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self-motivated, actively engaged, life long learning and leadership through fun, authentic, innovative and collaborative experiences.
It is my privilege to plan and lead this visioning day in Cromwell as my last official duty for the Otago Southland Catholic Primary Principal Association (OSCPPA) before I leave for Melbourne.
In order to ensure that the strategic visioning day is as constructive as possible for participants from the OSCPPA, all participants are asked to prepare in advance. This is similar to a flipped learning experience that some of us use for our staff meetings and in our classrooms to ensure we are time efficient and purposeful.
Here is a link to the existing constitution OSCPPA Constitution. Please read through this for your own information. Thanks Michelle for sourcing this from past president Alan Watts.
Please read through the NZCPPA visioning experience at this link. This will help you understand how this inclusive process works. Recognition is made to Mary Wilson and Teresa Edwards whose resources I have used to plan and prepare for the day. Special thanks to Paul Richardson who helped to prepare the original draft outline and probe questions. Thanks to all OSCPPA principals who have a growth mindset and are committed to the Catholic education and the important role our schools play in carrying out the mission of the Church.
Outline of the Day
8:30 Venue open, hot drinks available.
9:00 Welcome and prayer
9:15 Clarification around process and key probes (adapted from objectives of OSCPPA and those shared with you at the Bishop's Forum). Keep in mind anything you see as important and ensure you bring this out in your responses.
How can we work cooperatively to market, grow and ensure the continuing prominence of the Special Catholic Character of our Catholic schools ?
In what ways can we nurture our links to the Diocesan office (our relationship with the Proprietor, the Catholic Education Office) beyond the Diocesan events and forums ?
What are the most effective ways to promote and support Catholic professional development for principals and their schools according to needs from within the group eg. personal and spiritual well being ?
How can we enable members to have equity of representation from across our Diocese on appropriate bodies and organizations, including those at local and national level ?
9:30 Divide into four balanced groups (mixed gender and mixed regions) for the Classic Brainstorming and 10/4 voting process with 20 minute sessions for each of the four probes.
9:40 Round 1
10:00 Round 2
10:20 Round 3
10:40 Round 4
11:00 Coffee Break
During this time, top two responses from each group are collated onto a master page and copy made for everyone is made. This will mean eight responses per probe.
11:30
Individually review the responses and make 10 private votes.
These are then used to collate the draft vision and goals during the lunch break.
12:00
Lunchtime
Draft vision and action plan collated. Come up with about 6 important goals and spaces for actions and next steps.
12:45-2:30
Review and include actions, timelines and plan an agreed way forward for OSCPPA
2:30
AGM Meeting based on Article 6 OSCPPA constitution
Can you fit your leadership vision into 144 characters and Tweet it ? That was one of the challenges put to leaders during the two day seminar at Holy Cross Convention Centre, Mosgiel. Special thanks to the PDA members who organised these valuable days for principals and Directors of Religious Studies from across the Dunedin Diocese. These are the notes I took during the two day seminar with leadership guru Brenda Spillane. I took some photos and had access to some slides but not all slides. Hope this summary is of value to those that were there and those of you looking for leadership tips. A few of Brendan's top tips for me:
Know what brings you joy - your special gift and share it with your community. You will find a passion and energy through this gift that can be contagious.
Leadership is about harnessing the energy of the team to make good things happen. You can achieve so much more when you create a trustworthy culture that enables everyone to share their gifts and talents.
Check if your vision and values are truly aligned to the everyday happenings in your school
My notes:
There was full representation from every school in the Dunedin Diocese, including parish priests on day one of the two day seminar on Shared Leadership by Brendan Spillane. Julian Ineson, principal from St Theresa's School, Invercargill, warmly welcomed Brendan. Here is the welcome video and some further information about Brendan.
Brendan Spillane is an acclaimed Australian educator, speaker and coach and Director of Brendan Spillane Consulting. A former teacher and principal, he has also developed and led substantial systemic change initiatives focused on organisational renewal and improvement in the Catholic education system in Western Australia. He is a Growth Coaching International accredited Executive Coach and works in a coaching capacity with a range of senior leaders from business, education and elite sports. (from SPPA website) Connections: Brendan began by sharing a personal story. We felt connected to him straight away. He explained that leadership is about being connected. Our work is to find ways to bring the energy of a group together.
