CPlan Motivational and Visioning

Plan - Motivational and Visioning Intervention 

I mentioned in a blog before that this third intervention in my inquiry aims at enabling learners in my inquiry group to feel safe and comfortable in their learning environment so they can focus on their learning. They need to feel confident, motivated, and have a vision for their own learning. These should hopefully dinimish their feelings of anxiety, stress, shame, inadequacy, and reluctance simply because they do not have enough knowledge and skills in English language.

Krashen's affective filter hypothesis (1985) in second language acquisition alludes to the fact that affecive filters in English language learners must be low enough to allow the acquisition input in. According to this hypothesis, affect includes motivation, attitude, anxiety, and self-confidence. Basically his viewpoints are:

• A raised affective filter can block input from reaching Language acquisition device (LAD), which is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language.
• A lowered affetcive filter allows the input to strike deeper and be acquired. 
• The affective filter is responsible for individual variation in second language acquisition.

Being influenced by this theory of affective filter and being able to closely relate to in my experiences as a second language learner myself, I set out in this engagement to incooperate into my teaching ways to lower these affects in my inquiry learners.

While working with Dr Jannie van Hees and Michele Ensor on content for a workshop with my EL tutor group, I began to try and motivate my students in the classroom by doing the following: 

• I create a 'home' atmosphere in the classrom by referring to our classroom as a 'homeroom'. Students in my ESOL tutor group (my inquiry group included) are encouraged to regard their classroom as like a home for them, of course with very high expectations in place. They are allowed to come in and have their food and do work in the room during intervals and lunch. They could just simply sit down, have their food, talk, or do work, but very respectfully regarding the spaces of others and teachers in the rooms. I have never done that before as a teacher yet found no major issues at all doing it. I have only found my students feeling more at home in their classroom, treating it as their home with respect, and feeling that our 'homeroom' is a safe place for them. They begin to know each other better and closer too. There is not much teasing or bulling, but they have fun. This helps lessen their anxiety. 

• 'Morning talks' is another activity I start doing with my tutor group (again with my inquiry group included). Every morning we have 20 minutes for tutor to check attendance and uniforms, but I use the time to do motivational talks and give advices to my children. I have covered topics such as - be motivated, importance of English language in their study, importance of reading to improve their English, my personal experience on reading, respecting others, being yourself, making your future in the present, matariki, languages week, wellbeing, cyper-safety, and many others. We celebrate language weeks together. I find the children engaging and responsive too. Some children come and ask me further questions on topics talked about, and I have found them more settled. There is better engagement during class activities and we hardly have any behavioural problems with our children.

• I tried to develop relationships with my children and to have fun time with them in the classroom as well. I believe in having high expectations for my learners and with high consistency, but at the same time I can be also 'motherly'. It's a nice feeling hearing my students asking me, 'Ms, are you hungry?' or simly putting a plate of food on my table without me asking them. It's great to see my older boys responding to do some work that I ask, eg cleaning our department office, not simply out of obligation but they just want to help. I like having a sense of community while working with my children.

• Working on the vision of having a motivational workshop with our students is well underway. However, it is most likely that we will not be able to do it this term. Most likely next term is more realistic.           

CPlan Intensive Reading - A Plan Overview

Plan -  Intensive Reading Intervention 

ESOL Principles

ESOL Online recommends that "Incorporating these seven ESOL principles into your planning will help your students to make both academic progress and language progress in all curriculum learning areas." In planning this intervention, I want to incorporate most, if not all, of these principles into this instruction of intensive reading. Table 1 below shows those 7 ESOL principles. Knowing my learner (principle 1) through all the measures I have used has led me to focus my teaching on areas of needs identified about them. Some outcomes (principles 2 & 3) are incorporated into the overview of my plan which will be shown in table 2 below. Principles 5 & 6 are incorporated as outcomes to be achieved in the instruction. There will be an attempt to put a focus on principle 7 throughout the implementation and practice of the plan.

