Lockdown Learning Musings

Lockdown Learning Musings

"The impact of COVID-19 on education has been significant. In the short-term, there has been a complete change to the day-to-day realities of educators, students and their families. However, there also are much broader and on-going implications. The physical closure of schools has shone a spotlight on some of the persistent and systemic challenges facing our education system, providing an opportunity to refocus our attention and efforts on them. It further has created a space for asking big questions about education; do we want to return to the status quo and business as usual when schools reopen? Might the lockdown period act as a catalyst for education reforms that many have been seeking? And if so, what should we be looking to change?" - Dr Nina Hood

Lockdown was literally looking into an unseen part of the lives of my students. Initially, it was very hard to get them to turn their cameras on and it was hard to hard to get them to engage, I think it was all very strange for the (and me too)! I struggled a bit with the online interactive board, but persevered when I saw how much my students enjoyed working collaboratively. 

Teaching remotely and face-to-face teaching share the same principles i.e. 

• The importance of relationships and developing a class culture based on mutual respect, care, empathy and warmth, and the need to attend to and ensure the emotional wellbeing of each student.
• Establishing a careful sequencing of content to be covered, which builds logically and consistently through a series of well-designed and clearly focused tasks.
• Designing learning activities in keeping with the principles of how we learn so as to avoid cognitive overload and to facilitate an understanding from comprehension, to remembering, to understanding and the engagement with higher-order thinking skills.
• Supporting students to effectively manage their time, establishing routines and habits and establishing clear expectations for what students will be doing
• The need to ensure plenty of opportunities for free play, for time in nature, for creative engagement, and rest 

Emergency Closure

With the sudden, but probably expected closure of schools on Wednesday, I have decided to continue with online lessons through our 'holiday' period.  I have explained to students and called whanau and have sold the idea as "Our Lockdown Learning Journey". Students are familiar with the Winter- and Summer Learning Journey and the benefits thereof so getting them to buy into our Lockdown Learning Journey was not a big ask.

Our class site was updated to add an 'emergency closure' button so that students had access to a wide variety of independent activities and the daily class hangouts link.

Plan of Action

After analysing my students’ Reading results I have noticed that the majority of my students have not made significant progress in Reading. Figure 1 shows the Year 7 PAT results. Looking at this figure it can be seen that the majority of my learners are not working within the national norm. 

Fig 1: Year 7 Reading Comprehension Results (Beginning of the Year)

Similarly, figure 2 shows that many Year 8 students are also working below the national norm. 

Fig 2: Year 8 Reading Comprehension Results (Beginning of the Year)

Overall it is apparent that only 13% of our students are working at the national norm (Figure 3). 

Fig. 3 Combined Year 7 & Year 8 Reading Results

Our results were confirmed by the Woolf Fisher Research Centre (University of Auckland) where it is clear when looking at figure 4, that poor Reading results are not confined to our school but is a problem experienced by most schools within our community of learning. 

Fig 4: Woolf Fisher Research Centre (WFRC)

There are many contributing factors that can affect students’ reading comprehension abilities. These factors according to Linde, S (n.d.) includes but is not restricted to, “poor word recognition, limited phonics skills, phonological awareness skills, and the ability to read for extended periods of time.” Factors such as the ability to concentrate, background knowledge about topics, and text features, characteristics of the reading material can also impact a student's comprehension. Some text may be organised in a way that students can easily make sense of, using features such as headings, bullet points, or bold words, while others are not. The less organised the text, the more students struggle to understand. Reading can be challenging particularly when the material is unfamiliar, technical, or complex.  Moreover, for some readers, comprehension is always challenging (Linde, n.d.) Therefore, I am aiming at improving my students’ vocabulary knowledge through explicit teaching of vocabulary with the intention that this will enhance my students’ reading comprehension ability.

I believe that students’ vocabulary knowledge is one of the major factors that limit their comprehension of texts. Hendrick & Cunningham (2002) suggest that “the majority of children need more than considerably increased reading practice to increase their vocabulary.” Now that I have identified my inquiry topic, I will also be looking into the different aspects of reading and trying to identify which aspect/s my students need assistance with.

There are five aspects to the process of reading: phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, reading comprehension and fluency (K12 Reader, 2008-2018).  Looking at the vocabulary aspect, the K12 Reader (2008-2018) website proclaims that “as children become stronger, more advanced readers they not only learn to connect their oral vocabularies (the words we know when they are spoken) to their reading vocabularies (the words we know when they are used in print) they also strengthen each of these areas by adding new words to their repertoires. Vocabulary development is an ongoing process that continues throughout one’s ‘reading life’."

According to Van Hees  “providing multiple encounters is by far the most important condition” in order to learn vocabulary (Van Hees & Nation, 2017). This can be achieved by providing opportunities to re-encounter words, supplementing texts with large amounts of engaging texts that are rich in vocabulary and concepts and learners need to do large quantities of reading in order to get multiple encounters of words to increase their vocabulary size.      

