Number Agents

 In my little series about literacy, I thought I would meander off a little into the topic of writing.    Writing and reading are inextricably linked, while there are obvious differences, there are many pieces of the puzzle that are the same.  Sadly however, writing seems to be completely misunderstood and it is not yet widely acknowledged in our education system, that writing is one of the most complex cognitive tasks that we ask children to do. I have posted about writing before, a few years ago now, and reading back, there was much I did understand, but a lot I realise I just didn't know.  Since then, my deep dive into the Science of Literacy and more accurately in my mind, the Science of Learning or Evidenced Based Teaching, my approach to writing has changed.    Often writing is seen as just one part of the daily timetable, the teacher models, the children write and that is it.  Little thought is given to the foundations that need to be in pl...

Writing is something I have been giving a lot of thought to this year.  In my discussions with a range of teachers and principals this year, the one thing that comes through is that writing levels are a concern.  Particularly in Year 3 and 4 with many of our struggling children being boys. Part of my reflection this year has been on this, why?  Why do some children struggle to get started with writing, why does it become hard, and why are boys in particular struggling? I believe there are several components here that need to be dealt with separately.  Very briefly these things include: *Fine motor skills, if holding and using a pencil is an issue for me, then I am not going to want to write, it will be hard for me, and that will be a major barrier to my progress.  These fine motor skills need to be addressed early on.  We need to look at each child individually and assist them each to develop these skills.  Fine motor schools can be linked to han...

If you have been following me for a while, you will know I have a keen interest in the teaching of writing.  In fact in the teaching of literacy in general. My approach to the teaching of writing has changed significantly since I started my journey into play and I now prefer to look at writing as storytelling.  This is an old blog post...just in case you have not read it. http://numberagents.blogspot.co.nz/2017/07/exploring-greater-depth-in-writing.html If you have read my latest book you will know that I did stumble across some research that shows children become better, more engaged writers when they are allowed to engage with the storytelling process and journaling, rather than being pushed early into formal writing where the topic is prescribed by the teacher.  Regardless of research, I can, from my perspective clearly tell you that children become much more capable, engaged writers when they are allowed to see writing as storytelling.  I have taught...

2016 was a massive year professionally for me and I thought it may be useful to some if I shared my professional blog posts from my appraisal journal.  These obviously are not all of them, but they are the ones that centred around play based.  The are in order, and just reading them through it becomes obvious just how far I have come.  How does number agents fit into this....beautifully, seamlessly, I love it! I can not wait to see what journey 2017 will take me on! ------------------------------------------- Post 1 It was fabulous to be able to really talk about my where my journey with PBL has taken me so far with particular focus on writing.  Lets think about my assumptions prior to this journey: 1. PBL is just children choosing, it has little to do with learning and is lazy teaching.  Foundation learning and developmental discovery time has a place for new entrants, but only for a certain time period each week, or in a special group run by S...

Inspired by this ...have a listen, it is very interesting. Writing...a complex way to communicate with many pieces to the puzzle that I think often go overlooked.  I have previously shared some ideas on writing that can be linked to here. http://numberagents.blogspot.com/2018/02/storytelling-way-into-writing.html What I wanted to think about today, for myself, as much as anyone reading this, is the parts of the jigsaw that have to be in place for a child to become successful at communicating in the written form.  Too often I think writing is thought of as this stand alone area, taught in isolation and without purpose.  Firstly let me say this, children learn best through play, it is my belief that particularly in Year 1 - 2 their experience of school should be through play.  The most important part of learning for these children is social and emotional, if we fail to get this right, we can be part of creating huge problems later on.   We only have t...

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...