Teachers pack school hall to learn, on a Saturday!

It was not a paid school day nor a union meeting but a ‘yearning for learning’ that got more than 250 teachers from throughout Auckland at a meeting in East Auckland on Saturday [26 June], to learn how to upskill in literacy teaching in their own time.

The demand for professional learning in this area is growing rapidly, as teachers embrace the motto: "When you know better, you do better.” So much so, that teachers like me are willingly giving up weekend time with family and friends to sharpen their skills.

The event was organised by Structured Literacy-Auckland, a social learning Facebook page that has grown to nearly 4000 members in the past year. This was the third region-wide meeting the group has hosted. Free tickets to the event sold out. Some who wanted to attend could not fit in the hall due to restrictions on the size of the venue, Sunnyhills School hall in Pakuranga.

Teachers, like me, yearn to learn more about Structured Literacy to address the lack of effective literacy training they have received on it in initial teacher education programmes at most of our universities and in on-the-job training.

Structured Literacy features in the Ministry of Education recommendations for  inclusive teaching of dyslexic learners. But the approach has yet to be rolled out to all classrooms as best practice for all students, despite close to 50 years of research proving it is the most effective and efficient way to teach reading and writing.

School inspectors in the UK know this to be true and now make posts about what they are looking for when checking schools are up-to-scratch in teaching literacy. (See here.)

A few trailblazing schools in NZ, such as Kaiapoi North in Canterbury and Sunnyhills in Pakuranga, have made the switch and word about their positive results is spreading like wildfire.

Literacy coach and academic Dr Janice Belgrave of Canterbury, in a recent blog post for J and J Literacy, believes Covid-19 lockdowns are partly to thank for the increased interest in Structured Literacy. The forced non-contact time with students allowed teachers the chance to pursue professional readings on the topic. It’s a silver lining of sorts, she says.

Conversely, a number of parents in lockdown lessons also got to see what their children could do or couldn't do in reading and writing, and began questioning how literacy is taught at school. Some existing methods just didn't seem to make sense.

Most regions in the country now have a Structured Literacy support group, run by teachers in their own time, as they work to adapt their classroom practices. Many have sprung up under the auspices of Lifting Literacy Aotearoa, formed in mid-2020, a non profit organisation advocating for a shakeup of our literacy teacher training schemes, classroom instruction and literacy resourcing.

The group calls Structured Literacy the ‘first best solution’ to solving literacy underachievement in Aotearoa New Zealand. Chair of the steering committee, Alice Wilson, says current Ministry of Education approved practices are failing too many students. Our poor literacy ratings in international surveys attests to this.

“We want to urge the ministry to  take a deep look at the Science of Reading research, seek out the experience of those schools already following a Structured Literacy approach, and fund Professional Learning Development and support for schools equitably,” she says. If necessary, she adds, the MoE could “commission an independent panel of experts” to advise them further. (See full press release here)

Teachers, nevertheless, may still go out in droves in their own time, say I. Once you start seeing the joy successful early reading brings to your youngest learners through Structured Literacy, it brings deep satisfaction to teachers who have long struggled with knowing how to help their struggling learners. 

The best thing about Structured Literacy is that it helps our struggling learners and it helps accelerate our more able learners, too. It is beneficial for all and harmful to none. 

This is both an exciting and challenging time to be a teacher in New Zealand. “Once you know better, you do better.”

Groups teachers can join for more information:

https://www.liftingliteracyaotearoa.org.nz/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1112672342417494

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1200435063675166

https://www.facebook.com/groups/540348696631772

Horrakapotchkin! Dag Nab It! Kapow!

 

Kia ora!

Glad I’ve got your attention. Apparently, all blogs are meant to have catchy titles. I am a teacher and I am a learner, so this blog is about both those things.

I am learning to blog and I am learning to advocate for a change to Structured Literacy teaching in schools throughout New Zealand Aotearoa.

There are wiser people out there with good definitions on Structured Literacy (SL), so I’ll put in a link for you here.

Older kiwi teachers like me will instantly recognise the Margaret Mahy homage in my title (and a bit of Batman cartoon viewing time, too.)

Let me be clear. I love good literature. I can spend hours immersed in a novel or a long-form news journal. 

Some people say teaching reading is about creating a love of reading. Well, I beg to differ. I just want to start with getting kids to love coming to school.  

I want them to come to school because they can start to learn to read, not get made to feel dumb because “it’s too hard”.

Case in point, let’s call him Tim. He is in Year 4 and nearly 9-years old. For the first few years of school, he would hide under tables on arrival.  After a while, Tim would start playing with other students, but he would rarely speak to adults. 

During guided reading, when I was his classroom teacher, he would finger point and answer comprehension questions. But he would never read aloud and I could not get him to complete assessment tasks. He was stuck at Yellow/Blue reading levels.

Tim, as you can guess, had a troubled family background and suffered from anxiety. But because he was rarely at school, he was never put forward for the traditional interventions available through the Ministry of Education (MoE).

So I worked to build up Tim’s trust and his oral communication. I did lots of scaffolding to reduce his stress when engaging with tasks across the curriculum.

This year I am his Tier 2 intervention teacher and he has a classroom teacher also beginning her SL journey like me. Together we have had a breakthrough.

For the first time, I have been able to begin assessing Tim. (I used parts of the free Little Learners Love Literacy screening tools). I began instructing him with sorting sound/letter picture cards with a buddy for support, then we moved onto practising handwriting letter shapes. 

