Big ideas and core competencies, what counts in teaching literacy - a BC revision of Allington's T's, a focus on reading, writing, oral language.

1. Igniting a Passion for Literacy
K-4
Kamloops
May 16, 2017
Faye Brownlie
slideshare.net/fayebrownlie.kamloops.literacyjoy

2. Learning Intentions
• I have a plan for what I will do more of and
less of for the next 6 weeks.
• I beEer understand how to plan with
structures and strategies to include all
learners.
• I have a plan to try something new with a
literacy strategy or working with the core
competencies.

3. Your Class Profile
• What are the literacy strengths of your class?
– Think of 2 or 3!
– What are you celebraMng that they have learned?
• What are the areas you are wanMng to stretch or
strengthen in these last two months?
– Choose no more than 2☺
• What is your plan?

4. Where do your vulnerable kids
spend most of their time?

6. Instruction counts!
With thanks to R. Allington
• Teaching
– Gradual release
– Teach Up! Establish your ‘end’ and expect all to arrive
– Access
– Strategies:
• connecMng, processing, transforming & personalizing
• Time
– Eyes on text
– Engaged
• Talk
– Building understanding together
– NegoMaMng meaning
– Asking quesMons

7. • Text
– Choice
– Accessible
• Tasks
– Open-ended
– Meaningful
– No research to support comprehension quesMons or fill in the
blank, matching, mulMple choice quesMons
• Feedback
– Do your students receive 1:1 feedback from you in each class?
– How do you use the feedback you receive from your students?

8. What counts in the redesigned
curriculum?

10. Big Ideas
• Make this curriculum 3 dimensional
• Translate into essenMal quesMons
• Give meaning to the pieces of curriculum
competencies and content
• Include all students

11. Core Competencies
• CommunicaMon
• Thinking
– CreaMve
– CriMcal
• Personal
– PosiMve personal & cultural idenMty
– Personal awareness & responsibility
– Social responsibility

12. • Embedded
• All kids, all subjects, all grades
• Are NOT a checklist or a series of separate
lessons
• All students develop to become engage, life-
long learners
• Are included in the June report card as a
student self-assessment/reflecMon

13. Reading

14. Reading is understanding.
Reading is thinking.
Reading is making sense in
disciplines.

15. Literacy Centres
Julia Kranz & Lisa Schwartz, Gr. 1/2
• Begin with whole group lesson
– Focus on sight words and applying strategies
• 6 groups – explain their sequence (3 staMons)
• StaMons
– Read with a teacher (Lisa reads with same two groups each
Thursday – extra support)
– Read like an ant
– Read like a comedian
– Listen like a reader
– iPad
– Word work
– Read with a partner
• Reflect together

24. Strengthening Choice Reading
• 1:1 conferences
– Book chat – Tell me about what you are reading.
– Read a small secMon to me.
– Response has a meaning and strategy focus
– Extend the thinking
• Whole group response
– Model the format you want from the class read aloud
– Students analyze your response
– Students complete their response
• Be a photographer with 2 lenses: telescopic and long range
• Sketch 2 pictures and explain why each is important in the story

25. Strategies

26. Grade 1/2, Sunshine Coast
• The strengths:
– ChaEy, love to share ideas, take risks with their
spelling
• The challenge:
– Very diverse group
– Some resistant to wriMng, others write pages
• The goal:
– Teaching wriMng in a fun and inclusive way to help
everyone grow

27. Big Ideas – Grade 1 Language Arts
• Language and stories can be a source of creaMvity
and joy.
• Everyone can be a reader and can create stories.
• Listening and speaking builds our understanding
and helps us learn.
• Big Idea/Curricular Competencies
– Create stories
– Begin to communicate in print, using leEers and
words and applying some basic convenMons of English
spelling, grammar, and punctuaMon

28. • What do you wonder?
• 2 pictures
• Use these and others’ ideas to spark your
thinking for a story
• Leave the carpet with your first line in your head
• Write
• Teacher provides 1:1 feedback during the wriMng
• Share a phrase or 2-3 words that you wrote that
you are proud of
• Circle 2 words that you took risks with in spelling

37. Beliefs about Writing
• WriMng is thinking
• Write daily
• Precede wriMng with talk, reflecMon, Mme
• Focus on meaning
• Explicitly teach wriMng and provide Mme for pracMce
and feedback
• Feedback and co-developed criteria support the
development of wriMng
• WriMng is cross-curricular
• All children are writers

38. Writing

39. How can we help our writers
write more powerful leads?

40. Catherine Feniak, P, Sarb Sidhu,
2/3, BriEany Shoemaker, 2/3, Kate
Middleton, 3,
Lord Kitchener, Vancouver
• Writers Workshop
• What do we want?
• How can we get our kids there?
• 1 hour/week with co-teaching with Cath, 1 hour
teaching alone

41. • As a class, examined a powerful lead and
decided what made it work.
• In groups of 4, examined another powerful
lead and decided what made it work.
• Shared the leads
• Re-examined the criteria for powerful leads,
then wrote the first draj of their lead.

43. • It was the worst birthday party that Lewis had
ever been to. But then, what could you expect
when the guest of honor was a corpse?

51. Loose Parts
• As a prompt for storytelling
• As an alternate way to explain your learning

52. Oral Storytelling – Bev Marisco,
Campbell River
• Read class a FN story about local animals
hiding in the forest.
• Boys hid the animals in the forest because a
big flood was happening. One of the boys had
recently seen the flooding of the Campbell
River.
• It looked like chaos but they were reenacMng a
flood!

53. Gr 1. Note the chaoMc sekng

58. Gr 1. Note the organized sekng.

60. • The children use the deer hide, rocks, sMcks,
glass beads, animals to tell their story at
centre Mme.
• Use the document camera for a larger
audience.
• Ojen the Aboriginal Support Teacher reads a
story before centre Mme.

61. What is the relationship between
humans and energy?
• A culminaMng acMvity in a grade 3/4 class
• Lisa Schwartz, Richmond

62. Learning IntenMons: gr. 3/4
• I can use different materials (loose parts) to
show my thinking (criMcal competency)
• Using the materials helped me get my ideas
(creaMve competency)
• I was able to make a connecMon to humans
and energy and represent my ideas
(communicaMon competency)

67. Belonging – grades 2/3
Michelle Hikida
• Structured Inquiry
– All teacher quesMons
• EssenMal quesMons
– What is the best part of you?
– What are your gijs?
– Who is the person you want to be?

68. • Each day read a new book, collected characterisMcs of
characters and made lists.
• Watched Utube videos, read music lyrics – collected
characterisMcs of characters and added to the lists.
• Daily students chose a book from the basket and read.
• Sharing circle at end of reading – connecMons to the
characterisMcs of characters in the book –
– What is the best part of you?
– What are your gijs?
– Who is the person you want to be?

80. The Leveling Question
• It is detrimental to a student’s self-esteem and to
their love of reading when they are encouraged
to measure their own progress by ‘moving up
levels’.
– Fountas and Pinnell 2017
• Fountas and Pinnell created the F&P Text Level
Gradient to be used as a teacher’s tool for
assessment and instrucMon. The levels aren’t
meant to be shared with children or parents.
– Fountas and Pinnell Literacy Post, Sept 29, 2016