Table 1: ESOL Principles
Principle 1 Know your learner	Principle 2  Identify the learning outcomes	Principle 3 Maintain the same learning outcomes to all learners	Principle 4 Make the abstract concrete
Principle 5 Provide multiple opportunities for authentic language use	Principle 6 Ensure a balance between receptive and productive language	Principle 7 Include opportunities for monitoring and self-evaluation

Plan Overview

Table 2 below shows an overview of the plan for intensive reading as an intervention in this inquiry. There is a focus on learning different text types and their features, deliberate vocabulary development, use of reading strategies to identify ideas and meanings in the texts, grammatical forms, and language skills and comprehension. All of these are domains of reading comprehension.    

Table 2: Overview of Plan for Intensive Reading Intervention
Text Types		Titles	Outcomes
Fiction	Myths & Legends	The Sons of Ma’afu	To acquire new English vocabulary To practice using reading strategies to understand ideas in the texts To learn the structure & features of this particular text type To develop listening and speaking skills through the reading interactive activities To practice writing as output activities (summarizing, character description, expressing opinion)
		Origin of Taro and  Authority in Samoa
	Narratives	Mata i Pusi When Love is Blind Sarah and her stepmother The old grandfather and his grandson	To acquire new English vocabulary To practice reading strategies To learn structure & features of text type (orientation, complication, resolution) To learn different aspects of a text (setting, plot,  characters, theme, language features) To identify evidence from text to support To practice writing as output activities (personal response)
	Explanation	Matariki	To acquire new English vocabulary To practice reading strategies (prediction, prior knowledge, summarizing) To identify main ideas in a text  To learn structure & features of text type To practice writing as output activities (explanation essay)
Creative	Poetry	How to listen Sparkle Fish How to listen I met a Dragon face to face	To acquire new English vocabulary To practice reading strategies (prediction, prior knowledge, visualization,summarizing) To identify main ideas in a text To acquire poetic devices (personification, onomatopoeia, key words, scanning,  summarizing) To practice writing as output activities (explanation essay, thematic essay)
Non-fiction	Explanation	ANZAC Typhoon 19 Natural Disaster Cyclones Climate Change	To acquire new English vocabulary To identify author’s purpose in a text To practice reading strategies (prediction, prior knowledge,visualization, graphic organizer, summarizing,) To identify main ideas in a text & learn information about relevant topics in their contexts To acquire poetic devices (personification, onomatopoeia, key words, scanning,  summarizing) To practice writing as output activities (explanation essay, narrative essay, express opinion)
	Autobiography	Martin Luther King	To acquire new English vocabulary To identify author’s purpose in a text To practice reading strategies (prediction, prior knowledge,visualization, graphic organizer, summarizing,) To identify main ideas in a text & learn information about relevant topics in their contexts

Other Features of the Instruction

Text Types

The results from the English Language Learning Progression (ELLP) show that learners in my inquiry group can only read stage 1 texts which are short texts with ideas presented in a simple sequence, containing simple and compound sentences with a variety of sentence beginnings. and usually no more than two clauses per sentence, use varied high-frequency words and some words that are lower frequency and topic-specific, and that are strongly supported by the context. Texts also have about three sentences per page and are well supported by illustrations.

I feel that learners should be exposed to what Krashen (1982, 1985) refers to  as comprehensible input (i + 1) which is input that is slightly beyond the current level of competence of the language learner. So if i is the language learner’s current level of competence in the second language, then i + 1 is the next immediate step along the development continuum. Therefore, if the goal is to assist the language learner progress in their task, it is essential to provide the student/learner with comprehensible input [i +1]. I feel that exposing learners to different text types or genres which are beyond the short simple text structures of ELLP stage 1 texts would be helpful in increasing the reading comprehension ability of the learners.

