CoL Teacher Inquiry: Junky Monkeys - loose parts play in nature!

We had a visit from the amazing Junky Monkeys today!

They brought with them a huge pile of junk and we all had the best time.

 

It was a joy to see our tamariki being playful, taking risks, enjoying being in nature, laughing together and just having a whole lot of fun!

Our time with Junky Monkeys' was made possible thanks to funding from Tu Manawa Sport. At the end of 2022, I noticed that Junkey Monkey' was inviting low-decile school to take part in their loose parts play programme for free. I put through an application for our school and we were accepted.

 

Here are some photos that are just snippet of the fun we had being Junky Monkeys!!

Nga mihi! 

CoL teacher Inquiry - Profiling: Phonological awareness

Reflecting on my previous post about my dreams for literacy in 2023 in my new entrant classroom. I've decided to begin with a focus on phonological awareness as I want to create literacy learning for my tamariki that is based on the science of reading and meets their needs as learners. I believe phonological awareness is a great place to begin this inquiry. 

What is phonological awareness?

Phonological awareness is one of the foundational skills of spelling and reading. It is an awareness and understanding that speech consists of words, syllables, rhyme and individual speech sounds/phonemes in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify the first, middle and last sounds in words, segment and blend CV, VC, CVC, and words with digraphs. I discover this great graphic which gives a good overview of the pre-reading skills within phonological awareness.

Why phonological awareness?

When reflecting on my first year teaching literacy using the BSLA, I noticed along with my colleagues that our children struggled with phonological awareness. Phonological awareness is covered in part by the BSLA programme, but it does not include many of the foundational phonological awareness skills that our tamariki are yet to learn. 

BSLA teaches children to isolate the first sound in words, blend and segment sounds, and isolate the last sound in words BUT it does not teach children about explicitly teach children how to segment sentences into words, produce and discriminate rhyme, blend and segment syllables or delete syllables which are all basic phonological awareness skills.  After conversations with my team leader and our resource teacher of literacy, I decided to make phonological awareness my focus or starting point for teaching with my new entrants in 2023. 

Looking at the data...

I have used the "Phonological Awareness Screening Tool" by Liz Kane Literacy (this is available to download for free from her website).  I also used the data gathered by the Better Start Literacy Approach Assessment Tool which was administered at the beginning of the year. The knowledge I have gained from completing these assessments has given me clear areas of strength and areas of concern for my tamariki.  

Firstly, the Phonological Awareness Screening Tool" by Liz Kane Literacy covered a wide range of basic and early phonological awareness skills. I had included a screenshot of the Google Sheet assessment tracker (available for free download from Liz Kane's website). I can clearly see that all of my tamariki need explicit teaching of phonological awareness. The child listed at the top who has mastered some of the phonological awareness skills has been at school for the longest and last year took part in both the Heggerty Phonological Awareness Curriculum and BSLA.  It is recommended to repeat this assessment for all children who have areas of phonological awareness that need attention at the end of each term, so I will be repeating this assessment at the end of term 1. 

My initial BSLA assessment identified that only two of the children in my class could proficiently identify the initial phoneme in a word and one child could blend phonemes together to make a word. The remainder of the children are unable to identify the initial phonemes in words or blend phonemes together to make words. The BSLA assessment is completed again after 10 weeks of teaching or 40 sessions. 

Looking at the bigger picture, the BSLA phonological assessment task that has been used across hundreds of schools and with thousands of children has identified that maori, Pacifica and children from low-socioeconomic areas are more likely to enter school with lower phoneme identity (the ability to hear the first sounds in words).  This graph shared by the University of Canterbury shows the data they have gathered from all their 'baseline' assessments. 

Within the Manaiakalani cluster, I had a look at the shift in the achievement between the SEA data and the Six Year Net data. I noticed that our tamariki are making progress when you compare these two time points BUT on average our tamariki are scoring below the national average. I could also see that in the 2022 school year within our cluster only a small number of children took part in the BSLA programme so I am interested to see how teaching that is more closely aligned with the science of reading - which puts an emphasis on phonological awareness could have on student achievement. A second observation that I made was that when looking at the wider Manaiakalani programme as a whole the number of children participating in structured literacy in growing from the years 2021-2022. 

Looking at the science of reading...

I've had a look research to explore why a focus on phonological awareness is crucial for becoming a successful reader. 

Below is an infographic created by Dr. Hollis Scarborough, called the Reading Rope. It breaks down the five components of reading into their individual skills that need to be mastered to become skilled readers. The strands are woven together, this is really important as you need all of those strands to become a skilled reader. Phonological awareness is one of these strands. 

