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Home and School Connection and Rich Tasks (Inquiry)

I chose to watch several videos but the ones I will discuss are the Home and School Connection and the Rich Tasks as I feel these fit together nicely.

Rich tasks help to engage and motivate students in their learning and deepens their thinking on a subject. Inquiry is a very useful tool to help in these rich tasks. From one small question that students have they can discover so much about the world around them. By using inquiry on a specific "theme" in the classroom students can all discover different parts or aspects of that "theme" and come together to share their learning like a jig-saw puzzle. These students can also share their learning through different forms such as a diagram, a drama piece or a poem.

Another tool of rich tasks is to use home and school connections. Through communicating with parents and inviting them to join their students in the learning at home they can not only support their child better but the child also can see the strong connections of what they are learning and how it relates to their daily lives. It is important to remember that although some parents are very encouraging and involved in these activities some parents may not be able to due to time constraints or other reasons. This can be difficult for children who see the support their friends are getting and the rich learning that comes from, when they don't have the same opportunities. I am still learning ways in which I can assist students in these situations such as finding a community member or other adult that those children can have these authentic conversations with.

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Do you understand what you read on a regular basis? If so, you are a good meaning maker. Meaning makers use all tools at their disposal to make sense of what they are reading (graphs, visuals, background knowledge...), and go beyond that to read between the lines.
To lead our students toward becoming good "meaning makers", certain practices have been shown to be effective: language and word study is integrated throughout the day and rich, high frequency words are focussed on. Research has indicated that increasing student vocabulary correlates to not only better reading, but better oral and written language skills. It also shows that in order to increase vocabulary, you need to be exposed to each new word (in context) a minimum of 12 times.

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Although I must admit that the critical importance of phonemic awareness is pulling me to speak about code breaking, I need to focus on more than one thing st once to be a good teacher. :) Meaning Maker isabout  building a rich vocabulary of high frequency word

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Home and School Connections- Marianna Commisso

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Home and School Connections- Marianna Commisso

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Parents are children's first teachers and know their children best. Therefore, it is important that teachers and parents form a partnership and work together to support a child's learning and ensure that expectations are being met. Parental involvement in encouraged and some great examples include sending home a birthday bag, with a reading book and a journal that the child completes about their birthday celebration and then returns to school to share with the class. Another activity is the Mystery box, where parents help their child choose an object from home to put in the box. They write 3 clues about the object and practice presenting it and being able to answer questions from their classmates who will try to guess what is in the box. Another example was pairing students with adult ESL learners as reading buddies. The child would have an authentic audience because the story would be new to the adult, and the adult, in turn would read a higher leveled book to the child. Both would benefit from this experience. Finally, allowing parents to visit the classroom, keeping them informed of what is being taught, and making teaching transparent are all ways to encourage both parental involvement and parent support.

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Teaching through the gradual release of responsibility:

According to the Primary Discussion Paper, one section that spoke to me is how the gradual release of responsibility works when teacher gives students more and more independence in practising and applying the strategy over time. A question I have for this section is how can this be applied across all curricular areas? A piece of learning I think is important for this group to know is teaching approaches that demonstrate the gradual release of responsibility include modelled, shared, guided, independent practice and application to new learning (page 13).

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Susan                                            After watching the Home and School Connections video, a piece of learning I think is important for the group to know is that, “Parental aspirations and expectations for their children’s educational achievement have the strongest relationship with achievement” -John Hattie Connecting this to my personal experiences, many of the times during parent-teacher interviews, teachers wanted to see the parents of students who weren’t doing well but the parents of students who were doing well were the ones that showed up. This shows that the standards parents have for their children influences how they will succeed in their educational years. This is a light bulb moment that as teachers and the school community, we need to try different strategies to engage parents in their children’s lives. 

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Susan                                            After watching the Home and School Connections video, a piece of learning I think is important for the group to know is that, “Parental aspirations and expectations for their children’s educational achievement have the strongest relationship with achievement” -John Hattie Connecting this to my personal experiences, many of the times during parent-teacher interviews, teachers wanted to see the parents of students who weren’t doing well but the parents of students who were doing well were the ones that showed up. This shows that the standards parents have for their children influences how they will succeed in their educational years. This is a light bulb moment that as teachers and the school community, we need to try different strategies to engage parents in their children’s lives. 

