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Taihape Literacy Leaders Meeting 24.2.09 Kia whakapapa pounamu te moana kia teretere te karohirohe

May the days ignite as sunlight on green waters **// A wish for bright futures //**  // Possible Topics… // We looked at and shared some of the data that has been collated for the final report. We worked on a “piece” of the data in pairs. This was also to demonstrate how you could be using the data within your schools. //__ Breakdown of the Features of writing, year 3, 6 and 8 __// // Celebrations // // Issues // // Questions // // Hunches // There is a lot more focused teaching needed on surface features. This needs to continue through to year 8 //__ Comparative Data from 2007-2008 across Year 3-8 cohorts __// // Celebrations // // Issues // // Questions // // Hunches // // Other data // //__ Best Fit Levels for Year 5 and 7 __// // Celebrations // // Issues // // Questions // // Hunches // // Other data // //__ Best Fit Levels for Year 3 and 4 __// // Celebrations // // Issues // // Hunches // //__ Teacher Self Assessment and Child Voice data __// Julie shared some preliminary thoughts about the data //__ The Key Competencies in Literacy __// We briefly looked at a way of thinking through these
 * What we would like out of this… **
 * Making sure staff work together, how to bring staff on board and work alongside them
 * Working collaboratively
 * Finding out what others are doing
 * How to set up observations
 * Ways of teaching to help strugglers “plug the gaps”- sharing times
 * Ways of raising student achievement-sharing ideas
 * Look at the whole literacy programme, not just writing
 * Sharing resources such as websites
 * Exploring new resources
 * Look at curriculum statements
 * How to bring new teachers on board
 * On-going professional development
 * To know common ways of doing things across schools so there is a reference point for all teachers
 * Writing activities we can use while taking groups
 * Spelling
 * Spelling assessment
 * Data Discussion **
 * Year 4s are doing well at audience and ideas
 * Year 6s doing well at surface features, better than their deeper features
 * Year 4s struggling with structure and language, quite high numbers below
 * Year 4s who are critically below are struggling with surface features
 * Year 6 students, quite a few students operating below where they should be, especially in surface features
 * Why are so few Year 6 students working above expectation in surface and deeper features?
 * Why are so many students operating below expectation at Year 6?
 * Why are so many students working at expectation for deeper features in Year 8?
 * There are no students critically below in Year 3, 2008
 * Most of the Year 3 students are above in 2008
 * In 2006, people didn’t know what they didn’t know when moderating and marking
 * Benchmarks that were set at the start of the project were too low (to assess against as compared to a curriculum level)
 * There are some real variations year by year.
 * New teachers to the project, marked easier?
 * Unsure of protocols, people not using matrix and exemaplrs properly
 * Number of transient students moving in and out of district
 * Protocol changed from 2006-2007
 * Massey staff changed
 * The majority of Year 5 Boys/Girls at or above expection. There are no significant differences between girls/boys, Maori/European
 * There was still room for Year 5 students to make progress
 * Year 7: large differences in gender and ethnicity
 * The motivation, attitude and engagement of Year 7s needs thinking about
 * Are teacher’s explicitly teaching writing at year 7?
 * Are different gender interests being catered for at Year 7?
 * That the longer kids were involved in the project the better they would be, so kids who had been in it from year 3 would have been more adaptable to new learning
 * How many teachers were new to the project?
 * Year 3 European students the are mostly in the above and at expectation categories with few in the below category
 * Year 7, all students in the middle
 * Year 4 Maori, skewed to the left (more in below and critically below)
 * Year 7 boys underachieving
 * The data collection sheet had overlap in some categories
 * Teachers were using Learning Intentions but were having difficulty developing success criteria. These were beginning to be co-constructed
 * Teachers could identify students learning needs and next steps
 * Teachers were generally working on getting grouping organised. The nix of ability grouping and strategy grouping needed thinking about.
 * Independent activities usually related to the needs of the students
 * Teachers were focusing oral language to feed into writing
 * Shared writing and modelled writing were more likely to happen at the junior end of the school
 * Teaching the process of editing needed work
 * Feed forward was mostly constructed by the teacher. There is a need to get the students to be constructing their own next steps

A THOUGHT: May be the lack of shared writing at the Senior end of the school is where there is an opportunity being missed to teach surface features and editing??? Links with some of the data we talked about… add a comment on the disucussion page //__ Resources __// Websites we discussed… [] Spelling site that Barb alerted us to. Thanks Barb __ http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/enhancingtheenglishcurriculum __ This is where you find some great stuff to help you with the Curriculum although only for Levels 2 up. It is on the English on line site, The site seems to be down at present? Let me know how you go, put something on the discussion page again.