If you take a look at the lower part of the reading rope, the word-recognition strands, you can see how phonological awareness, alphabetic principle (decoding) work towards word recognition becoming increasingly automatic - which supports reading fluency.  This lower part of the rope covers three of the five components highlighted by the studies of the Science of Reading, Phonological Awareness, Alphabetic Principle and Fluency. 

This website: Dyslexia Evidence Based - provides a wealth of evidence based information about the Science of Reading and Structured Literacy.  

I found this particular paragraph from the document "Teaching Phoneme Awareness in 2022: A Guide for Educators". I found interesting that the ability for our children to progress speech sounds in their minds can support or hinder their ability to map word, meaning our children need to have an understanding of the three forms of a word, the sounds, the orthography (the spelling) and the meaning.  If they are unable to process the sounds of words, they will struggle to learn to read. 

"Both struggling readers and beginning readers have poor phoneme awareness due to underdeveloped, inefficient phonological processing. When students do not process speech sounds precisely in their minds, they may not store spoken words with the level of detail for mapping letters to sounds in reading and spelling. Having crisp, sound-by-sound memories of spoken words is not necessary for speaking, but phoneme awareness is necessary for learning to read. Students who struggle with word recognition and phonics share weaknesses in phonological processing.The discovery and confirmation of this phonological core deficit in struggling readers is one of the most powerful discoveries in reading science. It is simple to identify poor phonemic awareness, relatively easy to provide

explicit instruction, and this instruction supports gains in reading."

I've also explored Liz Kane's website and she has a section called further reading that provides more research and explanation of the science of reading and structured literacy. Here is a link: Liz Kane's Website. 

In 'Building a Strong Foundation for Literacy' by Kathy Barclay, it states that: 

"While some children can develop phonological skills through informal exposure during interactive reading experiences, other children require direct instruction. Thus, it is important for preschool and kindergarten programs to have deliberate and purposeful instruction of these concepts" (p. 6).

I believe that explicitly teaching phonological awareness is the most catalytic area of learning for my new entrants class this year as strong phonological awareness will set them up for success in literacy.  This supports the Manaiakalani kaupapa of "empowering learners". It is so empowering for our five year olds, and their whanau, to experience early literacy success. I have observed this positive start to reading and writing in my classroom this year with BSLA and witnessed the pride in whanau as they see their tamariki succeed as readers and writers. 

Moving forward, I am interested to learn more about the link between phonological awareness, vocabulary development and oral narrative. 

I already know, from my BSLA learning, TESOL learning this year, and my observations as a classroom teacher over the years that these are gaps in learning for my tamariki. I am thinking back to our professional development with Dr. Jannie Van Hees over the years that our children enter school having heard less words and with less conversational practice compared to their peers from different socio-economic communities. I am interested to get stuck in and analyse the "oral narrative" data gathered as part of our BSLA baseline assessment. I believe I underutilized this data last year and I am hoping to make better use of it in my teaching practice in 2023! 

Until next time!  

CoL teacher Inquiry - Identifying valued learning outcomes: Welcome to 2023!

What an unexpectedly weather focused start we have had to the year! It has felt a little wobbly at times with heavy rain, flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle. Thankfully our school community has been kept safe and dry. My class has been coming to school everyday (I’ve had 100% attendance everyday - and long may that last). I have a class of seven five year olds, three who have been at school for a term and four who are new this year. Here's a photo of my class on the first day of school (missing one has he only enrolled in week 3). 

Today I sat and reflected on the year that has been (2022). I thought about what I’d like to take with me into 2023 and what I’d like to leave behind in regards to my literacy programme.

I thoroughly enjoyed studying with the University of Canterbury in 2022 and teaching using the Better Start Literacy Approach in my classroom. I learnt so much about the teaching of reading and believe it was the one of the best pieces of professional development I’ve completed. I now feel much more confident in my understanding of teaching reading and how our brains learn to read. It sparked a passion for me in reading further and learning more about the science of reading. Upon reflection, after teaching using purely the Better Start Literacy Approach, following the lessons exactly as they were prescribed for the year I noticed a few places that this approach could be adjusted to best meet the needs of the learners with my school and elements of the approach where my tamariki really thrived.


I noticed that:

• Our e-Asttle writing results were the biggest win with half my class of 2022 gaining a 1B in writing - this was a decent shift on the previous years results.

• My class loved the structured and repetitive nature of the programme, they settled well and knew what was expected of them and how all the “games” worked.