I also feel that exposing learners to different types of texts would be a good practice in preparing them for the PAT & STAR post-intervention reading assessments which might have some of these variety of text types assessed. Their knowledge and familiarity with these texts and their features might help increase their reading comprehension ability.

Listening, Speaking, Writing Activities

ESOL principle recommends a balance between receptive and productive language, so this will be incorporated as part of the instructional strategies in this practice. Learners indicated in the questionnaire that they prefer listening to the teacher reading to them rather than them reading out texts to the teacher. This strategy would be used in this instruction, and by doing that learners would practice listening. Speaking would be through some interactions about aspects of the texts, discussions of ideas and meanings, and questions asked. There would be writing activities as output follow-up tasks from reading activities.    

CPlan Extensive Reading Intervention

Plan - Extensive Reading Intervention 

The design of this extensive independent reading recognizes the fundamental importance of practice in reading. In other words, students should read as much as they can. Research indicates that time spent reading books is the best predictor of overall academic achievement, even more so than socioeconomic status or ethnicity (Kirsch et al., 2002). Reading practice builds vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, writing and higher order thinking skills. It also enhances general abilities such as visual information processing and speech perception. Though beneficial in all forms, reading practice is most effective when guided—that is, when it is coupled with feedback and instructional support tailored to the individual student.

Accelerated Reader (AR)
AR is a technology tool that enables differentiated, data-driven reading practice, making the essential student practice component of any reading curriculum more effective. This is a practice time personalized to each student’s individual level to ensure a high rate of success and is immediately followed by feedback to help educators target instruction.

The AR process involves these basic steps:

1. Students read books that match their unique zone of proximal development (ZPD) or achievement levels and interests (identified by STAR reading comprehension test).
2.  Students take a Reading Practice Quiz after reading each book which gives indication of their comprehension when reading the book.
3.  AR automatically marks each quiz and gives an average percent correct (APC) which then suggests the next level of book (ZPD) ideal for the student to go on and read. This APC ranges from 1 - 100%, but the ideal % correct is from 85 - 95%. With that a student should go on to more challenging book by 1 or 2 points. The 98 - 100% indicates that the book is a bit too easy for that student to read, and that will not contribute to more effective shift. A below 80% correct indicates that the book was a bit challenging for the reader, so the next book borrowed should going down by i or two points.

Students are expected to self-monitor their reading and of course with basic guide and monitoring from teachers allocated to 'caretaker' their reading.

Best Practices for AR

There are three best practices which must be present in order to maximize the benefits students can have from this extensive reading, in the final analysis to make shifts in their reading.

1) Quality - Comprehension when reading each book

This is indicated by the % correct in the quiz of each book read. This should help monitoring levels of books to be read next.

2) Quantity - Time spent in reading (mileage)

Ideally students should spend time to read daily by at least 20 minutes. The school provides a timetable which allocates each student in our year 9 and 10 to read extensively for a minimum of 20 minutes daily.

3) Zone of Proximal Development - the right level of difficulty in books read

It is ideal for students not to read too difficult or too easy books. Reading the right levels of books guided by the APCs from their quizzes, as well as what they are interested to read, can guarantee gains in their reading.

   
The school is runs this extensive independent reading programme for our year 9 and 10 school-wide. A STAR test is run every term to guide the running of this reading. The initial STAR test indicates the ZPDs for each student to start reading from. The subsequent tests can indicate some growths in the students' reading.

STAR Test

Star Reading is a customised reading test for students to take on a computer. The test is designed for students in years 2 through 13, lso for students in year 1 who have basic reading skills. Teachers can use reports from Star Reading to determine the reading level of each student and to measure growth. 

The STAR Reading reports provide information about students and classes and the results of students' STAR Reading tests. There are variety of STAR reports, but for the purpose of this blog, I'd explain only two, diagostic report and growth report. They are very mportant to the function of Accelerated Reading (AR) reading programme, and extensive reading programme. 

