Writing PD with Leytia

This term we have been having writing PD with Leytia Leota-Preston.  I observed two writing lessons with her (in Shabnam and Sandhya's classes) and she observed one of my lessons.  One of Leytia's key messages has been that language experiences are valuable for engaging writers (especially boys).  One of the language experiences she talked about at our PD session in the holidays was dissecting a hammerhead shark.  When I watched Shabnam's lesson on adding adjectives, I got the idea of using post it notes to collect student voice.
When Leytia came to watch my writing lesson I got the children to taste a small piece of mango.  I got them to go around in a circle and describe the mango.  I then got them to write their description on a post it note and identify which of the senses it belonged to. I added the post it note to a a chart organised into the different senses.

The resulting writing had some great descriptions using a range of adjectives.  

Ready to go with Ready to Read

In November I attended a workshop run by Team Solutions that was about the new titles in the Ready to Read series.  There has been a review of this series and there are new ideas about its texts.  Previously the big books used for shared reading were enlarged versions of the books used for guided reading, with the idea that children could be introduced to the books in shared reading, and that this would make it easier to read them in guided reading sessions.  The thinking now about this is that being introduced to the texts first in shared reading reduces opportunities for building a reading practice.  This is because children can come to rely on memory, rather than using strategies to decode the texts they read.
The colour wheel has been removed from the shared books in response to this.

Also linked to memorising texts - the new Ready to Read guided texts are less repetitive in structure than previous texts, giving children more of an opportunity to use decoding strategies in guided reading.  I thought this was a positive step, as I have observed some of my new entrants learning the sentence structure in guided reading books then not really attending to the text as they read, just plugging in the change they can see in the picture.  I have a girl in my class who can still 'rattle off' the content of books she read in her previous class almost without looking at the words, which is an impressive skill in itself but not the intention in guided reading lessons.  One of my colleagues disagreed that the repetitive structure was a problem, saying that it helped to provide practice in correctly structuring a sentence, particularly for those with low oral language skills.  We have been learning in our other literacy PD that it is important for children with low oral language skills to be provided with models of correctly-structured sentences.  This led to a discussion of 'round robin' reading which the facilitator saw as an ineffective strategy.  Some saw it as a way to make sure children were supported with correct sentence structures.  I have done some round robin reading with my reading groups but have noticed that children 'tune out' when it is not their turn.  I have started instead to get them to read 'quietly in your mind' and asking questions to check comprehension.
This is my response to the article we read as part of this PD, "Ready to go with Ready to Read" by Kay Hancock:

PTC 4:

4. demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice

i. identify professional learning goals in consultation with colleagues ii. participate responsively in professional learning opportunities within the learning community iii. initiate learning opportunities to advance personal professional knowledge and skills

Oral Language professional development

This term I was lucky to be able to attend a workshop by Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey promoting their new book 'The Oral Language Book."

This was a fascinating workshop and linked to some of the professional development we have been doing in our syndicate meetings with Dale, the RTLit.  Sheena and Louise showed us a diagram of children putting their hands up in a lesson they had observed, and how this linked to student engagement.  They pointed out that the children who did not put their hands up were disengaged and missing out during modelled/sharing time.

One of the most important points I took away from the workshop was the fact that children need five seconds to prepare for talk.  In their lessons they used a hand prop to reinforce this - the five fingers of the hand symbolised the five seconds of wait time needed.

Though it is easy to ask for a quick 'hands up if...' they discussed valuable alternatives, like having talking partners (and perhaps different, organised talking partners for different tasks), doing 'think pair share,' 'think, pair, record,' 'think, pair, walk and talk' or having a tub of iceblock sticks with children's names on them to choose at random someone to answer a question.  They also suggested using an online random number generator to choose people to speak - thereby not just calling on the same children.

Having just had a conversation with parents of a child who finds it difficult to speak up in class I will be trying to implement some of these strategies in my classroom.  His parents worry that his fantastic ideas are not being heard in the classroom because he is hesitant to raise his hand - I hope that some of these strategies will help to provide a more comfortable way for him to express himself.

PTC 4:

4. demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice

i. identify professional learning goals in consultation with colleagues ii. participate responsively in professional learning opportunities within the learning community iii. initiate learning opportunities to advance personal professional knowledge and skills