CoL Teacher Inquiry: Bursts and Bubbles

 Wow! We made it to the end of 2023! 

What a learning journey it has been this year! 

I am very thankful to have a inspirational colleagues by my side. 

Here is a reflection of my own personal learning journey this year and below that is a Google Slides summary of my 2023 Inquiry. 

Reflection of my personal learning:

The biggest impact of my inquiry has been the increase in my knowledge of the science of reading. I’ve learnt so much about the science of reading and I can see that there is still a lot that is unknown in this space - despite the common misconception the science of reading (or structured literacy) is fixed there are still so many questions especially within the space where the research meets classroom practice. I particularly like this articles by Dr. Christine Braid from Massey University titled “Tread Lightly” and as she states;

“The research to practice pathway has some cement already dry and other newer pathways that we need to approach tentatively.”

Alongside, my CoL teacher role I have been completing TESSOL papers at the University of Canterbury and I am interested to see how the research behind the science of reading work alongside that of TESSOL to best support our ELL learners to become successful readers and writers. I touched on this link by looking at the ‘vocabulary strand’ of Scarborough's Reading Rope but I am interested to look into it with more depth in the future.

Google Slide summary of my 2023 teacher inquiry.

 

 Bring on 2024!! 

CoL Teacher Inquiry: Tread Lightly - things we know and questions we still have.

 Things we know and questions we still have... 

Dr. Christine Braid from Massey University shared a series of interesting articles that I have linked here: Literacy @ Massy 

I particularly found this table interesting as in the education space and in the wider community have a view that "the science of reading" is settled... but in reality there are many questions left to be explored.    

I'd love to hear your thoughts! 

CoL Teacher Inquiry: Vocabulary and Oral Narrative!

Wow! What a busy start to the term three! I can't believe it is already week six!! 

In this blog post I will discuss the progress of my inquiry which is guided by the following question: 

Will explicit teaching of vocabulary, phonological awareness and the alphabetic code lift the achievement of my tamariki in literacy?

Throughout this year, it has become increasingly evident that my students have made positive strides in word encoding and decoding through systematic and explicit instruction. However, they faced challenges in grasping meaning, including vocabulary, comprehension, and overall sense-making. As it is stated in my inquiry question, I have also been explicitly teaching vocabulary. I aim to achieve this goal through three methods: story mapping, vocabulary strips, and rich language experiences.

1. Story Mapping

I adopted the story mapping approach after attending a webinar by English educator Pie Corbett, part of the "Sounds-Write Symposium". A "story map" involves a squiggly line on a piece of paper guiding students to illustrate a sequence of pictures aiding their verbal recount of a familiar story. I've integrated "story mapping" into our daily shared picture book (which is an element of the BSLA) where the teacher shares the same picture book with the class each day for a week, explicitly teaching target vocabulary and oral narrative. I have started explicitly teaching story elements such as setting, character, problem, plan, and ending using these shared picture books. As the week progresses, students grow more familiar with the story, and they take on a more active role in narrating it, with less teacher guidance. I had the hunch that using a "story map" would really scaffold the children into producing a more coherent and rich oral retelling of the shared picture book of the week.

Thanks to a generous contribution from "Breakfast Club Kids," my class has been enjoying the "Tales of Aotearoa" series by New Zealand author Donavan Bixley. The series includes three books: 'How Maui Slowed the Sun,' 'How Maui Fished up the North Island of Aotearoa,' and 'Maui and the Secret of Fire.' Each student in my class has received their own set of these books for home enjoyment with their families.

For each of these shared picture books, I've curated target vocabulary, comprising four English words and two Te Reo Māori words, mirroring the approach used in the BSLA.

Here are the target vocabulary for the book, 'Maui and the Secret of Fire'. 

• Curious (p. 5): Curious means wanting to learn or know about something. Maui was curious to know what would happen if he put all the fires out.

• Respect (p. 9):Respect means to be polite or kind to someone or something else. Maui needed to respect the fire, by not letting it go out and knowing how dangerous fire can be.

• Furiously (p. 18): Furiously means that someone is really angry. Mahuika was furious with Maui for not respecting the fire.

• Precious (last page): Precious means it is highly valued or very expensive. For example, Maui’s discovery of the secret of fire was very valuable as they people could now make fire themselves.

• Ahi : Ahi is the Te Reo Maori word for fire.

• Kuia: Kuia is the Te Reo Maori word for grandmother.

