Manaiakalanai Wananga October 2020

The annual Manaiakalani Wananga is always rich with inspiring speakers.   I come away feeling motivated and full of ideas to try and implement.  One of the highlights was hearing from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre's Associate Director, Dr Aaron Wilson's.  His presentation unpacked the 2020 data from across all Manaiakalani schools nationwide and represented trends from online observation data.  

Aaron prefaced his presentation by explaining that understanding the online observation data begins with identifying student learning patterns.  Analysing these patterns helps identify strengths in teacher's practice and raises some important questions, such as retooling teaching practice, to make it more effective for students' learning.   Significant gains have been occurring with students writing, showing that after three years at Manaiakalani schools, students are making twice the expected progress in one year.   Writing achievement is showing promising results. 

However, a recurring theme within the recent data showed an over-representation of lower achievement and lower progress rates where reading is concerned.    

Aaron explained that students need to develop strong foundational reading skills in the early years of school.  Furthermore, teachers need to have the diagnostic ability to recognise students who need extra support.  They also need to know what steps to take to ensure students get the guidance they need.  

The overall reading pattern showed the trend in many schools that students can get to Year 4 with basic literacy but have irregular patterns for the preceding years.  The key goal is to disrupt this pattern by implementing high leverage practices and increasing students' reading mileage.  Aaron emphasised how teachers' planning is imperative to lift students reading using high leverage practices. 

The Shanahan & Shanahan model (see below), places basic literacy, i.e. letter recognition and phonetic sounding, as a necessary skill.  We still have some work to do to help students achieve intermediate literacy. 

Mirror texts (where students can see themselves in a text) encourages students to connect with what they are reading, making it relatable and purposeful.  

Window text, on the other hand, gives students a view into other worlds and cultures.  Window texts provide opportunities for students to recognise ethnic diversity and empathy.  The challenge for teachers is to incorporate both mirror and window texts.  Ideas to consider are;

• What opportunities are we offering students to read about non-European and non-western worlds?   
• Are our texts representative of the cultures within our class, and are we also using window texts to expose students to different cultures?   
• How can we help our students see themselves in what they're reading?  
• Plan to use texts that open students' minds to the wider world to help engage students in literacy and literacy development.  

Metacognition challenge: 

How are we developing and planning for metacognitive challenges across a range of abilities?  What support and scaffolding do we have in place?  Are these resources easily accessible from the class site? Reading in a specific subject area is a specialised skill at high school and must be taught consistently.  Teachers can help students understand by discussing specific texts with students and conversing about a text's structure.  This approach helps students to interpret the key messages or big idea.  Another teaching strategy involves having students unpack topic-specific text and to aggregate vocab pertinent to the genre.  

Class site design to aiding reading:

Aaron advocated for teachers to plan for and to include teaching strategies on their class site for students to refer to.  It would benefit students and be a resource for parents to engage with their child's learning. 

Critical Literacy:

How then might we develop students critical literacy skills?  Aaron advised critical literacy is not something that can happen spontaneously in the classroom; it needs to be deliberately planned.  Additionally, purposeful, engaging activities should be part of a teacher's planning.  These resources should be scaffolded for the best student outcomes. Teachers also need to be mindful that they are not putting a ceiling on students learning and limiting their ability.  Questions for teachers to consider are;

• Are we providing opportunities for students to evaluate multiple texts and then discuss them?
• Have we factored in planned activities for group discussion?
• Are we giving students a choice of text?
• What options and choices are we giving students to Create and show their learning?
• Have we provided a range of texts in terms of length and complexity? 

Professional development:

There is a need for systematic support to help teachers design and develop reading resources.  The recent classroom observations showed a shift in teaching practices towards multiple texts, so there is progress across our clusters.   The wero or challenge is to think about how we can work collaboratively and collectively to disrupt and improve reading outcomes.  

Our overarching goal could be for students to be reading like a writer and writing like a reader.