range of books/texts.

Link shared, guided and independent.

Generic follow up activities.  Don't create a set of questions to answer about the book.  Maybe use a question dice.  

(See Page 124 for levelled goals for reading, cracking the code, fluency and comprehension).  

Modelling Books

Not really used to Magenta/red groups as they can't read what you write and things are quite quick with them.  

How can you use your modelling book?  

Tricky Words-Record tricky words from the text.  

record questions for the guided session.  Can write questions and children write answers on post it's as shows evidence of work towards meeting learning goals.  

Record teaching point and notes about tricky bits.

CUse the modelling book for a 'warm up' or 'follow up' activity.  Graphic organisers...collect examples of student work.

Keep a record of progress.

One goal at the front of the book.  

 Guided Reading

1) Book introduction-teacher hold the book through this part.  Make sure kids have a really good understanding of the book before reading it.

 2) Lesson focus-Alphabet cards, word cards at level, high-frequency words hunt...can you find...?  Looking at where does the sentence start, the text spotters to isolate words.

3)  Independent reading (guided by the teacher) If a longer text, chunk it up.  Children read and come back together and talk about it.  Listen in and guide and support.  Students read in a quiet voice OR read silently.  Tap and read...you tap child and they read aloud so you can hear what is happening while they read. 

DON'T-

Read in unison as this becomes shared reading.  Limits how we can self-monitor and check.  

Round robin read.  Interrupts meaning for kids and outs them on the spot.  Get children to read quietly by themselves.  Short and sharp and then they get to come back together.  

 4) Wrap up-Discuss comprehension, review tricky sections, review learning focus, introduce the post-reading activity.  

Aim for kids to talk more than the teacher.

Independent Activities

Don't plan too many activities.

Mixed ability groups can work.

Consider letting students move between activities when they are ready.  

Provide some choice and the opportunity to self manage using Must Dos and can Dos.

Limit worksheets because you have to find them and make them specific to the group you are working with.  Need explaining, monitoring and then marked.  

Plan generic activities that can be used several times in different contexts.  

Story maps, Venn diagrams, same and different Venn diagrams, 

A cool activity was the one using the dice and children look for certain details in the text.  

Reading Activity Modelling Book

Frayer chart for looking at words, definitions, uses and a picture.  

Choice systems, book clubs, See Reciprial Reading slide from the site.  Reader's Theatre

Independent Reading

Be more active.  get up and go and talk with kids about what they are reading.  

Set clear expectations, show a list of with stamina and without stamina.  

Supporting kids to select and read appropriate reading material.  

Set personal reading goals, professional reading, novel.  Must read the books we are getting students to read.  Reading challenges.  Record selves reading and then share.  Reading Thoughts activity.

For me, this session has really given me clarity and more of an idea of how to structure and run my Literacy class.  I also feel a little overwhelmed with the levels and abilities of the children I am working with and struggle to see how I can possibly meet their needs.

Next steps:  Create modelling books for reading groups.  Include activities of a more creative nature for children to be doing while they are not working with me.