Reflections and tweaks in my Practice - CoL

What have I learnt from my initial efforts?

My End of Term Data shows that

• All Year 4 students are all on track to reach the curriculum level at the end of the year for Reading and Writing
• All Year 4 students had made considerable shifts in writing. ( Shift of One whole year in the first two terms)
• Year 5 students had made some shifts but not as much as I had predicted in Writing.
• Why is this so?

The data was very encouraging but also reflected some grey areas that pushed me harder to reflect on my practice. What was happening in the world of my year 5 students?

• All my target students were year 4 students whom I visited more often that others. this was because initially, at the beginning of the year I had realised that most of my year 4 students were very low in literacy. So I had chosen them to be my target students. But I taught the same thing to everyone in class.

Theory says that what works for your target students will work for others in class.

But as Rebecca explained...is now making sense to me.

Another glaring reflection!

Topic specific vocabulary size increased for all my students.

This is because I laid a lot of emphasis on subject vocabulary.

But children need other kind of vocabulary too...

How can I now hurry up and refine my planning and teaching?

What changes will I make?

• In Term 3 my whole class will be a target for writing - I cannot afford to leave anyone behind!
• Hit on vocabulary in all curriculum areas - Reading, writing and Maths. Now that students understand the importance of learning new words and use these in their everyday repertoire, It would be easy to target vocabulary in all curriculum areas. This will also increase the intensity of teaching of vocabulary. I reckon it will be very engaging for students because they have already got into the habit of noticing new words and phrase in texts.
• Make space in weekly plans to revisit all new words and use them in different contexts to recycle them. (So that there is more input)
• Make sure this gets transferred into writing.
• Talk to the students about what has happened and why we need to make this change.

Reflection - What I was doing was good and has shown improvement. I need to make sure that I take all my students in stride, share their data with them, explain where they are and what they need to do to reach their goals and change my planning a bit so that I provide that space and time which my students need so compellingly to make the shifts happen. After all language acquisition is all about

 " Planning Preparing and providing"