Structured Literacy UnConference

The Structured Literacy UnConference today was really inspiring and backed up many of the things that I am currently doing in my classroom.  

Big Ideas

Structured literacy is most important for those learners in the orange and red zone in the Ladder of Reading.    

Lesson Ideas

• Struggling learners need to interact with the sounds and ideas ideally 2 - 3 times a day - how can this be incorporated into my timetable?
• A4 laminated sheet with the 5 vowels and picture visible during all lessons

Structure of the lesson is always:

• Review (the letters/sounds from previous levels)
• Explicit Teaching
• Student Practice
• Application

Explicit teacher always includes I Do, We Do, You Do and is specific, clear and direct.

Ideas for Review:

• Zip through the sounds from earlier packs quickly
• Heart words - say and spell and say again e.g. my  m_y  my
• Word cards from previous levels/teaching

Ideas for Specific Teaching:

• Use of Google Slides (even on the iPad to support lessons, particularly with higher levels)
• Use different colours for new spelling patterns and underline each sound with a dot and new sounds with a dash
• Use of your full arm for blending - going down the arm
• Use of a metal tray with the magnetic letters - red letters for vowels
• Introduce only one new sound each day
• For new letters, picture cards starting with that letter e.g. yak, yellow, yoghurt

Ideas for Student Practice:

• Student practices words (encoding)
• Ensure explicit teaching on how to write a sentence as part of dictation (from approx. level 3)
• Mix this up each day e.g. dictated sentences/read a book

Ideas for Application:

• Read and sort words - could do this via Seesaw
• Pictures to encode - again, could be done via Seesaw
• Speed words - these could be sent home

Ideas for Sending Home for Further Practice:

• Speed words e.g. from the back of the books sent home for further practice
• Heart words
• Word building sheets (to be shared)
• Games to play at home (with notes on specific teaching)
• Little Learners Love Literacy app - stage 1 is free but rest can be purchased
• Reading fans

Further Readings and Research

• Gough & Tumner - Simple View of Reading
• The Reading League website
• Milo's Birthday Surprise - a great book to introduce letters 
• The Science of Reading
• Heggarty Hand Actions
• How the Brain Learns to Read - Professor Stanislaus Dehaene
• Sunnyhills School - Presentation to Families
• Lifting Literacy Aotearoa - case studies

Sharp Reading - Comprehension Strategy Instruction

Today's PD focused on a new way of teaching comprehension. This process is for those readers with a reading age of approximately 8 (PM levels 18 - 25).

STOP asking content questions 

START prompting for Strategy use

"Once the strategies have been introduced the teacher's role is limited to prompting students to be active in deciding how they might process the text" - Pressley

Follow a clear teaching and learning model:
Explicit Teaching of Strategies - explain; model; guided practice (20%); independent practice (80%)

Use cover cards to: slow down the reader, don't read on, keep their place and show you when they are finished.

Clearing the roadblocks ... three important parts ...

• Are there any roadblocks?
• Have a go at clearing it?
• Have you cleared it?

Convince Me!

This really encourages them to dig deeper into a sentence and teachers provide feedback using the triggers (prompt card).

Ideally, for top groups, three - four paragraphs per day - but start with an easier group and look at less paragraphs.

Further Reading:

Reading for Understanding

As part of our ongoing school wide Professional Development, today we had another session with Dr Rebecca Jesson, to upskill and provoke us in the curriculum area of reading.   Firstly we recapped from our last session and discussed as a team what we had achieved to date.  Some important reminders from that session were:

Widen and deepen vocabulary knowledge by:

• Multiple texts for word recycling
• Relationships between words, meanings and concept development
• Word walls for scaffolding

Increasing depth and breadth to allow learners to deepen their understanding as well as provide repetition of content learning over texts.

Higher order creation activities from multiple texts

Themes that cross texts - eg children who are heros

Rebecca reminded us that  ... "A good text should be both a mirror and a window" and that teaching vocabulary, is a "big ticket" item in our reading program.

