Otago Literacy Symposium

On Tuesday 24th April, I was fortuanate enough to attend the Otago Literacy Symposium. https://sites.google.com/silverstre.am/otagoliteracysymposium2018/home?authuser=0

The key note speaker for this was Gail Loane. I found her talk to be extremely interesting, and my take home point from her talk was that in order for students to excell in writing they need authentic context.

I also attended 3 different workshops that I found really interesting as well

The first workshop was run by Joan Turner, and was on: Guided reading with fluent readers years 4-8 : keeping it simple. Joan was a literacy lecture at the Otago TC, and is currently contracted to run BT and Mentoring courses. I was fortunate to have completed one when I was at St Marys.

In her workshop she shared different ways of getting high achieving students engaged in guided reading groups, and ways of encouraging deeper thinking from them. One simple way which I am planning on implementing in my reading programme is the way I ask questions of my students. As Joan said "Being asked to Think about a text just read is different to being asked to recall a text being read.

She also said to encourage the students to talk to each other about the text, rather than to me, and this also increasing higher order thinking.

The second workshop was run by Deidre Senior and was titled: Raising Writing Achievement the Waitaki Valley Way. Deidre is the principal at Waitaki School, and the school has been involved in the ALL programme. She talked about what had been successful in their programme. I like how she had her target group write a children's book and then they published it using Snapfish. I will look into doing something like this for my ALL group. She also talk about taking the Writing out of Writing and again to look at different opportunities for the students to share their writing. I think this will tie in well to the use of Seesaw which I am going to be implementing into my class this coming term

The third workshop was also run by Deidre Senior" Fizz, bang pop! Using Science and Technology to Spark Literacy.

Again I found this really interesting. Waitaki School have also been involved with PD involving Vicki Collett, so I found some of the information she was sharing very similar. What I did really enjoy with this workshop was seeing different experiments that I can use for my class.

This Experiment involved having a jar filled as tall as you can with water, then dropping paper clips in one at a time into it. This experiment shows water tension, and you can discuss meniscus with the students. 

In this experiment one balloon had water in it, the other didn't. The balloons where then held over a knacked flame until it popped. The ballon with the water didn't pop, as it the water inside kept the surface area of the balloon cooler.

#Get New Zealand Writing

Earlier this year I signed my class up to a programme run through School Kit, and sponsored by Warehouse Stationary. This programme was called Get New Zealand Writing, and was about connecting your class to another class in New Zealand, so that we could send some post cards and a poster about our class and school to them. In return we received the same from them about their school.

Everything required to complete this writing activity was supplied. Students completed a poster about our class, and postcards about themselves and our class and school.

To introduce the activity to the students I got them to put the postcards together to see what they said.

 

We then looked at what a metaphor is. I was able to use some great you tube clips that had been supplied for us. Once all the students had the idea of what a metaphor was we sat outside the classroom to see what was outside our classroom door. All the students sat an wrote a metaphor around what they were seeing. I was impressed with how engaged the all the students were, and some of them came up with some great metaphors

In these pictures students were listening and looking at what they can see and hear from our classroom. I was surprised at how engaged every student was with this activity.

What was even more awesome and encouraging to see, was how excited the students were when we received our package from the school we did our exchange with. The school we had been partnered with was Cambridge Middle School with another year 8 class. My students were surprised to see the class we exchanged with were a class of 64 students (I have have 19) and where very impressed with their metaphors. The beauty of this exchange is that when students have the opportunity to experience not only what other students their age are up to, but also see other students work. 

Chapter Chat - Final Weeks

We are on our final week of Chapter Chat for this term. I have been super impressed with the engagement of the students. Next terms book has been announced, and I wasn't sure if the students wanted to continue on with the new book. So I decided what better idea to find out what they students wanted to do, then ask them. I ask them and they unamiously decided YES, so I guess we are going to continue.

Here is a breakdown of what I have learned this term:

1. Carefully choice what activities you want the students to achieve, then make these a must do. When I gave them free range, they tended to do the easier activities. I had one week where everyone spent the whole week doing Mindcraft. Whilst this increases creativity, I felt they had missed the point.
2. Everyone needs to be accountable and have something on our twitter page to share by the end of the week. Those that had shared their work were more engaged in the actual Chapter Chat. 
3. Clear expectations of how work needs to be set out. Some students were not working to their full potential.
4. Make sure everyone completes the twitter questions for the Friday Chat, before the chat. Some students hadn't done the questions, and made the Friday Chapter Chats harder for them to follow, and thus they were less engaged.
5. Keep ahead of the story! Makes it easier to keep up with what is happening, and means that if you are away, or things crop up you are not rushing to finish the story up to the point for the students to continue on their activities.
6. Trust your students! I had a group of boys on the last week that worked together to create a fantastic trailer for the book. I was really impressed with what they had produced (To be honest I thought they were just faffing about outside of the class) yet the group I thought would produce fantastic work did not.
7. Embace the unknown. Students are cleaver, and creative, and when given a little creative freedom produce amazing work!