Although we all have differences, we have much more in common with one another. When we gather, we should gather as people rather than positions. When good people work together, good things happen.
As mindful leaders it's important we build renewal time into our daily practices.
Brendan shared with us the fact that a twelve minute attention span is long enough for most adults. As a result, we stopped frequently during the course of the two days to discuss our thoughts and reactions with those around us.
High Performance Mindset
What do high performing people actually do ?
They have superior habits and that frees up energy for other things that are exceptional. Energy for extra things. They work above the magic line.
Action is vital - moving from the head and heart to your hands is critical for leaders.
Our work is too complex to do it on our own – our time demands the genius of the group.
It can't be the 'leasers ship', it has to be leadership.
We need to break down our sedentary time – sitting is the new smoking.
We have energy when we are spirituallyconnected to our purpose.
High Performing Schools
We need to look closely and take away what do we do that's unnecessary.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. It's a place where we bring young people to being.
Look at our calendars and take away what we don't need. Michelangelo took away the stone to reveal the angel.
Look at the Kaizen Culture and say where are we at now ? You have to have a disposition for this kind of leadership.
Bill O' Brien Hanover Insurance: What is the single greatest intervention you want to leave behind ?
Leaders energy can be contagious. Interior condition of your own energy is important.
Authenticity.
Collective energy of the group is important. People buy who you are, not what you say.
Put your energy into what really matters. What are you here to do ?
What gives you joy ? What joy do you give ? What opportunities do you get to do the things you want ? Joy is important.
Vulnerability in professional sense is about passion - not being afraid to say what you care about and what you feel in your work. Passion and purpose...
Pope Francis - Says we are lowly and yet chosen.
I am good and gifted and I come to offer my gifts (2013) Lowney
As a leader, we are flawed but we come to offer our gifts.
How can what I do be turned into practice? How can I serve others? You life is not about you. You can help to create the future !!
Levels of Perspective
Your school from the daily events to behaviours should be fully aligned to your vision and values. Our front desk has to be connected to our vision and values. Brendan shared a visit to NZ Rugby headquarters. Brendan's front desk experiences were perfectly aligned to their vision. How do we support our front desk to be like that ?
Your workplace is authentic when it is aligned to your vision and values.
As the question - what are we here for ? Can we organise events that are aligned to our vision and values. You should see patterns and behaviour, systems and structures that infer directly to your vision and values. Most places are aligned on some things and not on all things.
Sometimes, there is a mismatch between what we do. As leaders we need to bring the place back into alignment. We have to work alongside our school families and ensure everyone is aligned with the vision and values of the school eg. parent association, sports teams ....
Is there anything that doesn't fit with our values at the moment ? For example, do we say we
love to hear staff voice and then we speak for the whole staff meeting !!
Vision Challenge:
Write your own leadership vision in a form you could tweet. What words and phrases would be there ? In 144 words (just like a tweet), put your personal vision into words.
Here is Brendan's vision.
Ensure we are switched onto our own vision and action it.
Steven Covey gets you to imagine what sentence you want people to say at your eulogy. Then that becomes your mission. That kind of clarity is helpful.
Only happy people have the energy to give out kindness.
Inherent Gifts
The things that give you joy are often things that use your own gifts.
What can you recall was your gift as a child ? Your gift might feel to you that it is nothing special, it is just the way you are. It could be a simple as listening. Often people come to you for coaching.
Joy and energy and authenticity are connected to your gift. Do we know our own gifts and the gifts of our staff ? Get our staff to share them. Sometimes we don't know what our gifts are.
We should be putting our gift at the service of the school.
Reflection: What is it like to be a patient in your hospital ? What is it like to be a parent or a student in our schools ???
Handy Hint: Good time to check emails is your least productive time, straight after lunch.
If you take interruptions during the day with emails it takes away 20 minutes at least of productivity time.