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A genuine question is one I don’t know the answer to.  So asking a student, “What do you think about this problem?” or “How are you thinking about approaching this problem?” or “How did you come up with that answer?”  In this way, I can hear their thinking and the idea of being right or wrong is irrelevant. The next step is then to ask questions that would help the student defend their thinking and deepen their understanding.

In a whole classroom, the teacher needs to keep everyone focused on the idea one student presented (after being asked a provocative question by the teacher) and getting the other students to listen to that one student’s voice.  This shifts the classroom dynamic from solely listening to the teacher, to everyone listening to each other and then contributing to each others thinking.  It take a lot of skill for the teacher to be able to go with the flow that comes from this sort of discussion; we need to know the content well enough to be able to spot it when a student brings it up!  All in all, this is a great picture of inquiry.

(source: Lucy West in 2 videos under "Talk")

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-Rich tasks/Inquiry
I was really interested in the inquiry video clips because I attended a PD session last year that challenged teachers to use inquiry more as a way of engaging students.  I loved how the teacher used one field trip to the CN Tower and got so much learning out of it.  Sometimes we may just go on a trip and have the students journal about it, but this really took it to another level.  I liked how all students participated at their own level of writing when labeling diagrams.  I also thought it really great how students that young were able to come up with such good questions like" Why is the glass so strong?"  Also in the video that showed the photo story of their trip, the teacher clearly linked the task to the curriculum "text features".  Its important that rich tasks do not get out of control but still end up leading somewhere and that you can report on the students' learning.

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I read the Primary reading discussion Paper. The first interesting thing was that this was done collaboratively by a variety of professionals: representatives from EQAO, English and French language teachers, and many other professionals including speech and language pathologists. One of the primary discussions was how literacy learning takes place. This was looked at in great detail. Then, it was also noted that to impriove students literacy skills one needed to discuss the strengths and the next steps with the student. It was also noted that the gradual release of responsibility was an important feature in acquiring literacy skills so that the student becomes more and more responsible for their own learning. Finally, accountable talk

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Text analysis involves two things: higher order thinking and critical thinking.  Higher order thinking connects to taxonomies of thinking, and involves evaluation, synthesis, and analysis.  Critical thinking involves questioning assumptions and bias.  All critical thinking is higher order thinking, but not all higher order thinking is critical thinking.  If Critical literacy is “the capacity for a particular type of critical thinking that involves looking beyond the literal meaning of a text to determine what is present and what is missing, in order to analyze and evaluate the text’s complete meaning and the author’s intent”(p. 17), then we might say that this is one of the main end goals of our literacy (and thinking) programs.  Concurrently, text analysis would be the highest goal for the fluent primary reader (i.e. analysis requires strong reading fluency and thus indicates preparedness for increasingly challenging texts).

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Something that really spoke to me was the idea of the importance of professional learning communities. In the primary discussion paper, the authors found that there was an improvement in reading if the progress of the students were monitored by the entire primary division team. The teachers were able to support each other and different perspectives can be explored in order to find the best support student learning. This is a school-level consideration that can benefit primary reading.

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The Importance of Home and School Connection

A piece of learning I think that is important is what Ms. Harrison has done with the Classroom Blog. I think that the inclusion between home and school is key in bridging the gap and making learning relevant to the students. The use of technology is brought forth and utilized in a very creative manner in which I believe many primary learners can relate to by use with ease. With the move towards integration, some students with learning challenges may find it easier to utilize an ibook, or typing instead of printing.

What is the “Mystery Box?” This is a new concept for me and definitely a very neat one! This is a very clever way to get parents involved in the classroom and their kid's education. What exactly is Mystery Box? Well, the students take turns to bring home a box, where their parent helps them choose an item from the home to put in the bag. Then, they write out three clues and then the parent and child practice reading out the clues before the child presents their Mystery Box to the class. The next day, the student reads the 3 clues and the other children get a chance to guess what is in the box. Being inventive, creative, and involving parents more in the education of their children is a great way to get parents involved.

Birthday Bag is a fun way to celebrate a student's birthday. The student takes home a bag filled with items such as a book about birthdays, a birthday card from the teacher, and a birthday journal. I immediately thought the journal book was a creative way to engage the student to write. This simple activity promotes reading skills by making reading enjoyable through the context of one's birthday. This is a great way to build confidence in children and to make them feel special, which as a teacher we should all try and instill confidence in our students. Furthermore, the connection between school and community is strengthened.

