Sunday Vlog - Explicitly Teaching and Understanding the Component Skills

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.

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ThinkSRSD - my journey so far with my Year 1 and 2 class

A reflection of my journey - slideshow shows my progress this term as detailed in this blog post. Introduction to SRSD If you have been following any of my posts, you will know that my journey into evidence-based practice in all areas led me to SRSD (Self-Regulated Strategy Development) last year. I started to explore what I could find online and quickly realised that, even though I was only scratching the surface of what SRSD is, the impacts on my class's writing were obvious. I listened to numerous podcasts and read as much as I could find, discovering that SRSD truly fits the bill for an evidence-based approach to writing. I must preface this by saying that I am not an expert; my qualifications lie in my commitment to using best practices and making this work in a typical New Zealand classroom. Professional Learning Development (PLD) with ThinkSRSD As a staff, we collectively decided to undertake Professional Learning Development (PLD) in ThinkSRSD. Our goal is to develop a sh...

The Importance of Sentence Level Fluency And Comprehension In Literacy

The Importance of Sentence Level Fluency And Comprehension In Literacy Sentence-level fluency and comprehension are often overlooked components in literacy education. These elements are crucial for helping children not only decode text but also understand and connect with it. In my teaching practice, I have been inspired by the works of Anne Lucas, Tim Rasinski, Hugh Catts, Nell Duke, and Lyn Stone. Their research and insights have significantly influenced how I approach literacy in my classroom. I shared some of these inspirations in a blog post at the beginning of 2023, which can be found here . Developing Class Texts In 2023, I focused on the development of class texts to improve sentence-level fluency and comprehension. This initiative was documented in my post on this blog, "The Unintentional Impact of My Class Decodable Texts." The primary goal of this work was to strengthen the connection between reading and writing. The Role of Ned and Bob Ned and Bob, the original c...

The Power of Simple Organisers: Building Independence in Young Writers, Intentionally Linking Reading and Writing

The Power of Simple Organisers: Building Independence in Young Writers, Intentionally linking Reading and Writing Why a Basic Organiser Struck a Chord Recently, I shared a very basic organiser for reading comprehension on my Facebook page—something I have used frequently in my classroom. I was genuinely surprised by how popular the post became. It’s clear there’s a real hunger among teachers for practical ways to foster writing independence in young learners. With that in mind, I wanted to share the reasoning behind this organiser and how it fits into the wider journey of developing independent writers. Laying the Foundations: Sentence-Level Understanding My class of six- and seven-year-olds are building solid foundations as writers. We’ve invested a lot of time working at the sentence level, using Colourful Semantics to help children understand how sentences are constructed. From there, we began to add greater detail using planners inspired by Colourful Semantics, linking this with th...

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