"This is not an era of change, this is a change of era", Pope Francis
What works in Complex times ?
Winning Leaders:
Stance is how we place our energy.
Horse whisperers know how to speak the language of the horse. Coaches learn to develop relationships. How conscience are we in taking a stance ?
Leaders give up, keeping up, speeding up and standing up. Brendan has been studying leaders whose people say they are standing up.
9 things that winning leaders do...characteristics of those who "Stand Up" in these fast times.
Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.
How can you be hard and kind ?
1. They all know their leadership is not about them. They are different but one among everyone else. Is it safe to talk around you in your meetings ? How do you ensure people can speak truth to talk around you ? Talk is indicative of culture. How ? Simple as the leader being the last to speak on everything. Critiquing your own ideas, asking others to think on things. Encourage risk takers. They have confidence and humility.
2.They don't mistake intention for IMPACT. Good at getting feedback from beyond the inner circle. We don't see ourselves easily. What is like to be led by you ? Work from the inside out and get feedback from outside in.
The average person speaks 16,000 words a day and 11,000 within their inner circles.
3. They don't plan for journey they will never take.
No plan survives contact with the enemy. The Anzacs weren't led from the ship, it was from the scrub. Plan lightly and iterate hard. Is your planning honest ?
Small cycles of action learning towards the outcome works better. Planning an iteration.
Canvas - you need the freedom to paint it. Freedom to move with the kids. The plan allows flexibility and freedom to do the great things we want to do. Planning is a means to an end.
Collaboration helps us to deliver something - its a means to an end.
4. They don't lose sight of what they are asking other people to do. It's important to remember the hard job our teachers are doing. The school is as strong as its classrooms. Would you flourish in the environment your leadership creates. What does the airspace around our teachers look like ?
Person & performance - the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
5. They have all found ways to increase the total quantity of power - access to power. Genuine leadership increases. We want everyone to feel they can contribute. Leaders grow leaders and create the conditions for others to grow. Balance.
6. They have appreciative mindsets. More appreciation about seeing what's going right and then able to say what's not going well. We can be very judgemental in our roles as leaders. Positivity Ratio: An engaged employee gives you the stuff they don't have to give you. The oil of the engine of Catholic education is discretionary efforts.
Just to survive 3:1 Employees need 8 times more positive feedback to flourish. We need to be drawn to the positives much more than anything else.
7. They achieve and protect strong narrative clarity. The place knows what its all about. They have the story right for the place.
6 questions of organisational clarity -
Why do we exist ?
How then do we need to be behaving ?
What's our work ?
How do we know when we are successful ?
The most demotivating circumstance is that they don't know they are making progress at something that matters. Progress success markers termly would be good.
What's most important right now and who needs to be doing what - operational clarity ?
To be everywhere is nowhere and too many things is a bad thing.
People are taking pot luck if you don't have narrative clarity.
Stories give data a soul. The numbers have to have faces and names. That makes it more powerful.
8. Great at asking outrageous question ? eg. How would my leadership be if I had to lead volunteers ? Will our organisation got to heaven ? What is good about this organization. What is our patient experience. Do we have invisible children here ? Children who ask for very little and get just that. They called those children amber. The ones that are doing well are green and those with learning needs are red. What about the ambers ? Track amber children and make sure every child had a champion.
If you find a question that drags people in, then much energy can come from a great question.
What question would outrage your team ?
9. They have professional health and wellness. What could you do to help people to get a balance ? Sacrifice and renewal. Model it yourself and take care of those you work with.
Day 2 Trust and skilful conversations
God comes to us, disguised as our lives.
How do we be radical with less ?
We are radical, regardless of the resourcing we may not have access too.
You can't call yourself humble.
Level 5 leaders (Jim Collins) - characterised by deep resolve, determination, deep humility.
If your knowledge could be held in a golf ball - contact with ignorance. As you grow..humility travels with competence.
Do you work through questions rather than answers ? Coaching needs to be done through better questions.
Leadership as a disposition rather than a position
Enable rather than empower (you are not giving power to others)
Kouzes & Posner 5 exemplary practices of good leadership
model the way
inspire shared vision
challenge the process
enable others to act
encourage the heart
Shared purpose and trust are fundamental to high performance.