New learning from today's session focused on:

Empowerment or self monitoring or agency or ownership by the learner.

We were encouraged to consider:

• scaffolding to support to independence  -  learners need to be able to stand on their own
• are learners offered opportunity to tackle things "without us" but with "support" from us

What would make the learner want to?   (motivation ... engagement ... of our learners) - free choice?

Ideally, we are working towards:

• learners who notice whether the text makes sense
• learners who notice whether they understand
• learners who problem solve
• learners who persist

As a team we discussed what this would look like and how we can scaffold learners towards this with such questioning as:

• How do you know you are right?
• Were you right?
• Did the text give you what you need?
• Did the text give you something you can use?
• Make the thinking visible - eg with highlighting, voice notes, screen-casting

As always, Rebecca has made me think about not only my deliberate acts of teaching but also my follow up activities and how I can give my learners more choice and opportunities to demonstrate their understand in creative ways.

Inquiry 2015 Reflection

As part of our school wide inquiry into our practice, this afternoon I presented my final reflection for the year.  This slide show and movie show some of the progress made this year.

Reading ... from planning to completion

Earlier this term I was asked to present to teachers in the cluster that may be moving to 1:1 iPads next year.  During this presentation I briefly described how I planned my reading lessons and what they looked like in the classroom.  Following this session I've created a screen cast of the process I follow in reading in my classroom.

Collaboration ... helping solve each others' problems :)

Today was our first inquiry meeting for Term 4 and provided an opportunity for us all to take a "teaching problem" to the meeting and seek advice and suggestions from others.  In my session today there was a vast array of different problems which we brainstormed about and came up with suggestions for.  So, without further ado, the problem I took to todays session was:

My learners are struggling to remember blends (letter combinations which make a sound eg ch or st) are holding learners back in reading & writing.  What sort of independent activities can I create on the iPad to assist learners with practicing these.

Some of the ideas that were contributed from the group include:

• Start off with shorter blends or ones most frequently used first
• Use sound bites that learners can press & hear what the blend/word is
• Chunk the blend and the remaining part of the word and have pictures so learners can put the whole word together (include sound bites)
• Break up words and re-create (with pictures and cues)
• Flash card type activity - beat the clock - repetitive
• Work on blend families eg play/plays/playing/played which also will work on word endings
• Use song - link to You Tube clips focusing on that blend

With these great ideas in mind, tonight I have created an Explain Everything project as a starting point focusing on the "st", "gr" and "ch" blends.  Each project has a short video clip (song) about the blend and then activities using the above ideas.  Some screen shots from the first project are included below.  As always, the plan is to test this first project before creating others - watch this space.

Title Slide - used as a visual on my reading rotation board

create "gr" words

create "st" words

Putting it all together - match the picture with the beginning sound

Three quarters of the hill climbed ....

I find term breaks an excellent time to reflect on my year to date, and in particular the term just gone.  The majority of this post was actually created last week - maybe not on paper, but in my mind!  I took some family time away from Auckland in the Waikato area, and while away decided to explore Wairere Falls (the tallest waterfall in the North Island).  This is relevant because my 'plan' was to walk to the viewing platform, a walk of around forty five minutes.  I 'prepared' for that but not to really go any further.  Over three hours later, I'd not only walked to the top of the waterfall (totally unprepared) but successfully made it back to the car!   So yes, I managed to push myself (and succeed) and felt really great about that, but I know I would have enjoyed the journey even more if I'd been prepared (water, a snack, a better camera ... ).  I can't help but see similarities in the classroom and to my learners - the more I'm prepared for, the better position I'm in to accelerate their learning!  The more I'm prepared, the better I'm able to turn each eventuality into a more robust, engaging learning experience for them.