To scaffold this process, I've introduced a straightforward story map to guide children towards independent oral story retelling. The simplicity of the story map proves effective: a squiggly line on paper, with the beginning of the story at the top and the conclusion at the bottom. I demonstrated the creation of my story map to the class, and they crafted their own versions.

Below are a few examples of the story maps created by the students, based on the story "Maui and the Secret of Fire." Additionally, I've attached a video showcasing one student's narrative using the story map as a tool for enhancing their oral storytelling skills.

 

2. Vocabulary Strips 

I participated in GEM Literacy's webinar titled "Introduction to Explicit Vocabulary Teaching," where Gemma explained the rationale and methodology behind explicit vocabulary instruction. In May, I incorporated her "vocabulary strips" into our daily small group reading sessions. These strips have helped my students bridge the gap between word decoding and word meaning. I specifically choose words from the reading material for each session, aiming for high interest, and multiple meanings—such as 'pit' which can refer to a 'sandpit' or a 'hole in the ground'.

In practice, I introduce the chosen word for the day along with an accompanying image unrelated to the reading material. Using an "I do, we do, you do" approach, I first model segmenting and blending the word, then guide the students through the process, and finally, they independently practice the word. We then discuss its meaning, with an emphasis on the children expressing it in their own words.  Then the students use the vocabulary strip to practice writing the word, as illustrated in the attached image. Lastly, the children complete a sentence dictation that includes the target vocabulary and other decodable words or heart words that they know (usually this is a sentence taken directly from the decodable book the vocabulary was selected from).  

Following this, I've observed that children are more likely to both recall the word's meaning and retaining it in their memory. Subsequently, they are often able to recognize the word in their reading without needing to sound it out. It's important to note that although this trend has been notable among my tamariki, it isn't always true for all my tamariki all the time. 

3. Rich Language Experiences 

Giving my tamariki the time to create as been a big focus in our classroom this term. Our topic study for the term has been focused on "Farms" which is leading up to a trip to Ambury Farm (next week). 

The tamariki have been creating using the products that we get from farming. We've made butter from cream, bread from scratch, lemonade, cooked scrambled eggs and will be making french fries using potatoes, weaving with wool and making our own ice-cream! 

I've given the tamariki as much opportunity as possible to be independent and experience making these things for themselves. Here are a few photographs as evidence of what we have been getting up to! I have displayed these photographs and key vocabulary on the wall in the classroom and it has been lovely to see the children looking at the photos and talking with their friends what we made.

Making butter - we made butter by placing cream in a jar (and a few marbles) and shaking it until it turned into butter. The tamariki enjoyed butter their own fairy bread!

We made bread from scratch using yeast, flour, water, sugar and oil. 

We made lemonade (with a few limes thrown too!) using lemons a tamariki in our class brought along to school. 

After much classroom debate and a taking in a vote in the classroom the children decided the best way to cook eggs was to scramble them, so that is what we did! 

Lastly, I am left with the challenge of capturing all this amazing learning. I have decided to keep it simple and use the assessment practices that we have in place at our school already like the BSLA assessments (as this covers early literacy and oral narrative) and the Liz Kane Phonological Awareness Assessment.  I have gathered data using BSLA for all learners at baseline (beginning of the year), after 10 weeks of school (and 20 weeks for those identified as needing support) and will gather data again at a the end of year. I have gathered data using Liz Kanes Phonological Awareness Assessment each term as recommended in the instructions for administration. 

I am looking to find a way to gather my tamariki's voice in an authentic and meaningful way. Any ideas would be much appreciated?

Nga mihi nui!!

CoL Teacher Inquiry: Fostering Oral Composition in Early Years: Talk for Writing with Pie Corbett

On a chilly Saturday, with the weather keeping us indoors, I found myself  watching  an enlightening presentation delivered by educator Pie Corbett. This engaging session, which formed part of the Sounds-Write Symposium, focused on the significance of developing oral narratives in young child. As the developer of the "Talk to Write" approach, Corbett highlighted the imperative nature of explicitly teaching oral language composition in conjunction with high-quality phonics instruction, recognizing their profound impact on literacy success. Drawing upon Scarborough's rope metaphor, he underscored the crucial role of seamlessly integrating both oral composition and decoding skills in fostering language proficiency.

Corbett's thought-provoking presentation shed light on the undeniable relationship between oral language development and effective phonics teaching and a child literacy success. He emphasized the importance of simultaneously cultivating oral composition skills and decoding abilities, recognizing them as inseparable strands in literacy development. As I dive deeper into the science of reading, specifically the relationship between vocabulary and encoding/decoding I was interested to see Corbett also making this connection. 

