PLD 2023

 As usual Panmure Bridge School always encourages us to do as much PLD as we can.  This year I have participated in PLD in person and online.

Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey: Online                                                                Supporting Students to become Competent and Confident Spellers

This was a 3 hour online PLD that was held of 2 days.  It was looking at how to use simple high-frequency words to build onto to give the students confidence to use those words spell new words.

I used aspects of this PLD in my Teacher Inquiry this year.  Connections to the sounds, words, using the spelling rules as a tool. The use of their spelling tools will be part of my literacy program going forward.

Maori Achieving Success as Maori: Webinar

This was PLD on how, in our schools and the education sector as a whole we can think how we look at ways Maori is Achieving Success and how we can work together to ensure this happens. 

What is it like when you engage in Maori - it's like the pieces fit together!

School should reflect both worlds - that has to be the place we start - where we get to see their worlds. 

This webinar really made me think about how I think and teach and how even with the best intentions that maybe I am doing a disservice to my students. One of the main points I got from this webinar was you have to really understand where the student is coming from and that they need to know that you respect that place and you are trying to ensure that they feel relevant and heard.

T-Shaped Literacy: Online

This has been ongoing PLD with the University of Auckland. This year we looked at 6 units as follows:

• Mood and Atmosphere
• Characterisation
• POV/perspective
• Great Beginnings
• Genre
• Features
• Symbolism

This has been a big learning curve in my thought process and teaching practice. Breaking down a text and looking at an individual unit over a number of texts, exploring it deeper and deeper has been a revelation to not only myself but my students. I am fortunate to have the expertise of my teaching partner Robyn Anderson (PLD on a daily basis) to discuss ideas with, especially when I have trouble understanding the unit or struggling to find a text set to work with. Sometimes the most unlikely texts make the best examples for teaching. Through doing T-Shaped this year the biggest take away for me is to ASK FOR HELP if you need it.

Giving Effect to Te Tiriti of Waitangi: Online

New Zealand School Trustees Association - Board Matters

As the staff rep member for the BOT of Panmure Bridge, I took on this PLD as a matter of being prepared for and understand Te Tiriti of Waitangi when it came up in board matters. Having previously done a webinar Maori achieving success as Maori, they both spoke the same message. Listening to Maori, understanding where they have come from and where they want to go and how they are going to get there. It comes down to equality and equity and how we present that to our community, parents and students.

 

Intervention: implementation & monitoring of new approaches

 

Intervention: implementation & monitoring of new approaches 

The 'worksheet' I had designed for my students to enhance their knowledge of how words are connected involved using phonemes that have the same sound, pictures to visibly see the difference of the sound, both familiar and unfamiliar words, an opportunity to define the words as well as being able to look for new words themselves.  Below on the left is my original worksheet and on the right the learners full in the rest of the words themselves and find the root words.  We had to do a lot of unpacking and defining for understanding so my students felt confident in finishing the worksheet. A teacher intentionally calls attention to specific vocabulary terms which heightens the student’s awareness of the new words heard or read (Manzo & Manzo, 2008).

After reflection of my initial concept of designing a word list to show the differences and similarities of phonemes, I realised that my students were still struggling with the beginning of the given words.  While having discussions in the talanoa time it was suggested that I not only make the words visible to my group but to also place a sound bite on each word so that my learners could hear the word.  The fifth framework suggests involving students in original investigations of word and word features.  (Ashlie R. Jack, 2011). When I was discussing how I was going to alter the way I would be doing the word sheet to my students, it then dawned on me that as well as working alongside words the students had searched to expand their knowledge they could place a sound bite on those words so I could navigate their learning by hearing if they are pronouncing each sound correctly that would enable them to have an understanding of how the word sounds as well as being conscious of how the word is spelt. 

With monitoring the trajectory of the understanding the students have with words they have been introduced to and observing how they have the confidence to look up new words to ensure they have not only the spelling correct but also an understanding of the definition given.  

I have really changed my thinking of the teacher teaches the unknown, to the teacher and students co construct through discussions or informal feed forward and feedback of what works for them and which words, sounds, chunks etc  they have difficulty with.

Question 1: Student Inquiry Focus

 

This year Robyn Anderson and I will be undertaking a collaborative inquiry. What this will look like exactly at this stage is still in the early stages although we do know our purpose. This year we want to find out if a focus on spelling conventions will foster an environment where word consciousness strengthens connections to the learning.

We teach a Year 7/8 class with 40 learners, all who bring different connections to the conventions of spelling to the table. We know from observing students from past years and  noticing the actions of our learners this year stop writing completely as well as stop reading and avoid sharing back to the class when they lose the connection to words needed to continue to make sense of the learning. There are many reasons as to why this happens but rather than focus solely on that, we want to focus on how we can prevent this pattern from continuing as time goes on and being a challenge that becomes too much to overcome. Our thinking is that if we begin to develop these skills and understandings, the transition to language of instruction used in Y9 may be strengthened by stronger connections to word knowledge.

Once we had decided on our inquiry focus this year, Robyn and I spoke with Anna Salmon, our Reading Recovery teacher about the barriers children in the junior school face with spelling, and how she helps the students she is working with to overcome these barriers. We came away from a very rich learning conversation with lots of ideas to pull together a tentative pathway forward. Here are the notes we made to help us formulate a plan going forward.

'Word consciousness involves being aware and interested in words and word meanings (Anderson & Nagy, 1992; Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2002) and anything new is a matter of linking this new knowledge in some way with the already known (Laurence R. Sipe, 2001). Individuals who are word conscious are motivated to learn new words and able to use them skilfully '(Sourced here). Our challenge now is to find out why their is a gap in their knowledge and how we can close that gap. Robyn and I co-constructed a survey that we plan to use to get to know our learners as spellers. To do this we will be looking at shift or change in:

• Disposition
• Data
• Word consciousness
• Student voice
• Strategies used to make sense of new or unfamiliar words

Further Reading/PLD to grow my own knowledge kete:

• Supporting students to become competent and confident spellers - Louise Dempsy

• The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth
• Invention, convention, and intervention: Invented spelling and the teacher's role