RPI: Day 3 - Text Selection

 Day 3 of RPI kicked off with Dorothy covering what reading in a digital world looks like for us teachers, as well as students. One of the parts we covered was around the use of reading apps. I am so glad Dorothy said it out loud as it needed to be said - but reading apps are NOT a substitute for instructional reading sessions with an actual teacher. Instead, by using the built in affordances provided by most of these apps, they can be used as an independent timetabled reading task. Making good use of, and sharing with students the dashboard data provided in most reading apps ensures that it also doesn't just become busy work.

One work on I took away from Dorothy's segment was to sign up to more toolkits to ensure I am making the most of the digital affordances provided by the Chromebooks in class. 

Using appropriate texts: Mirrors, Windows and Sliding doors

I had come across and been exposed to the kaupapa of ensuring students could see themselves in texts, as well as opening their world views and experiences through text, but I hadn't heard of the 'sliding doors' part. Having a diverse set of texts to choose from, ensures texts could go both ways where they could see both mirrors and windows, but also stepping in and out of the different worlds as written by Rudine Sims Bishop.

One real useful segment we covered today was the use of text sets. We had covered this last year as a team but this time I fully understood the 'why' behind each text we were choosing. I originally selected texts based purely on theme. Today we learnt about a ramp text - which was a middle ground text the whole class/group could cognitively access easily. This could be used as a springboard into the 'anchor' text which is a main/meaty text you wanted the group to focus on. From here you'd also attache a poem, video, graphic text or poster to go with to provide extra information and support the main anchor text.

I am looking forward to completing my own text set for ANZAC for week 1 of next term. I am also going to try out the Kakapo group taskboard provided in todays session on one of my groups.

CoL: Profiling - Part 1

This year, after discussions with our Senior Management Team and my team leader, I've decided to focus my inquiry on reading. This will hopefully align with what I am also learning about in the Reading Practice Intensive (RPI) being run every 3rd week.

My identified/priority learners I have chosen are: 9 students all with a current reading age of 8.5 years. 

Out of the nine, only 3 are students I had previously taught last year. The following are my priority groups responses to our reading survey results I carried out as part of our RPI course in getting to know our learners through a 'reader' lens. 

Here are a few results from the reading survey:

Here are my priority learners PAT scores:

My next blog post will have more about students reading behaviours gathered from the reading survey.

RPI: Day 2 - Know your learners as readers

 Today's RPI covered a lot! Thankfully I have been exposed to most of this through my team leader as we had a trial implementation of mahi tracker, the task board and also the spreadsheet to help keep track of our students learning.

One of the things I was reminded of was the power of our literacy cycles we had a while back. Dorothy shared and reminded us of some of the really awesome pedagogy that took place and where Learn, Create, Share originated from. This cycle was close to what I started with some 10 years ago when I first started in Manaiakalani community.

Something I've picked up from todays session would be that despite my students being lower level readers, I still need to expose them to skills and more complex texts (and text types if they are available at a lower reading level) due to what they will face in high school. I am referring to CAA - Common Assessment Activities. It will definitely be worth my time to do some backwards mapping as explained in todays session and adapt it accordingly for my 6-9 year old readers in Years 7/8.

Learning Intentions: I completed a few of my first years of teaching unpacking and studying Michael Absolum's 'Clarity in the Classroom' text. Even after all that, I still find myself struggling at times to word LI's and Success Criteria. What I took from today was to remember to remove the content from it and focus rather on the reading behaviour/strategy you want students to learn.

One take away I'll be sharing with my team would be: Aratohu Kaiako - great spread and types of questions in the 5 categories that each test will tell us. A great guide I’d never seen before. I actually need to see more about this as I had it in my note taking but didn't link the slides.

Overall, a great day of intense learning and I will definitely be using the planning sheet to link with the Phases rather than the old learning progressions.

RPI: Reading Survey Results

 As part of getting to know our students and their attitudes in reading, we conducted a survey with questions provided by our RPI course. It delves into the thinking and attitudes of our learners in relation to what they like to read and their reading habits in and out of school.

My results weren't too surprising, and still provided great insight into reading habits outside of school, and the types of books my class likes to read. Below are some graphs to highlight some of the questions students answered. 

