Back to school - Testing, discussing and thinking about the future.

This is a quick update from my previous blog.

Upon returning to school I meet with my students. We discussed specific problems they have when reading. These range from not knowing the new words, losing their line, or forgetting what has happened in the story. I gathered their voice and made a record of the problems. These can be used when planning. Summarising and vocabulary work will be my initial focus with many of these students.

 Then I administered an eAsttle Reading Test. The results confirmed what I already know from the PAT data. Year 6 boys are generally achieving lower than the girls. Many boys were quick to finish the test which suggests that they were not reading closely. There are currently 10 boys sitting at 2B or 2P. My goal is to move these boys to 2A or 3B (an increase of 60 points in their scale score).

We had two lessons on reading habits and sustained reading. The students identified what they thought good reading habits were. These are:

• Sit away from distractions
• Have an interesting book to read
• Actually read the words
• Stay in the same space
• Be comfortable
• Get a book you can understand

Our first session was terrible. They were fidgeting and talking. There were arguments. Few students could sustain their reading for more than 5 minutes. That day I set the class up on epic.com. Students were able to sustain their reading for 15 minutes. There was a mixture of paper texts and digital texts. 

After reading Developing Strategies for Reading on TKI, I wrote out my generic questions for students to discuss during literacy circles and to help their reading reflections. These questions are:

• What have you been reading?
• What did you like about the text?
• What happened in the text?
• What are two strategies have you used to help understand the text?
• How did these strategies help you understand the text?
• What are two new words you encountered in your text?
• Where did you find the text?
• Would you recommend this text?
• What problems did you encounter in the text?

My colleagues Urmi and Paula have suggested that I add a prediction questions, increase the word identification to 3 words, and identify the main theme of the text (synthesis). I am aware that it will be necessary to focus literature circle discussions on key themes so each week may focus on specific questions.

My next steps are:

1. reread Effective Literacy Practise for Years 5-8 again
2. read Literacy Circles and their Improvement of Comprehension
3. Probe test target students
4. Make the prototype tool (release day)
5. Develop a two-weekly plan that allows for reading millage, guided/ targeted teaching and literacy circles

MIT 19 - KPMG Meeting 25/3/19 - Evolving our Inquiry

Year 6 Boy Reading Progress is Low (1 year or lower movement)

On Monday the 25th of March we had our first collaborative meeting at the KPMG Office in Auckland.

To start the day we were asked to share what had worked well for us, and what had not worked well. I talked about discussing my inquiry with my team in Tåwhirimåtea and other teachers at Rawhiti School. They have been supportive of the inquiry and offered advice about texts and routines used in their classes with literacy circles or reciprocal reading. My team thought it would be beneficial for me to take the majority of the Year 6 students for reading.

I also discussed the PAT Reading Comprehension data we had recently gathered, and how this reflects the overall low achievement with Year 6's at Rawhiti School, and boys in particular.

Next, I discussed my first meeting with my students. This went reasonably well. They were generally open to the idea of using literacy circles and videos in their reading programme. Some seemed intimidated by the idea of the amount of reading I want them to do. Others were apprehensive about being on camera, however, others thought they would get an opportunity to be famous!

In terms of the things that had not gone well, my main issue up to this week had been one of time. Our studio has been busy with daily swimming, Year 5 and 6 Camp the previous week and the tragic events that occurred in Christchurch on the 15th of March. This had impacted the time I could spend with my students and making contact with a colleague of Amber's who has experience running a similar initiative to mine through Twitter. At this stage, I was stared away from using Facebook or Twitter as a tool (not that I had intended too) as it was not a safe or monitored forum, compared to the blogs and sites set up by Manaiakalani. 

Following a lovely morning tea, I worked with Sandra and Nicola to experiment and evolve our inquiries. Sandra discussed how she wanted to start her inquiry with her competition that assigned mixed ability groups tasks and questions based on the overall literacy of the group. She realised that she needed to take a step back to work out how to group her students to make the best composition of students. When she tried to group them there was a "revolt". One of the ideas she came up with was having her students buddy up with a friend, and then join pairs. I liked this idea as I can see it would offer a variety of student combinations for literacy circles, exposing students to ideas beyond their immediate social circle. We will call this 2 and 2.

I shared my plan. Starting with my problem, Year 6 boy reading progress is low, then moved on to my focus on improving reading engagement through literacy circles. I also hope to improve student self-perception of themselves from developing or dormant readers to capable readers. Considerations for running an effective literacy circle in the class include groups (2 and 2), roles within the group and creating a script or set of generic questions for students to follow as a guide. It was suggested that these questions could be a guide for student reflection after reading.