Corbett's explanation of the "talk for writing" approach for young learners (4 and 5 year olds) encompasses several key points that form the foundation of an effective classroom environment, fostering literacy skills.

• high expectations
• oral composition and comprehension
• strong phonic instruction for decoding and spelling
• handwriting

To effectively teach story language, according to Corbett, educators should begin with a rich story (this next paragraph will go into more detail about this). Rather than simply reading it aloud, the focus should be on orally presenting the text, allowing children to actively participate by repeating and making the language meaningful. By engaging in these interactive exercises, students internalise the linguistic structures and vocabulary required for constructing their own stories. The emphasis should be on helping students hear, say, and understand the language, fostering a solid foundation for their narrative development. The child will be exposed to the same story over many days. This holistic approach involves incorporating various strategies such as hearing, saying, understanding, drawing, engaging in rich experiences, and role-playing before transitioning to the writing stage. By encouraging imitation and guiding children to notice patterns in language, we enable them to develop their storytelling skills and encourage innovative thinking.

He also shared the concept of a "reading spine" comprising a selection of core books that are read to children, allowing them to immerse themselves in rich literary experiences. By exposing children to high-quality literature, their writing possibilities expand as they absorb elements such as settings, characters, and sentence structures. Corbett stressed that children have the right to be immersed in the finest literature available, setting the stage for their lifelong journey with language and literacy. This concept of the “reading spine” reminds me of the shared picture books that I have been using in my classroom as a part of the Better Start Literacy Approach.

Here are a few of the slides he shared that I have saved as reminders of what I might try out with my Year 1 class:

Picture cards and story structure cards are placed along a rope to retell a story.





Key words from a story are matched with images.








This screenshot above shows the key story language that is explicitly taught to children.







The children are composing their story using pictures along a line and practising their oral narrative.


Nga mihi nui!!

CoL Teacher Inquiry: How the Brain Learns to Read by Prof. Stanislas Dehaene

Prof. Stanislas Dehaene is a neuroscientist and the below is a lecture he gave aimed at teachers about how the brain learns to read. It was interesting to see "learning to read" from the perspective of a scientist rather than an educator. This isn't a new lecture (it is about 10 years old) but it is amazing what scientists can now observe using technology that can then be used to inform best practice in the classroom. 

I have included some notes that summarise  Prof. Stanislas Dehaene's lecture below. I will use these notes to help inform my intervention design in the coming weeks. I have also included at the end of this blog a graphic by "Learning Matters" that has been created based on Prof. Stanislas Dehaene's work as a neuroscientist. 

Here are some of the key points he makes in the video: 

From the brain's point of view, learning to read consists of:

• First, recognising the letters and how they combine into written words (the blue and the red)
• Second, connecting them to the brain systems for coding of speech sounds and for meaning (the orange and the green).

Reading starts in your brain like any other visual stimulation, in the general visual areas of the brain, but then very quickly moves into an area which concerns the recognition of the written word.

Professor Dehaene calls this area the brain's "letter box" because it is where we store our knowledge of letters.

From there it's an explosion of activity into at least two brain networks; one that concerns the meaning of the words, and another that concerns the pronunciation and the articulation of the words.

When first you went to school to learn to read, your brain already had a very sophisticated spoken language system. It also had a very sophisticated visual system, but it needed to create an interface with the visual word form area, the brain's letter box.

Reading consists essentially of creating an interface between your vision system in your brain and your language system, your spoken language system.

Your brain has areas that are shared between spoken language and written language. And these areas are in your brain before you learn to read. They already existed when you were a very young child.

Brain is changed by reading

Everyone's brain anatomy is changed by learning to read, and Professor Dehaene and his colleagues have managed to make a complete map of the brain areas that have been changed by reading.

The first major change is making the "letter box area” active. It is not active in people who haven't learnt to read.

Learning to read is to a large extent the capacity to attend to the individual phonemes of speech and to attribute them different letters.

What predicts how well a child will learn to read

The predictors of learning to read in young children are:

• How well they know phonics - the understanding of the sound systems of language
• How large is the size of their spoken vocabulary. If they know a large number of words, they will learn to read faster.

"We can help children learn to read, way in advance, by enhancing their vocabulary and their sound system of language at the age of three, four and five - even if we don’t start to teach reading until the age of six or seven, as some European countries do" - says Professor Dehaene.

Phonics versus whole word reading

We now understand better the question of phonics versus whole-word reading.