One of the ideas that I have discussed with my senior teacher to improve reading comprehension was Literature Circles. Literature Circles are very similar to reciprocal reading. I was thinking of using literature circles, together with the students' knowledge of chunking and deep-diving to help with reading comprehension. During Literature Circles students will work in small groups, reading the same text and each student is given a specific role (connector, summariser, word wizard, discussion director and passage picker) to do when reading. 

This approach allows students to use and practice 21 st century skills. The 21 st century skills that are exhibited during Literature Circles include:
Critical Thinking - Finding solutions to problems
Creativity  - Thinking outside the box
Collaboration - Working with others
Communication - Conveying ideas

Using these skills also reinforces the New Zealand Curriculum key competencies of thinking, relating to others, understanding language, symbols and texts, participating and contributing and managing self.




REFERENCES

Hendrick, W. B., & Cunningham, J. W. (2002). Investigating the Effects of Wide Reading on Listening Comprehension of Written Language. Reading Psychology, 23(2), 107. https://doi.org/10.1080/027027102760351025

K12 Reader. (2008-2018). The Five Essential Components of Reading. Retrieved from https://www.k12reader.com/the-five-essential-components-of-reading/


Linde, S (n.d.) Factors affecting reading comprehension in elementary students. [Video] Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/factors-affecting-reading-comprehension-in-elementary-students.html

Van Hees, J., & Nation, P. (2017). What Every Primary School Teacher Should Know about Vocabulary. New Zealand Council for Educational Research. PO Box 3237, Wellington 6140 New Zealand.

Blog Post #2 - Collaborating with School Leadership Team

Our school goals for 2020 are:

READING:

 2020 Reading Goal:

•  To increase the number of ALL students reading at chronological age.
• An emphasis on acceleration in Yrs 1 & 2 students as well as Maori students in Yr 3 - 8 to be reading at chronological age. 

WRITING:

  2020 Writing Goal

•  To increase the number of ALL students working within curriculum level.
• To increase the number of boys in Yr 4 - 8 working within curriculum level to above 75%. 

MATHS:

    2020 Mathematics Goal:

•  To increase the number of ALL students working within curriculum level.
•  To increase the number of all students working within curriculum level to above 75% with an emphasis on all Maori and Pasifika students. 

Blogpost #1: Inquiry Stocktake

Reflection: What worked for me?

• Having support and guidance from Dr van Hees.

• Having supportive colleagues who were also available to act as 'sounding boards'.

• Using various sources of data to inform my practice.

Challenges

• Impressing upon students to the importance of attending school regularly and not to stay away for frivolous reasons.

• Consistently reflecting on my practice.

• Understanding why there was such a huge gap between vocabulary PAT scores and comprehension PAT scores- One would assume that if you have good vocabulary knowledge it will lead to better comprehension.

Additional Support I'd Like

• Working with Dr van Hees to have a thorough understanding of the theoretical ideas underpinning her practice.

What I aim to learn about Inquiry this year

• Ensuring my blog entries are clear and unambiguous - making sure my actions can be replicated.

Evaluation - Bursts and Bubbles Presentation

Bursts and Bubbles Presentation

The catalytic aspect of student learning my inquiry focused on this year was raising reading comprehension through expanding the vocabulary of students
I identified this as my focus when I noticed that only 20% of my class was reading at stanine 5, with not a single student achieving beyond that.
To build a rich picture of my students’ learning I used PAT reading and vocabulary data, lesson observations, running records and anecdotal notes.
The main patterns of student learning I identified in the profiling phase were that students had limited life experiences and therefore limited vocabulary.
The profiling of my own teaching showed that I had strengths in using ESOL strategies but that my students would likely make more progress if I developed my pedagogy in vocabulary acquisition and use.
The changes I made in my teaching included doing more whole-class texts. This made it more inclusive, easier to discuss as a class and to elicit prior knowledge and vocabulary. We used the chunking strategy together with deep-diving and transcripts accompanied by videos. Students were encouraged to read the text into screencastify with the chunks in place. This enhanced both meaning and fluency.
The literature/expertise that helped me decide what changes to make was Dr van Hees as she modeled deep-diving and chunking and did observations of my teaching, followed by feedback sessions. I also used the book by Dr van Hees and Dr Paul Nation, ‘What every primary should know about vocabulary’
The easiest and hardest things for me to change was to stop using vocabulary maps. It was easy because after speaking to Dr Jannie and getting feedback from students I realised they were of very little value. It was also the hardest thing to change as it was one of those activities that kept students occupied for long enough for me to work with another group without interruptions. This meant that I had to further inquire into my own practice to find truely engaging activities that had real educational value.
Overall I would rate the changes in student learning as extremely encouraging with 80% of my focus group making progress and 60% making accelerated progress.
The evidence for my rating is the end of year PAT scores. I now have to look closer at the learners in my target group and compare their  progress to the norm,  data from last year, and other comparative learners in school.

Intervention Review