CoL Update (Term 3, Week 6).

OVERALL COMMENTS

This week has been really interesting, and again another week where I haven't been in class for a full 5 days (CRT on Friday). 

Ryan has had awesome days and terrible days. Last week I gave all my students 'spots' or desks to sit in instead of letting them sit wherever they wanted, as they weren't being responsible and looking after classroom equipment (including Netbooks). Ryan took his spot and really made it his own. He bought over the labelled container he keeps all his stuff in, started putting things in his desk, set up three walls around him and decorated them with his own work/books (including moving the teaching station to make his third wall). This has worked really well for him, and I am so impressed that he has taken his 'spot' in a positive way and made it his own. I took this photo of him one day when I randomly noticed he was wearing the ear muffs (something we have tried/failed at many times) and was quietly working away. 

TALK ABOUT MANAGING SELF!

Paul really surprised me again one day when during a DMIC session, he said to his group "I know it, I'll do it", and took the piece of paper and solved the problem. For context, the boy sitting next to him is the top maths student in the class, and yet Paul is the one who solved it. I love that because his friend is giving him the chance to succeed and lead, even though he could have solved it himself. This boy (the friend) understands what I have been trying to do with him, and is trying to do the same. I also LOVE IT because he is leading and participating and contributing in a maths lesson, without ANY teacher input. 

Side note - he also got it right (adding fractions with different denominators - BOOYAH!)

He then later tried to help other groups explain their maths thinking because he understood it and others didn't.. He wanted to get up in front of the class and explain where somebody else had gone wrong in their maths thinking. AMAZING.

Another time, I was working with a group of about 10 boys on an inquiry task. The task was a group task to sort (compare and contrast) different natural disasters - there was no reading and writing involved, only sorting and explaining/justifying. In the video (although you can't see their faces so you might not notice), both Paul and Kian ask for a picture in the beginning, then discuss with their friends where it should go and why. 

ACTIVE PARTICIPATION ANYONE?

I find that with Kian and Paul, they are more involved with group/whole class tasks when they don't involve reading and writing. This makes sense, as they are both lower (ability wise) than the rest of the class and know it, so are scared to make mistakes or say something silly. To try and get them to participate, I think reading the text with them before hand or giving them a different text (in groups), so then they could access the information without feeling awkward, shy or scared.

CoL Update (Term 3, Week 3)

 Paul - relating to others/participating and contributing.

Last week I tested Paul on PM Benchmark and moved him up to level 21. This week, while reading levels 19-21 with him for 'guided' reading, I noticed he didn't need me much apart from to prompt him when he came to a new word. He is getting better at sounding out words, or making connections to other words he knows (e.g. should, would, could), but often gets stuck on high-interest or topic words he has never seen before (e.g. desert foxes, thick stems).

I PROBE'd him on Tuesday as I wanted to see if his comprehension was moving at the same accelerated pace his decoding was. Firstly, I gave him the story 'SNAP'. 

He passed with 100% on comprehension.

Next I gave him 'Teeth' (which is the same age level, but non-fiction).

Again, passed with 100%. 

His reading was pretty accurate as well considering he doesn't normally read non-fiction texts.

Next I put him up one level (age bracket), and tried him on fiction.

And again, 100% comprehension.

The same age bracket, but non-fiction.

This one he struggled with. There were words he has never seen written before (e.g. sandy, spikes, plants) but he tried to sound them out or connect to other words (e.g. he said planets for plants because he knows the word planets). Although he didn't actually know what a desert was, he got most of the questions (enough to pass anyway). I thought his answer to question 8 was sweet, because he had learnt about lizards and desert foxes for the first time in this story and wanted to see them in real life. 

Although he technically passed the story 'Desert life', I felt his confidence drop and he took a lot longer to read it, and think about his answers.

Even though he got lots of words wrong, this is still useful information for me as I can see where he gets the words he did say from. 

small=smile (sm sound and shape of the word)

thought-threw (th sound at the beginning)

tired=tried (same letters but in a different order)

Mr=Mrs (not noticing the s)

onto=into (not noticing the first o?, knows the word into)

settled=sitted (noticed the 'ed' at the end of the word, both have the same shape and have 's' at the beginning and 't' in the middle, possibly didn't notice the 'l')

give=gave (confusion of tenses possibly, or maybe didn't noticed the 'i')

would=could (knows the word could, maybe didn't notice the 'w')

He could answer the first question very easily - the others.. not so much. 

