Conference Day: Special needs in literacy

Non-dyslexic person- right side brain is smaller than the left brain
Dyslexic person- leaders -neurons have to travel from left to right

2 different -surface:written dislexia, Phonological dislexia

Struggling readers/writers: Struggle with storing information as long term memory

Dog-4-10 more times written to remember, Dyslexia 500-1300 times to remember
They havent seen the word enough

STEP web was invented these words can be presented to children over and over in different ways.

Beginning of reading-oral language (child coming in at 2 and a half-year-old).  Teaching children how to talk. Not knowing labels.

2 years behind- very hard to catch up to where they need to be.

Teaching alphabet: sounds of the alphabets
Structured language way
MSL
Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic

Getting children to read back of what it is written

4 unvoice sounds k, p, t,
Pure sounds m,
q with u 

Ground/grass/sky
encoding
CVC -Zap finger spelling isolating sounds everything we write, we say them back

Memory implications 
Constant repetition-multi sensory
Sounds-very crucial -hear sounds and associate those sounds to word patterns
Listening, responding, manipulating

1 in 7 people have a learning difference -learning differently
80%=2.5 years
sequential memory-remembering numbers

Visual support implemented

To support a child with limited language, I have been using visuals and New Zealand Sign Language to support the child ways to communicate his needs/feelings.

The time schedule helps M understand what will happen that day and what is coming next. The running card is used when he starts feeling full of excitements and when he is not able to deal with those feelings. When this happens, he is jumping, running, not able to regulate his feelings. He puts the lanyard on and goes for a run around the school. Sitting on a bean bag at mat time works amazingly as possibly this hugs him in and he feels content. 

M knows some basic signs and he communicates using these signs. He is really interested in signing the alphabet and really enjoys this time. He signed 'same' and 'fish' in the same sentence the other day which really surprised me. 

Using these visuals and New Zealand Sign Language gave ways for M to be able to communicate his needs/wants/feelings. He is less frustrated and is able to regulate more often than when he started school. He is developing the routines of the day because of the time schedule. More importantly, he is developing friendships which enables him to stay in the classroom for play. 

Play-based research project: reflection 1

For the first phase of the research we would like to do the following:

• Teacher researchers (that is your team) write a reflection about the following:

What was your reasoning for starting Play-based teaching and learning in your classroom?

When I joined the Kōwhai team in May, 2017, I started working with Rhonda in the same classroom co-teaching. A play-based learning environment was already established then, and there was a lot of discussions about how we develop and support children’s play in the classroom. The reasons for having play-based teaching and learning was that there are so many learning opportunities for children. It is really important for me that children develop their own passions and be able to self-direct their own play which also leads to goal settings. Through play, children also develop learning dispositions such as curiosity, persistence, and risk-taking etc. I believe these dispositions become significant parts of academic learning.

Where did you get your knowledge about Play-based teaching and learning from?

From working at an early childhood centre for over 10 years. In the centre, we had free play philosophy, working with Te Whaariki curriculum, emergent curriculum and we supported children’s interests with dispositional learning. Learning stories were hugely important for us, whaanau and children.

What issues/challenges have you faced when implementing this at your school?

I guess the huge difference from the early childhood setting and the classroom setting is that there is only one teacher in a classroom whereas you would be working with a group of teachers in the ECE settings. When I am having a group of children doing reading, and other children are playing, I do take notice of their play and their interests but how I support their play or next step to challenge in their play has been quite difficult in a classroom setting.

Also, understanding of play for school teachers can be very different. For some teachers, playing maths/literacy games can be seen as play. For me, play is authentic, comes from children. I think there is a huge trust between the teachers and children when we let our children play and this can be a struggle for some teachers who like to control what the children can ‘play’ with.

Play through the school-What does play look like in the new entrant classes and Year 3 or 6 classes? I think we don’t really have a seamless transition in terms of our play philosophy and people see it as a new entrant thing?

What difference do you think Play-based teaching and learning has for children’s learning and transitions?

It makes a huge difference in transition between early childhood settings to our new entrant classes because the environment looks similar to where they came from and this is really important for me. The children who were in a centre setting know that they are able to choose what they want to play with, their voices are heard, and self-directed play is celebrated.

I also do think it makes a huge difference for the parents knowing that they are coming to a place that is similar to an early childhood setting.

