I've seen the kids actually use what they've taken through the vocab instructional routine
lessons and actually apply it, which has been fantastic. And their writing has come up,
even just their sentences and their spelling contracts have been so much better.
And they're using things like, "Oh Miss, I'm using more sophisticated words",
which me as a teacher, I'm pretty proud of. I love seeing the journey. I love
seeing what happens for children and for teachers. I'm really privileged here, I've got some teachers
who are really young and inexperienced and to see them grow and develop and that excites me, I'm at
the end of my career. So it will be fantastic to know that they picked up the mantle and they're
going to run with it and they're going to take that skill and knowledge out there, and they're
going to make the lives of children better. Never before have we had, I guess the
wide range of research available to us about what works for teachers. But then I would have
to build on from that and say never before in South Australia, have we had the research
placed and developed and categorised for us like they are in the literacy and numeracy guidebooks,
to give us that continuum of practice all the way from Build Foundations to Inspire where you
can have a look at what it is that I need to work on, what it is that my site improvement plan is
telling me I need to focus in on and go to that source and not have to go to all the different
places in the world, in Google, in archives, in research libraries,
journal databases. It's just all there in that one place. And so we can go there first and
then that's our bespoke approach to research and evidence that we can all now engage with,
which we haven't been able to do before. We started with a writing goal and then
that was the work we did with How Language Works and getting people to better understand grammar,
sentence construction, and improve writing. And then as we moved through that, we realised
that we needed to really work on reading. We needed teachers to better understand why it
was that children weren't learning to read. As a school, our teachers know
about the Big 6 of reading and all the strands that need to be taught. And we'd been aware of
the Big 6 for many years. And we were doing the best we can with what we know. However,
our students were not making the progress they should have been. They continued
to struggle with word reading, fluency. Comprehension is always a big one,
particularly inferencing. Enter the science. The science helped us understand why students
continued to struggle since in developing our understanding of the Simple View of Reading and
deepening our knowledge of how students learn to read. One of the most significant changes
are the assessment tools we use. We no longer just use
one assessment tool, such as a running record to gain the information we need
to establish what is it the student needs and how they can be best supported. We know,
based on science, we need a battery of assessment tools and so we now assess students using firstly
and foremost, a phonological awareness screener. We then use a word reading assessment
tool. And then we also add to that a spelling assessment,
and we use those 3 assessment tools to establish what is it students need and
how we can best support them by creating a differentiated targeted program for them.
Today we're at Pennington Primary. It's a school closure day and
all the teachers and the SSOs, the leadership team are all here supporting each other.
They're focused in on what is it that they need to do some practice, deliberate practice
in their teaching. They're going to be focusing in, they've gone to work on the evidence from
the research underpinned by the Big 6 of reading, their goal is to improve reading.
And now they're looking at their own teaching practice, engaging with the research,
breaking that down to what's something small and specific that they can actually go to
work and improve on. So the teams are now meeting, they're actually looking at how
can they work better collectively in a team? So they're looking at what makes,
what is it that's going to strengthen them to be better as a team and work better to
ask challenging questions, to use the research more robustly and then support each other to
deliberately practice that strategy, and then evaluate it and share whether or not that made
a difference to the kids in their classroom. And if there's something there
that's more effective than they would otherwise experience to share that practice. Teaching
sprints, you start off by identifying an area of teaching that you really want to focus on and
improve your practice. And it's something like it's an area that everybody will do,
and everybody would benefit from improving. So you identify the area,
you then do your research to figure out the best ways of improving that area and the
best practice that is out there, you then pick a timeframe. Ideally you want to do
between 5 and 6 weeks, because obviously you want enough time to test it out,
see if it's actually working or not. So you do the actual sprint, that
5 weeks you test out your new teaching practice, you collect data. So we've been using pre and post
tests. So at the very beginning, we do a test to see what the kid's knowledge already is.
Then at the end of that 5 weeks, we do another test to see what the knowledge is now that we've
actually done that explicit teaching practice. And then you do an evaluation or
a review where you look at all the data you've collected. You look at your own practice. How has
it improved your own teaching? And then you make a decision about, are you going to continue using
that particular teaching practice? The way you've done it in the sprint, or are you going to modify
it or are you going to say, "Nope, that didn't work" and then you just do something else. I
think we've been on a little bit of a journey, refining our sprints, and I think over the last
year and a half, it's definitely evolved and we've definitely refined it and we're at a place where
it's running quite smoothly at the moment. So for me personally, especially being an early
career teacher, being part of the teaching sprints allows me to identify an area of practice I wish
to focus on further and develop further and allows me to make those incremental changes
in that specific area I identify that can become embedded in my everyday practice for a bigger and
longer-lasting impact. It's not something that I just do for 3 weeks and forget about, I'm able to
make those small, but careful, deep changes. So that way it becomes part of my
everyday practice, just like how the vocab routine has. And I feel here at Pennington,
we have aligned our PD and our whole-school points of focus with our teaching sprints. So
we've been able to apply all of our learning and develop it further in the sprints. And then our
sprints have just flowed from one to the other. So we looked at one sprint where we
did hinge questioning and at the completion of that sprint, we found, yeah, it's effective,
it's useful. So we carry that one into the next one with the vocab instructional routine. So
we've done it so we can keep building. All right. So the word
we are looking at today in today's
vocabulary lesson is chronological. Let's say it all together,
chronological. What word are we looking at? Chronological.
