Month: April 2016

#eTwion

Sonya Van Schaijik Professional Learning, PTC 07 , , ,

etwion.png

My ongoing personal inquiry is teachers and how they share their learning. I was really excited to  join Arjana and Bart @abfromz @BartVerswijvel and six other global educators on Tuesday 26th of April for a global networking seminar as part of their programme for European teachers called The Networked Teacher. When Shelly opened the session, we had both Arjana and Bart on screen and I was reminded about our history of connections through the TeachMeetINT virtual sessions that we took part in a few years ago. Bart had this cow bell that he used as a timer. That bell was an awesome timekeeper and we tried hard not to hear it.

I shared parts of my ongoing personal inquiry but from my perspective of how I built my professional learning network. I was asked to focus on my New Zealand connections so was extra excited to share about our part of the world to European educators in the eTwinning programme. The hashtag they use is #etwion. The session took place at 5.00am in our New Zealand time zone. You can check out the hashtag and see what the attendees are learning.

I built the slides over a few days. An event like this allows me to reflect on where I am as a learner and from listening to other global educator stories inspires me to set new digital learning goals. I was interested in hearing their stories from their parts of the world. Happening in the chat window was a lot of questions. I am not the best at multitasking so quickly captured the questions asked of me so I could respond to them later. The ones that caught my attention involved teachers of heritage languages wanting to make contact with our Te Reo teachers. So I suggested contacting me via social media and I hope to help them make connections here. I learnt the splot trick from @MissSpeir. So sprinkled purple splots as hyperlinked breadcrumbs throughout my presentation.

I have to mention here how Arjana was an inspiration for the #TeachMeetNZ project which is where New Zealand teachers share their passions and learning in 3 minute video clips. In a way too she plays a part in #Edblognz because it was by tagging me in a #Meme that the list of New Zealand educator blogs was curated by @HelenOfTroy01. I took that over and expanded that to include all other New Zealand blogs which was then added to the #EdblogNZ curated site of New Zealand educator blogs which I now help curate with @nlouwrens and @ariaporo22.

Thank you Arjana and Bart for inviting me to share our New Zealand teachers learning. To Joe from Canada @Joe_Sheik, Fiona from South Africa @fibeal, Shelly from Texas, USA  @ShellTerrell, Karina from Israel @karinam60, Marie-Leet from Belgium @BensBel, and Annamaria from Brazil @anamariacult, fabulous to meet you all. Hearing your stories was inspirational. To all the attendees of the webinair great to meet you all and I look forward to adding you on twitter.

Holiday presentations

Sonya Van Schaijik PTC 01 ,

Last week I attended the #GafeSummit in Auckland. The event was held at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. I have inserted access to the three presentations I attended as well as access to everyone’s presentations via the Summit Schedule.

Summit Schedule

Richard Wells Learner agency: No matter what! Slides
Molly Schroeder Google Classroom and Introduction and Best Practices Slides Google classroom can only be happy with the same domain. 

Integrates with Drive and calendar.

Can have co-teachers.

Archive with students work.
Chris Harte My World, My Maps. Slides Gets the chn curious to locate and ask good questions

Each session enabled me to  make connections and reconnect with other educators and for me to reflect on my own learning. I was excited to see some of the #TeachMeetNZ presenting for their first time and had intended on supporting them, however became very sick. So once I presented my first session and  the first day ended I went home to bed and put in apologies for my second session. For this presentation, I included several hands on moments after showing the attendees examples of what our students had created using google draw. Included also are links to educators who have a way with visual and graphic skills:

Here is my session description and my slides are above.

  • Session Description *Sonya will share how she uses Google draw to create thinking maps. She has recently used this strategy with students as part of Flat Connections Global project where students from around the world contributed to shared Google Draw maps. She has also used Google Draw with second language learners to help them plan their writing.