Should we teach the whole-word level, or should we really teach every single letter and the pronunciation?

The answer is clear. Professor Dehaene says, "whole-word reading is a myth". The brain processes every single letter and does not look at the whole word shape.

Teaching letter to sound correspondence is therefore essential. It is the fastest way to acquire reading and comprehension.

Preschools should be preparing children for learning to read and phonics exercises can help a lot.

"The brain process' every single letter and does not look at the whole word shape. Teaching letter sound correspondence is therefore essential. It is the fastest way to acquire reading and comprehension."  - says Professor Dehaene.

Brains are the same all around the world

We understand now a lot about reading, and we understand that in all cultures, there's not much variability. We all have the same brain mechanisms – they are very universal.

Reading always requires specialising of visual system for the shape of letters and connecting them to speech sounds. Even in Chinese (which has characters, rather than letters). 

Nga mihi nui!! 

CoL Teacher Inquiry: Structured Literacy- An Introductory Guide by the International Dyslexia Association

The article 'Structured Literacy: A Introductory Guide' shared that 'structured literacy' has fixed characteristics  BUT it is the teachers knowledge of new scientific and their learners (the successes and their gaps) that is required to adjust this approach on an ongoing basis to best meet the needs of their learners. 

The Characteristics of Structured Literacy 

I found the way that this article defined 'Structured Literacy' really helpful especially the way that is describes the "instructional principles" so have included this definition as part of this blog post as a reminder to myself as I begin to generate ideas for my intervention. 

Structured Literacy is characterized by the provision of systematic, explicit instruction that integrates listening, speaking, reading, and writing and emphasizes the structure of language across the speech sound system (phonology), the writing system (orthography), the structure of sentences (syntax), the meaningful parts of words (morphology), the relationships among words (semantics), and the organization of spoken and written discourse.

The following instructional principles are hallmark features of a Structured Literacy approach to reading:

1. Instructional tasks are modeled and clearly explained, especially when first introduced or when a child is having difficulty.

2. Highly explicit instruction is provided, not only in important foundational skills such as decoding and spelling, but also in higher-level aspects of literacy such as syntax, reading comprehension, and text composition.

3. Important prerequisite skills are taught before students are expected to learn more advanced skills.

4. Meaningful interactions with language occur during the lesson.

5. Multiple opportunities are provided to practice instructional tasks.

6. Well targeted corrective feedback is provided after initial student responses.

7. Student effort is encouraged.

8. Lesson engagement during teacher-led instruction is
monitored and scaffolded.

9. Lesson engagement during independent work is monitored and facilitated.

10. Students successfully complete activities at a high criterion level of performance before moving on to more advanced skills. 

Monitoring progress and making adjustments 

The following is a direct quote from the article that I found interesting as it placed a different perspective on 'structured literacy' and how it can be implemented effectively. 

"After implementing a Structured Literacy approach that is most appropriate for them, schools should use progress monitoring assessments to track student progress and gauge the overall success of instruction and intervention programs. They should make necessary adjustments in instruction and intervention on an ongoing basis. And they should follow emerging scientific evidence on literacy for new findings that may impact educational decision-making.

In addition to paying close attention to scientific research on reading and evidence-based practices, educators sometimes need to exercise judgement in making educational decisions, especially where evidence is lacking. For instance, an intervention with a relatively greater emphasis on phonemic awareness, or multisyllabic word decoding, or fluency, may be more effective for a student with greater needs in one of those respective areas. However, these kinds of judgments will differ across students and even for the same student over time, as a student’s needs shift with progress in intervention."

I think that this is point worth holding onto as I head into the intervention stage of my teacher inquiry as it really places an emphasis on firstly the profiling stage of teacher inquiry, but also the ongoing formative assessments and observations that we make as teachers. It also highlights the importance of teachers being equipped with the knowledge need to make these judgements. I know that for myself, this is a constant journey, especially with literacy as I dive deeper into the literature and learn more about the science of reading. 

The article 'Structured Literacy: An Introductory Guide by the Dyslexia Association can be found here. 

CoL Teacher Inquiry: Teaching Phonemic Awareness in 2022 - A Guide for Educators

I found this guide an interesting read, especially as it focus on teaching phonemic awareness, rather than on a specific programme or approach to teaching phonemic awareness. 

I have highlighted a few points for myself below that will inform the design of my intervention in the coming weeks:

• Small daily doses (a few minutes at a time) in effective phonemic awareness instruction improves a child's ability to read and spell unfamiliar words independently. Most children will make progress with just a few minutes of daily instruction at the start of the literacy lesson.