To give some background on my students, although we are a year 7&8 class, my highest reader is currently reading at 9.5 years old. My lowest readers are at 5.6 years and I have a big chunk (10 students) reading at 8-8.5 years. 

Here are some of my findings:

- Overall, students thought they were good at reading

- This translated to students saying they actually like reading at school (I was not expecting this)

- A high majority of students 70% do not like reading in their own time

- In terms of what their teachers think about their reading capabilities, the class was split 50/50

RPI - Day 1: Reading is core

This year I am very fortunate to join a whole lot of teachers joining the Friday RPI Cohort 3. Today was day 1.

The following are some of my reflections or things I've picked up from the day. 

Acceleration! We need our students to make more than one years progress in reading, writing and maths, in order for them to cope with the curriculum as it opens up more when transitioning into high school.

One of the things we covered today was reader profile. What is the profile of a good reader? how do we gather this? and how can we unpack or address this in order to be successful readers?

What I was reminded about, and really landed with me was the slide below about Whanaungatanga - fostering connections to learners' identities.

Todays segment on professional reading will definitely be one slide deck I will revisit to familiarise myself with more of the literature out the there in order to support my knowledge and kaupapa around reading.

A digital tool I will be making more use of will be the Canva whiteboard with sticky notes. Here is one where we shared about how we gather student data about their reading interests.

I also really liked studying the Pillars of Practice and highlighting our strengths and what we could work on. I hope to revisit this at the end of our 9 days of RPI and have made more change colour to green!

Overall, I feel like I had a bit of a head start as my whole team of 5 teachers have been through RPI and as a result we have implemented many of the tasks and extended discussion tasks we looked at today.

Across Schools CoL 2025

 Talofa Educators!

For those who are new to this space, my name is Latini Ilaoa and I have been fortunate enough to be an Across Schools CoL Teacher again for 2025.

This is my 11th year teaching Year 7/8 at Pt England School. Last year, I focused my inquiry around mathematics and accelerating students in Years 7/8 in order to cope with the transition into high school.

This term, I am also picking up RPI (Reading Practice Intensive). Due to this, I am still tossing up whether to keep with Mathematics as my focus for inquiry (more so now with the new curriculum refresh), or switch to Reading to align with what I will be learning about in RPI. So far, looking at my class data this year, I'm leaning more towards acceleration in Reading as a focus for my inquiry. I'll unpack this more as I gather more testing data.

Below is my booking form with time slots I am available for on Thursdays and Fridays. Please feel free to share this with your fellow teachers and school leaders. I am more than happy to travel to you, meet online or book a room here at Pt England School.

If you have any questions, please email me: lilaoa@ptengland.school.nz

I look forward to connecting with teachers across our cluster.

Faafetai lava

Latini

Summary of evidence

 The following are a few comparisons of the pre and post intervention data collected throughout this year. 

1. PAT & GLOSS data - Overall Teacher Judgements (OTJ)

The following show the actual results of all 8 target students. During my Bursts and Bubbles presentation, I had made a quick OTJ based of data made available. Upon reflection and further analysis, I realised I was too generous in my judgement and need to remedy this OTJ before reports are published. 

My initial report was that 3 students made accelerated shifts (1 made 2 years progress, 2 made 1.5 years) 3 made 1 years progress and and 2 made 6 months progress. 

The correct OTJ summary:

• 3 made accelerated shifts - all 3 made 1.5 years progress
• 2 made 1 year progress
• 3 made 6 months progress

Students A, B and E made accelerated shifts, which was the ultimate goal for this inquiry. 

Students D and H made 1 year progress. Still a good shift.

Students C, F and G made 6 months progress this year. Not ideal, but along with many contributing factors, I am still happy they've made progress.

My OTJ was based on a collection of data points. Their book work, online work, Maths Whizz progressions/achievement percentage, as well as our standardised testing of PAT, and Gloss testing. This was great to see students achieve what they set out and practiced in class, but also seeing some students who's testing did not always reflect a lot of their work completed in class. This required a good balancing act as well as some input from my team to ensure we all made the same judgements across our team.

2. Student Voice Survey

This was an End of Term 3 survey I wanted to try and capture students thoughts before the holidays. The main idea behind the survey was to get student voice about what I set out to change - Warm up games and using materials. Here are the results of the student voice survey. 

To check out what the student voice survey looked like at the start of the year, check out my blog post about Student Profiling.