Novel studies - WHY is this beneficial?

 As mentioned in my previous blog post, I have observed that our year 5 and 6 children are really good at reading short texts that challenge them however many of them find it challenging to focus and be engaged in extended texts at their level which challenge them. There are a few questions I have around this.

- Why do these children find it difficult to engage in extended texts that challenge their thinking when they are good readers?

- How can reading extended texts (novels) excite and develop the learning of these children?

- What programmes have been used in other schools to have novel studies as part of their reading programme?

Photo by Laura Kapfer, Unsplash

To make a start on this inquiry, I first want to gather some student voice around the children's engagement in reading extended text. I am interested in knowing such things as what genre of texts these children enjoy reading, how often they read in their own time (at home) and why they read texts (i.e for enjoyment or to learn new information). 

It will be important for me to understand why I want the children to be reading novels. What will they get out of reading novels?

- One teacher writes about observing children discussing such things as character relationships, viewpoints and inferences (Differentiated Teaching). This teacher goes on to discuss research-based reasons to teach using novels:

1) Giving children experiences that go beyond their own world.

2) Vocabulary development.

3) Communication & Dialogue skills and strategies

4) Social skills development.

5) Engagement

Some books that might suit 10-11 year old children as suggested in The Teaching Bank:

- Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

- Sadako and the 1000 paper planes by Eleanor Coerr

- Esperenza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan

- Wonder by R.J. Palacio

- Holes by Louis Sachar

- Hoot by Carl Hiaasen

- Bud, not buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

Some books that might suit 10-11 year old children as suggested in Wheeler books:

- Two Wolves

- Holes

- Fish in a tree

- It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime (YA Edition)

- The Giver

- How to Bee

- The Boy at the back of the class

- Finding

- Loyal Creatures

- The Goldfish boy

- A different land

- Girl Underground

- Kura Toa: Warrior School

- Chinese Cinderella

- Refugee

- The MapMakers' Race

- The Crossover

- The Fall

- Lion: A long way home (Young Readers' Edition)

- I am Malala

- 47 Degrees

- The Boy at the top of the mountain

- Hidden Figures (Young Readers' Edition)

- Goodnight Mr Tom

- Owl

The next step for my inquiry will be to have discussions around this inquiry focus with various people around the school. While I am doing that, I will also gather information around the children's reading habits.

Inquiry focus 2021: Initial Data Collection

For my 2021 inquiry this year, I have been thinking about what a challenge is for the year 5 and 6 extension children who I teach twice a week. I am in an interesting position where I do not have my own class of children. My role could perhaps be most likened to how secondary teachers teach multiple groups of children each week. I believe that the year 5/6 group would be the most appropriate group to base my inqury on as I see them twice a week. As a result, I would have more of a chance to implement a regular pedagogical approach with them. 

I asked myself this: What do the extension children have as a challenge/ something they need to work on which I could inquire into?  Alternatively: Is there something totally different which could be beneficial for me to focus on in my unique role?

I have come from teaching year 5 children. As a result, I can draw upon observations and knowledge of some of the children who would be my focus for this inquiry. I have observed that some children in year 5 who read above their chronological age in reading have some difficulty with spelling. Therefore, I was wondering whether a focus on spelling with these children could be beneficial. I tested the group of children and came up with some data.

Test 1: Schonell Spelling Test

Data:

Interestingly, only 4 out of 17 children have spelling as an area of concern according to the Schonell test I gave them.

As a result, I decided that spelling was necessary to focus on for those 4 children whose spelling level did not reciprocate their strong reading levels however, it was not an area that I needed to focus on for the whole group for the year. 

I had a conversation with Angela Moala, the year 3/4 team leader. We used to co-teach in a year 5 space and do well with putting ideas past each other. Through this conversation, I mentioned another observation I have made whilst teaching year 5 children who are strong readers. This observation was seen when I gave a group of 4 year 5 boys a novel to read. We had built up this novel and the children were all excited to read it. However, when it came to reading the book, only 2 were engaged to read it independently from start to finish. In my conversation with Angela, we realised this is a real challenge for this particular group of children. They are very good at reading short texts at their level however they do not all show an ability to focus on reading an extended texts independently. 

My second idea for my inquiry is therefore, how can I support extension children in year 5 & 6 to be engaged in extended texts which are challenging and which encourage critical thinking. How can I get the children to engage in deep and thoughtful conversations about these extended texts which they read?

I am going to spend this week exploring this second inquiry idea.

What's in store for 2021??

2021 is going to be a different year for me at Pt England School. I have taken over as the Creative Space and Extension Teacher. In this role, I will be producing the school news, PENN, every Monday to Thursday, taking children from year 1 to 6 for lessons in the creative space and teaching the year 5-8 extension children. With this change in role will come a change in inquiry focus. 

So far this year I have had a clear out and made sense of what gear I have to utilise around the school. I have created three episodes so far for the school news (PENN) and taught three days of classes.

Creative space lessons this year are going to be broken up into Sight, sound and motion. 

- Term 1: Focus on Sight

- Term 2: Focus on Sound

- Term 3&4: Focus on Motion

This term, the creative medium we are using is photography. For years 2 and 3, photos will be taken using the camera on their iPads and will include a focus on digital fluency. For years 4-6, photos will be taken using digital cameras. Part of the planning for these sessions has included me figuring out the progressions between year levels, which has come about from the progressions in the digital curriculum and my knowledge of children in year 5 & 6 and what they would be capable of achieving.