Next it was recording sounds/letters on whiteboards. Earlier this year Tim declared “I can’t read!” but we persevered gently.  Later, he began writing CVC words and reading them back to us.

Through my guidance, Tim’s teacher started using SPELD SA free phonics passages with her target students. Now she has started incorporating the new Ready to Read phonics books from the MoE, too.

(Our school has not formally approved the SL approach, so we are working on a shoe-string budget. We have no other decodable books, apart from a few Letters and Sounds readers and some digital downloads, such as Really Great Reading passages. However, the biggest difference for Tim has come from increased teacher knowledge, not ‘things’.)

Now, when I go to collect Tim for his small group lesson with me, he leaps out of his chair to come to do his work. Tim is reading! 

And the powerful effect this is having on Tim is heart warming to see. But I wish I had had these tools when I first was responsible for teaching him 18 months ago. 

I don’t care whether Tim goes on to read Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera  or all the books in The Harry Potter series.

But I do care whether Tim  learns to read and write so that he can engage in all aspects of his education.

I do care whether he has the skills to write a birthday card to his baby brother, read a shopping list, follow the instructions to play a game, apply for a job, open a bank account, enrol to vote, and write a post on his preferred social media site. You get the picture.

I do not think SL is about turning us all into avid readers, just as when we practise soccer skills at school, not all of us are going to join a pro soccer team as adults.

But being literate and numerate is a basic human right in a modern society. I want that for all my learners, so they aren’t excluded from living what most of us experience, a regular life.

And while I can’t change Tim’s present home life, I can make his time at school a positive and life-affirming experience. 

Nga mihi,

Miss Anon

Footnote: Be sure to read my future post about the value of reading  high quality children’s books in a Structured Literacy approach, to build your learners’ vocabulary and comprehension skills, and their understanding of the wider world.

Structured Literacy is not a ‘this OR that’ approach with phonics instead of rich literature experiences, as some critics claim. SL is an ‘AND AND’ approach. Who doesn’t want to give their learners the best of both worlds! 

But it starts with explicit direct instruction (EDI) in foundation skills, as happened for Tim, with oral language skills and phonics skills, step by step. 

ABOUT ME - “Miss Anon”

 

1. What is your strongest area of expertise?

2. What issues would you most like to learn about? 

3. When it comes to the state of the world,

where do you feel the most urgent need for change?

Welcome to my new blog. 

Kia Ora!

Chances are you’ve landed here because, like me, you are a New Zealand teacher embarking on a Structured Literacy journey, or curious about taking your first tentative steps.

Perhaps you are a parent or a school leader and are interested in ‘walking in my shoes’ for a while, to see things from another perspective. Welcome to you, too.

First, I’ll address the photo snips above. When I started thinking about blogging, I landed on pages that wanted to show me how to monetise my writing efforts.

So to clear that up, do I have any conflicts of interest? Am I trying to sell you something? Well, no. I am already paid a regular wage as a teacher in a state school. I have no other business at present, though in the future I might become a literacy coach or a private tutor in that far-off land called ‘semi-retirement’. 

Instead, I started this blog by seeking guidance on how to be a social activist, hence the questions I asked myself above.

1. What is my area of expertise? 

• I have an intergenerational family history of special education learning differences (dyslexia, ADD, hearing loss, and vision impairment.) 

• I have 16 years of classroom teaching experience, 7 years of preschool teaching experience and 7 years of newspaper reporting. 

• My expertise here is that of an education communicator, aiming to bridge understanding about education issues between the public, parents, teachers, literacy experts, and New Zealand school administrators.

2. What issues would you most like to learn about? 

• I am on a journey learning about Structured Literacy and attempting to embed it in my teaching practice in a primary school. 

• I am advocating for inclusive education in NZ state-run schools, implementation of the Learning Support Action Plan and adopting the strategy outlined in the manifesto of Lifting Literacy Aotearoa.

3. When it comes to the state of the world, where do you feel the most urgent need for change?

 

• I want to lift the literacy achievement of ALL my learners and extend this into my wider community, beginning with the adoption of Structured Literacy practices.

• In my local community, there are background home-school issues around child poverty: poor or precarious housing, a lack of healthy food, stressful family dynamics (time-poor, inattentive, depressed, violent), low socio-economic status...This list can go on and will take years to resolve, depending on our collective will and leadership as a nation.

• BUT as an educator I can help my students learn to read and write so they can fully access the curriculum and advance their learning and future social outcomes. Step by step, beginning with explicit direct instruction in the early years, we can build a more equitable Aotearoa New Zealand.

 

A note on my anonymity

• I am blogging anonymously to protect the identity of my students and family members, who I may reference from time to time. 

• Likewise, I am protecting the reputation of my school that is only taking tentative steps on its Structured Literacy journey. This causes frustration for me, as I am further along the path. So this will be the subject of some of my posts. 

• I love my school and fellow teachers but we are at an important crossroad in NZ education. Advocating for picking up the pace of change is why I am bothering posting. 

• I am hoping other teachers in other schools may be able to pick up the ball and run faster than me, and perhaps some of the public can cheer from the sidelines, advocating for change, too. 

 

Nga Mihi,

Miss Anon

Nā to rourou, nā taku rourou, ka ora ai te iwi 
With your food basket and my food basket, 
the people will thrive.