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Reading Instruction and Assessment

Effective reading instruction relies on ongoing assessment. Once teachers gather information about student strengths and ongoing goals (base data) individualized instructional approaches can be implemented. Effective assessment provides students with multiple opportunities to show their learning. Assessment requires different components that all fit together to reach the end goal or “big picture.” Two examples of assessment techniques used in the videos include: thumbs up and bump it wall. The “thumbs up” activity represents assessment for learning. It is used as a check in point and helps students assess their learning and understanding of topics under study. The bump it up wall represents assessment as learning. The wall includes examples of student work with descriptive feedback from the teacher. Prior to posting it on the wall students self-edit and peer edit their work. The examples illustrate what is needed for a level 4 piece of writing. Having this visible for students allows them to see strategies

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Higher-order thinking, or critical thinking, among students needs to be encouraged through rich questions, prompts, and tasks. One way to scaffold inquiry and lead students to higher-order thinking is illustrated in the arc of inquiry (see Appendix 4.5). Opportunities should be provided for students to engage in a critical discussion of a wide variety of texts, including television programs, movies, web pages, advertising, music, gestures, oral texts, and other means of expression. Critical thinking is the process of thinking about ideas or situations in order to understand them fully, identify their implications, make a judgement, and/or guide decision making. Students use critical thinking skills when they assess, analyze, and/or evaluate the impact of something and when they form an opinion about something and support their opinion with a rationale. Critical literacy is the capacity for a particular type of critical thinking that involves looking beyond the literal meaning of a text to determine what is present and what is missing, in order to analyze and evaluate the text’s complete meaning and the author’s intent (The Full-Day Early Learning – Kindergarten Program, Draft Version, 2010, pp. 45–46).

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Home and School Connections

I chose to watch the video clips on Home and School Connections.  What I felt was very important from those clips is that parents are the child's first teachers and there should always be a partnership between the school and the parents.  When teachers give parents meaningful strategies to use at home to practice and encourage what their children are learning at school, it is supportive to both the child and the skill that is being developed.  Parental engagement promotes and supports various skills.  Examples of the home-school connection include:  having children bring level books home and read with mom/dad.  This gives children an authentic audience to practice in front of.  Another example of home and school connections is the `birthday bag`.  This is an activity whereby when a child has a birthday in class, they take home the birthday bag. In the bag, there is a birthday card from the teacher, a storybook about birthdays, a little gift, and a journal.  The student has to write in the journal how they celebrated their birthday and the next day present that to the class.  When schools involve parents, the relationship between both is strengthened and the learning is mutually beneficial.

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A piece of learning from Primary Reading Discussion Paper, which I consider important, is The Arc of Inquiry. In the Arc of Inquiry the trajectory takes students from factual comprehension to applicative literacy. It is a particular way to scaffold inquiry and lead students to higher-order thinking / critical thinking. Opportunities should be provided for students to engage in a critical discussion of a wide variety of texts, including television programs, movies, web pages, advertising, music, gestures, oral texts, and other means of expression. (p.17) This kind of teaching makes what we do matter – to ourselves, our students, and our world. Initially students find themselves at factual comprehension stage, where they learn what is currently known about topics. Next, students begin to interpret established information and ideas, evaluate merits, and discern patterns in the data. This is called Interpretive Exploration stage. Critical Literacy is reached when students take a critical look at the accrued research, premises, and ideas around their topics. When students have developed their own data and understandings, they are full participants in the discipline’s community of practice. They articulate new understanding and their unique knowledge in writing or by creating a product or social action of some kind. (p.25)

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A piece of learning I think is important from viewing:
Four Resources Model
1.Code User- understanding how books are read and what words are and how they work together to create meaning.
2. Meaning Maker-integrate the words, pictures, their own experience to make meaning of the text (vocabulary, metacognition, prefixes, read-alouds, synonyms, antonyms ect.
3. Text User- understand reading has a variety of purposes through their understanding of genres, grammar structures and other clues to meaning. Reading and writing are taught together and students should be exposed to a variety of different text types.
4. Text Analyzer- analyze to find author’s purpose, bias, and the tools the author used to achieve their purpose.  They also look at how well the author did  in meeting their purpose. Involves looking beyond the literal meaning of the text.

