Decodable Texts

Recently I was invited to go to Sunshine Publications for a day to meet with editors with the view of making decodable texts available online.  We heard how the books are structured and about the deliberate choices of illustrations. The publication team wanted to listen to teachers and practitioners about what would be helpful in the digital versions. We had lots of time to talk and make suggestions so I hope they were helpful. Charlotte Gaston from Pt England School attended and will trial the digital versions with her class. 

Prior to going I spent some time researching decodable texts and how they fit into a reading programme. I was opened to the world of Structured Literacy, The Science of Reading and the battle between 3-cue reading, Reading Recovery and Structured Literacy. 

In my research I found Lifting Literacy Aotearoa and dived into this as it is in a New Zealand setting. Their manifesto made for interesting reading and has links to research. 

I had to get my head around a different way of teaching that would be needed with decodable texts. A phonics or code-based approach is used in the early years with the decodable books supporting the practice and generalisation of concepts and elements taught so they can experience success.

This is such a change to using natural language texts and the 3-cue approach that professional learning would be necessary to affect change in schools. It is also a decision that would need to be made school-wide and not done in isolated pockets. 

The Ministry of education have been rolling out Ready to Read Phonics Plus books to school since the end of March this year. Support resources are available for these series.

The Ministry of education has also been reviewing the Reading Recovery Programme. It is now known as Reading Recovery and Early Literacy Support. 

So from being invited to spend time at Sunshine Publications came a pathway of learning that I am still trying to make sense of and to understand what this means to teachers and learners. 

Ubiquitous Learning is Rewindable

 

Our Whakatauākī for the term 1 staff meeting is about making learning accessible for every learner any where, any time and at any pace.

Teachers can harness the affordances of technology and provide instructional material that is rewindable, visible and audible. In our term 1 staff meetings, teachers are coached to adapt material from their class site and make it rewindable.

   

We have many tools on hand to enable us to do this. Check out what has been used in the slide deck below where we have curated "before & after" samples of the content in this slide deck. 

Orientation 2021

This year we held our Orientation day with teachers who are new to our cluster. The Manaiakalani Orientation contributes to a programme of professional learning that supports our people to confidently connect with the goals of our education programme, including raising educational outcomes for our young people through effective teaching in future focused communities of learning.

Today's participants worked within the Learn Create Share pedagogy to connect with the kaupapa of The Manaiakalani Programme Outreach.

 

To experience the Learn Create Share pedagogy our participants explored online profiles and the Cybersmart thinking of how to advertise ourselves positively online. 

 

 They created their own online profile using a range of tools. Here are their profiles shared in a slide deck. Take a peek and please leave a comment. 

Summer Learning Journey

 The Summer Learning Journey (SLJ) is a programme run in all Manakaiakalani clusters in response to the summer slump which sees the achievement levels of students plummet over the long summer break. Students are given daily tasks to do then share them on their blog. This integration of literacy and other curriculum areas keeps them engaged in reading and writing in particular.

Every blog post is read and commented on my a team of commenters. Points are awarded and when school returns in February we will have prizes to present.

Many students in our cluster registered and have been blogging through the summer break. Below is Kylah's blog post that earned her bonus points. If you want to leave a comment about the post below you will find it here.

Gravity Defying Bucket and Cup Trick 

Today for summer learning journey Nanogirl task I made a gravity defying bucket and did a cup trick that meant I could turn the cup over and the water didn't escape!

I decided to make and edit a video on how to make the bucket. I really enjoyed making the first video about Tolaga Bay, I decided to try editing another video using Movavi.
Both tasks were nice and simple to follow. My favourite of the two was the cup flip trick. I thought I was going to make a mess all over the table! The cup and card trick is pretty cool! I wanted to know why it worked. It's to do with air pressure! With the card there is no air being pushed into the water so the water stays in the cup upside down! pretty cool huh! I have sort of discovered the bucket trick before by accident once when I spun my drink bottle in a circle and no water came out.

I'm getting better at editing my videos and it was easier to work out what to do. I didn't even need my Mum to guide me this time! I had to split the audio to the video lots of times to make the volume higher when it was going into time lapses and lower when I was talking so you could still hear me over the music. Next time if I was do do this task again I would make the string slightly shorter because I had to have it wrapped around my hand lots of times because I had made it too long. I would also make sure I was doing a task when my little brother wasn't around. He tried to grab the scissors!

 

Here are my videos.

   

   

Reflection on 3 Years of TMPO

Facilitators of The Manaiakalani Programme Outreach (TMPO) met today to reflect on the 3 years of being in the programme. Our Tairāwhiti cluster started with TMPO in 2018. 

Themes emerging from the facilitators reflections...

• leadership
• personal reflections - we must blog ourselves
• if its good at the top - its good at the bottom
• TMPO - delivery of online learning - theory move to reality
• blogging is the change agent - Lenva - Secondary schools
• sell the why of blogging - to teachers and kids

Looking ahead:

• scale not stretch
• What tree will we plant? | He aha te rākau hei whakatō mā tāua?
• how will we know that Cybersmart is being implemented across the school?

Parliamentary Bills:

we had 2 provocations today to discuss and 

My reflections of the 3 years in a nutshell...

Partnerships with Whānau

As we return to school in this post-lockdown period we have an opportunity to reflect and learn from our experiences.

The Education Hub has been active in collecting parent, teacher and student voice. 

The Education Hub's webinar of "Lessons form Lockdown: Engaging in true partnership with Māori and Pasifika families" is a succinct article about what can be done on the way forward. 

In our cluster many schools reported anecdotally that they felt that they had formed closer relationships with whānau. They reported that whānau were active in their children's learning at home and even sat in on class Google Meets. Many of the junior teachers I worked with had parents emailing photos of their children learning at home. 

On return to school parents were messaging schools with gratitude for the work they saw teachers and schools doing. They appreciated the high level of communication through daily Meets, online assemblies and emails. They expressed thanks for the care and attention the teachers gave to the learning tasks and how accessible it was on class Google sites. 

So how can schools learn from this and continue to forge relationships to continue on from the good work done in lockdown? How can they build on what worked and collectively work on what is good for students, whānau and schools?

Reflecting on the Magic

At the end of a very long period of work from January to this week, the Manaiakalani facilitators met online this week to reflect and share our perspectives on the power of the Manaiakalani kaupapa through the pandemic.

After working with teachers closely during lockdown so they could deliver distance learning, this time of reflection is important so we can see what worked well and harness that as we return to classrooms. 

Here are my reflections on my experience.