As I reflect on Term 3 of my second year of teaching, I look back on the goals I had for this term and think about how far I've come with each of them:

• Complete my research dissertation - so close - just some formatting and a little tweaking to go - this mountain has definitely been conquered and I can definitely say the effort has been worth it - its been inspiring to research the practice of other teachers and I know my own practice has improved as I embrace the ideas of others - #collaboration 
• Transition to using Class Dojo for class management - I found this was not as effective with my learners this year as it was last year.  I feel the special needs learners I have in my class respond better to a more visual reward system of putting a sticker on their chart.  I think perhaps the ability for them to always see at any time their progress has more influence?  
• Continue to innovate with the iPads - this term I've focused on the use of sound bites more than ever as a way of allowing my learners to repeat or re-listen to my instructions.  We still unpack the activity at the teaching table, but I find particularly on the bigger projects, learners will forget what an instruction is - the sound bites have definitely made a difference in the "what do I do on this slide Mrs Belt" visits to my teaching table!

• My Inquiry Journey - as part of our ongoing school wide professional development I've really enjoyed continually exploring my practice and sharing this with a group of like-minded individuals from my school.  The end of term presentation feedback session was particularly inspiring and motivating and I found myself wanting to hear back from everyone (which of course time doesn't permit).  I'm looking forward to continuing this journey next term.
• Sharing with others outside of Manaiakalani - I had two opportunities this term (the most recent being ULearn15) and I continue to be motivated by both blogging and these presentations - its great that others are interested in what I have to say and I hope what I share has value to other educators - I love my job and am so enthusiastic about working in a digital learning environment which embraces and allows innovation
• Explain Everything reading projects - I have been particularly pleased with how engaged my learners have been with the additional reading Explain Everything activities this term and how they allow each learner to revisit their text on a second day.  I definitely feel this is more purposeful for learners on days when I'm unable to see them at the teaching table and plan to continue with this into Term 4
• My research dissertation - this has been an inspiring journey and I've grown as a teacher as a result of observing and analysing the practice of others.  As I dot the final i's and cross the final t's before calling it complete I know at times completing it has been a hard road (particularly with balancing a family) but its definitely been a highlight of my year and I know its opened my eyes to even more possibilities.
• My Manaiakalani Film Festival movie - I can't say any more, but watch this space in mid November!
• The amazing team of teachers I work with - to be in such a collaborative, caring and sharing environment makes even the hardest challenges seem easier.  I feel extremely lucky to be surrounded by experienced teachers who are happy to share ideas and resources so willingly. Having this amazing resource to ask advice of has made my journey so much easier and I'm extremely thankful for their willingness and collaborative nature!

• Behaviour management continues to be a challenge in the classroom, and just when I think I have made progress, more curve balls come along to tip the scales again.  Thanks to some great ideas from teachers in my team I have some great new ideas to implement in Term 4 (star of the day, whole class reward) as a way to motivate some special learners in my class and assist me in managing their special behaviours.
• Time - it was interesting that during yesterday's ULearn Keynote "time" featured as the one thing most teachers wanted more of!  Without the additional pressure of my Research Dissertation next term I'm hoping to have a little more 'downtime' and more time to spend creating and innovating (and some exercise too!)

Term Four is a busy term (I remember that from last year) but I still have some goals which are amazingly close to completion:

• Implement the ideas from colleagues for behaviour management with my learners to ensure a more settled learning environment and make the most of this term for accelerating learning
• Complete the requirements to become a Fully Registered Teacher
• Complete my Honours degree 

Term 3 Inquiry Presentation

The year is flying by and once again its time to present to a group of colleagues on my inquiry progress.  I like to mix up my presentations and use alternative ways to present as a way of keeping my skills with different software current as well as giving me different tools to utilise.

And so we start typing .... another Explain Everything tool is introduced!

As often occurs, another professional conversation with a colleague had me thinking about another use for Explain Everything.  She is having learners use the keyboard and typing onto the iPad, particularly for those learners who struggle with writing.  To date, my learners haven't used this tool but I do think its a great first step into publishing their own writing via Blogger, which I hope to achieve by the end of the year.