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Teaching through the gradual release of responsibility

After watching the Precision Teaching Video and hearing the term "gradual release of responsibility", I wanted to learn more about it. It was interesting seeing how much independence those grade three students had and seeing that it is accomplishable. Reading this document, I was glad to see there was a section on this very topic.

This method of teaching starts with the teacher first having most of the control and gradually through practicing and applying what the students have learned give them more independence.

There are five steps to this method of teaching outlined in the document (pg 11):
Modelled Practice – teacher models, explains, demonstrates, thinks aloud
Shared Practice – teacher explicitly teaches, and teacher and student practise strategy together; the student gradually assumes more and more responsibility for the strategy
Guided Practice – students practise the strategy with coaching from the teacher
Independent Practice – students apply the strategy on their own and receive feedback
Student Application – students apply their learning to a new genre or format, a more difficult text, or a new situation

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Rachele La Neve's  Thoughts  on the Code User (Primary Reading Disucssion Paper - Section 2.3.3.)

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Rachele La Neve's  Thoughts  on the Code User (Primary Reading Disucssion Paper - Section 2.3.3.)

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A piece of learning that I think is important for all Primary Teachers to know is that "Print contains meaning" (p.15).  Not only traditional print texts, but those multimodal texts (i.e. websites, texts with images, meanings) that our students are seeing and reading.

This document reminded me of a TedTalk I watched about how to learn how to read in Chinese (see below).  The Chinese language has meaning in its words.  This made me think of all the reading and writing strategies (ex. Code User, Meaning Maker, using images, analyzing pictures and texts, etc.) that we have been learning about in this course and how they can be connected to reach all learners in our classrooms. When I think about literacy I also think about the diversity in our classrooms and how all languages have different characteristics than the English language (which is taught in more prominently in our publicly funded schools). For example, I teach French Immersion and one thing that differentiates this language from English are the accents and in Arabic, sentences are read from right to left. I then started to think about my students and the languages they speak and read at home and wonder if these same literacy strategies can work for them.  I think sometimes I forget where my students come from or how to combine their identities into my teaching. How do we know we are giving our Primary Learners all the literary strategies they need to succeed in the 21C and this increasingly multicultural world?

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Learn to read Chinese ... with ease! | ShaoLan

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Systematic Phonics Instruction (Code Users, 15)

The application of phonics knowledge during the reading of connected text is vital in helping students develop a rich repertoire of word recognition strategies (Taylor, Pearson, Clark & Walpole, 2000). This section speaks to me because it supports the practice of direct instruction, mastery learning and rote learning for foundational phonological awareness. In other words, when you have mastery over phonics and phonemic awareness skills you can assimilate reading for learning in all subject areas. Mastery learning and rote-learning is important because it is the most efficient way to transfer phonological awareness skills from short to long term memory.

I went to the Guide to Effective Instruction in Reading, K-3 (2003) for some more information related to what kind of activities would be good daily practice for phonological awareness (phonics and phonemic awareness). They included word wall games; flash cards; finding words inside of words (i.e. how many words inside of “Toronto:” on, to, onto, ron); I spy prefixes and suffixes in words; chants rhymes and songs.

Furthermore,  to offset the often onerous task of decoding and rote-learning, I would mix direct instruction with sight word board games or I spy as mentioned above in addition to whole word strategies like repeated reading (modeling a sentence out loud that the student repeats). This way the student can begin reading connected text at the same time they are mastering consonant blends and vowel sounds. Students have a sense of accomplishment with repeated reading and then they are willing to work hard on rote-learning, with the ultimate goal of becoming independent readers of connected text.

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Accountable Talk:

Accountable Talk (Primary Reading Discussion Paper, page 12) is an essential part of critical literacy. Accountable talk supports and strengthens a student’s ability to build, use and relate knowledge. Accountable talk should be encouraged, promoted and supported throughout all aspects of the curriculum. Accountable talk allows for students to ask questions, guide discussions, seek explanations, share ideas and use knowledge. When students discuss ideas, thoughts, strategies and responses with other students and teachers they deepen their own understanding.  One way to encourage/support accountable talk is by creating learning centers where students can, “ [be in] the presence of people who share expertise and provide assistance; [have access] to feedback from others; [have] access to literacy tools and related supplies; [have] multiple options for activity; [have] problem-solving situations.” Therefore students should have many opportunities to participate in accountable talk in the classroom.