Leadership needs to be subtractive at times and take things away.
What should we STOP doing around here ? Follow the process and narrow them down to just the top three.
Trust looks like:
When you are not in the room here, you will be,,, protected (gossip).
'Guys we are better than this and we are trying as a company to be better than this. It takes courage.
We need to get past the culture of triangles and talk directly to each other.
High Performing Teams - high trust, high quality conflict, high engagement, high peer accountability, high teamwork & results, Lencioni, 2012
Peer accountability is great to see. Campfire ( purpose)
Positive deviant -things that vary from the norm. We must study our own successes - we have achieved it in our time with our resources.
Negative deviant - something that's not working
Individual excellence loses the power of the group.
Leadership in Catholic schools is relational, emotional and very visual.
Our effect on learning has to be mediated through the teachers if we are not in the classrooms.
Trust -character and competence, belief in and ability and integrity of each other.
When trust is high... speed of execution is fast. Important our staff meetings are safe places to talk. When trust is high constructive conflict is possible
Conflict continuum.
Ideal conflict point is about 4.5 to keep it about issues.
Upskill in competence but hard to upskill character.
Leaders who are skilful extend trust.
Skilful Conversations:
Bring conversation to a specific place eg. relating it directly to the actual issue (like listening).
It's about knowing how to say difficult things in skilful ways.
Our dysfunctional perception - confirmation from ourselves. These are the facts as we see them and the truth as we see it.
Ladder of Inference (slide) Need to get it right. Reflective loop. The moment you have beliefs about the data that's what determines what we notice. Talk is the most valuable way to make a difference.
Data - what are we paying attention to ?
When you look at something it is a framework, when you use it, it becomes a tool.
Use the ladder with the staff - as a leadership team for example as a check for difficult decisions to make as a leader.
Use it with the school board and it becomes a tool in our leadership toolbox.
The stance we take for a difficult conversation is vital
The stance is simple, forward and tell, back foot and listen. Timing is important.
Dance between those energies in crucial conversations.
What is our preferred default stance ? advocacy or inquiry ?
Awareness - you must raise the issue and give the data. You must be clear on the critical message.
Acceptance - come back and listen for acceptance
Action - as soon as you have acceptance then move to action. Enough action will give momentum. Summarise the agreement verbally even follow it with a quick email.
Acknowledgement
FAST
Fair
Actionable - it can actually be changed
Specific - connected to behaviours that you have seen
Timely
CPR to scale it up. In the same framework but lifting the stake.
Content
Pattern
Relationship
Evidence is if we start the conversation off well then it will go well.
Language counts eg. focus on the issues rather than on anything personal
IBM
Invite them to say it again - I'm not clear, I want to be really clear
Breathe and this helps with adrenalin (Yahweh)
M This is what I need to say. It's not about you, lets come forward and deal with this
Turn it from a concept into a tool. "I need to have a professional conversation with you.."
Special thanks to Brenda Spillane for allowing me to share some of his slides and for an inspiring two days of leadership and learning.
Schools and Communities Creating a Better Future was the title of the recent learning session held here at St Joseph's school. This was facilitated by the inspiring duo -Mary Wootton and Brian Annan (links to early blogs that include them).
Our staff sang a welcome waiata led by Paul Cartlidge and Leanne Brookes and fifty staff from the North Otago education sector (primary, secondary, RTLB & RTLit) joined in. Special thanks to the North Otago Primary Principal's Association for sponsoring a scrumptious and well received afternoon tea. Thanks to the St Joe's Year 7 and 8 students who helped to set up for this event.
St Joe's staff lead the waiata to welcome Mary and Brian
Future focused learning, Learning Maps, Identifying school change priorities, Identifying student change priorities to grow agency,Engaging family/whanau in learning relationships.
Here are a few highlights of the session:
Future focused learning: Brian asked us to discuss this at our tables and to agree on one "big ticket item" of what future focused learning could look like for our learners.
He shared visuals that captured the shift away from adult controlled learning - past focused learning to student-adult negotiated learning.