Play-based teaching and learning provides opportunities for the teachers to really get to know our children and develop meaningful relationships with the children and their whaanau. Because the play is driven by the children, things that they are interested in, the stories they share from their interests are very important to us, and if we were the classroom with no play, I wonder if I would know about the children and their whaanau as much as I know about them now…

Supporting a child with needs

Reflection 

New year and adapting a new routine in the classroom

After listening to Anaru's workshop last year, I really wanted to incorporate his idea about classroom paepae. He explained how clasroom paepae welcomes everyone in the classroom, celebrates the biculturalism, and settle down the children in the morning for learning.

For my new entrant classroom, I wanted it to be simple and easy to learn for the children. I printed out and laminated the labels that said "kaikarakia" and "kaikorero". In the morning, children might express their interests in being these roles, and I help them with the words that they said. Kaikaraki will greet to the children and start the karakia. At this moment, we are learning the karakia. I say one line and the children repeat after me. Kaikorero thanks the kaikarakia and greet to the children and the teacher and do their pepeha.

It has been really wonderful to have this ritual and everyone respects this time. When we did not do the karakia on one morning because we needed to go to the assembly, one child said "Yoshie, you forgot to do the karakia!" so this tells me that it is a part of us and our day and it also reminded me that we need to do this everyday. If we needed to go somewhere, then we will start the paepae a little bit early so we will have enough time to do this.

I am hoping that we will be able to do this without so much of my help later this term or in term 2. I would love to see our children leading the paepae.

Writing programme

Now I have children who are turning 6 who have the great letter-sound knowledge, can write many words, and construct sentences, I really wanted to provide appropriate support for them to be able to progress in writing.

There are a few things that these children are still working on such as having a finger space between words, having a full stop and writing more than 2 sentences. I has kind of started to be a bit boring as we write about our experiences, these children have been done this a lot, and I needed to do something different to encourage a different way of writing.
After reading the effective writing book, I came across a case study where a teacher read the story called "A lion in the meadow" and this led to the children writing about their mum. I thought this was a really interesting idea and something that our children can easily relate to the topic.
First I read the story, but before reading the story, I told them to think about the mother in the book, "what does she look like?" "what does she sound like?"

After reading the book, we discussed the questions that I asked them before. It was really interesting how the children shared their understanding of the character of the mother.
Then, I asked them to visualise their mum in their heads. Then, I modeled my writing about my mum. I talked about what her hair looked like, how it made me feel when she gave me a hug, and her name.
I wrote down some questions on pieces of paper for the children to reflect on like "What does she smell like?" "What does she sound like?" "what is her name?"
The children wrote their stories, and it was really fantastic to listen to their thoughts about their mum.
There are still many things that the children need to work on like the ones I mentioned earlier, but as a way to create a wonderful topic and to see a great content, this was such a great way to promote writing. I really enjoyed watching them think about how to put their own ideas and writing them down.

Supporting parents

Child A has been having a little bit of a difficult time at reading, I realised this when she started boking the book and playing with the pages as she read. Her reading was quite slow and I could not understand why she was trying to move the book so much. When I talked to our librarian, she said that it could be that the girl was trying to get her eyes to focus on the texts and maybe it could be that the texts seemed to move as she read. She suggested the child to have the eye test with an optometrist to see if there are any eye tracking or other issues.

The family confirmed that her daughter would need glasses after the eye test and was really grateful that they had found this out and could help their daughter. After she got glasses, it was amazing as she never moved the books like she used. She then explained to me that she could see the words more clearly with the glasses on but without them the words looked very small.

With the glasses on, we kept working at reading with her, but I still felt that something was not quite right as the girl would struggle to read words like "on" and  "like", the words that children would have learnt to read at the magenta level. Talking to the librarian again about the problem, she had given me some strategies to use with her. The great thing was that the girl has amazing letter-sound knowledge which helps her to read words letter by letter when she is not able to recognise a word.

Strategies that the librarian suggested was
to use a card that has an indent so that the child can focus on one word at a time when reading
to work on the sight word chart and read it every day (the recognition of the words needs to be instant)
The sight words can be practiced on different ways, we have been using windows to write on with a window marker which she really enjoys.
Her eyes are working really hard to focus so if she is getting tired at reading, a teacher/parent can read the next page so she can rest her eyes and read the page after.

I also had a time to sit with her mum to talk about these strategies so that we are doing the same things at home and school. The mum really appreciated the support that we are providing and recognises how individualised the support has been. She continues to say how the experience has been very different from the previous school that they were at and talked about the importance of play in the classroom and how happy the girl is at our school.

This all has been really positive and important to reflect on. Working as an early childhood teacher for the last 10 years, I know the importance of building relationships with whaanau. All children are different and we need to understand their unique individual needs so that we can support them. Involving parents in this case has been easy and it is wonderful that we are able to provide the same support at home and school.