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Time for Literacy
Something that is important for all teachers to know is the importance of allowing children time for reading, such as read alouds, shared reading, and independent reading (Primary Discussion Paper, 13).  While kindergarten classrooms generally allow time for reading, as student move up in grades, I have found that teachers often brush over reading time or substitute it for other things, but I believe that reading is imperative for student literacy development.

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Meaning Maker

When students read to understand they are meaning makers. They connect their reading with their prior knowledge, get meaning from graphs and pictures and make connections to text, self and world.

According to the paper in schools with strong reading programs language and word study is integrated through the day and focuses on high-leverage, all-purpose words; and strategies to develop comprehension are modelled and guided. Students and teachers monitor the use of strategies like activating prior knowledge, promoting acquisition of new vocabulary, interacting with text, practicing purposeful reading, etc.
I think the most important point is to understand that comprehension strategies are intentionally taught, modelled, guided and monitored by teachers.

My question is: Do we wait after a student is a strong code breaker to start introducing the comprehension strategies? or We work both skills at the same time from the beginning?

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Four Families of Practice

There are 4 ways that learners may make meaning from texts. In order to be considered literate learners, students must be able to use each of these approaches when appropriate:
1. Code user - uses the code of text (spelling, punctuation, structure) to understand texts
2. Meaning maker - uses personal experiences to understand texts
3. Text user - uses understanding of audience and purpose to decode texts
4. Text analyzer - understands bias exists in texts and uses this knowledge to greater understand texts
As teachers, we need to provide opportunities for students to become literate in all 4 families in order to become fluent and critical readers and writers.

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I chose to read the Primary Discussion Paper. The purpose of the paper is to help improve primary reading achievements. It endorses the use of a four resource (“Four Families”) model developed by Luke and Freebody, the four being Code User, Meaning Maker, Text User, and Text Analyzer. The piece of learning that I found important is found in section 2.3.3, the Code User.

The paper asserts that a student’s ability to understand phonemics is a direct indication of current ability and future reading success. It quotes; “Phonological awareness involves the auditory and oral manipulation of sounds. A student’s level of phonological awareness at the end of kindergarten is one of the strongest predictors of future reading success, in grade one and beyond.” (Adams et al., 1998) and, “Children who are destined to be poor readers in fourth grade almost invariably have difficulties in kindergarten and first grade with critical phonological skills.” (Torgesen, 2004). Phonemics is the mental process of translating sounds into their representative letters, whereas phonics is the reverse process of translating letters to sounds. The two are like the two sides of a step ladder; the steps and the support. The height of the ladder is equal to the height of the support. Adding height to the ladder without lengthening the support may work to a point, but eventually the structure will topple over. The same is true with phonemics and phonics. It is clear that phonemic instruction must be a part of the reading curriculum in order for students to succeed. The document then states “Giving students daily opportunities to write is one of the best ways to support them in learning about letter–sound relationships.” (page 15).

I believe that the key information to be gleaned from this is a class structure which will help create successful Code Users; begin the class with phonemic instruction, followed by group led reading phonetics, concluded with student writing that incorporates the specific phonemes and phonetics from the previous two segments.

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Self-Assessment:

Students need to be able recognize what their strengths and weaknesses are. They should be able to come up with next steps for themselves. Students need to see self-assessment as tool rather than a judgment. Self-assessment has a profound impact on their metacognitive development.  Through problem solving strategies “Students are explicitly taught to monitor their learning, the quality of their work, and their time on task. They are also taught strategies that good readers use, and how to fix problems that they encounter as they are reading (for more information on strategies and strategy instruction, see Appendix 4.3). Learners who have developed their metacognitive abilities have the following advantages (Wenden, 1998):

- They are more strategic in their learning.

- Their rate of progress in learning, as well as the quality and speed of their cognitive engagement, are higher.

- They are more confident in their ability to learn.

- They do not hesitate to obtain help from peers, teachers, or family when needed.

- They provide accurate assessments of why they are successful learners.

- They think clearly about their errors when failure occurs during an activity.

- Their tactics match the learning task, and they make adjustments to reflect changing circumstances.

- They perceive themselves as continual learners and can successfully cope with new situations” (Primary Reading Discussion Paper, 2012, pg. 14-15).

When students feel safe in their own abilities to identify their needs they will take more positive ownership over their learning.