• Emergent and struggling readers will benefit from phonological awareness instruction. Struggling readers have phonological weakness. Most children who struggle with learning to read have an underdeveloped phonemic awareness when they enter school.  At-risk and struggling readers enter school with poor phonological awareness, which indicates that their phonological processing is less developed than it is in children who are on track for typical reading development. 

• Comparison of present research indicate larger reading gains for students with lessons that include both phonemic awareness and phonics. 

• Each phonological awareness session should begin with a review of the previously taught concept first, then focus on the teaching the next sound position in the sequence (e.g. the final sound). 

• Many students learn new phonemic awareness tasks more quickly, and are more accurate, when
  they use manipulatives. For example, a child might use two small blocks or chips for first sound
  segmentation of the word “map.” First, he repeats the word “map,” pushing one square up under the picture of a map when he says /m/ and pushing another up when he says /ap/. In later lessons when he is able to fully segment words into phonemes, he would push up three chips as he segments each sound /m/ /a/ /p/, and then blends those sounds to say “map". Practice with manipulative  tasks further strengthens phonological processing, which facilitates mapping sounds to letters and, thus, supports memory for written words and instant word recognition.

• Most children pick up syllable awareness quite easily. We do not know if it is necessary to teach syllable-level and onset-level phonological awareness after preschool. BUT the point of phonological awareness activities with syllables is to prepare students for success with phonemic awareness tasks that focus on perceiving individual speech sounds.

• Teaching phonemic awareness separately from phonics and spelling seems to provide the best environment for focusing student attention on the sounds in spoken words.

The following is an example of a phonemics awareness lesson - I will refer back to this as an example of best practice when designing my intervention: 

In the graphic below it shows how manipulatives (like blocks or counters) are used to teach phonemic awareness. I was particularly interested by the way that the 'first sound' example uses only two blocks to segment off the 'first sound' in the words 'sat'. I would have previously used three counters for the three sounds in the words 'sat' and had the learners indicate that the first sound was /s/ by pointing to the first counter. I am curious to find out the 'why?' behind the two counters when segmenting off the first sound.

I found this statement interesting as it highlight where I am at in my journey with teaching phonological awareness. 

"Scripted programmes are great at the beginning BUT children who are at risk of reading problems will need an approach that is systematic and multimodal approach where each concept is taught for accuracy first and then practiced for automaticity."

For the past year, I have implemented the scripted phonological awareness programme 'Heggerty" with my learners. It has been great. It was so needed. I have seen growth in my learners phonological awareness. When I began using this programme, I didn't have the knowledge yet to teach phonological awareness without a scripted programme. It has supported me as a teacher to build my learners phonological awareness and build up my knowledge of teaching phonological awareness. BUT it makes total sense that our learners also need an approach to teaching phonological awareness that is is responsive to where they are at in their learning, that teaches until the learners can accurately achieve a phonological skill and then for automaticity. Unlike, within a scripted programme where the teacher works through the script without pacing the learning to the learners needs. I will be continuing on with 'Heggerty' as I believe it is a great tool for quick daily practice and for getting regularly coverage of all the phonological awareness skills. But I will be taking on board the recommendation to move away from just using a scripted programme when designing my intervention. 

I will definitely be going back and rereading this resource as I plan for my intervention as it is a wealth of knowledge!

If you're interested the Guide for Educators can be read here - Teaching Phonemic Awareness in 2022: A Guide for Educators - by Jane Ashby, Marion McBride, Shira Naftel, Lucy Hart Paulson, David Kilpatrick, Louisa Cook Moats

CoL Teacher Inquiry - Profiling: Vocabulary and Oral Narrative

A key component of structured literacy (the science of reading) is vocabulary. 

Over the years, oral language as mentioned again and again as an area of gap for the children in our Kahui Ako for a variety of reason such as many children learning English as a second language and hearing less words in the home before beginning school. I can vividly remember Dorothy Burt (Manaiakalani Programme Lead) talking about the million word gap at a Manaiakalani orientation day when I first began teaching back in 2014.  I have over the years received professional development from experts in this field such as Dr Yannie Van Hees. 

Better Start Literacy Approach: Oral Narrative Assessment

As a part of the BSLA assessment, all of the children complete a task called "Oral Narrative" essentially they are read a story and are asked to retell the story in their own words (while looking at the pictures as a prompt) and then are asked to answer some comprehension questions about they story that they have just heard. Thanks to technology, all of the children's responses are recorded and analysed first by the computer and then checked by a teacher. The analysis of the "oral narrative" gives a run down of, the number of words used, the number of different words, the types of words used (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs). Here is a link to the academic study of the "Oral narrative assessment" and here is an example of how the task is scored. 