With having had three days with the children in front of me, and with the term well under way, I am now in a position to think about what my inquiry focus should be this year. To make this decision, I need to consider what is going to benefit me in this new role, what is going to benefit the children and what other teachers can learn from and implement themselves.

Here are some of the ideas I have had so far:

- Do I focus on the Extension children OR children participating in the Creative space programme OR children in the PENN (news) crew?

- Do I focus or compare engagement (or key competencies) between creative space and in class?

- Do I focus on progression of learning through the years using various creative elements?

- Do I focus on how participating in the school news supports reading level?
- Do I focus on how participation and engagement in the creative space impacts class engagement?
- Do I continue to focus on critical thinking with the extension children?

There are many questions I have regarding what my inquiry should be this year. I now need to have conversations with a number of people to decide what is most important to focus on.

End of Year Data Collection

My hypothesis was:

A focus on critical thinking and causal reasoning when responding to texts will support increased levels of critical thinking and ability to create causal links in online written interactions with others for year 5 children reading between 10 and 12 years.

After implementing use of Peter Worley's framework, The Concept Box, into reading lessons, I collected data to compare with the data I collected at the beginning of the year. Graphs from the beginning of the year are also in these slides to make comparisons.

Critical Thinking in a Digital and Creative Environment

Below are a number of resources which I found particularly useful around teaching critical thinking. The coral coloured boxes look at critical thinking in general, where as the blue boxes share links to articles making a connection between critical thinking in a digital/creative environment. 

Edutopia Getting critical about critical thinking	Inside Higher Ed It’s time to get serious about critical thinking	Digital Learning Collaborative Using technology to teach critical thinking skills
Wabisabi Learning 8 Classroom Edtech Strategies That Develop Critical Thinking Skills	Technology Online Creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving in digital technologies	JotForm Education How to use technology to foster higher-thinking skills in class

The Challenges of the Concept Box Framework

The children who have been using The Concept Box in their reading groups are really motivated and now know the routine when it comes to reading. One challenge I have is how I focus in on the children's decoding whilst using The Concept Box framework. Technically, children reading at their level (reading age 10-11) should have strong decoding however I have begun to notice that some of these children are still having difficulty with simple decoding. I have attempted to hear the children read during the time they are silently reading however this means we then don't have enough time to do a good job of the Concept Box.

Teaching critical thinking is something which takes time. Going forward, teachers who use the Concept Box in reading may have to ensure that at least one lesson a week has a decoding focus while another lesson has a focus on the Concept Box. This will come with other limitations as it will mean that reading mileage may reduce as children will be reading less texts with the teacher per week.

Image Attribution: Challenge by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images
From Picpedia

Bursts and Bubbles Presentation: Kahui Ako

This afternoon, we had our annual Bursts and Bubbles function where all of the 2020 CoL teachers presented a snapshot of their 2020 Inquiry. Here is my 3 minute presentation.

Transcript: 

During Lockdown, we were learning about food from Canada. A child disappeared from the google meet and then reappeared with a bottle of maple-flavoured syrup. “Maple syrup comes from Canada!” he stated. Another child said, “That’s not real maple syrup.” And that was the extent of the discussion.

Both children were correct. The bottle quite clearly said “Maple flavoured syrup.” However, there was no critical thinking to explain why. In fact, when I tried to initiate critical thinking, the second child could still not explain how he knew it wasn’t real maple syrup. So what does this mean?

This is just one example of the lack of critical thinking observed in some of our year 5 children who are working beyond their chronological age in reading.

Critical thinking is an aspect of learning which stretches across the curriculum, including the key competencies, however it is a skill which many of our children could do better at and which we could do a better job of teaching.

I identified this as my focus when I noticed that those children who are better readers tend to be better critical thinkers and those children who are better writers tend to be better critical thinkers. The problem with some of our children who are strong readers is that they don’t reciprocate this strong academic level in their writing and as a result, critical thinking is actually not as strong as we would expect.

I identified that children in year 5 who are reading above their chronological age tend to fall into two categories. All of these children already know how to read. One group can independently read to learn and tend to be able to create causal relationships and put ideas from texts into their own words where as the other group are still learning how to do this. I wanted to focus on this second group of children.

Profiling of my teaching showed that I had strengths in using talk moves to encourage children’s thinking. However, a reliance on me made me realise I needed to be using other strategies to encourage higher level causal links to be made by the children.  Therefore, I changed the structure of reading lessons so the children would no longer solely rely on me.

After exploring research into critical thinking by Richard Anderson, I researched and implemented a framework called The Concept Box by Peter Worley. The Concept Box framework is a teaching strategy which incorporates vocab acquisition, discussions and argumentation in order to get children thinking critically. Children are first asked to share any ideas they have about what they have read. Once their ideas are flowing, the children have to think of individual words to represent ideas in the text. The children are then encouraged to discuss which of these words are the most important to convey the more critical elements of the text. Through this process, the children eliminate words if they are not sufficient to the deeper ideas being explored.

In the story, The Lion King, one child  stated, “The word ‘Lion’ shouldn’t be there because it doesn’t go deep enough.” Another child decided the word ‘sad’ did not do a good job of explaining the story but did not give a reason. A child responded by saying, “Wait. You need to have a reason. You can't just take it out." This is evidence that some children are identifying when others are not thinking critically.

Children felt that using the Concept Box framework encouraged them to listen, explain, learn new vocab, make sense and think deeper. While some children are still challenged with the concept, there are more children in the group who are beginning to lead and support others and I have begun noticing a shift where the children are doing the job of guiding their thinking.

I have learned that our children need a strong framework, like The Concept Box, which can be used with a range of texts to support development of critical thinking.