I am still very impressed with this piece of evidence as it shows that his decoding and comprehension are both improving at an accelerated rate. I 100% think this is because of the group work he has been doing while still reading at his own level. 

Ryan - managing self
As I mentioned in last week's update, Ryan has a LOT going on for him in his wider circle (home life, RTLB and other agencies, family stuff, friendship stuff) and so he has really been in a darker space this week. I know that for him RIGHT NOW, being at school everyday, being safe and having an outlet for his thoughts is what he needs. Right now, he doesn't need to be pushed into reading groups and growled for not completing his work. Right now, he needs a bit of love. A lot of love. So right now, that is what he is getting. I have not been pushing him to join in discussions or anything. He is doing small amounts of work each day and right now, that is enough for him.

 Kian - managing self
Kian is continuing to learn at his own pace. He is way more confident in his reading than he was last term and enjoys being able to choose books from his own 'box'. He doesn't choose from the 'lowest' box so thinks he is really smart by getting 'hard' books.

CoL Update (Term 3, Week 2)

Ryan - managing self
Kian - managing self
Paul - relating to others/participating and contributing.

All three students have been working very hard, especially in reading where they are in a group together reading (or listening to..) a chapter book.

On Friday Ryan came to the group for the first time all week, sat for about 30 minutes and even offered to read aloud to the group. This is amazing! This is the LONGEST he has sat in a reading group EVER. Add the fact that he was reading aloud for the others to listen to, and contributed to the discussion about what had happened is AWESOME.
After reading the group went away and had to draw an illustration about something that had happened, find 10 new words and write 3-5 sentences of a summary about what happened. All 3 students completed this task.

I have been reflecting on the type of work I give them, and wether that work actually offers them a chance at success or not. Sometimes, my high expectations might be too high and the task I want the students to complete is either too hard for them, too hard to do without teacher help, or I don't give them enough time to complete it.
I have also found that when I give them different tasks to complete (i.e. roles for literacy circles where one person is the illustrator and the other is word master), they really struggled to complete it. When I gave both students both tasks to do, they could do it.
So maybe it's not the task itself, but it's that they couldn't do it together.



Ryan has a lot going on for him at the moment at home and in other aspects of his life. I have noticed he has started making forts again. I don't usually growl him for doing this, as he is trying to protect himself from overstimulation or needs a bit of quiet time by himself.



Evidence of shift

This week I tested Kian and Paul's reading level using PM Benchmark. Kian passed level 12 and Paul passed level 21.

I know that Kian hates being tested and typically doesn't do well on tests. For guided reading, he is currently reading level 15-16, but only just got instructional on Level 12 on his tests. I will keep him reading levels 15-16 for guided reading because he is able to read them. 

Paul has made huge shifts to be instructional level 21 at this point in the year. He only started school 1 year ago, and started on Red (level 3).

For Kian I noticed that he often looks at the first letter or sound and guesses the word. Sometimes the word he guesses is close enough to the actual word that it might make sense, but often not.. I noticed that on line 12, he read the word 'ride' as 'run', kept reading, got to the end of the sentence, realised it didn't make sense and started the line again (and got 'ride' correct). This shows me he is trying to make sense and make meaning while reading, not just reading fast and incorrectly to 'get through it' and 'get it over with'. I hope this shows he is starting to enjoy reading.

A lot of the errors Paul makes are because he doesn't know the word in the first place. He still has come small errors with p/b sounds but has gotten so much better at sounding out words.

I notice with both of them that in long words (three or four syllables), they sound out words letter by letter. And because the words are so long, they forget what it started with by the time they get to the end of the word and have to start again or give up and ask me what the word is. 

I think we need to work on blends and chunking words into pieces, rather than sounding it out letter by letter. 

CoL meeting - 26th July 2018

Our job is not to tell, but to influence with good reflective practice.

Term 3 is the best term - no testing, no report writing.
we need to
- deliver the curriculum really well
- make sure its visible
- have high expectations

We are letting kids 'dumb down' their own language. 

- When kids don't understand what to do, the learning, or they misbehave, how do we speak to them? how do we speak to them when it matters? Do we speak to them in the 'language of success' or in 'dumbed down' English?

- We should be treating our children, no matter their age, like when they are learning languages for the first term (E.g. 0-5 year olds). Don't reprimand them all the time, just rephrase it and say it back to them in the correct way.

