Inclusive practice: Using NZSL in the classroom

This year I have a girl who is deaf with cochlear implants in my class. One of my passions in teaching is to teach our children New Zealand Sign Language, and I have been learning NZSL for the last 5 years. Although I am not fluent in NZSL, I love learning this beautiful language.  For the last 6 weeks, I have had a private tutor and have been learning it properly again, and especially at being able to form a sentence in NZSL.

As the girl has cochlear implants and can hear with the device, she does not rely on using NZSL so much however she knows quite a lot of signing and her family would like her to develop more knowledge in NZSL so it has been great to work with the family and that I regularly sign in the classroom with the children.

Some of the changes I have made in my class are
Having a visual classroom schedule and have the pictures of the signs next to it. This also reminds me to sign if I forget a particular sign.

I also have a sign of the day so we can all learn different signs.

















Other children have started to understand why I use sign with the girl and why I wear the microphone so she could hear. Now we are trialling using a microphone that children can hold so that she could hear if someone is talking in a class discussion.

After reading Ako article about NZSL in a classroom/school , I felt very inspired and that I agree that hearing children should be learning NZSL together with a child who is deaf. I always think that people who are deaf should have access to their language so that we could communicate with each other. The children in my class will learn many signs this year and this will help them understand how different we are and how unique we are to each other, and to help us communicate, NZSL is an important language to learn for everyone.

At the moment the children are learning to sign Te Aroha in sign and te reo Māori.  They love singing and learning new songs and I can see how the girl is very responsive when I use sign. She watches my sign and copies it. She also teaches me some signs that I don't know. It is truly the word of "Ako" where we learn from each other. She has a place in our classroom and has developed a great sense of belonging in our class.

Reading Teaching the brain: The new science of Education

When we went to the Yolanda phonics course, she talked about a few books that might be helpful to understand how children develop phonological awareness and learnt to read and write. One of the books that she talked about was called 'Teaching the brain'.

Here are some notes about what I have learnt from reading the book.

Function of the brain

Left hemisphere of the brain: learning process including reading, writing, maths, and spelling. 

Brain weighs about 1.5kgs, there are about 80-120 neuron cells.  

Frontal lobes: muscle movement including production of speech, and output. Planning, reasoning, judgement, impulse control and memory. Long term memory -emotional links. Reward, attention, planning and motivation.

Parietal lobe: sensory systems, movement and space. Visual objects in space.

Temporal lobes: hearing, both speech and auditory signals. Comprehension and naming. Visual recognition making up part of a 'what' stream. Face and word recognition. Converting short term memory into long term memory. 

Occipital lobes: Visual processing

Cerebellum: motor control-timing, and sensory systems-spinal cord, cognitive processing (language and attention) 

The speaking brain 

Infants use the left side temporal region when they listen to speech whereas both sides are activated when listening to music. Mother's voice enhances the activity. -mother's voice is very important to develop a child's language acquisition. 

Three processes-phonology (Sound), meaning (semantic), syntax(structure). 

Small unit of sound is called a phoneme.  

Bilingualism: selection of correct language for use-develop great focus and resistant for distractions. 

Use daily opportunities with an infant to speak, and communicate. Always let the baby know what you are going to do before physically move the baby. Wait for the response from the baby. 

Singing songs, rhymes are important for language learning. Action songs- clapping, pat knees, stamp feet. 

Sheena Cameron reading programme

Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey

Reading book

Explicit teaching of reading

Decicated reading time-shared reading, guided reading, independent reading

Reading for pleasure

Reading to support writing: full stopis, capital letter

Reading to learn- across curriculum

Stages of reading

-Develop a love of reading

-Oral language and vacab

Getting ready to read

-Deevlopmentally not ready to read-need to develop visual skills, phonological awareness and how the book works

Learning to read

-concepts about print, high frequency words, letter sounds and names, story and focus on meaning

Developing independence as a reader

-becoming a reader (make sense)

Proficient reader

-knows how to decode, has strategies to read

P104 -colour wheels

P49- word lists

Teaching reading

Reading is about vocab and oral language.