To this end, I am introducing a new slide to the Reading Activity project this week.  I do try to introduce a new one each week and have a bank of 15 slides now that I can pick and choose from for different learners or groups.  This also helps with variety and engagement with this activity.  The new slide asks learners to copy/transcribe the words from one page of their book.  To scaffold this for my learners I've created some laminated keyboard cards which shows the letters in lower case.  I remember from last year that many learners struggled to find the letters on the Upper Case keyboard.  One of the updates I'm most looking forward to is the introduction of the lower case keyboard for the iPad as this will negate this scaffolding.

As with any new activity I will introduce this to the learners as a whole class first on the Apple TV so they can see how to change the size of the text box and how to put a space between words.  I fully expect to take this activity further and over the coming weeks learners will have the opportunity to type some of there responses as well as handwrite others - I think the combination will give them an opportunity to practice both their skills.

My 2015 inquiry ... revisit and review

As part of our ongoing inquiry into our practice, this afternoon we are meeting to discuss where we are at, and giving feedback and support to those in our group.  This term, I'm working with a new inquiry group.  My group, and links to their inquiry blogs are:

Russell  (Principal @ PES)

Ben  (Year 5 teacher)

Chrissie  (Year 2 teacher)

Sandy  (Creative Space teacher)

Willis (Maker Space teacher)

We have been given some focus questions to guide our discussion this afternoon and I've decided to unpack each question on my blog so I'm prepared for our session today.

One of the challenges/barriers my students have is……

Generally speaking learners' have less oral language than you would expect in a "typical" new entrants classroom. While there are many reasons for this, such as them not undergoing as many experiences in their pre-school lives, or speaking their mother language at home, it necessitates the need for us to gift rich vocabulary to the learners. This can be challenging to do in reading as so much time is spent on decoding, allowing little room for this necessary gifting.

To address this in my teaching I have tried…….

Following the professional development with Dr Rebecca Jesson, our team discussed the limitations we have in gifting vocabulary during our guided reading session. I was reminded of the need to 'read to' my learners, with the three texts being the optimum number each day. I've struggled with doing this up to now, due to the inability of my learners to sit still on my mat for even a minute, without calling out and interrupting the flow of the story. As detailed in an earlier post, I'm trialling a solution for this, and trying hard to achieve my target of "three books a day." This 'reading to' allows me opportunities to gift vocabulary, and I've also tried extending a text which the learners have been captivated by into a motivation for writing, allowing for further gifting of rich vocabulary as well as adding to the 'experiences' bank for each learner.

The impact of this so far has been …….

While only early days, I have achieved my target on 9 out of the 10 days tried, and the learners are actually asking "when" we will have story time each day. My star chair remains a huge motivator for learners who seemed unable to sit still in the past, so much so that I plan to extend it into all mat time sessions as an extrinsic motivator. To date, I've extended one of the books into a three day writing session and combined this with a fun out of class experience to support the learning. We unpacked some great vocabulary around the word "big" with a combination of gifted words and words that learners were able to share.

So .... where to next ??? …….

My next challenge is to find a way to continually use this exciting new vocabulary, particularly when learners are working independently. I plan to try and incorporate some of it into my Reading Activity projects, again scaffolding this carefully to ensure its used correctly in context as well as adds to the value of the activity.

Today's meeting this afternoon was great - we have an amazing group that covers different levels/areas throughout the school and its great to hear their challenges and what they are doing to make a difference in the lives of our tamariki in other areas and higher up the school. We were reminded (during our inquiry group and also earlier before we split into these smaller groups) that we are an innovative school and have 'broken new ground' on this journey into the whole school using 1:1 devices. I've been privileged to be part of the journey in the junior school and personally really enjoy the ability to continually try things so my learners get the best from me as a teacher. Having 1:1 devices makes learning more engaging, repetitive and visible in my classroom and my ongoing challenge is to continually ensure it is utilised to its fullest potential.

Enhancing the Literacy Experience

As part of our ongoing Professional Development we have been looking at reading with Dr Rebecca Jesson.  As mentioned in this previous blog post, my aim has been to ensure I'm reading to my learners 2 - 3 times a day.   An additional aim is to unpack some rich vocabulary with the learners and this often comes from our shared book experiences or from our whole class writing.  While ideally it would be great to embed this into guided reading sessions also, this can often inhibit the guided reading session which has a focus on decoding and allows minimal opportunities to gift new language which my learners need.

