Words have Power Part 2

Today we had Dr Jannie van Hees visiting us again today. 

The number of text the are in children lives is a huge factor is achievement, we know this from a number of resources. These texts however are best when they are accompanied by talk. We also need to be aware of the language we use with kids, if we keep puddling around it simple texts spoken, written and visual then all kids will know is simple texts. No matter the age or stage children need to be exposed to lots of texts that are too hard for them. 

What does this mean for our PM text that are simple in their nature that we use to teach students to read. Is there a different way of looking at this but not throwing out what we know. We can't just have kids repeating what they know we must move them beyond what they already know. 

Children have an outstanding capacity to learn, we must never be afraid to push children to work at a level they can't do it on their own. 

A question we must ask ourselves: How much time are we spending pulling from the kids and how much time are we spending gifting. 

Jannie then reminded us of the conditions we want for learning. She suggest that an encourager should happen 3-6 times with the teacher has a higher likelihood of up take. Jannie talked about putting the effort back on the kids and using specific feedback. 

We need to deep dive into the text, it is not to say we need lots of activities but that we need time and quality conversation to really truely build understanding. 

Talking with detail is a major change maker for our kids. Learners need to know they have to dig deep and that the expectation in the classroom is that we share in detail. We want the children in our class to talk to us the whole class not just the teacher. We need to work on how our children talk to everyone. We are sharing our thinking is because we learn together. 

No matter what we value each others contribution!

The teacher is a major scaffolder, however children can be great scaffolders if we scaffold their scaffolding and families can be scaffolder also. 

We want kids to talk the detail and expand our ideas. 

We want to stop saying it is more interesting, We want to say because you used more detail that your audience know what you mean. 

We must have a mantra as a teacher: I will alway offer vocabulary that talks the detail and say thing they would not normally utter. 

We need to get children to unlazy their brain, don't use the easy word because you have another word. 

We must keep thinking gifting, gifting, gifting.