Archive of ‘Improving Student Learning’ category

Assessing Reading Comprehension – Fiction Texts

The attached rubric can be used as a guide to explicitly teach students to think deeper about their reading of fiction texts, moving from literal to inferential and evaluative levels of understanding. Through modelling and guiding students through the Here, Hidden and Head levels on the rubric with shared texts, students can begin to use the process in a more self directed style with independent texts.
It can be adapted for use with different year levels. For example my year 5 students are focusing on ‘characters’, ‘setting’ and ‘plot’, whereas the year 6 students have also been exploring ‘language’ and ‘themes/ messages’. As the year progresses we will look at other aspects.

The rubric can be used as an assessment of learning, and for learning. For example, after completing a recent reading assignment, students were provided with feedback and a copy of the rubric with their personal achievements highlighted. Students were then guided to set their goals for the term using the next step on the rubric as a guide. In this way students take more personal responsibility for their learning.

Graphic organisers, such as webs, Venn Diagrams, comparative charts etc, can be used to enable all students to successfully show depth of thinking.
Fiction Reading Comprehension Assessment – Lawlor 2013 v3

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#Sologlobal chat

SOLO Taxonomy

Tonight I read Alice’s comments about her use of SOLO Taxonomy in her class. She has done a great job of simplifying the language and using effective visuals to communicate the message. It makes me think about what I am implementing and I wonder if it will all be a bit too complicated.

During this week I introduced a task I have been mulling over for a while. It relates to a video I saw at Deb Masters presentation last year, which related to the SOLO Taxonomy. In the video a young New Zealand student verbally described, with the aid of a visual display behind him, exactly where he was on a learning continuum and where he was heading using what he needed to be able to do to get there. The school was near a quarry and so each step on the continuum was a big boulder.

The task my students were set this week was to design a concept for a game. The game needed to have four levels, which build in complexity. It also needed to include themselves as a main character, (they could have superhuman traits, or be an animal, etc). They also needed to decide on the setting for the game, eg. Futuristic, forest, etc. They need to be able to present their concept to the class on Monday. They have been encouraged to find an interesting way to present, either orally or using visual tools.

The students have responded eagerly to this task. It could be built on to work on descriptive writing, and narrative text types. My aim is to then get students to use this as a reference point and analogy to describe their own learning in various contexts. I will introduce the Structured Observable Learning Outcomes and see if they can make the links between this model and their game. Not sure whether this will be too difficult for them? An A4 poster may be good to have as a reference point in the students’ Assessment Folder. I had thought that I would also make some sort of class chart. I was going to use a Morton Bay Fig Tree design, but perhaps this is a bit too ambitious?

Roots (Pre-structural) – trunk (Unilateral) – branches (Multilateral) – Fruit (Relational) – Seeds (Extended abstract)

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John Hattie Reference

John Hattie: Effect Sizes on Achievement from richardcookau

Particularly focus on types of feedback.
Task level – How well tasks are understood/ performed?
Process level – The main process needed to understand/ perform tasks?
Self-regulation Level – Self monitoring, directing and regulating of actions.
Self Level – Personal evaluations and affect (usually positive) about the learner.

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Game Based Learning – Gamification

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/gamification-game-based-learning-unit-andrew-miller
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/video-game-model-unit-andrew-miller

Enjoyed reading this blog post today, and will look forward to implementing some of the ideas into my classroom practice this year. Since listening to Deb Masters at the start of the year showing a video of students in New Zealand describing their learning, and simply observing how motivated my own children and others are when playing various games, I have been wanting to try to synthesise some of these factors into my teaching.

I am working on an idea at the moment, after exploring the SOLO taxonomy. What if students designed their own ‘game’ with 5 different levels? The levels would need to build in complexity – as most games do. We would then use this regularly as an analogy to describe their own learning in various areas. This could also be linked with an art activity and perhaps some exploration of the fantasy genre in literature.

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SOLO Taxonomy

http://lisajaneashes.edublogs.org/2012/11/27/solo-autonomy-for-beginners/
http://www.pedagoo.org/2013/01/solo-part-01/

SOLO – Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes
I would like to use this structure with students more so that they can begin to take more control of their learning.

Pre-structural – I don’t know about…
Uni-structural – Knows a thing about topic
Multi-Structural – Knows some things about topic
Relational – Cab relate the parts to each other
Extended Abstract – Can apply learning in a new situation/ to solve a problem

First three stages involve gathering information and the last two involve using information.

Good idea about using hexagons with some of the multi-structural attributes written on them. Get students to fit these together and explain to get them to the relational stage.

Verbs Associated with Stages
Uni – define, identify, name, draw, find, label, follow a simple procedure
Multi- describe, list, outline, complete, continue, combine, enumerate
Relational – sequence, classify, compare and contrast,(cause and effect), anaylse, form an analogy, organise, distinguish, apply, explain, causes, criticise
Extended Abstract – generalise, predict, reflect, evaluate, hypothesise, theorise, create, prove, justify, argue, prioritise, design, construct, perform, formulate, generate

Introduction to SOLO taxonomy from David Didau

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