Last week after reading Bubble Trouble, we talked about the language in the book and what happened to the bubbles which the two friends in the story were competing to create.  This lead into our writing session and we wrote a story about bubbles being transparent - a word I gifted my learners.  Our whole class story for the day was:

"When we blow bubbles they are transparent because we can see through them."

I later added the word "transparent" to our growing vocabulary wall for learners to refer back to.

The learners were really engaged with book the book and the concept so I extended this into writing for a second day, with a plan to extend it into a third day and have the learners experience blowing bubbles and then free-write about the experience.  This idea came from something that occurs in a colleagues classroom, with a story/idea being built on over the week and vocabulary gifted to the learners that they are able to find and use in their own stories during the free writing session.  Our second day story was:

"The gigantic bubble floated away in the sky."

On the third day we went outside and had fun blowing bubbles.  It was really interesting to see the learners using some of the gifted vocabulary to describe what was happening to the bubbles.  Of course, what I was most interested in was what the learners would be able to write and what vocabulary they would choose to reuse.  A selection of the stories created include:

"The bubbles went up in the sky and I like bubbles."
"I like the bubbles.  The bubbles went up in the sky."
"We blow the small bubbles and we blow the big bubbles.  We blow the big bubbles and the bubbles float."

While it is only early days, for the first time I've attempted this I was really pleased to see how it progressed and how each day took the concepts and ideas a step further.  My next challenge is to find picture books to read to my learners which extend our inquiry topic so I'm able to combine my writing and inquiry curriculum areas as this will help cover more of the inquiry topic in my limited learning time.  I often find it is a struggle to incorporate all the ideas from our rich Professional Development into my programme and I'm sure this will occur more naturally as I move from being a beginning teacher into being more experienced.  I definitely enjoy the challenge of trying new things and love the sharing of ideas that comes about from our PD sessions, particularly at a team level as I find these even more applicable in my classroom.

Sound bites for comprehension

As my learners move up through the reading levels I want them to be aware they are reading for a purpose and that they need to understand what they are reading.  One of the ways we do this are through comprehension questions which ask them about what they have read.

While I often ask follow up questions during my guided reading session, I am also keen to include comprehension questions in my follow up Explain Everything projects which the learners work on independently.  I have done this in the past but found that learners can sometimes be tripped up by having to "read the questions."  They understand the question if its given to them orally, but may not be able to read all the words used if they have to read it - and its not always possible to phrase it in a way that it uses words that I know they will be able to read and understand.

I've recently tried using sound bites to ask the comprehension questions as part of their project, which is proving extremely successful.  The learner is able to listen to the question and then find the answer in their book and write it onto the page.

An example of this, for the book "The Duck with a Broken Wing" (this is one of six slides in the project for one group of learners who are reading this book later this week):

I've found using soundbites so successful that I am beginning to add them to many of the pages I create.  This allows the learner to listen to the instructions again and prevents them having to return to my desk if they have forgotten what I said when I scaffolded the project.   In most cases the sound bite is exactly the same as the text on the page so the learners are able to listen and follow along with the words.

The importance of reading to ...

At our recent team professional development session with Dr Rebecca Jesson, I was reminded of the importance of reading to my learners.  Often in our busy day I struggle to find time to do this, and have yet to achieve the recommended three books a day.  One of the reasons for this is the inability of some of my learners to sit quietly and listen to the story - they feel the need to continually interrupt or jiggle around on the mat.

I set myself a challenge of achieving three books a day with my learners and discussed with other teachers in my team how they achieve this.  One suggestion was to read a story with the learners while they are eating their lunch.  I also decided that as many of my learners arrive late to class and this can be quite disruptive, to trial reading a book at the beginning of the day while waiting for these latecomers to arrive.