In terms of deliberate acts of teaching necessary for this to work there are many. These include lessons on running the literacy circles, possibly modelling with groups and using a fishbowl approach. Guided reading lessons would be needed to develop comprehension strategies. In particular, we would initially focus on vocabulary work, asking questions, summarising the text and synthesis. Lessons around how the Key Competencies operate within the literacy circle would also be necessary. 

I brought up how when students select their own texts they are more engaged. Generally, for literacy circles, the students read the same text. This allows for specific questions for them to discuss. I would need to develop generic questions if students are discussing their own texts. Ultimately it would be a combination of the two approaches based on student interests.

Groups for guided reading and literacy circles would not be the same. Guided reading groups would be based on specific gaps in fluency and comprehension. Literacy circle groups would need a stronger social nature to work. Students need to feel comfortable sharing their thinking with their peers. 

The tool I develop would be a site or blog where students could upload short videos summarising their literacy circle. There would be an area for teachers to explain the reasons why using literacy circles are effective at improving progress, and how they may operate in different classrooms. The main part of the site would be a catalogue of videos by various literacy circles. Students can watch these to find new texts and see how other students talk about what they are reading. There would be a place to comment so the content of the student videos becomes a dialogue outside of the literacy circle.

Later we shared our inquiry with the whole group. We had to defend our ideas. As a guide for our thinking, Anne gave us this set of questions.

Prototype of solution questions

What was the achievement challenge?

What was your purpose in designing this tool?

What were the gaps you identified in your prototype?

What is the point of difference with other tools already being used? Why yours?

How is this tool/approach/process going to have an impact on student achievement?

As a result of the feedback, you received today who else do you need in your team? What else do you need to do with your design?

What is the weak point or link in your design thinking process?

In the feedback that followed these concerns were raised that need addressing:

1. This reading programme is going to be very busy for the students. Where is the time for reading millage, the primary cause for improvement in a reading?
2. How will I identify the key gaps in students fluency and comprehension that has held these specific students back, and how will I address these? 
3. What are the options for different text types? Is there a place for digital content and audiobooks?

My immediate solutions for these concerns are:

1. Make the literacy circle and video creation part of a two-week cycle (one-week literacy circle, one-week video creation/ upload)
2. Use PROBE and eAsttle reading tests to identify needs. Group students based on their fluency and comprehension needs for guided reading lessons. Some students will need one-on-one teaching. A target group can have guided reading that follows an ALL approach. Again, this will also need to allow time for students to read independently to build their millage.
3. Visit the local library. Set up the class on Epic or other digital reading tools. 

These are my initial solutions, and other solutions will present themselves over time.

MIT 19 Beach Side Hui

The Hui has been challenging and awesome. Lovely location, nice people, fierce card playing!

Session 1 - Here we learnt what is Manaiakalani, and what came before. Specifically, we learnt about Russell Burt, Andrea Tele'a, Sandy Lagitupu and Helen Squires. They are educators who found opportunities to enrich their learning communities and innovate how they taught. Andrea and Sandy developed a reading podcast that accelerated their students progress. Helen developed a programme of blogging giving her writers an authentic audience and leading to acceleration.

Then following this we did a roleplay where each MIT 19 teacher was given the role of someone who has an investment in education, such as parents, students, teachers, MOE, researchers or Google. During the roleplay, we were given statements about current education and had to respond as our character.

Session 2 - In this session, we looked at our reworded problem from two weeks ago. This was another roleplaying session, with Anne and Jenny playing the part of a principal and BOT head from a local area school presenting their 2019 target goals to the local community. We played the part of that parent community. Each problem was presented on the screen and the community could discuss it. I say discuss, but what really happened is we tore each statement apart. Every statement was full of flaws and waffly language. This was a particularly brutal process for me as my statement was the first to be displayed! To be honest, I was left a bit shell shocked. Only one statement was concise and to the point.

The question was raised What is your actual problem? As part of the design process, we needed to have a clear problem that we wanted to address. We were given time to think about our problem and make it well defined.

In my initial moonshot google presentation, I had stated that I wanted to improve Year 6 boy engagement in reading. After the 5 Whys task, I had changed my problem statement into Many students in my studio are reluctant or struggling readers who see reading as a challenge and a chore. They have reading habits and attitudes that show a lack of book accessibility and reading role-modelling. My challenge is to improve the enthusiasm for reading among my Year 6 students, especially the boys. 

I looked closely at my class reading data, my school reading data and the cluster reading data that had been provided by Woolf Fisher. After some consideration, and a bit of help from Amber, I finally came up with a new concise problem statement:
       "Reading progress for Year 6 boys is lower than the national expectation"
This is the problem I hope to address with my new proposal.