#Etwion Global Networking Webinair

List of presenters

My ongoing personal inquiry is teachers and how they share their learning. I am really excited to be joiningArjana and Bart   and five other global educators   ,on Tuesday 26th of April for a global networking seminar as part of their programme for European teachers called The Networked Teacher.

I will be sharing parts of my personal inquiry but from my prospective of how I have built my personal learning network. I have been asked to focus on my New Zealand connections so am extra excited to share about our part of the world to over 200 European educators in the eTwinning programme. The hashtag is #etwion so if you are up around at 5.00am do follow the hashtag. You can also follow along now and see what the attendees are learning.

 

Understanding my impact

Sonya Van Schaijik PTC 08, PTC 12 , ,

Inferencing Bitmoji

I oversee our English Language Learners progress at Newmarket School.

I monitor their progress against National Standards carefully. At the year 5 and 6 level I have a particular interest in seeing how they are achieving. If the children have been with us since they were 5, I know we should see a greater alignment with children in their cohort. However if children have come to us after they are five years old, then what I do is highlight where they are and watch that progress too against the time they have been in a New Zealand school.

Yes as a school we do report students progress using ELL reports to their parents using the English Language Literacy progressions. However we still gather data on them against National Standards to watch their progress against mainstream children.

Together with my principal I have set my inquiry goal. A a school we are focussing on writing. I have adjusted my goal and removed the writing focus because I did a lot of that last year and I know that from previous inquiries, as the year progresses this goal will become firmer. I also have reflected and believe that other language inputs and outputs are just as important such as speaking and listening and reading and have an effect of writing.

By the end of September I will have trialled three visible learning  interventions for ELL and then through data analysis ascertain the effect size of the interventions so that the most effective strategies can be applied to accelerate the progress of  targeted ELL students.  

Discuss Strategy not content

In my two major intervention groups for this term, I chose year five and six children for a targeted reading intervention. Even within this group I had some adjustments. Three weeks into the session I noticed two students moving very fast with comprehension. The evidence was from observation of them discussing the text with their peers and the way they could quickly move through the three levels of comprehension and justify their responses. Therefore I swapped them out and brought in two other students from the class itself that were at the same level and also needed the same strategies.

So overall I had 8 children. I wrote about them before and the targeted three level guide strategy I would implement.

Evaluate the effect of my teaching on my student’s learning and achievement.

This week after all reading testing was completed I checked the data. Out of my original eight students, yes I achieved my initial goal of seeing them all move up one reading level this term. I had two students continue with that accelerated progress and move up several levels. So much so that they can now be ‘probed.’ I look forward to catching up with their reading asTTle data when they are completed entered. Reading asTTle  will be the second piece of evidence to confirm my findings. From my data I can see the children who need to be on my target list because they are not making the accelerated progress I do expect at this level. Two of them have had every kind of intervention thrown in. Sometimes I do wonder if we interfere too much with natural learning. They have had reading recovery at 6 years old. ( I believe this is too soon for our ELL students and wish we could defer this until they are seven years old.) They have had steps intervention. They have had some RTLit intervention. They have had someone in class that they read to every day.

Not just scores on tests.

However Hattie reminds me that it is not just test scores. He is so right. With my targeted group. I have made positive relationships with the children. I showed them their last score. I gave them their historical data charts at the start of the term and together we set goals. I told them I believed in them and I know they can achieve this. As Hattie said, ensure that the goals were not too hard and not too easy. Their initial goals included retelling what they read in their own language at home, drawing the main idea, pointing to the answer in the text or pictures. Aim for one level higher by the end of the term. These achievable goals were easily achieved. Overall I believe that as a teacher I understood clearly what the students knew already and by studying the reading progressions on TKI I clarified what they needed to work on. I made these comprehension strategies as visible as I could by using images and text. This time I also used part one school journals. So yes I chose texts that were a year beyond their turquoise reading level. But each time I chose articles, stories with settings and contexts that may or may not be outside the student’s’ prior knowledge but they could still relate to them. There was a mix of explicit and implicit content. I thought too that they have probably read everything at Turquoise level because several students had been sitting at this level for far too long. A strategy I learnt too from a previous inquiry was that when student make connections with what they read even if the text was harder than what they were capable of, they were able to shift in their scores.