Number of words: 61
Number of different words: 35
Number of nouns: 13
Number of verbs: 14
Number of adjectives: 0
Number of adverbs: 6

Percentage of intelligible utterances: 100%

Follow the link here to listen to a few examples of the Oral Narrative Task that were collected from the children in my class at the beginning of the year. 

Overall, I found that the qualitative information from this assessment was highly valuable. It is great to have a recorded version of the child's retell available to listen back on and later in the year to be able to see the development of language. I've also found it really handy when writing a referral for a child for a SLT - I was able to attach a recording of this child's speech to the application. It will be interesting to look back on these scores and the audio recording at the end of the year and see what kind of shift is achieved for these learners.

Oral narrative and vocabulary are taught through the BSLA using a quality  children's book, this is the first building block of BSLA teaching.  As part of my BSLA lesson each day, I  focus on one quality story book per week. As the taumata (stages/levels) progress, I will use this book to teach story recall and retell skills, elaborate on interesting words, teach story structure elements and build children’s language in oral narratives using adjectives, adverbs and complex noun phrases. This will carry over into writing instruction in later taumata.

Discussion with our SLT:

Within Glen Innes School, we have many ELL tamariki and a number of children working with our SLT.  

I have discussed the language abilities of my learners with our SLT (as she is working with a few children in my classroom this year). In our discussion, we both recognised that many of the children in my class at gaps in their speech sounds (some were typical of a five year old and those that she is working with as a SLT had some gaps). She recorded the gaps she observed and encouraged me to take note of any speech sounds the children were missing or found difficult. We also discussed the best practice when it comes to growing children's language abilities in the classroom.  Most of these were not new, but a fresh reminder is always good. 

• Providing explicit instruction
• Modelling 
• Using visual aids 
• Engaging in conversations
• Providing feedback 
• Reading books together
• Play-based activities 

Professional Development: 

I am also interested in completing the webinar by GEM Literacy, "An Introduction to the Explicit Teaching of Vocabulary" and learning some different strategies to explicitly teach vocabulary to my learners. 

Until next time! 

COL Teacher Inquiry: Connected Phonation: Sliding sounds!

I have a child in my class this term who has been struggling to blend sounds together to make words. She can quickly say the sounds from the first set of our scope and sequence (m, d, p, t, a, i, n ,s) but when it came to blending these sounds together to make words she was getting stuck. 

I discovered a video online shared by another New Zealand teacher, Marianne Brown, that showed a strategy to scaffold children towards being able to blend sounds together.  This approach is called "Connected Phonation". Look up "Marianne Brown Literacy Resources" on Youtube as she shares an excellent explanation of this approach and an example of what it looks like in practice.

I have begun using this approach during our small group reading sessions this week. Here is a short video of this learner blending together a word with two sounds. I am so proud of this learner as she has been really struggling to make this connection BUT she loved the concept of the slide and by the end of the lesson she was happily sliding the sounds down the slide to make words - all with a huge smile on her face! 

Nga mihi nui! 

COL Teacher Inquiry: Curriculum refresh: Common practice model

It has been interesting to read through the first phase  "Common Practice Model" that has recently been put out by the Ministry of Education as part of their curriculum refresh. The section is talking about the beginning of primary schooling and is potentially describing a curriculum based on the science of reading. 

This section is from the "Strengthening Explicit Teaching in Literacy and Communication" section. Here is a link to the full document: Phase 1 - Common Practice Model 

COL Teacher Inquiry: Clapping syllables!

The 'Phonological Awareness Screening Assessment' by Liz Kane identified that syllables were an area my tamariki need learn. I began by explicitly teaching the whole class about syllables. We clapped the syllables in our names as we called the roll and used these picture cards from Twinkl (pictured below) to practice clapping the syllables in words. We practiced this in short burst throughout the school day over a few weeks, only ever spending a few minutes at a time... a few times a day practicing. 

I then introduced the class to this syllable game (Here is a link to the syllable game). At this point, we had already spent a few weeks practicing clapping syllables together. It was a joy to see the children all joining in the game and excitedly clapping and counting the syllables in words with their friends. 

Side note - this was also a great way to build vocabulary! 

Nga mihi nui! 

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!  

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!