At the beginning of term 4, all my target students will move to Room 4. This has always been interesting for me, it happens every year and sometimes I feel that it's a bit unfair on both the child and myself.
However, these children will move and here is a brief evaluation of their final achievements. I am very proud to say that I am confident that these learners will cope and do well despite the changes.
First time - draw their story - cannot write
Using 'cut-up sentence' to write their story
Attempting to write - copying words that they know and recording sounds for the unknown words
Independent writing - using skills that they have learned (eg. copying words from the wall / alphabet cards & sounding out unknown words etc.)
What went well?
Well, for me I think TESSOL activities have helped a lot. But in order for such wonderful strategies to be successful and effective, I believe that teachers have to be really careful in scaffolding these strategies, and be very clear with the purpose of using them for.
At first, like most 5 yr old students my learners didn't know how to write, they were not able to talk properly, they were not always confident to talk/share/contribute to any discussions in class, not aware of what alpahabet letters and sounds were let alone their formations ... etc.
Before I started teaching, I was looking at all these gaps and the children's strengths. Know my Learner - this took a while - got to know the child and their whanau, got them to enjoy school and it's environment, and then introduced the academic part of their learning.
My next action was using the curriculum for backmapping. This was very useful because I got to see where the children should be achieving at the end of the year, and worked backwards in details to set short term goals for their learning.
My questions were (strong feelings then) ;how am I going to make my learners:1. talk/share/contribute? - for I believe that once they're confident to talk, they're also confident to write.
2. write their talk/idea down?
3. enjoy writing (not to stop whenever they don’t know how to write a word)? - from previous experience - most children were discouraged at this age to write because they don't know how to form letters, high frequency words, and how to write words that they don't know.
4. add on details to their writing - to make their story more interesting, meaningful etc.
TESSOL acitivites used
- Running dictation
- IOL - Intensive Oral Language
- Talk Moves - repeating, rephrasing, increase wait time
- Multi-level groupings
- Cut-up sentences
- Rub-dictation
- Dictation
- Shared writing - interactive writing - almost everyday
- Record their story on ipad - then listen to it and write it down on their book
- Phonological awareness - clapping of hands to hear the most dominant sound of an unknown words
- Word wall
- Word ring - for kids
- Word card / alphabet card
What did I learn as a teacher / what surprised me?
- TESSOL strategies are fantastic - teachers need to know what the purpose of using these strategies - scaffold them wisely to achieve hunches.
- backmapping is amazing - helps teachers to increase content knowledge of any subject.
- being specific with learning outcome for each child at this level and age group is very important.
- helping the child to feel successful (providing and gifting them with language, skills and strategies) is very vital for building confident and enthusiasm for their learning.
- not all strategies are going to be helpful to every learner - as a teacher be prepared to adapt other strategies and search for more
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