Comprehension strategies

Critical thinking

Is it authentic?

Time for talk and really listen to each other

Conversation promps-can download on the site

Cracking the code

Not just phonics but with other skills as well

Phonics-can be time consuming

Chunking-breaking words into syllables/parts

Analogy -recognising similar words Thistle

Teaching rhymes/song/chants

Tricky words from shared reading or guided reading

Grab a base word-prefixes onto the word ‘Success’

Good readers-does it look right? Sound right? Make sense?

Self monitoring cards

Stop and think

Try again, look at the first sound, look at the picture

Modelling: shared, guided, reading to them

Guided: model before they have a go

Immigrant children/culture 

Shared reading

Children can see the texts -we are practicing reading strategies, need to be able to see the texts 

Whole class 

Variety of books 

Read and enjoy 

Lots of time for discussions 

One big book and poem 

Owl moon 

Songs -Stan Walker as a role model 

Kidsnews -Australian-colour wheel levels

TKI instructional books 

Resource link 

Focus 1 (Day 1) Activating prior knowledge 

Predicting 

New Vocab 

Text structure and organisation 

aurthor's purpose 

Phonics-Chunking-Analogy 

twigs

Branch

trunk 

Get the white boards out as much as possible 

Children decode it 

discuss in the group 

Introduce your word 

Focus 2 (Day 2) 

Zooming in 

Looking in detail at words, sentences, decoding and self monitoring 

Using a puppet 

Having the poster on the whiteboard 

Children say 'stop' 

Tick and check to make sure that reading makes sense 

Cover the words to see what word it is as you read 

Focus 3 

comprehension 

dramas 

Thought bubble -what is the character thinking? 

Question- what kind of question does the character have? 

Talking what does the character say? 

3 thoughts after guided reading 

p.160 

Guided reading 

Magenta/Red 10 min 

Independent 10 min 

Proficient 20 min 

 Make time for talk: Green readers:comprehension 

2-3 groups a day- 8 a week 

Grouping 

Limit the learning goals 

Plan generic follow up activities 

1intro 

activate prior knowledge-using the hand, have a think about experiences,  

Hold the book, talk about the book -book walk, looking at the pictures, asking questions 

Don't rush the intro 

go through every page-familiar with the sentence structure and new words? know the meaning? 

2lesson focus Initial sound-first sound of words 

                       high frequency words 

                       punctuation

                       Text spotter (looked) 

3Independent reading (children read the whole book) 

Stop and prompt 

Stop and ask a question 

4 wrap up 

Discussion

if they got stuck on something 

Follow up activities 

Independent activities 

kids practice reading 

reading shared books 

going back and looking for information 

Story map 

Shared reading-explicitly teaching independent activities 

summarising using the charts 

dice activity 

Reading activity modelling book 

Diagrams comaring characters from different books 

copy the sentence and draw the picture 

Book club- powerpoint download (each has a role, chance to talk about it, develop a love of reading) 

Reader's theatre-Tadpoles in the Torrens - great to develop fluency 

Set expectations (reading daily) 

Making connections 

Struggling readers- selecting materials 

Promote books (selling books) 

Whole class independent reading 

Buddy reading 

Student/teacher accountability

monitoring students reading

-using Ipad- film themselves read 

Developing phonological awareness

This year as we will have new children in the term, I thought I would do something differently about developing phonological awareness. Last year, I feel that I didn't spend a lot of time exploring the basic phonological awareness and Stage 1 so much as I focused on my inquiry as trying Yolanda's Stage 2.

As we get to know children, I will develop an understanding if they are able to differentiate sounds.  I want to spend some time exploring the components to develop phonological awareness such as sound discrimination, speech sound discrimination, alliteration, rhythm, sound breaks and rhyme. 

Here is the document that discusses developing phonological awareness. 

It is important that I provide various opportunities throughout the week, daily to explore sound discriminations and developing phonological awareness in a fun way. 

