RPI Day 7: Thinking

I have been looking forward to our day on thinking. I enjoy the discussion that critical thinking and critical literacy promote in my reading groups. The points that Dorothy brought up about our students being online were so valuable,  even at Year 5 and we have so many of our students in a vulnerable position online. I really enjoyed hearing how the critical thinking aspects of Maniakalani’s pedagogy support students to be smart online. Teaching critical thinking is more important now than it ever has been before.

I am looking forward to exploring Adobe Express podcasting, and will put text to voice. I think it will be great to introduce after some of our students having taken part in a podcasting workshop last term, we will be able to continue to use those oral language skills and recording skills.

It was good to go back to see the progress of thinking from literal through to the higher-order thinking skills. It was a chance to think about the difference between interpretive questions and evaluative questions,  I often find it challenging to be certain of the difference between these, but I like the point that Naomi made about evaluative questions often having an element of interpretation within them. 

At the end we were given the opportunity to reflect on what aspects we will use over the next few weeks to develop higher order thinking. While I would love to focus on developing all areas, I feel with the time it takes to implement new learning I am going to start by focusing on a couple of aspects. I will target the pre-reading activities and the provocations during guided reading, using these to support our focus on extended discussions.  I really liked the example of the bungy jumping pre-reading activities as they gave students some prior knowledge of the topic and a chance to think about the topic more critically prior to needing to share their ideas with others. I hope this also gives students more confidence to share by feeling more prepared and having the opportunity to process ideas.

Today I felt like we were given some valuable resources that I'm able to take back to use in the classroom, as well as being given opportunities to think and plan ideas for coming weeks. The lesson on the Cave Poem was great for figurative language and I think I will have a go with this later in the term.

I am looking forward to using the analysing figurative language activity. I am going to use this in a couple of weeks when we start to look at advertising.

Word work

As part of the focus from RPI we have been looking at word work on Morphology. 

Teacher Workbook

The teacher workbook has been helpful for incorporating word work into planning. Having the learning intentions there when planning keeps them at the forefront of my mind during the planning process, as in the past morphology was often a part that was missed,  I would focus on teaching new words from the text rather than knowledge to support students to understand a more extensive range of words using their knowledge of
morphology. 

When planning I have been choosing a strategy-based learning intention and a word-based learning intention and focusing planning around these. I have used the student's 'must do' activity to provide activities related to morphology and have also been trying to look for these words in our texts as teaching points. 

I am looking forward to seeing the impact these changes have on my student's word knowledge over the rest of the year.

Adjustments to Practise

From the learning I have done at RPI, there are a few things changes I have made to my Reading programmes and my own practice.

Guided Reading Framework

I have found the guided reading framework useful when planning my reading. It has given me more structure in my guided reading sessions. In the past I would put more emphasis on the comprehension strategy I was teaching and often other components, like discussion or vocab, were brushed over during the lesson. It has helped my thought processes when planning and feeling less overwhelmed because I know I have covered all bases of a well-structured guided reading session.

Vocabulary

On thing that really stuck with me was idea of vocab knowledge being a big predictor of reading success. Over the course of the RPI I have built up the amount of vocabulary activities I have been using, from adding them into the response to reading tasks to beginning to use the Robust and interactive vocabulary activities. I particularly enjoyed using the spotlight activity as it gave me a good picture of which words to focus on during my guided reading sessions. 

I have also found that my teaching focus has shifted more from tier 3 words to tier 2 words. I think I used to focus on the more topic-specific / jargon-based words from a text. I have also been aware of discussing the contexts of the words and looking at words that can be used in various contexts.





Timetabling

While I haven't changed a lot with my timetabling I find my class needs direction/ structure. One thing I have done to build some independence is on days that groups aren't with me, I have added a must-do activity and then some choice options.  I am finding that this has been a good step to build independence and hopefully, I can give more of this time as the year progresses.