What success looks like.

I showed the student what success looks like as they began the task. I showed them students at year two who could speak their language reading at and above what they were reading and have the children tell them some of the strategies they used. The regular one was that the successful younger children read every day and retold the story to family members in their own language. I showed the targeted students class members who were their age reading at and above in national standards. These children shared their strategies. The main one was reading everyday for pleasure and information.

Create climate of trust to fail.

I used the three level guides for this section. Between the text and beyond the text, there was no right or wrong answer. The power was in the discussion and in listening to each other. The children also worked regularly in pairs and if they spoke the same language then I encouraged them to have the learning discussion in their language. Comprehension is comprehension, whatever the language of learning. I believe this encouragement of valuing first language helped create the climate of trust.

The learning strategies used.

Teach the learning strategies and provide lots of coaching to reduce that gap of where they are to where they want to be. The children parroted the learning strategies daily. They drew what the strategies looked like. They gave examples in child speak of evidence when they performed the strategy. For one lesson weekly I had the children write down the strategy they were learning and explain what it was in their own words. They include a drawing of what this looked like.

Maximise teacher feedback

I provided piles of feedback and information and gave the student plenty of opportunities to practice to increase their standard and  to reduce their gap.

I stressed the importance of knowing lots of stuff and moving on to extend those ideas and make connections. As the children discussed, I would say things such as.

  • I loved the way you used because… such as…  to extend your ideas.
  • Whoah you used the word if…then  to make connections.
  • Hey … I heard your compare your ideas because I heard you say different…same… is like.
  • When you retold what you read,  I could hear you used sequencing words Then, Next, After Finally.

Using three level guides I was able to have the children know and understand surface details before unpacking making connections using between and beyond the text strategies.

Demonstrate the impact that I am having.

One way of doing this is by ensuring my walls are up to date. I use my walls as think aloud spaces. The children went up to our principal and showed her their progress and with no coaching were able to easily answer her questions. I will also create a sketchnote to highlight the strategies I used.

To finish this term with me, I had a reading around how rice is grown. Each of the students eat rice so of course we finished with a rice celebration. I bought in cooked rice and some general ingredients and the students made a dish from their country. I also made a dish from Samoa. Together we shared what we made and made a special connection. Of course the children wanted to share some with their class teachers and so they did.

Hattie states that the success and failure of my students learning is about what I do and don’t do. Two of the children I picked up part way through have had a lot of intervention. Initially I hesitated to bring them in because of this. From this inquiry and after further discussion with my principal I highlighted ELL children who I believe are not making the desired progress. Maybe like when they were earlier readers, I should have monitored their home reading better with a notebook. Even though they did not shift in data I believe they have a better understanding of what inferencing is.

Where to next

I gave the children a bag of journals to read over the holidays because I want to ensure that they do not slide back. This is a strategy I have learnt to do also from a previous inquiry.

I will show them adults from their own culture who are successful who love to read. I will do that next term and have already made connections and plans via social media.

Some of the children did not have a language buddy. I had a Farsi and a Cantonese speaker who did not have a language buddy. However my Korean, Japanese,Mandarin and Hindi speakers did. I had carried out a phonological awareness test with the children but did not do a follow up. I will do that next term too when I retest them after the holidays.