Why can't 17 year olds assess themselves against a rubric of self-created standards ?
Five global trends : We need schools to shift their thinking around these global trends. Have conversations around these with learners and families and plan how we will shift into the future. We can either be forward thinking and action this ourselves or wait for it to happen. We need to step into the future with confidence. 1.Schools
to ecologies (not just classroom equals school but learning outside the boundaries of the school walls) 2. Individuals
to connected (connectedness to the outside world) 3.Competition
to collaboration (we learn and achieve more by working with each other) 4.Passive
to interactive (this has moved from active to interactive, then you are also collaborative) 5.Needy
to appreciative ( pld in the past was needs analysis, we need to take responsibility and appreciate learners and their families capabilities).
Passive to interactive - We had to place ourselves on a human continuum and share why we were in that place. We need to move towards the right end of the continuum. Brian suggested this would also be an engaging and thought provoking activity to do with students and parents.
Brian explores the continuum in relation to future focussed learning and learner agency
Activate,
collaborate, innovate : We discussed a visual that was divided into four quadrants with aspirations to be in the top left quadrant "innovate to improve". The greatest challenge is to become interactive around learning with families, community and the environment and change something in terms of industry and business. Brian and Mary's Infinity business offers support services for schools to work towards success in all four quadrants. Infinity Learning Maps : These are a perfect place to start with our students, staff and families. They allow for open and jargon free conversations and can be used as an evaluative tool to learner agency. You can read more about a learning map workshop at the National Networking Hui on this blog. Mary explained that learning maps offer a child's perception on their learning. Learning maps can be looked at within a certain school context for authentic purposes. They can be used to understand the current learning situation and then revisited again in a few months time. The learner can take a photo of their map and make a two minute video clip explaining it. This gives an informative picture over time around the learners and their thinking around learning. Research around learning maps by Jean Annan has proven that student, teacher, leader and parent practice make huge shifts. Brian and Mary are able to offer support in the form of workshops and seminars for teachers, leaders, students and families in the learning map process and in relation to addressing global trends and future focused learning.
Mary shares the power of learning maps
Brian and Mary very kindly left me with a copy of their presentation to share. If you are interested in it, please email me - jjackson@stjoseph.school.nz
Are you actioning these 5 global trends? If so, how ?
In a nutshell "Our kids need to see spelling as a problem solving process." That's the gist of Stephen Graham's message to us as educators. How do we teach our children to retain the correct spelling of words to be able to write them correctly in continuous text not just for spelling tests ? Stephen unfolded the answer to this question during the course of an action packed, informative and fun day of learning for our St Joseph's teachers and other educators from across North Otago. How did the day evolve ? Sharon Johnson, the North Otago Resource Teacher for Literacy (RTLit) has a love and passion for spelling. I worked with Sharon in Culverden almost ten years ago and was thrilled when she was appointed to her role in North Otago. I distinctly remember Sharon enthusiastically leading a teacher only day with primary and high school staff at Amuri Area school many years ago. Sharon spoke fervidly about the importance of teaching spelling strategies and has continued to promote this important message in her practice. Sharon has often referred to the spelling and writing guru Stephen Graham and it is because of Sharon's determination to make a difference for all spellers across North Otago that we had the opportunity to learn from Stephen firsthand during his visit from Australia to Oamaru. Stephen has a diverse background in education and literacy. You can read more about Stephen here.
Our St Joseph's teachers with the inspirational Stephen Graham
Here are my notes and reflections from the day How can we explicitly teach children how to spell ? The gap between reading and writing is too high for many children. We need to close the gap. How can we do this ? An important skill of a good writer is about being able to spell in context. Children need to do something in continuous text, not just be able to spell it for a spelling test. They need : 1. Underpinning knowledge 2. Scope and sequence of teaching of spelling (develop skills and strategies to solve words). A good reader uses three information systems: meaning, structure and visual (MSV) A good speller uses four information systems:(PVME) Research proves that many children only have two out of four of these strategies. (You will learn what these are below). Spellers must be able to use words in a purposeful continuous text, not just in sentences. For example, a good recount.