My final challenge was how to have them engage with the reading without the constant calling out - and again, based on a recommendation from another teacher, we're trialling the "star chair".  This is a reward for an individual learner that sits and listens to the story without calling out or wriggling around on the mat.  Not only does the individual get to sit on the chair for the next story, but they get to choose which book we read next (from a range that I have pre-selected and have available).

I couldn't believe the difference this star chair made when I implemented it last week - immediately every learner was engaged and focused on listening to the story - it made such a difference that even my Teacher Aide wondered what was going on when she entered the classroom and saw everyone totally still, silent and listening to the story.  While its early days, I successfully read three books a day three times last week - it is from these books that we're able to discuss the rich vocabulary in some of the stories as a whole class and introduce the learners to new experiences and ideas - we've had some rich discussions already and I look forward to this continuing!

Once again I'm reminded of the value of professional development as a way to enhance the learning for all in our classrooms as well as refocus us and ensure our pedagogy is the best it can be!

My Inquiry ... where to next ?

At our first inquiry meeting this term we discussed with our new group where we were at with our inquiry and what plans we had for the direction of our inquiry.  We've received a significant amount of professional development over the last term, and this will continue this term.  The challenge is to integrate all this new learning into my inquiry to ensure acceleration in reading and activities that encourage higher order thinking.

As detailed in my post yesterday, I'm currently implementing activities in my reading rotation which ask the learner to re-engage with the text from a previous day, as I'm no longer able to see each learner every day (I still try to see my lower groups each day).  The initial activities I have created are more word work, recall and comprehension type activities but it is my intention to extend these as the term progresses to include activities which require aspects of higher order thinking.   The challenge with this is to have them generic enough that they work across a range of texts whilst still being engaging and challenging across a range of reading levels (Red - Blue).  This seems to be my next step.

I have found that as learners move up the reading rocket in the classroom, they are able to independently complete activities at a more complex level and spend more engaged on these.  This continues to motivate me in trying new things, while ensuring the learning is personalised and engaging for all.  

So I can't see all my reading groups each day ..... now what ?

Last year, team teaching with Michelle, we were able to see all our reading groups each day, and I believe that impacted their learning immensely.  To date this year I've been able to see all my groups every day on most occasions.  However, as each learner progresses at a different rate, I've had to increase the number of groups I have and now with eight reading groups (maximum of three learners per group) its impossible to see them all each day and give them the attention they deserve.

The question I've been mulling around for the last week is how can I have the other learners engaged in purposeful activities during reading time on the day I'm not seeing them?  I currently have engagement in a variety of activities, including the Explain Everything activity they complete as a follow up to the text they read during their guided reading session.  Ideally, I'd like the learner to reconnect with this text on the second day.

I explored extending my Explain Everything projects so they were larger and took them longer to complete.  However I wasn't totally happy with this approach as the learners enjoy (and stay more engaged) through the variety of things they do during a normal reading rotation.   Combined with this, the learners that are quicker on completing their follow up activity could potentially complete it all on the day they saw me and would therefore have no need to engage with the text on the second day.

Last week I trialled a second reading activity which was slightly more generic.  I created a range of single page stand alone slides, focusing on comprehension, retell, word work, letter identification and pictorial representations (things that I've identified my learners need more work on).  A new feature of Explain Everything (v 2.71) allows me to insert whichever of these stand alone activities I want to focus on for the week into a new project with the touch of a button.  I'm able to create a second project quickly for individuals or groups to complete using their existing text, which I can add to the existing reading rotation.  The ease with which I can add slides from my existing bank ensures its not time consuming, but enables the personalisation which I value.  Importantly - all the instructions on the slides are verbal as well as written, so learners can listen to what they need to do, fostering independence.

Locate words in your text starting with each letter

Identify the words starting with the letter b

Match the capital letter with the lower case letter

As I review the work completed this week I'm excited that learners have definitely reconnected with the text on a second day.  Interestingly, despite scaffolding "retell" by demonstrating and modelling, most learners have not retold the story by summarising what happened, but instead read the entire book to their iPad.  I can't see this as a bad thing at all - I can hear what words they are struggling over, and while I need to provide further instruction and demonstration on retelling, the way they have completed the activity has provided valuable reading practice for individual learners as well as provided me with information for follow up lessons.