Reference

Hattie, J. (2015). What doesn’t work in education: The politics of distraction. Retrieved April 23, 2016, from http://visible-learning.org

Literacy Progressions. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2016, from https://sites.google.com/a/matata.school.nz/literacy-progressions/

Masters, D. (n.d.). Visible Learning; know thy impact. Retrieved April 23, 2016, from http://visiblelearningplus.com/content/know-thy-impact-4-questions-help-you-pin-down-what-children-are-really-learning

New Zealand Ministry of Education (n.d.). The Structure of the Progressions. Te Kete Ipurangi. Retrieved April 23, 2016, from http://www.literacyprogressions.tki.org.nz/The-Structure-of-the-Progressions

Van Schaijik, S. (2015). Innovative Learning.  Edbooknz terms 2015. 44-65. Retrieved April 23, 2016, from https://issuu.com/ulimasao/docs/edbooknz_terms_2015

Visible Learning. (2014). John Hattie’s Eight Mind Frames For Teachers. Accessed April 23, 2016, from  http://visible-learning.org/2014/08/john-hattie-mind-frames-teachers/

Wǒ jiào Sonya

Sonya Van Schaijik ALLiS ,

glasser

What I know

As part of the TPDL course I have undertaken for the year, one criteria is reflecting on my journey of learning Mandarin.

I have been a student at Unitec learning Mandarin for one evening a week from Huang Wu who teaches Chinese (Mandarin) Level 1A at Unitec.

The lessons have been the incentive I needed to learn Mandarin, however the real motivation to learn the language has been from teaching the five and six year olds each week. That is a blog post in itself.

So far I can say my colours, how to count to 99, I have several basic greetings and am learning to ask questions.

What I am learning

Then this week I attended the pedagogy component at Auckland university. Two thirds of the session was immersion in Mandarin. That was an absolute challenge and I admired our tutor Janelle Wood immensely for modelling formulaic expressions.  Formulaic expressions accelerate language acquisition and students can gain 33% of  vocabulary using this strategy. Therefore we were exposed to 100% Mandarin and were expected to use the language. 

We covered several activities with varying levels of forced output, such as a dominoes activity, where we found  the answer to statements based on the ten Ellis principles.

When we split into our language focus groups we were introduced to further language learning strategies such as:

  1. Introducing ourselves,
  2. Reading a Chinese book silently and in pairs and discussed what we could using Mandarin.
  3. Trimono a puzzle activity (2:5.1)
  4. What is this?
  5. Songs like the transport one that reinforced colours by listening.
  6. Dot to dot focusing on Mandarin number characters.
  7. Matching activity where we matched a formulaic expression with the English.
  8. Race against the clock.

I was exhausted after the two days. I came home both days and had a nana nap. I thought about our children who go through this exercise day after day and really empathised with them.

The TPDL course puts us in the place of the learner. So we learn a language that we are unfamiliar with. We learn how to acquire a language. A lot of what I am learning is a revisit of what was covered in the Diploma of TESOL. However being a language learner has reminded me of the challenges our English Language Learners encounter every day.

I had forgotten about the exhaustion of language learning.

In my Mandarin focus group, I had 3 colleagues from the Mandarin course at Unitec. So it was great to make further connections with them.

My week’s highlights

  • Catching the train to and from Unitec allowed me the opportunity to download my thoughts.
  • Attending an ALLIS Lead Teacher Meeting hosted at Epsom Girls grammar where we shared our school’s journey.
  • Having a student help me with translation. She showed me how she used her chrome for Mandarin character writing and then used google translate to add the PinYin.
  • I memorised and use formulaic expressions in my teaching of Mandarin.
  • A child told his mother that I spoke Mandarin and I understood the statement.

What I still need to learn:

I need to:

  • Memorise the number characters and the colour characters;
  • Learn more formulaic expressions;
  • Learn to tell the time.

What I still need to do:

  • I still need to create formulaic expressions as learning mats for my learners.
  • I need to apply for my student Identity Card so I can get Wifi at Auckland university.

Overall I now believe I can learn Mandarin and I am glad I asked to teach the language because this has enabled me to memorise vocabulary. The spin off is the incredible connections I am making with my children who take great delight in helping me. The experience is also a reminder that learning a language is hard work and is exhausting for our learners. Teachers remember to provide heaps of visuals both in picture form and to provide a learning mat of formulaic expressions for your learners in class to help them survive the early days.

再见

Zàijiàn