Beautiful. Now, during our vocab lessons, we have been learning a range of new words,
but why is it important that we learn new words? Why is it important that we learn new vocabulary?
So let's, let's work our way around a table. Luis, why is it important that we
learn new words and new vocab?
Beautiful and more technical words? So our writing is more sophisticated. We're using
more technical words. And how might that help us in the future, Luis? For high school and stuff.
Yeah for high school and stuff. So a lot of you in this room are year 7 and you'll
be moving up into high school next year. Joel, next one here. So when we speak,
people use more sophisticated language.
Beautiful. So I love that word sophisticated. We are year 6/7s, we want to use that extra language. The discovery of the
Simple View of Reading has really changed the way that we approach the teaching of reading in
our school. For a long time, we work on with children doing a lot of guessing, I guess,
in terms of look at the picture on the cover. Tell us what you think the word starts
with. What do you think the next letter might be? You know, to parents, we would have given them,
this is what you can do with your child at home. And now what we're saying is, well,
that wasn't wrong it was the best that we knew at the time. I now have a much clearer
understanding of the Simple View of Reading, and I recognise that students cannot be competent,
capable readers, unless they have both word recognition and language comprehension. My
developed and stronger understanding of the Simple View of Reading has allowed me to effectively
assess and analyse where my students are at that point in time, what they're missing or need to
improve on and where I need to take them next and how I'm going to get them there, using targeted,
specific learning experiences. We've got Vicky and we've got staff here at Pennington who
are wanting to do our very best for our kids. And the way we can do that is upskill
ourselves, develop ourselves, develop our teaching practice, which would then hopefully
carry on over to the kids so we can boost up their knowledge and their understanding. So,
yeah, I'm, I'm quite excited. It's something that
I've really, really enjoyed learning about. We made reference to the guidebooks
and one of the things that jumped out at me was the fact that they use the word explicit teaching.
Certainly, you know, in teaching the Big 6, teachers would teach the Big 6 explicitly,
they would teach writing explicitly. In my mind, as the literacy coach, what I needed to do
was separate the two initially. We had to gain an understanding of what explicit teaching is,
because it's a word we throw around a lot, but don't really fully understand. Explicit teaching,
I think the biggest impact it's had is when teachers come to you and say,
"I used to think I was teaching vocab, but I really wasn't". What explicit teaching
has done is it's made teachers think about what they were teaching, how they were teaching it,
why they were teaching it, but more importantly, it's given them some really clear instructional
routines that they can use to teach children. And I heard a quote the other day
that said that explicit teaching has put the teach back in teacher. And I really liked
that because I think we got caught up for a long time in children, doing activities,
doing things. Advice to young educators, do your research. There's lots and lots of
research out there by cognitive scientists. There's resources, such as the
guidebooks that can help inform us and move our practice forward. Don't just rely on a commercial
fancy product that you might want to implement in your school. What the research is telling
us is the strongest impact of moving student learning forward is a knowledgeable teacher.
The vocab activities that we've been doing, and the time that I'm spending on the routines and all
the activities associated with that and breaking down those morphemes. I have the kids saying now,
"well, I don't understand what that word is, but let me try and find the base word. Is there a
prefix at the beginning or a suffix?" And for me, that's really great because it shows that they're
using the strategies that I've taught them. They're using the knowledge and understanding
that I've taught them and even just their writing, using some of those words that I've taught in my
vocab lessons, in their writing, I'm seeing it. And I've put a heavy emphasis, it's not
just writing, I want to also see you being able to read the words and break up the meanings of it,
but also use it in your everyday speaking as well. So that's been really, really great
for me to see it. Well, I get quite excited. I'm a pretty energetic and passionate person.
So it makes me really excited that I'm able to, that I've upskilled
myself and I've developed my knowledge and understanding, and I can pass it onto the kids
and that they're developing their knowledge and understanding, and I can see it actually in place,
like I can see them using what I'm teaching. Pennington if we look at their data are
now I think, they are, not I think, I know that they are, they're actually achieving at levels
which are higher than the historical averages than we've seen before and consistently. Not only in
SEA but also in the higher bands of achievement. And, you know, I think, that that tells you that
it's not just a random event or random act of improvement that we're seeing in the data,
you know, it's actually happened for 3 or 4 years or more consistently.
So, I believe that the systems and processes that are in place here
are research and evidence-informed and are always going narrower and deeper than before.