2019 Inquiry

This year Toni our AP went to a PD session with Betsy Sewell. From having two dyslexic children of her own Betsy developed a programme 'Agility With Sound' for helping other children who have had difficulty with learning to read and write.

She explains how reading and writing is a relatively recent development for human brains which means that there is not a specific area designated in the brain for this. Most able English readers and writers use the part of their brain used for speech and sound, but often people who have difficulty learning to read and write use the visual part of their brain instead. The programme she has developed has a strong phonics base and helps to reestablish the pathways in the learner's brain back to using the speech/language area.




Children can surprisingly become relatively adept at using the visual side of their brain for literacy up to a certain level but will struggle as the texts become more difficult. In addition the demand on their brains is much greater trying to decipher text using the visual side, so this in turn compromises their ability to focus also on the comprehension of the text.

We had Betsy come to Pt England to give a quick overview of her programme. What she said really resonated so we have decided to try it with some of our year 5/6 students.

INQUIRY FOCUS
 I have decided to focus  my inquiry on seeing what shift in reading and writing we can get from a group of children who are reading and writing well below their chronological age using the Agility With Sound literacy programme.

PRETEST
The initial part of programme involves testing each child individually using a couple of specifically designed tests.  The first one is a spelling test where the child is at a whiteboard. You, as the recorder note down each attempt at spelling the word including changes they make. (This is key in helping to get an understanding of how the child is processing the information - what part of their brain they are using) It clearly highlights gaps or misconceptions in the child's phonological understanding, and also what they do know.
I found this test really eyeopening. To see these children really struggle with trying to spell even basic 3 letter words. To see them knowing that what they had written didn't 'look' quite right so added in a random letter to change that 'look' rather than listening for specific sounds.
Here are two examples.




The second part of the testing is a timed minute test seeing how many words they can read. These words are not high frequency words, rather words that are made up of the basic standard letter sounds. Starting with consonant-vowel-consonant, then adding in blends and multisyllabic.
The test shows how quick they are at processing letter/sounds and also highlights the misconceptions they have.

The final test is another spelling test where the words are made up words.

This programme has similarities to a few things I was trying to do in 2016 when I was taking some children for withdrawal literacy lessons. I had the realisation that the children in these groups had really poor grapho/phonic knowledge and their speed at processing and decoding was really slow and inaccurate. I had searched for activities people used for dyslexic children and came across a similar process which I used daily and felt made a difference.

I am really excited to be trialling Betsy's programme as it seems very specific and targeted. Although I don't think it is a programme you would teach everyone how to read and write I think there are components that complement our Gwyneth Phillips literacy really well which could possibly help avoid having so many children not connecting with the crucial side of their brain for so many years, ending up like the group I will have - children who have learnt inefficient and inaccurate strategies to help them read and write.

Student Collaboration

From the same Teaching Channel site here's another clip that has some good reminders about ways to establish effective student collaboration.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/video/encourage-student-collaboration

Developing Mathematical Discussion

"The Same or Different: Developing Mathematical Argumentation in Kindergarten."

I came across this clip and thought it highlighted a really good way to start getting children into not only starting to notice similarities and differences but then also being able to express what they notice, explain their thinking and agree or disagree with others.
Lots of thinking going on with one simple activity.

Teaching Self-Compassion

I came across this really interesting article

How Self-Compassion Supports Academic Motivation and Emotional Wellness

which ties in fantastically with what I have read about teaching growth mindset to children. The main idea is that teaching self compassion can help children develop resilience and strength.

"When a student develops self-compassion, the seat of motivation shifts.  Since internal value doesn’t depend on external achievement, it frees students up to experiment, take risks and try new paths.  “Self-compassion leads to learning goals instead of performance goals — such as trying again after messing up,” "

The article also says how teaching self-compassion is particularly valuable for children who have experienced trauma as it can even help children rewire the neural pathways associated with attachment. 

So another valuable element to somehow try and incorporate into our programme.

Play-Based Learning

While developing oral language continues to be a focus, this term we have decided to put a greater emphasis on exploring play-based learning.  From observing incidental interactions the children have had with each other while they are engaged in the independent play component of our programme, it has been obvious that there are many positive benefits with play.
Firstly the children are interacting with each other. They are negotiating, sharing ideas, responding to each other, expanding on other's ideas, agreeing, disagreeing, reasoning. In other words, not only developing important social skills but also language skills.
Secondly they are `being creative, such as coming up with innovative and different ways to play with equipment and designing and constructing like with the blocks and sand.

A focus for us now is to try and build on these positive attributes of play and help foster conditions for children to be really developing their thinking skills along with social skills. We are trying to give the children a greater variety of experiences to explore, and looking at ways of focussing their play in particular directions by setting challenges.

We also need to be looking at ways to record their exploring and thinking, in order to revisit their experiences, to help develop their language and thinking more.

Cynthia Greenleaf

Last week I went to the  Collaborative Reasoning PLG with Cynthia Greenleaf.


There were several similarities between her programme and DMIC: The establishment of group norms was important to help create an environment where all children felt they had a voice seemed to be the main one. Having a task where children have to think was another crossover.

In the seminar we were asked to do an activity in groups where we had to look at a picture of an 18th century crime scene, read the accompanying article about it and draw conclusions about what had happened. The most interesting thing highlighted for me was how important it was to have a scenario that was didn't emphasise a single dominant interpretation to help promote discussion, and develop the skill of supporting your views with evidence.

This made me wonder about some of the reasons I have been finding it very difficult establishing group norms in DMIC. The establishment of group norms has felt very teacher-led and forced for me. It hasn't seemed a natural process at all. Now I am wondering if particularly at our level when the problems are fairly simple, that there just isn't the need for discussion. It is trying to force something to happened when the reality there isn't enough depth to allow it to happen.

So my main take-away from this PLG was to try and establish these group norms in a different context, rather than trying to establish them in DMIC. Create some group discussions where children will have ideas to add. Where there are different interpretations so they can learn how to listen to others ideas and share their own but be able to help develop the skill of backing up their views. Then having learnt these skills in more natural and less contrived situations they can transfer these skills into the DMIC lessons.

My next to-do is to come up with some activities to help develop this.

I found the same activity online here.

Slip or Trip

Nigel Latta's A Curious Mind

Interestingly after having read the article on Mindfulness and Curiosity yesterday I also watched the latest episode of the Curious Mind by Nigel Latta which delved into several of the same issues. In the programme it highlighted schools which have included Mindfulness into their school philosophy and programme. They have found that not only has behaviour and empathy been impacted positively by this but academic success also.

Last year I started after lunch with a simple time to relax or rest. What was interesting was that that the children who had more behaviour issues found this really difficult to do. They just couldn't calm their minds enough to relax. As our 1 class turned into 2 it became more difficult so instead of continuing with it I abandoned it. I am beginning to see now that helping children develop the skill to be able to do this can be hugely valuable.

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/the-curious-mind