Reflection on the science conference

Going to this science conference for 3 days with Edie has been very valuable and eye-opening experience. I really did not know what to expect for this conference and I feel that I have learnt so much about what science learning is about and what Edie has been trying to work on with the support from Royal Society Te Aparangi.

Sharing our science experience with others and listening to other people experiences have been really beneficial to understand how we can teach science and get the children to feel really excited and be engaged in the science experiences.

There were a lot of opportunities to discuss, share ideas and hear thought provoking ideas, and I really enjoyed this part. I like how Jen said about how teachers say that science is everywhere, but we as teachers have professional responsibilities to teach our children and that we need to know what we are about to teach.

Over the 3 days, I thought a lot about myself as a teacher, science teaching and science in our school. I have never really thought myself as a science person, someone who is really interested in science although I do have some interest areas like sustainability, insects and looking after our environment. If I really want my children to think like a scientist or act like a scientist, first of all, I need to establish their ideas about scientists. Then, we can establish and explore our ideas about scientist. When we know that we are all scientists and we all do what scientists do in our daily lives, I can then use the language like "I like the way you are thinking like a scientist!" Using words like observing, describing, and gathering data in my practice is also really important so that it is explicit teaching and they will understand what these actions mean. I feel that I know where I want to start from next year with my new group of children to explore science in a more explicit way.

Listening to Edie and sharing ideas with her has been so valuable and I have learnt so much from her for the last 3 days and have felt her passion in teaching science. I didn't know how much time and effort Edie has put in order to create the past unit plans. It was so great to work together to develop the next year's unit and we were very excited to share this with our group and get some feedback.

Online Citizen Science Projects

How do we get them to do science practically to teach astronomy?

5 science capabilities for learning

Online Citizen Science
helping real scientists do things

Looking at science process
p- professional
c-citizens

Relationships how the dips happen, long/short string 

Science Capabilities- Gather/Interpret data 

                       Use Evidence 

                             Critique evidence 

                                       Interpret representation 

                                   Engage with science 

Karakia 

Science teaching leadership programme

Science- taking time to take it in, observing, being able to describe what they see

Start with what we know before starting introducing a topic.

Science table: what would you have on the science tables?

OYLA magazines: Scanning, can be used for all the levels even though there are technological terms
When the teachers are engaged, the children are also feeling excited and get engaged.
Warehouse stationary: film canisters
Hands on things are really important for all children, but how do you engage parents and local communities? Inviting astronomy people come in and present a presentation.


Having a folder that we can have access to Edie's experiments?

Collaboration in science -working together to create a unit.

comparing data, challenging each other's findings

Science learning hub - great site to go and learn
Children go and research on their own- developing their wonderings?

Using the language of scientists
Teaching maths through the same topic

Blake inspire for teachers
Squawk squad

The electric garden: recording a process of planting/growing

Discussions: Covering all 5 contents (Nature of science, Living world, Planet earth and beyond, Physical world, Material world).


Authentic contexts-weaving other curriculums through, focusing on capabilities. not knowledge base? Hands on activities/experiences

Questions
Student/personalised learning (teacher manipulating the whole thing) be honest about it
Balance in depth: being able to notice what science looks like-varying capacities/knowlegde to do this: highlighting-is it really?
Formative assessments in the moment
Is Noticing once and making judgements? -depends on contexts
Rubrics -adults way to organise things- it is not evidence based

Unpacking about scientist: what do scientists do? What is science? How do scientists think? What do scientists look like?

This progression was from NMSSA report 17 Science 17 Key Findings 

Science in the New Zealand Curriculum 

Insight for teachers 

Science capabilities 

Insights for teachers 

Scaffolding ideas about scientist

What are scientist? What do scientist do? look like? 

We are scientist, and we become scientist when we do... observing, gathering data,... 

Sand and diet coke experiment: rough parts- gas is caught in it Mentos has rough surfaces 

Microscopic of mentos on google- very rough around