Session 3 - Initial Cohort support. In this session, we were given the opportunity to provide support to our peers. Each problem and proposal was stuck to the wall and we were given post-it notes. We then had to go around the room and write How might we questions to turn the problem into opportunities. Then we took the post-its and grouped or ranked them based on themes we noticed.

The themes I noticed were around student motivation to read, the mindset of my reluctant readers, the purpose of reading and involvement with the community and my readers.

 The statements that struck me the most was create a way for reading to occur when they may not engage and change the ways the boys think about reading. 

Then we got to refine our thinking based on post-it notes. What sticks out from our suggestions? What could we adapt or change in our problem or proposal?

Session 4 - Who will help us solve our problem? We made a list of everyone we thought might have a part to play during our inquiry. For me, this included the students, my team in Tåwhirimåtea and Rawhiti School, my fellow MIT cohort, Manaiakalani support (Dorothy, Anne and Mark M), whanau, RTLit, research from Woolf Fisher, as well as research from NZCER, University of Canterbury or Auckland University. These last ones will be the most difficult for me to access so I know I will need to ask for help from my senior management.

We were also asked to add a moonshot person, the person who we admired or thought could give a special insight into our problem, but probably would not get the chance to talk to. I put down Sheena Cameron and Donalyn Miller given their backgrounds in reading education and engaging students.

Session 5 - Ideation (Crazy 8): In this session, we were asked to come up with 8 different possible solutions for our problem. The ideas could be as random and crazy as we could think of. I put my original idea which centred on running classroom literacy circles and an online book club. To this I added these ideas:

• An online resource for teachers of questions for popular children's books
• 10 book per term challenge which is blogged
• Online reading log with students, teachers and parents site texts they read
• Vocational reading with texts based on possible student career choices
• A buddy reading challenge
• A site that offers visual stimulation to invite reading, followed by a creative or technical challenge for students
• A collaborative "art" project based on a shared reading

Following this, we were given stickers. These we placed on the pages of our peers to show which ideas we thought had the most potential. On my Ideation poster, my final idea had the most endorsement. 

This idea was the collaborative art project. While I like the idea, I came away feeling like I had only offered a reading follow-up activity as opposed to an acceleration strategy. I needed to take the events of the day away and think about my proposal.

That was the end of Monday's work. 

Session 6 - Consolidating our Proposal: In this session, we were given time to think carefully about the direction of our proposal and what our digital tool would look like. As I stated above I was not particularly enthusiastic about the Crazy 8 idea that was most popular. I had a walk before the session and considered what message had come out from the previous days. 

My original proposal did not spark the interest of my peers, and it seemed to me upon reflection to not be the engaging tool that I had hoped it would be. However, I still believe that the central premise of student-led literacy circles that encouraged discussion and peer support for reading had to be my focus to accelerate my Year 6 boys. So what now?

I started to think about using video as a means of students sharing their literacy circle discussions and host these in a site where other teachers and students can view and comment on them. Could I develop a Google site that hosted videos of students summarising their literacy circles? How would this work? Would this be engaging enough for my students? Was this idea too similar to the work done by Andrea Tele'a, Sandy Lagitupu and Helen Squires? With these questions in mind, I approached the morning's work in a new direction.

I discussed the idea with Anne and Amber. They were receptive it. Anne reminded me that whatever I do, there needs to be deliberate acts of teaching and that it can transferable to other schools or classes across NZ. Amber suggested I contact Mark Lorenzo from Belfast School as he runs the Chapter Chat Twitter programme. 

My new proposal now looks like this:

• Teach Year 6 students to run literacy circles based on the texts they are engaged with
• Focus on the Key Competencies needed for a successful literacy circle, critical thinking about texts (reading comprehension strategies) and deep questioning
• Create a Google site that has two sections - one for students and one for teachers
• The student section has a place to upload videos with a Google Form and Sheet comment section
• The teacher section has the hows and whys  for both literacy circles and creating videos (why use literacy circles and videos, how to set these up in the class
• Teach my Year 6 students how to make and embed short videos following this process - read your text, hold a literacy circle, create a short script, record 2-3 minute video, embed on the site

While writing up my revised proposal, Santi pointed out that I will want to talk to my students about what they know about literacy circles and their thoughts on videos. This is my next step. I also need to gather their reading data into one place. We are doing the PAT Reading Comprehension test this week, but I will also create an e-asttle reading assessment for them to do. This will act as my baseline data for the year.

Then the Hui wrapped up. After the morning's work, I felt more positive about the direction I was heading in, and that I could accelerate my Year 6's in their reading progress. 

Bring on the next session on the 25th March!