Every text is made up of content words and function words- it's the function words that cause problems. What kinds of words do you need for a recount ? You need a good bundle of time connectives, past tense action words and personal pronouns. Stephen has bundled up function words for all genre of writing. We carried out a writing scaffold activity for an explanation text based around the life cycle of a frog. What do we need for an explanantion text? Start with a bundle of time connectives - one for every piece /step of the explanation. For example, first, next, eventually... After and following are tricky words. They can't be followed by THAT After (that) and following (that)... is not correct. It is better to go back to what you are talking about. Take the language from the previous step and use it instead of that. You cannot put after and following next to each other. You must slide another time connective in between or it becomes too complex. Turn time connective words into content using function words with content words. By giving the learners the function words they can focus their writing energy on rich content. If you want to improve the quality of children's writing teach them the words they need to know. Function words are words that you can use all of your life.
Next we need groups of words called modifiers (they tell us how big or small a group is.... many, most, majority, few). It's the function words that make texts work. What words glue the text together ? For the rest of your life whenever you write an explanation you can use those same function words. To turn it into a good explanation, we need to add in description words. The describing bubble: take a thing or phenomenon and describe it in a number of different perspectives... numbers, size, colour, shape, texture, position and doing....
Describing bubble to add detail to writing
Year 2,3 - Describe a noun. Firstly the frog lays eggs. Circle a noun in the sentence - eggs. Give me a colour sentence. The eggs are black. Secondly... tadpoles. The tadpoles are three centimetres long. When the children are good at describing nouns from a number of different perspectives then describe nouns and verbs. Year 4,5, 6. - Circle the noun. Female frog, verb lays and eggs. For the paragraph to have cohesion, then describe it in the order of the first sentence in which you introduced the idea. For example, describe the laying of the eggs from a position perspective. The eggs can only be laid in still water. The eggs are small and jelly like with a black centre. Now we have used size, texture and colour descriptors. If a child can't describe then writing will be difficult for the rest of the lives. Explanations and expositions are the same but the verbs are in the past tense. For older children you need to add qualifiers. An activity to model physically with children To write well, children must be able to say it well. Use the correct language: noun, noun, pronoun, pronoun, noun. For example, Toby the toy dog story. Have the children physically make the story by standing to say each sentence in the story. Child 1: Title sentence Toby. Child 2: A Toby number sentence - Toby has two ears. He is multicoloured. Get the children to repeat the story with you, as it is demonstrated. Get them to tell you another number sentence etc Child 3: A texture sentence. He is soft. Include conjunctions that make the sentences longer. Add more descriptions. There are three groups of conjunctions- coordinating, subordinating and modal conjunctions. In that order of difficulty. For example :Toby has two ears and four legs. Don't mix up the perspectives. If you are thinking of number keep with number. Subordinating conjunction - include of or with. He is multicoloured with a blue scarf. Modal - this is when we change our mind and use... but, although, however, on the other hand.. But... is the opposite .Toby is soft however his eyes are hard. Macro or defining sentence. A sentence that defines Toby.Toby is a stuffed toy. Add a feeling sentence at the end. Children physically watch the text being built in front of them. If they can do it orally and then put it into a piece of writing and then spell it correctly then they have made huge progress with their literacy.
There is a definite scope and sequence in teaching children to describe. 1. Describe themselves first. To describe well they must attack a phenomenon from a range of perspectives. 2. Next they learn to describe familiar objects. 3. Describe less familiar objects 4. Describe literary objects. If you can't do this you will never write a good narrative. If teaching narrative, do a describing bubble for every narrative. If children are not good writers then they need to go back to writing descriptions. When you come across words you can't spell it stops the flow of the text. In writing this way, we did the opposite of whole language teaching. We started at the word level to the sentence to the text level. Conclusion for your story - Go to three macro sentences and choose your favourite one and put a circle around it. Take the sentence and resay it and link it to the process that you have explained. This glues the text together. Editing the text When boys in particular put the full stop on their work that's it. They don't want to know about it. What can we do ? Teach them to self edit by giving them a table like this. They tick or complete it as they progress through each column.
