Louise Dempsey: Embedding Oral Language Across the Curriculum

 Cluster Teacher Only Day: Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey (The Literacy Place)

Embedding Oral Language Across the Curriculum

"Talk plays a central role in learning; in learning how to think and in talking your way into meaning."
- Christine Edwards Grove, Michéle Antsey and Geoff Bull

What does research tell us about student talk in the classroom?

5 Nations Study - Alexander 2001 (UK, France, India, Russia, US)

- Teacher talk was dominated by questions.

- 10% of questions were open.

- Student responses were on average 5 seconds and 70% were 3 words or less

Nuthall 2005

A hands up culture controlled by the teacher severely limits student talk and often results in a small group dominating the talk in a competitive manner.

"Why would we only ask one or two to speak when we can engage everyone through talking."

Think/Pair/Share Culture:

Important to ensure that they have a think time (at least 5 seconds) before the share with their partner. Share doesn't have to always happen as a class it can be just with their partner. With a new to English speaker put them into 3's. 

Must come up with criteria for talking. Set partners: If you are going to change partners often, research says, then don't worry about ability. If you are keeping them together for a set amount of time (no longer than one month), then research says they should be closeish in ability.

Students Actively Listening to each other and not just the teacher.

Think, Pair, Record

Think, Pair, Record

Think, Pair, Walk and Talk

Having students listen to the audio of a video only helps them to focus their listening. 

We listened to this and predicted what the setting, characters and whats happening. We had to justify why we thought those things. Then we watched it ...

Students talking in full sentences and elaborating on ideas:

This has to be an expectation for all no matter where they are or who they are. Sentence stems will support this until it becomes natural. Likewise talking strips and elaboration role cards.

Using alternatives to questions:

Final Thoughts

- reduce teacher talk, put the power in the hands of the students

- no hands

- ensure their is a 5-8 sec think time given at each time. 

- horsehoe model is the best organisation for a talking session

Sheena Cameron: Reading Comprehension Strategies

Uru Mānuka Teacher Only Day: Reading with Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey (www.theliteracyplace.com)

Reading Strategies:

These are the strategies that are the most beneficial and have been researched.

These are the three Sheena and Louise identify as the biggest game changers.

-self monitoring

- the ability to be able to infer

- summarising

Reading strategies support readers comprehension at all levels. Comprehension processes depend on what you read and your purpose for reading. There are levels of comprehension literal, inferential (Author and Me) and evaluative. Children need time to talk no matter what the level. Discussion prompts.

Our brains are not cognitiely wired to read. So they have to connect the language part of the brain with the visual part of the brain so it does take time. Therefore comprehension is easier once they are not having to chunk to decode words. This is their model for teaching the reading process:

Activating prior knowledge supports comprehension. Given what the text is decide on the best strategy that will get them into the text.

Explicitly pre teaching words.

The dot to dot activity supports this and can be used in a variety of different ways. Either single connections, multiple connections or connections over time (throughout the reading).

  

Another way is:

Self Monitoring: 

Everybody gets stuck when they read sometimes. Everyone uses different strategies to support their comprehension, including adults. It's ok to check ourselves. Some children tend to skip over the words if they are unfamiliar or reading it but moving on without questioning what it means. This is important to tackle.

Understanding Words when self monitoring

Word Hippo is a child friendly programme for finding synonyms, antonyms, definitions, understanding and pronunciation.

Predicting: 

Predicting is about engagement so unless everyone makes a prediction then what is the point. Smart Guess is a better word, followed up by why do you think that, what are your clues? Let's not predict just about what the story will be. A further example of this would be predicting what job would be good for this character and justifying why. Predicting, like all other strategies, needs explicit modelling too.

Follow up to strategy teaching:

. 

Summarizing and Retelling:

This includes note taking too. Both need to be taught explicitly as a strategy. This is a great idea for summarizing a paragraph.

Note taking Exercise - Jan 1992, 3 containers washed off ship in storm 1 c = 29000 plastic bath toys yellow ducks, blue turtles, green frogs now all over worlds oceans. Some found 15 yrs later.

Inferring:

Using real estate ads. Why have they used these words, images, what are they trying to say.

What's in the handbag activity. A range of objects in a bag and the children infer who owns the bag. These two activities help with the beginning of inferring. Creative activities encourage children to create a relationship with a book.

Synthesizing:

A level 4 activity. It's about understanding then solving the unknowns and making those connections before digging deeper. A couple of good activities for this is designing a board game or diorama or designing business cards for character.

Book Clubs/Literacy Circles:

Great for extended conversations. Book clubs can be done virtually to using google meet. A great way to connect our learners.

Final thoughts:

- classroom culture  encourages comprehension and time needs to be given over to this.

- talk is the key to developing those deeper level skills.

- children need to be clear about the strategies they are learning and how it will help them. 

- strategies need to be explicitly taught and modelled by the teachers. A couple of activities may show short term success but not give long term benefits across genres.

Reading Strategy checkups are great for identifying next steps and understanding.

Using Pixton Comics

 Today I have been having a play with Pixton Comics. Pixton allows you as a teacher to create a class and then children can sign into that class. Everyone creates an avatar and you can take class photos in different situations eg fairy tale, space, graduation ... You can then use your classmates avatars in your comics.

I want to use it for the children to create a comic for one of our Cybersmart sessions. Initially it took me a little time to understand how it worked and what all the different buttons could do but if you were looking for an easy way to present some information then it would definitely be a good choice. Once you learn all the different parts to it, I think that you could create some very high quality comics/storyboards to share learning, teach others or tell stories.

This was my finished example.

A Week of Shadows...

 I have been Kelsey's shadow for a week. Kelsey is an amazing practitioner who in this role can have a number of plates spinning at one time and has to keep all of them from crashing. While in my head I know that this is not my first plate spinning role, there is always those little doubts as to whether they will all spin calmly or whether there will be some erratic spinning at times and the best way to manage this.

Management styles are at play 👍  This is not something that I will focus on in this blog post apart from  acknowledging  the different styles and how they impact the enthusiasm of colleagues and the outcomes which is common knowledge. Interestingly, and it has been my experience, Colin Price who writes for McKinsey Quarterly says that:

 "Far more centered and high performing, in my experience, are those leaders who welcome the inconvenient contradictions of organisational life." 

Learning is an ongoing practise that can challenge us, engage us and enthuse us. While there are little butterflies at the moment, when I stop and analyse these further, a number of those are because I am excited to try something different and to share my love for the Learn Create Share kaupapa and framework. Therefore I am assigning myself homework and unlike some of the children I have just left, I am happy about it.

Homework this weekend:

  iPad linking to mac

  confidence and competence with explain everything

  timetabling check up