Joy Allcock Spelling

Attending an inspiring four hour workshop from Joy has really refocused and motivated my spelling programme. Starting off with a test, our group certainly had some head scratching moments debating digraphs, blends, phonology orthography morphology, spelling rules and conventions, and this certainly catalysed focused engagement for the rest of the afternoon!

Joy stressed how important it was for us as teachers, to regularly look at our own skills in recognising how words sound and to practise digraph analysis of words as a quick excerise in team meetings.

Another aspect covered, was how children perceive words –Chinese learners who are visual and can tell if a word looks ‘right’ and Phoenician spellers who spell from sounds (e.g. The Won I'd Doe c.f. The One-Eyed Doe). It is the Phoenician learner who is of concern. Her description of these learners rang bells for me and I could now see why some of my class produced words that defied interpretation and why some children could not copy accurately.

The time was packed full of perceptive understanding of how learners learn – or don’t. I am so glad I have a record of this and may well blog all my notes –if I have time.

The first thing I have done is to conduct the Topic Assessment 1 test to ascertain groupings, strengths and weaknesses. I will administer the other tests once I isolate the ‘targets’ to further refine needs and grouping. I am interested in pseudowords aspect as it will pinpoint those students who cannot analyse sounds in words and translate them into appropriate letters and letter clusters.

I will also be using the vowel phonogram test to identify significant gaps in knowledge of sound-letter spelling patterns (SUS p62). My next step from this test will be to administer Topic assessments 2 and 3  p75 (SUS)

I hope to keep adding to this post as a means of recording how I have implemented this programme and the difference it has made.

Reflective Practices

I have been very pleased with the progress in this area, by both my class and myself this term. I had been thinking about how to incorporate De Bono's Thinking Hats into my programme more effectively and in real contexts. I hit on the idea of having a blank, self-inking Thinking Hat stamp made. The reason for this is that the pupils can colour it in depending on what coloured Thinking Hat they were focusing on. I trialled the stamps, using the end of week Reflective Log as a vehicle for this.
I initiated it by first of all reviewing the Thinking Hats and the thinking around each colour. I printed off a Thinking Hats chart for each group and laminated it. This was a useful prompt for them as they worked.
We discussed the blue hat and for this purpose we looked at the graphic organisers we had used over the week to record our thinking.
Subsequently we analysed our learning using the white, green and yellow hats, taking each hat, discussing its meaning and how it related to our week.
Looking over the entries this strategy worked really. I will be really interested to see how it works with this week's reflection. I would like to get to the stage where the children choose which hats they will be reflecting on -increased independence.

Interesting things!

Have enjoyed two thought provoking sessions as part of our staff PD
The first revisiting de Bono's and our other thinking strategies and applying these ideas as a means of modifying undesirable behaviour. The discussion arising from OPV based on the fire in the Peaceful Garden was really great -the children found looking at issues from different perspectives quite enjoyable.

Our session with Cathy on Environmental Writing was also really motivating. Will go through my notes and write up into a usable record once I have time.

I also came across this from Jacqui Sharpe about the regurgitation of info by students, from the web based research: Click on the graphic to follow the link.