From my head to my MIT tool

Getting the tool up and running involves me delineating the exact shape of my work, and that isn't happening rapidly.  The image I sketched in July of how my tool could look is no longer what I want at all.  This time I'm not just drawing squares in my book, but thinking about how another teacher is likely to access this tool and get the best use from it.  Dorothy has encouraged me to create resources for visual learners, so I think an introduction for each section needs to be oral.  So, screencastify -> youtube ->google site.  I will have some classroom footage as well.

So I'm going to work with three categories as a serious draft:

Why reading?

What is on-between-beyond the lines and how does it link to student success?

How can we use Socrative to develop reading skills beyond surface features?

I've put wellbeing and cooperation to the side for now in terms of website design.  I think these are super important parts of the equation, but I don't currently think that they are the aspects which would draw a teacher focusing on reading to dig into the site beyond the heading.  I've been looking at the tools developed by MIT 2018 teachers.  We discussed tools being either 'teacher facing' or 'student facing' at our last KPMG day, and that has been useful.  I've identified that my tool is teacher facing.  It's a support for teachers to dig deeper into reading comprehension with their students, with strategies showing them how to do this using Socrative, cooperation and competition.  You could use it any level from about year 4 upwards, but I have focused my tool and resource development on years 9 & 10, which is an under-resourced area in New Zealand.

I have been trialing different aspects of reading and Socrative throughout the year.  I expected to be launching straight into Team Game Tournament and doing that all year, but that turned out not to be the case at all.  My learner feedback took me in different directions as I found that they struggled with groups outside of friendship clusters but they did respond really well to scaffolded and structured reading and writing activities. Over time, I came to the conclusion that there are other ways to use Socrative to deepen reading comprehension which are valuable, and that I could see a gap in the 'market' in that in the academic literature and on line resources I could find, Socrative was being used for surface level thinking, and that there wasn't much around on using it for reading activities.  Thus, my tool will give examples which use New Zealand based resources, and it will give tips for teachers on how to make their own.

This afternoon I've drafted up a shape for the tool, and put together the why.  The resources I have created, trialled and refined during 2019 will be uploaded under the what and the how sections in the near future.

I've spent a while going back to make clear the why as before I put together the resources for the what and how.  This felt really important to me, so that I was anchored in my purpose for this project.  I played Simon Sinek's fabulous presentation on the importance of why for my Level Two class last week as part of our preparation for our speeches.  I think his work is relevant for every time we want to sell something, whether in the classroom or online or on a shop floor.

Starting with the why of adult literacy is super important, and comes from a session I ran as Literacy Leader at Greymouth High School a few years ago when we looked at the Survey of Adult Skills report for New Zealand, and considered how well equipped our students were for handling the depth and range of text in unfamiliar websites, and what that means for the extent they can participate in new experiences, whether in the workplace or in political life, or as volunteers or as members of families with complex legal or medical needs.  It took us away from thinking about how to 'get students through' the next assessment and into the serious need for life skills that are independent and flexible.  

The Literacy Learning Progressions and the New Zealand Curriculum English are Learning Objectives also flag clearly a need for a repertoire of reading strategies and confident, independent and flexible use of those strategies.  In my next post, I will discuss how these strategies link to the on-between-beyond the lines reading comprehension model and some 2019 resources I have developed to support this.

(There is more why, linked to learn-create-share, but I have to put this aside and do some senior exam marking so that my wonderful students can indeed make more progress on their Level Seven reading skills)