Day 6 of the Manaiakalani RPI course brought us valuable insights into vocabulary and decoding, two critical aspects of fostering strong literacy skills in our students. You can read more about Day 6 here.
Our homework for the day was to engage our students in two word work activities. I chose to replicate the degrees of meaning task as well as the spotlight task. In our previous coaching conversation, my RPI mentor Robyn created an extension of the spotlight task that involves 'sacawac'ing words. The engagement and enthusiasm from the students were palpable, and it reaffirmed what the RPI course taught about the importance of equipping our learners with a robust vocabulary.
For both tasks, students needed to be in buddy groups. The RPI course explained that the conversations that happen in these spaces is actually where a lot of learning can take place! Here's a quick summary of the tasks I implemented aswell as the instructions the students received for them. All tasks are linked.
Degrees of meaning :
- Each take a turn to read out the word and both examples.
- Discuss which of the two examples best matches the word. Use your ground rules for talk to reach an agreement.
- Be prepared to take turns sharing the reasons for your groups’ choices when we come back together.
For this task, we also discussed relevancy of vocabulary to the context of the story. We talked about how some words can different meanings depending on the context they are in, so it is important to take that into account when we learn new vocabulary. My students enjoyed working in partners for this task and could all find success in completing this task as they could all complete this task and give an explanation for their decisions.
Instructions the students receive :
1. Read each of the words (or phrases) below.
2. For each word, paste a tick (✔) in ONE of the columns to show your prior knowledge of the word.
3. Do this BEFORE reading.
Extension of the spotlight task - SACAWAC
Robyn suggested a possible extension I could make to the spotlight task could be where students need to SACAWAC the vocabulary. Any vocabulary the students could not explain the meaning of, they needed to put into 'Word Jail.' The only way to get them out, is to SACAWAC them. What it means to SACAWAC : Say and cover and write and check. For each word students had to : say it out loud while looking at it. Cover it and say it. Write it onto a whiteboard. Then check if they had spelt it correctly. They thoroughly enjoyed this activity.
Since we first tried the spotlight and SACAWAC tasks last week, my students have been eager to show me their ability to spell their new vocabulary and have since suggested that I could test them on it. We have now set up our reading lessons so that our second reading session in a week (after we have SACAWAC'd words), I run a quick spelling test with that specific vocabulary in our small groups. The vocabulary that is in this spotlight/SACAWAC activity, is the vocabulary they are tested on. This has been lots of fun and has definitely improved my students' confidence in writing as well as their eagerness to expand their vocabulary.
For the purpose of the RPI homework, I facilitated these activities in small groups to make sure my students understood the task and how to complete it. Going forward, I will make most of them independent tasks they complete before they see me or after. I am looking forward to going through the RPI resource register to see what else I can use for my learners.
.jpg)
Malo Toreka!
ReplyDeleteI have thoroughly enjoyed following your professional blog and picking up on your follow up implementation of the homework for RPI Day 6 - Vocabulary and decoding. I am really impressed by the deepening of your pedagogical content knowledge as you extend design for learning by integrating content from the RPI, with your coaching conversations.
Your practice descriptions show a high regard for your blog reader (e.g. making practice steps rewindable for us) while also detailing your developing adaptive expertise. I come away with fresh insights on your professional journey each time I engage with your blog and in relation to more generalisable learning by other participants! Nga mihi nui!
Your selection of the ‘degrees of meaning’ robust vocabulary approach is such a great choice to trial, because as you say, it offers opportunities to discuss the nuances of meanings based on context and relevance. Our recent round of Manaiakalani Classroom Observations show learner collaboration is generally down across the network so deliberately planning for students to reason with one another is additionally worthwhile! Your uptake of Robyn’s recommendation for a SACAWAC extension to the Spotlight task gives multiple opportunities for students to further embed the words in long term memory and to use multimodal approaches for consolidation.
Thank you Toreka for sharing your insights and I really look forward to your Day 7 post!
Nga mihi
Naomi R.
Literacy Facilitator - Manaiakalani Reading Practice Intensive