Digital Fluency Intensive #1

I have been looking forward to my chance to join the DFI course and finally I've made it in cohort #3. An exciting start jam packed with an enormous amount of knowledge, tricks and quick fixes which would all add towards making my teaching life a lot more manageable in our Google world.

We are very fortunate to have quite a packed class in this cohort as it makes for more rich sharing of experiences from novices and experts alike.
Having been at Pt England and therefore part of Manaiakalani for the last 5 years, I was immediately immersed in the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy which has become just what we do as teachers. Something new and interesting I found out today during Dorothy's coverage of the 'Origins of Manaiakalani' was that this was born out of classroom teachers literacy learning cycles and the realisation that we were actually already doing Learning, Creating and Sharing just in smaller settings and maybe using different academic language.

One of the things I really enjoy about DFI so far is the set out/ layout in which the course is delivered I've shared this in my top tips poster below (which is a big achievement in itself as it is made in google docs!). This is using the Deep Diving, Chalk 'n Talk, Explore and Levelling Up model. It definitely felt like all those things and I particularly enjoyed the levelling up so that if we felt up to the challenge, there is still more to be learnt, or we could choose to stay and keep familiarising ourselves with some of the things we've covered already.

My biggest takeaway is the amazing wonders of google docs. One thing I could share with my students come Monday would be the explore button on docs which only give you images that are free and good to use with citations already imbedded.
One thing I will be working on is to do a complete Marie Kondo of my drive so my folders for the last 5 years are more organised.

There is so much more I have picked up and can't wait to revisit. This is also made easy as everything is rewindable and constantly being updated for us. So I've had such an enjoyable 1st session and am looking forward to our next DFI session. I also highly recommend EVERYONE needs to make sure they do this course.

One KEY STRATEGY in Reading and Maths

Our writing data across the cluster shows accelerated progress in writing. We are currently looking into how we can make that a "threefer" as Russell Burt puts it. That is accelerated progress across all 3 core areas - Reading, Writing and Maths. 

One of the reasons why we thought writing was making that shift consistently across the cluster was that there was a shared understanding and knowledge of what writing covered. And we all had a similar way of delivering this part of the curriculum for our students. So how could we do the same for reading and maths? What are some key strategies/practices that we think every class should be doing (because we've seen it work in our own classroom setting). Our hope is in collating this data using our CoL group would be a great starting point in trying to achieve a "threefer".

I decided to share my strategies with my team during our morning meetings to see if they agreed and if this was THE ONE that would benefit students in Years 7/8. 

For reading we decided: 

Deep diving sessions with the teacher using texts that are difficult/challenging for students in that group. This has students pushing themselves to unpack unknown vocab and looking at phrases in and out of context.

For maths, I couldn't decide on just one so the top 2 strategies that have worked for Year 7/8 students in our block are:

1) Teaching number knowledge through strand

2) Pitching your lesson focus/problem at Level 4 of the curriculum, then differentiating from there. That means pushing your extension kids out further from level 4 and bringing up students who are struggling to level 4 work.

Collecting and monitoring the changes in my teaching

Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention (so it is clear what you doing differently)

I plan to collect information about the implementation of changes through my weekly planning and highlighted in tables like the one below. 

Here is a detailed description of the changes I made in my teaching practice. 

One of the major mind-set changes for me as a teacher was EXPECTATIONS! I had no expectation what so ever for any student in this group to make much/if any shift at all. This was from reading their history of learning in their black folders which you get the general picture that this group of students had a negative outlook on their reading capabilities and actually hated reading time. I simply wanted them to enjoy reading. Feel good about themselves when they read. I have since lifted my expectations for this group by setting goals for us to work towards within a given time-frame. These goals are covered in my previous blog post about Interventions in Action.

My evidence of this change will be in my planning as my DATs (deliberate acts of teaching) will have less description of sequencing of lesson (coverage) and describing follow-up activity but more bullet points of important phrases and vocabulary I want to draw their attention to in a text.

Together with my "feelings" of how I think things are going, I have also collected a few student voice opinions every 3-4 weeks. I have also made sure to stick to my timeline for when I had planned to test students again. 

Here are my target groups mid-term 3 running records testing.

My 2 students I'd like to comment about are the ones of didn't make much/if any shift the first time round. My first student 'FM' only made 1 level shift in the previous testing round failing level 9. This time he round he passed level 9 and 10 so could potentially keep being tested up. Student 'GW' failed his level 15 test in term 2. This time, he passed level 15 and 16 and was quite chuffed with himself. My last student 'RF', although she is not getting the same change in teaching as she has moved reading groups, I can report she has made another 6months progress in her reading age. However this is not attributed to my interventions as she moved group at the start of Term 3. 

Target group - Sharing their learning

One of our group goals this term is to share our learning on our blogs. We've made a good start of it so far with my target group. Here are examples of their learning from their blog.

Our next steps is to work on a task description which explains what they learnt about in their reading group. I have 1 or 2 students who can do this independently. but the rest will need to have a guided mini writing session to get this written and onto their blogs.