- We are forgetting their heritage and roots; expectations of White Sunday and other cultural oracy. They CAN do it, but we aren't expecting them too. 

- Build into planning that vocab needs to be revisited.

Challenge - 

literacy planning should be designed to have as many experiences of reading/writing/listening/speaking/thinking/viewing or presenting. 

Colouring does none of these. 

High value activity that do this. 

Link to Rebecca's slideshow

So it worked for Jimmy, but not for Rosie? Yes, we can think about

DON'T ONLY THINK ABOUT - why did the dolphins end up in a different place?
THINK ABOUT - What will cause learning under the water?


*students need to listen and respond to each other, not just have parallel conversations*

What am I going to refine?

I need to do more frequent, small format data collection E.g. timing how long and often Ryan sits in a reading group, how long he stays on task, how many times Paul will say something in reading group. 

CoL update (Term 2 Week 7)

Ryan - managing self

Ryan has been very settled thanks to his new strategy implementation and has shown small changes in his behaviour and learning, such as: being able to keep his voice level appropriate for the classroom; keeping hands and feet to himself; being able to focus for longer periods of time and enduring/attempting learning challenges for 5-10 minutes. He has shown, in many, small ways, huge change over the past week. Communication with his RTLBs is on-going and he had an IEP meeting this week as well, targeting his learning goals and next steps.
On Tuesday he asked if he could go to one of the junior classes, and after agreeing he could go if he stayed and completed maths first (which he did), he was very welcome in the junior classroom. I checked on him to see if all was well and managed to grab this photo.

He had a group of young students sitting in a circle watching him as he instructed them on "how to count". He even had counters out to use. It was so sweet to see him working so well with the younger students, but amazing that he was leading them in actual learning. He was focused, prepared and loved handing out tokens to his little students once his lesson was over. The teacher of the class he was in reported he did an awesome job and she would happily have him back.
This is just one example of how he can be very calm and focused for long periods of time.

Kian  - managing self

After being away for a week, Kian was able to manage himself inside the classroom well. I was quite proud of him when as part of a DMIC maths lesson, he got up and tried his best to help explain how his group had gotten their answer. Although he needed help in the end, it was awesome to see him managing himself to a level where he could actively participate in group tasks.

Paul - relating to others/participating and contributing.

Paul is getting more and more confident in group situations and it is awesome to see how far he has come. He has really stepped up in the past few weeks in terms of leading learning. He wants to be the one who draws/explains/shows/helps etc. He is learning how to be part of a group and is building skills such as taking turns, negotiating, helping somebody else explain if they get stuck etc. He confidently speaks to the class when presenting from the front of the room as well.

Paul is still loving being in a proper reading group, although I still require him to read books at his own level during school and at home to practice his decoding and comprehension skills. The reading groups have changed (post-testing) and he was a little upset that his friend wasn't in the group anymore, but he has since made new friends and will be okay. In this context he is again practising how to be part of a group (i.e. taking turns, agreeing with people, replying to something they say) and is gaining confidence in doing so. 

CoL update (Term 2 Week 6)

Ryan - managing self
Ryan is really trying his best to challenge himself, even when he doens't like the thing in front of him. We were lucky to have the opportunity go to on a bouncy castle on Friday morning. At first, Ryan didn't want to go on at all and stood to one side as his classmates took their turns. I personally thought it might be a sensory thing, or the noise of the air blower/pump thing, but I didn't push him at all. After ten minutes or so, he started moving closer and closer and eventually took his first turn.. and loved it! He came up to me and said he changed his mind and he wanted to go on now. Good on him!

   

   

Another highlight has been how involved he is during inquiry time. He often wants to do inquiry instead of reading/writing/maths, and mostly I let him because he is doing some learning. He has learnt about the moon and took the oreo activity very seriously. He traces pictures of the planets and can explain what is in his picture in his own words which shows that he does really understand the content.



Kian - managing self
Kian was away all of this week.

Paul - relating to others/participating and contributing
Paul is doing really really well. He is loving being in a reading group with his friends. He is actively involved in the group discussion and adds value to the conversation about the text. Although the actual texts are above his reading ability, he listens and follows along when the rest of the group reads aloud so he gets the understanding orally. A highlight was Paul going around the class and offering to help his classmates with a particular learning task. For one of the first times, he was the helper, not the helped. His confidence has really grown when working in groups. DMIC maths has definitely aided this confidence growth as he has a role to lead in.

