Number Agents

 This vlog talks about the importance of understanding what lies beneath the learning outcome that we see.  It has been one of the biggest learnings for me and I hope this thinking is useful for you too.

We are currently experiencing massive changes in education here in Aotearoa. As someone who has embraced evidence-based practice, I should be fairly content with the intent of these changes. However, I am not. Why? Simply put, our current government is trying to impose 'accelerated' changes on a system where most of us are just struggling to keep our heads above water. While there is no denying that we desperately need to address certain aspects of literacy and math teaching, achieving this is nearly impossible right now without first implementing some long-overdue changes. Teachers are overwhelmed; they are dealing with behaviours not seen even five years ago, facing massive levels of need with little to no support. The stories I hear about the number of schools needing to teach children basic skills like using the toilet are overwhelming. Many children come to school with a developmental age of two or three, unable to speak in full sentences. Many teachers and leaders are exp...

This vlog focuses a little on leadership and a little on PLD,  

 This vlog post is about my class shared texts that I started writing when I launched into whole class literacy teaching.  Next to my scope and sequence, they are the most rewarding aspect of my practice right now!

 This vlog is all about language.  Language development, in my opinion, is the most important thing we need to be talking about right now.  Get it right and so many things fall into place.

 This is a short conversation about how we weave the more 'structured learning' times into our day.

 This vlog post is in response to the numerous questions I get about 'how fast' we can go through the scope and sequence and where classes need to be 'up to.' It also looks at the vital role of patterning and why this is placed at the beginning of the scope and sequence, however, often ignored in an attempt to 'accelerate learning.' If you have had anything to do with me, you will know that I firmly believe for progress to be 'faster' we first need to slow down. This vlog post is 20 minutes and talks about these things, I hope it is useful.

 This vlog today, is a bit of a prequel to yesterdays.  Today I look at the instructional hierarchy again, but back track to talk about acquisition before working on the strategies mentioned yesterday. This relates to the scope and sequence, but can be applied to any resource you are using.   This video talks exclusively about basic facts and obviously there are many skills children need to acquire in mathematics that would also work through this hierarchy in a similar way. I hope this is useful. Let's build a strong sense of number through subitising first, from here, children will fly!

 I thought today I would upload a bit of a 'vlog.'  There is simply too much information in my head to write it down.  This 'vlog' is around 30 minutes and details my learning so far around strategies to build fluency (accurate and with ease) with basic facts. I know it is useful to sometimes have the main points broken down, so this video is my attempt to do this. If you are like us, you shied away from building fluency with basic facts, for fear of causing anxiety.  This video addresses why this is a bit of a myth.  In saying that, there are ineffective and effective ways to build fluency with basic facts. Daily retrieval practice is now part of our day, it looks a little different at times, but it is deliberate.  You can find out more via my number agents group on facebook, as I share what we are learning along the way. We have a basic fact crisis in our country, if a year 6 child is still counting to solve facts that should be known, then there is somet...

There are numerous buzzwords in education today, but the term "structured maths" has left me somewhat puzzled. Structured Literacy is a term trademarked by the International Dyslexia Association (IDA), so is there any value in using a similar term for maths? If so, what on earth does it mean? Let's start by addressing the problems with how we have been teaching maths: Lack of Guidance Firstly, if your experience has been anything like mine, we've had very little guidance on what to actually teach. We had numbers and a set of strands, but our teaching seemed to oscillate between these without any clear connection or deliberate intention.  I'd spend a week on this, a week on that, to be frank, I was aiming for coverage, not learning. Ineffective Numeracy Approaches Secondly, our numeracy approach has often prioritised counting as a means to calculate. This has led to many children struggling to develop effective strategies for achieving fluency in mathematics.   Gap...

 This has been a hot topic recently.  With Tim Shanahan's blog post on the research behind decodable books and their use (of which there has not been a lot)  Blog post here . Firstly let me say, I love his work, his research and insights have shaped a lot of what I do now.   But let's put some perspective on the post. Very basically, the research is limited and unclear, leading to his last comment. "I think it’s okay to use decodable texts as part of phonics instruction, but such practice should be  limited, and even beginning readers should be reading (not just listening to) more than decodable texts." This issue is complex and, in my opinion, not as straightforward as "Decodable's are nice to have, but not needed," as some might believe based on this last comment. It's crucial to consider both research and practice in this matter. Given the high cost and difficulty of conducting relevant research, we must rely on practical experiences to answer que...

 Reading back over this blog, I realised I have never shared our journey into creating a school culture based on 'understanding.'   After listening to the radio segment yesterday and sharing it on my facebook page, I thought it was fitting to do a bit of a post, like many of my posts, it isn't short, but hopefully it may spark some thought, or at least give some affirmation to those on a similar journey. Background... Like all of our journeys,  it all started with play.  At the time when we started to plant the seeds of our future school culture, I really didn't realise how significant our play pedagogy would be, but as it turns out, like just about everything else we do, it ultimately it all does come back to play and understanding the brain. We had already worked hard on being developmentally aware, changing this lens to developmentally sensitive and responsive.  We understood the difference of 'chronological age' and 'actual age', understood how play ...

Some initial thoughts... I wanted to start this 'last' blog post around the pillars, by clearly saying although the visual represents the different components as independent, they of course are/should all taught in an interactive way.  Vocabulary, should of course be taught in the context of comprehension and as I have added to the bottom of the pillars, rests on a bed of oral language (expressive and receptive) and background knowledge. I would not want anyone to think that we would teach these components as seperate and it is also important to understand that comprehension is one of the most complicated things we do on a daily basis and it does not only happen in the context of reading.  Narrowly focusing on reading, as it is presented in the visual, is not useful to anyone. I have taken this straight from the transcript of the podcast I have linked to this post. "Comprehension is not a skill that you can learn how to do it and then apply it to different contexts, becaus...

  This is the next instalment in blog posts around the 'pillars of literacy' and unpacking what this looks like in a real classroom. If you have read any of my posts, you will know I am a massive advocate for whole class teaching.  When I say whole class teaching, what I mean is quality tier one teaching for the whole class, done together, without groups. Obviously I still work with groups or individuals as needed, but this is much more fluid and dependent on the exact need at the time. This blog post touches on the code, the teaching of phonics, encoding (taking the sound to print) and spelling, learning the rules and applying them. In the past (before I developed an understanding of a scope and sequence) I did of course teach phonics, in fact we did a bit of everything, it was all very balanced.  While we did our best, I can see why this pick n mix approach, with little thought of the why and the what, did many of our children little favour.   I did a lot of '...