For this week I have kept several of the existing slides and introduced a few new slides, thereby ensuring learners can practice from the known as well as be engaged with new activities.  I have plans to add to my bank of slides as the needs of my learners change.

A continued inspiration

As part of my continued involvement with Auckland University's Top of the Class blog, the following post is my latest contribution:

I have seventeen wonderful reasons that constantly inspire, challenge, motivate and yes at times frustrate me - those seventeen reasons are the seventeen wonderful learners in my classroom!  I was reminded of this recently when an injury kept me away from work for a week.  The welcome I received when I returned blew me away.

Every learner in my classroom is an individual and I want to ensure that they have the best possible start to their school journey.  Being a new entrants teacher, for me, is a special privilege.  As with any teacher, I get to make a year-long impact on a young persons life, and encourage and inspire them to be the best that they can be.

As the second term at school for most of my class draws to a close, and I assess their progress and what we've achieved to date, I'm proud of all my learners.  Many have entered the primary school system with very limited English, coming from an ESL (English as a Second Language) background yet they have continually tried their best, climbed the reading ladder and made significant progress with maths and writing.

Having 1:1 iPads definitely assists with engagement and allows for purposeful small group and individual activities.  It also gives me a visibility of what the learner has been doing during this individual time.   This is most noticeable during reading time where each learner has an activity using Explain Everything to support the guided reading completed with me.  The projects increase in complexity and number of slides as the learners move up the reading levels.

This short clip features some of the many projects we work on during reading to follow up our guided reading lessons.

Tiny Tap magic

I've discovered a new app which allows me to create purposeful activities for my learners and tells them they are correct!  While I love using Explain Everything in the classroom, one of the things that somewhat frustrates me, are projects where learners can practice things but I need to provide feedback as to whether they are "right" - after all there is no point in them continually practicing ordering of numbers from 1 - 10 if they are not getting it right.  In the past I often use collaboration - other learners in the class who are secure on a concept or skill, providing peer feedback to others.

The Tiny Tap app allows me to create projects which provide learners with feedback if they get something right, and prompts them to try again if they are not correct.  The receive instant feedback that they have got the answer right and can continually practice to improve their accuracy and embed the learning.  I've created several projects so far, specifically looking at the needs of my learners on things that 'repetition' will help with - counting to 10, high frequency words, ordering numbers, number identification!

When I introduced the activity to my learners last week they were immediately engaged - there is a "gaming aspect" to it - it has bells, whistles and sounds which my 5 year olds really enjoy! Importantly however, they are engaged at doing the same game/activity again and again and their accuracy improves the more they play.

So - how am I managing this in the classroom in order to make the learning personalised, whilst also being manageable with 18 learners?  I've created my own Tiny Tap account and have labelled all my games as "PES Rm 19" for easy identification!  So far I've created eight games, but intend to create many more after the successes of the last week - all the games are public and available for anyone to play or download through the app (or a browser on a computer).  As I found with creating Explain Everything projects, I get quicker at creating the games, the more I do.


My next step was to find a way for my five year olds to be playing the game that best matched their learning needs - without asking 5 year olds to perform complication searches!  Drawing on my experiences from last year once again, I've decided to implement the use of QR codes - and it works!  I've created a QR code for each game that I've made (with a picture of the game next to it so that its easy for me to identify which QR code is which).  The very first time a learner plays a game they are prompted to "get" the game after scanning the QR code (I've done this for the learners so the games at each learners' level are already downloaded to their device).   My learners now scan the QR code, press the green "play" button and the Tiny Tap app opens with the game ready to play.


I'm looking forward to seeing if this engaged, personalised repetition helps learners to remember things such as high frequency words and number identification.  It's also great to get ideas from other teachers in the Tiny Tap community which may help my learners.  As I get faster at creating projects I look forward to being even more personalised to the needs of my learners and to further supporting their learning acceleration.