Learning more about Autism, ADD, ADHD and ODD

My school bought a copy of this book as recommended by our RTLB Georgia. 

My DP gave it to me to look at so I could get some ideas for Ryan. 

Click here for more information.

I took photos of anything I thought was important, inspiring, challenging or relevant to me. That way I could give the book to another teacher. 

I took a photo of this because it resonated strongly. This week and last, I have been trying so many things with Ryan and none seem to be working. This reminded me that its never going to be that easy.. 

I thought it was interesting that girls and boys with ASD present differently. I didn't know that before.

Ryan also has ODD, and I suspect other students in my class do as well. Before this year I had never heard of it...

This sentence was huge for me after the week I've had - 'doesn't mean they're acting out on purpose'. I need to remind myself that and not take Ryan's behaviour as a personal attack on my teaching or leadership ability. 

Yup..

Yup..

Tips to use in the future.. 

This sentence stood out to me from this section; "students on the spectrum often don't realise you are speaking to them if you don't include their name". I purposefully will use Ryan's name every time I address him and see if it makes a difference...

Number 9 is so true lol. 

This was so relevant. Some of these I already have in place as part of normal classroom practice, such as having a set way and location for students to line up when we are going somewhere. I also often ask Ryan to be the leader of the line so he has a set position in the line. He likes to walk next to me instead of actually 'leading' the line but its better than him playing at the back soo whatever. The organisation tip I implemented straight away, by giving him his own 'box' where all of his books will go (rather than the books being in seperate maths/reading group boxes). We'll see how that goes. 

This was hugely relevant as well. In my own humble opinion, Ryan acts up 99% of the time when we are outside of the classroom, and only 50% of the time in the classroom. Every time we are Kiwi-Can, Kiwi-Sport, assemblies or music something will happen with him. The changing environments bullet point talks about this. All staff know about him and often check with me (via a 'look' and/or quietly asking me whats up) about his behaviour. I'm not sure what it is that causes these upsets, because he knows when we will be going (these times are consistent throughout the year) and he knows what to expect/what is expected of him. Ryan does not get any teacher assistant/aide time at all, so this point was not relevant for me.

There are 2 things from this page that connected and stood out. Ryan's mum is really on board with his learning, realistic about his behaviour and understanding when the school or myself approaches her to talk about him. She's really good. Eating for Ryan is also an issue, but not because of smells or noise as suggested. After talking to his mum about it, I understand now that his 'Miss I'm hungry can I get something from my bag' at 9.15am and 10am is not him trying to avoid work. He actually eats breakfast before 7am due to mums work schedule, and by 10am he genuinely is hungry. Now that I understand this properly, I do let him eat something in the first block as a break.

These are good tips. Ryan does have people he regularly asks for help and seems to have 'rotated' these students all on his own. I think I do need to give him some visual tools to help him though.

This is like a goal sheet they suggested. This was also suggested for Kian by his RTLB last year, but we never implemented it. I'll give it a go.

I have never used a timer for Ryan, but might try it out using some of these tips.

I really struggle with this. Ryan's 'special interest' at the moment is playing Online Launchpad on his netbook (which he is really good at by the way). However.. He does it all the time, when he should be doing his work. Normal protocol says I should take his netbook off him, as he is not using it appropriately. But this says I can't. When his 'special interest' is his main learning tool, that already has its own rules applying to it, how can I then treat it differently?

I am the first two. I'm trying for the others..

This might be less relevant for me as his teacher, but I know that he has issues with sleep so its good to reflect on anyway. Maybe I could have a sheet he could wrap himself in (Point 15.) as part of his 'calming' corner.

#CoLweeklyupdate (W10T12018) - Academic readings about Autism

Effect of Classroom Modification on Attention and Engagement of Students With Autism or Dyspraxia
Moya Kinnealey; Beth Pfeiffer; Jennifer Miller; Cecilia Roan; Rachel Shoener; Matt L. EllnerPublished in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy. 

This article discussed different things that affect students with Autism or Dyspraxia in mainstream classroom. 