Diagonistic report provides an individual skills assessment and other diagnostic information for each of the students  selected. This report helps teachers determine how to improve their students' performance. It also supports a discussion with an individual student's parents or guardians. Among the many information given, it gives the reading age, scaled score for the test taken, and the zone of proximal development  (ZPD). ZPD has 2 numbers which indicate the lowest and highest levels of books students can read.  

The growth report can be used to evaluate students' improvement during the year or over many years. The report includes each student's name, class, teacher, test date, test time, Normed Referenced Standardised Score (NRSS), Percentile Rank (PR) and Percentile Rank Range, Reading Age, Scaled Score (SS) and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), as well as the mean pretest and posttest scores for the entire group of students. This report is very important because it shows whether a student has made improvement in reading or not, as a result of extensive reading through accelerated reader. 

In March this year, students in my inquiry group did their first STAR reading. Their diagonistic reports gave information which I shared in my previous blogs, and more importantly indicated some learning needs which have helped me in designing the reading programmes for these learners. The diagonistic reports also gave the ZPDS of each learner which indicated the levels of books in Accelerated Reader which each learner can begin their reading from. Students were immediately put to start their reading, and they started in March. The ZPDs across the whole inquiry group were pretty low, they ranged from level 1.7 to 3.4. 

The individual diagnostic reports of each learner were given to them, teacher went through and explained for students to understand. The ZPDs across the whole inquiry group were pretty low, they ranged from level 1.7 to 3.4. The table below was a summary of information fro students to start off AR with.

Inquiry Group Pre-Intervention STAR Reading Results
				Reading Comprehension Domain Scores
Students	Scaled Scored	Reading Age	ZPDs	Word knowledge  & skills	Comprehension strategies  & meaning	Literary Text	Author's craft	Argument
1	163	6:11	1.7 - 2.7	1	2	1	1	1
2	230	7:07	2.1 - 3.1	3	3	1	3	1
3	252	7:08	2.2 - 3.2	4	4	2	3	2
4	224	7:06	2.1 - 3.1	3	3	1	2	1
5	330	8:04	2.4 - 3.4	9	9	4	7	4

Books to read 

Students now knowing their ZPDs can begin to borrow accelerated reader books and begin to read. Each accelerated book is marked with a ZPD number, so students can only borrow books at their ZPD levels. 

There are two kinds of AR books students at our school can choose from to read. First, the hard copy books are in the library. Those AR books are already marked with their ZPDs on the spines and on separate shelves. Students can go there and borrow books to read and return through the library process of borrowing books. 

There are also AR digital books which students can borrow from MyOn reader in the school digital library. Renaissance myON® Reader is a student-centered, personalized literacy platform that offers unlimited access to thousands of enhanced digital books. It provides unlimited access to a broad collection of authentic digital texts that are available for online reading. MyOn generates a list of just-right titles for each student that matches his or her current interests, grade, and Lexile level. Students can choose titles from their recommended list or from the full myON library available at school.

Students can use the same process of borrowingAR books, go into myON and borrow books at their right ZPDs. They can borrow books, read, and do AR quizes before returning them. One main difference between hard copy and digital books is that students can read and also listen to the content or ideas in the digital books being read to them.

Time to do reading
The school is to grant time for students to read in class during school. Twenty minutes is formally timetabled for AR reading daily, and these are taken from 5 major subjects in year 9 & 10 classes. When it comes to that time, both teachers and students of each class should stop and do AR silent reading. This reading timetable should run up to the last term. Below is the AR timetable for my inquiry group.

2019 Inquiry Group AR Timetable
	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Subject	ELIP	ELIP	EL	ELIP	ELIP
Period	2	4	4	6	6
Room	B3/4	B3/4	B3/4	B3/4	B3/4
Teacher	Ch	Ch	Sl	Ch	Ch

 The students are also encouraged to take their books home or use MyOn to read.


The slides below have more information on how this AR is implemented school-wide and to also provide specific information for teachers and students.