Sheena and Louise - Retelling PLD

During lockdown Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsy ran a workshop on using the retell strategy for reading comprehension. This was a great session with lots of practical ideas to implement in the classroom with students. Two of the ideas I was able to implement once lockdown ended are excellent for my TAide to work with some of my ESOL, high needs students on.

Stick puppets to retell Traditional tales

Copying Nursery Rhymes onto ice cream sticks for organising and retelling.

Using images as our 'text'

One of the main ideas I took from the PLD with Cynthia Greenleaf last term was the idea of using images as the text to be read.

I sourced images on-line to use as the conversation starter with my students. The images are from the NY times section - What happening in this picture. Here is the link. The pictures are drawn from the newspaper and have the captions removed, there is a moderated forum for students to comment and have an on-line discussion about the images. The pictures are selected to provoke conversation.

My students enjoyed the difference in having a picture to look at instead of discussing a written text but they thought it was harder to do. I think this may change as they have more opportunities to discuss visual texts. I was pleased with the depth of the conversation, especially when talking about what might have happened before and after the image was taken. They were able to come up with complex themes and build on each other's statements. I'm looking forward to seeing how this progresses over the next few weeks.

Starting the term with a new scaffold

I have started the term using the new scaffold sheet that I put together last term. This uses the links that Jannie talks about as a way to represent the connections made in a conversation. The students seemed to find this template easier to use and the conversation flowed better than it has in the past. The removal of the 'prompts' meant students were using their own words and weren't as 'stilted' in their responses to the text and each other. My next session I want to focus on using words from the previous speaker to help link the conversation further. I also think using a non-fiction text was helpful as there were facts for the students to reference.

Starting to see traction

Really happy with the session today. A lot of progress with the responses and comments idea. We discussed the idea of 'chains of conversation' before we started and I think this made a difference as we had a much better conversation and a lot of comments were being made about what other group members had said. This idea of conversation chains comes from the work we have been doing with Jannie van Hees. 

This slide of Jannie's talks about the scaffolders that will help students develop an abundance of language. It is interesting that the peer section matches what I am hoping to achieve with my students. Also as part of these sessions Jannie has emphasised the role of the teacher in introducing new vocabulary to the students. I am thinking of a way that I can be involved in the students discussions with out undermining the improvements I have seen in the students when the teacher doesn't take an active role. I feel that I do have the ability to introduce the extended vocabulary needed.

This is the template that I am working on and want to introduce next term. The idea being to build on having a conversation by adding links to the chain. Thanks to Ashley Schellingerhout for letting me re-purpose her template. 

Where to from here?

• I want to include 2 other students in the group to see if they can spark more conversation. This will also be an opportunity to include more than one boy in the group. 
• I will continue to use the short text book format as this is how we can get as much mileage done in the time available, and what the students enjoyed.
• I want to step away and see if they can fill in the sheet by themselves, this will also stop them from looking to me when they respond to the text.
• After a few more sessions I wan to record the conversation and write up a transcript to see if I can identify trends in the responses and comments.
• I also need to make sure I go over what the language of questioning with the group so that they know what sort of response is needed.

I am hoping to give this another 2 weeks and then do the recording and check in again with the students about how they think it's going.

First session

This week I started the intervention with my target group. They found the activity and text very challenging (more so than I expected). They understood the goal was to have a discussion, but they defaulted to putting up their hand and talking to the teacher.
The scaffold I had created worked well as I was able to record how many things were said and the students used the sentence stems really well to respond to the text. They were even able to use it says in the text... which was great. They were less able to comment on what each other had said, so this will be a focus for our next session.
I think that I will need to find a simpler text for the next session. So that the focus is on the discussion  points I'm introducing.

Intervention

Robyn and I were lucky enough to meet up with Aaron Wilson on Friday and check-in with him about our planned interventions. It was beneficial to have the conversation about my thinking and what I planned to do as it helped me consolidate my aims and what I was going to talk to the students about to introduce the intervention.
I have a mystery text that I have broken up into 3 parts, all at crucial points in the story to help the discussion to be about the clues we have so far and what we think will happen next. This is what the slide for the week looks like on our class site.
Aaron suggested we also talk about the meta-language of a mystery text as there is a 'red-herring' used in the story.

Discussion Starters

Starting week two I am going to introduce the following scaffold to my target students. At the moment their responses to text are short and at a surface level. By using this scaffold I am hoping to hear more in-depth discussion and dialogic responses where students are replying to each other, rather than just to the teacher. At the moment the scaffold has been created by the teacher but, as we get familiar with the responses and comments using I am hoping to include more student created prompts.