Have you used five different
time
connectors?
No personal pronouns ?
You have a linking sentence. How is this writing going to continue ?
Check time connectors,if you used after or following then check you haven’t used that after it.
Tick if after each of your time connector sentences, you have at least one describing sentence
Find your first relating verb. If you have are, it is the present tense. If it is was it is the past tense. Now circle every other relating verb in your writing . Check they are same tense.
If they match all the way through then give yourself 2 ticks
Four spelling knowledgesNo phonics programme can teach children how to spell. It is one of the knowledges but not all. Our kids need to see spelling as a problem solving process. A good speller has access to four spelling knowledges. 1. Phonological knowledge (P) Ability as a speller to hear sounds and know what marks on the page make that word. Important that children learn sounds first before names for letters. 2. Visual knowledge (V)- How words look. Don't ever sound it out. For example was - look at it and know it. 3. Morphemic knowledge(M)- you have an ability to have a bundle of spelling generalisations like 'i before e except after c'. Other part is when you have a word like penultimately, you find a base word and then add prefixes and suffixes ti it,other is ability to hear compound word ie big words in small words 4. Etymological knowledge (E) - derivations of words. Where groups of words come from. eg. Television versus tellyvision. Tele( means from far, far away).When you watch television from far away. Try telephone, telescope... A good speller can jump between the four spelling knowledges. A school needs to agree on the above four knowledges and explicitly develop these areas throughout the school. Activities to help teach the four spelling knowledges Use four different coloured pieces of card to stand for each of the above areas. Sort words into the four different groups. Talk with the children as you do it. You are telling them what to think as they write it. What are you going to do ? This is the same pedagogical approach as teaching reading. The difference is your write. When we read, we deconstruct. When we write we construct the word, build the word. If there are more than one possible strategy in a word, go for the tricky part of the word.
St Joseph's staff having a go at the knowledge activities
The words should always be recorded in their four knowledges. We do different activities for each of the four knowledges. If it's visual - do look, cover, write and check. But that doesn't work for every knowledge. Visual - draw the shape boxes. They - start tall, then short and then tall. Many spelling activities most teachers do, don't teach the children anything. They are just activities. Stephen gave us a link to resources and activities to use to support the knowledge strategies. For example, Greek and Latin roots words go to a website link. Google search for etymological knowledge and it is the second one that comes up. Differentiation in spelling - Make sure you give a variety of words from the four different knowledges so that the children don't become reliant on only one knowledge. If you just give children words that you sound out, then that's all they will be able to do later on. Scope and Sequence for skills and strategies not just for words. Stephen also provided us with a resource that we can use across the school. For example:Year 1 - Lots of phonological, visual knowledge but hardly any morphemic and etymological. The teachers will be talking about words we can sound out and won't sound out at all. You can organise word walls into knowledges. Year 4 & 5 - Morphemic knowledge has to start building just like times tables Year 6 & 7 - Etymological knowledge stronger What spelling generalisations should children be learning ? Stephen researched this with speech pathologists. They identified the main spelling generalisations to teach that will support children 93% of the time. We have been given a resource that supports the teaching of these. If we want better spellers, they don't need more words but more knowledge to access words they can't spell. Assessments for spelling - what do we use ? 1. Dictation - link it to genre that you are learning with 2. Edit a passage 3. Word test 4. Standardised tests 5. Analyse a work sample (most powerful) 6. Phonic recognition Everyone of these is a valid way to assess student's spelling. As a teacher and a school we need to use a variety of ways, not just one way. This will give us an overall picture. It's better to spend time teaching kids spelling knowledge through function words rather than content words. What about spelling homework ? We can give the children words sorted into the four knowledge groups linked to their work from school.The link between home and school is then meaningful and purposeful.
Having the strategies to give words a go is more important than learning to spell lists of content words. Next steps : At St Joseph's we are keen to action our learning from today and give our learners the strategies to strive forward with their spelling and their writing. We aim to ensure that "Our kids see spelling as a problem solving process." We aim to take our learning from today and action it across the school. Watch this space.