Things to think about

• Mainly, this article talked about sound and light. These are both issues for Ryan. He hides under tables on a daily basis and once laid under the chair at the movies because the screen was too bright. He doesn't like loud noises but doesn't effectively use the ear muffs I provided for him. 
• could I possibly change the lightbulbs in my classroom to Hallogen lights? The readings showed this to decrease stress behaviours in children with Autisim, and reduce fidgiting in the child with Dyspraxia. 
• It talked about different kinds of attention - "Various types of attention—orienting attention, sustained attention, shifting attention, social attention, and joint attention—have been studied in people with autism, as described by Patten and Watson (2011). Orienting attention is a person’s initial physical orientation to a stimulus, person, or event, and sustained attention is the ability to maintain the regard of an object or event. Shifting attention is the process required to disengage attention from one stimulus and to reorient and engage attention toward another. In contrast, social attention is a naturally occurring orientation to social stimuli such as voices and faces of others, and difficulty in this area is a core feature of autism. Finally, joint attention is shared attention between two or more people or between people and an object or event. Joint attention is particularly pertinent in the educational context; it involves all other components of attention and is a social behavior. All of these types of attention, except for sustained attention, are problematic for people with autism (Patten & Watson, 2011)." (page 512).
• I think Ryan has issues with orienting attention and a shifting attention. When he is overly distracted, he often physically moves around a lot around the classroom or even within a physical space, moving from standing, leaning, sitting, back to standing, within a few minutes. He struggles to shift from one activity to another, especially when the first activity is incomplete. 

Investigating the social engagement of children with autism in mainstream schools for the purpose of identifying learning targets - By Carmel Conn

This article discussed a study where one autistic child was observed etc in the context of a mainstream school. 

Things to think about

•  'Children's friendships were partly defined by their play' (page 156) - therefore they play with people who want to play the same game as them. I can connect to this because Ryan often says nobody likes him, as they don't want to play with him, but in reality he and his peers just don't want to play the same game, or in the same way. This leads to his perception of lack of friends. It also talks about kids having friends in other classes and how this affects them in the class. For Ryan, he does have friends in other classes but I don't perceive these to be positive friendships. His other friends don't understand him in the same way our class does so this often leads to fights etc on the playground.
•  The case study school relaxed their seating plan policy in order to accomodate the focus students better. Possibly the opposite could apply to my situation? Maybe an overabundance of choice of where to sit and who to sit with is too much for Ryan?
•  It talks at the end about how more time and effort needs to be spend on making observations, having discussions etc with the autistic children and their social group. How do they perceive each other? What is friendly, helpful behaviour and what is not? The purpose would be to 'find out what existed in the environment to support or constrain social inclusion' (page 158).  
• At the end they discuss a list of things that were discovered about the case study student 'Kyle'. One of these was having clearer learning targets (which I think Ryan needs). They also discussed Kyle's imaginative thinking, and how although it worked for him at this point in time, it would cause issues as he grew older and imaginative play was not 'normal' for his age. I can notice that Ryan plays mostly with year 5s or very immature year 6s, and hardly ever speaks to the more mature year 6s. Maybe this is why...?

A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Social Skills Interventions for Children With Autism Spectrum DisordersScott Bellini, Jessica K. Peters, Lauren Benner, Andrea Hopf

Things to think about

•  This article talked about having social skills interventions for students with ASD, suggesting 30 hours over 10-12 weeks. That's 3 hours a week, if not more, of specific time where ASD students should be learning social skills. As much as I agree with that, how is that realistic when students are in a mainstream classroom? There is no way I can provide that time 1:1 or even for a group. 
• It also talked about that when interventions are done, they are often not as successful as they ought to be because students are pulled out of the classroom into resource rooms or other rooms. This disconnects the learning to the context where it should be applied, so the results are not always high. The article recommends that social learning interventions should happen in the classroom environment in a normal way as possible. 
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#CoLweeklyupdate (T1W82018)

Here is my #CoLweeklyupdate for Week 8!

Next steps

If possible, I would like to..

• do more academic reading about Autism, ODC, ADHD and Dyslexia - get the book my DP talked about and read it.
• keep trying out the ear muffs, see if it is actually making a difference to learning or is it just a novelty.
• try out strategies suggested by Donna.
• do more small group focused teaching E.g. how to form a sentence, 
• practice how to hold your tongue to make certain sounds (for Paul and the new girl) E.g. the 'th' in thought; you put your tongue between your teeth at the front of your mouth and sort of blow air out?. 

#CoLweeklyupdate (T1W62018)

Here is my #CoLWeeklyUpdate for week 6!

#CoLweeklyupdate (T1W52018) Part 2

This is just to further discuss and analyse each of my 3 boys, identify where they are currently and what their next steps are (for both academic learning and key competencies).

Ryan

Paul

Kian