• The shared picture book was an excellent way of growing my tamariki’s vocabulary - especially when used along the posters (these were created by another BSLA teacher and really scaffolded the tamariki well into remembering and explaining the meaning of the new words). Here is an example: 

• The speed of the teaching was a one-size fits all approach- each week the children were presented with 2-3 new sounds (regardless of their progress learning the sounds that were taught in the previous week). This did not work for many of my learners as it was simply too fast. 

• It was challenging in a new entrant classroom for new tamariki beginning school during the school year. They would be faced with a whole class teaching session - many many steps beyond their own abilities, for example: the class might be learning about split digraphs but they are yet to recognise the first sound in their own name.

• The BSLA whole class sessions required lots of mat-time - something my tamariki coped with but I felt there could be other ways to achieve the same learning while also allowing them to get up and move around.

• Many of my tamariki did not enter school with phonemic awareness required for a good foundation for literacy learning (they could not isolate or manipulate the sounds in spoken language, for example; identifying rhyming words, the first sound in words, or blending and segmenting sounds). Within the BSLA the tamariki do focus on phonemic awareness, but I believe the gap in this area for my tamariki needs more explicit teaching to cover other elements of phonemic awareness (that are missing in the BSLA). For example; simple listening games, rhyming words and syllables. 

I then had a think about my tamariki and what I'd love for literacy learning to be like for them in our classroom this year:

• I’d love to create learning based on the science of reading.  

• I’d love for  literacy in my classroom to not be a “one size fits all” type approach but an approach that that honours my five year olds and everything they bring to the classroom.

• I’d love literacy in our classroom to honour my tamariki who have arrived at school not yet ready for the curriculum. Many of my tamariki are not yet ready to sit still, listening carefully to the teacher, or have not yet developed the fine motor skills needed for a strong pencil grip.

• I’d love  literacy in my classroom to honour my tamariki’s home life. My tamariki bring a home life with them to school that is often complex, at times unsettling and often doesn’t align with the expectations for school life.

• I’d love literacy in my classroom to be a time that honours my tamariki’s need to move and develop their gross motor skills - rather than spending extended periods of time sitting.

• I’d love to create literacy learning that is at a pace that is appropriate for their cognitive abilities.

• I’d love to create literacy that honours the gap in words that my tamariki enter school with, that grows and develops their vocabulary. I'd love for the shared picture books that I use of connect with my learners - I have been on the lookout for picture books by Pasifika authors.  

But most of all I’d love for my students to not leave their learning at the classroom door but for them to see how what they are learning in the classroom connects to their world.

Nga mihi nui! 

Sold a Story by Emily Hanford

I've recently listened the the "Sold a Story" podcast by Emily Hanford. It's well worth a listen for any educators!  It has left me with many thoughts to unpack and has resonated with me deeply. 

If you're a teacher in Aotearoa like me, you've likely said this three phrases thousands of times during your reading sessions over the years, "look at the first letter", "look at the picture" and "think of a word that makes sense". The idea that beginning readers do not have to sound out words, they can, but they don't have to is a idea that is so entrenched my pedagogy and our pedagogy as a nation. But it is an idea that is wrong, what once was a mystery, how our brains learn to read is no longer a mystery. The science of reading is clear. The research shows that we are not born with brains that are wired to read. Human being can get really good at reading. But our brains have to change for us to become good readers. And sounding out words is a key part of this process.

In the second episode, Emily Hanford describes how sounding out words is a key part of learning to read. 

"You are born with a brain that can remember the pronunciation of words and the meaning of words. And as you connect the pronunciation and meaning of words with their spelling, you create new neural pathways that allow you to remember written words. Once a typically developing reader has looked carefully at a word a few times and sounded it out and identified or figured out what the word means, the written form of that word gets mapped into their memory. And once a word has been mapped to your memory like this, about the only thing that can take it away is a brain injury. Otherwise that word is there for you, always, in an instant. You don’t have to sound it out or do anything conscious to recognize the word anymore. But you know the word because at some point you sounded it out and you connected the pronunciation of that word with its spelling and its meaning." 

There is lots more that I could unpack but I particularly love this quote near the end of the final episode - "Good reading instruction isn’t boring for children. Maybe adults find parts of it boring. But this shouldn’t be about what adults want. It should be about what kids need. And there’s no reason that reading instruction aligned with scientific evidence can’t be exciting and beautiful."

And now because I know better, I can do better! 

He waka eke noa!

We are all in this canoe together!