The Reading Tumble

Back in the day, when I first started teaching, when it came to reading time, the best I knew was do a story with a group of kids, then send them off with a worksheet.  Sometimes I was lucky enough to have a worksheet out of a book that went with the series.  Sometimes I hated that worksheet and made my own.  Sometimes I had to make the worksheet because there was none.  It used to take me hours on a Monday to set up my reading programme for the next week!!  And the programme was boring with kids finishing at different times and not enough to keep them busy that meant any good learning was taking place.

The great thing about teaching is that it is an evolving thing.  We don't just go to training college and come out knowing everything.  In fact, most of us are pretty clueless when we first come out, and we learn from our more experienced colleagues, on the job and from the kids themselves.

So I had been out a while in the real teaching world.  I'd tried changing my approach to reading a few times, but it still wasn't going the way I'd like, especially for the kids in my class that struggled with learning compared to the majority.  Then I had this RTLB who said, "Hey, I'd like you to visit a class at a nearby school that is doing something called the Reading Tumble."  And then that RTLB helped me implement it into my class!!  Awesome.

I think this is suitable up to Year 5, but if I have a Year 5/6 or higher class, I tend to go into a contract type system to give them more responsibility and autonomy over their learning.  The Reading Tumble gives the students a chance to practise their social graces such as sharing, compromise, helping and leadership.  Each time the whole Tumble changes focus we have new groups, new leaders.

Having the Reading Tumble does not mean that I don't necessarily not give out a worksheet or a follow up activity, but it means that if I do or if they have finished that work, they have meaningful literacy work to carry on with.  And often I do not have a follow up activity because we have covered that possible focus together in the modelling book during our guided reading time.

So I'm going to attempt to explain how I run the Reading Tumble in my class in this post.

While I am very busy with my guided reading groups, the rest of the class will be engaged in meaningful activities planned to enhance their literacy learning.  The class is divided into five multi-levelled groups, allowing the students to support each other as they do their activities on the Reading Tumble board. 

Each group has a leader who is responsible for ensuring the group stays on task; that the equipment for the activity is collected, packed up and put away; and to be the liaison for me to alert to any issues.

My guided reading groups are ability grouped, but my Tumble groups comprise of students in a multi ability for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the more capable can help out those who need help.  When someone comes to me for reading I haven't gutted a whole group of everyone, so there should still be someone for them to work with.

Above is a picture of my Reading Tumble board.  The Tumble groups are down the left side with three activities going across from each name.  Each day I change the group position, so the top group will go to the bottom and each group moves up (or you could go the other way ;-) ).  Below I usually have a table showing who is in each group (because my brain can't always remember) and usually a table showing my guided reading groups too.

The names of my groups are usually based on the theme of our unit or class wide reading topic at the time.

       

So these first three are for three of my favourite science units on New Zealand endangered birds, the life cycle of a butterfly, focusing on monarch butterflies and space.

I also do a focus on Anzac Day each year, so the groups are named after companies that served in WWI.

I have more than five group names for each group, usually eight or more, which means I can lay the cards out and let the groups negotiate which name they prefer.

I try to make the cards inviting and colourful.  They also have to be read from a distance, so they are big, 10 to an A4 sized paper.  They are laminated, cut out, Velcro dot on the back to attach to the fuzzy Velcro dot on the Tumble board, therefore easy to move.

The pictures are for the kids who are more visual in their learning and can't read the label.

I have these for a variety of topics such as sporting events, animal
topics, health, or some generics for when having specific topics doesn't work.  One set I have doesn't have names written on them, so each group can choose their own name and I can wipe them off with meths and change the names.

Many of the activities on the Reading Tumble board will be themed around the inquiry or book focus that the class may have at the time.  I will have some activities that run consistently through, such as handwristing, editing skills, spelling, etc.

I also choose activities that will enhance their reading, writing, oral language and thinking skills.  There has to be some challenge, some fun, some creativity.  I try to keep it fresh.  Some activities may need to change focus weekly, some may come off in favour of others.

The students, well the younger ones at least, get quite excited about seeing what their next actities for the day are. 


I will now explain some of the activities I use on the Reading Tumble.

This is a fairly obvious one, Handwriting.  But at the beginning of the week I hand out all my worksheets and go through them with the students.  So I demonstrate the letters that are on the focus.  I use Start Right Junior and Senior Handwriting books published by ESA because they are aligned with the NZ curriculum and they are so straight forward.

I like these junior ones because the focus is on just two letters per page.  There are also numbers in the book.  I always go through drawing with your finger first on different surfaces (desk, carpet, skin, fabric) to get the kinesthetic going before picking up the pen to trace (I don't do pencil - broken pencils do my head in, and pencils are for maths and drawing).  I am big on kids starting letters in the right place and these books really reinforce that.

The senior book starts with printing, moves on to flicking and then linking.  There is also a focus on signs and addressing envelopes.  It has assessment stops on the way and a page of tips to do your best writing posture.  I also school my lefties on some tips to make things easier, and all of them on how to do slope.

I also have another book for kids who are not ready for the senior book and some cards I have created myself for printing, flicking and linking to carry on with when the sheets are finished for the week but they still have handwriting time.

I also have it so I can use it on a Smartboard or ActivBoard or Mimio.  I usually leave examples of the letter expectations on the board during the week.

Success Sheets is from a book I came across in my first year called Success that in the odd school may be on a dusty shelf in the Teacher Resource Room.  It covers alphabetical order, vowels and consonants, dictionary skills, phonics for long and short vowels, phonics for vowel combination, blends and dipgraphs, prefixes and suffixes, various spelling rules, punctuation rules, editing.....  It has four levels and combines puzzles and colouring activities as well.  It was developed by former principal Murray Meecham (not sure of the correct spelling) and I do not know if it is still in print or available, but I think they are great.  We mark as a group using the interactive board so the kids can come up and write things too and we can discuss the challenges and successes we had together.

Word Families is pretty much doing activities focused on word families in the traditional sense.  It many involve games, brainstorming.... I kind of based it loosely on Chunk, Check, Cheer.

Poet's Patch is a box of poems, usually on the theme, but can be a mixed box, available for independent reading and practising the performance of delivering an oral presentation.  I also introduce other activities such as these on occasion:



Chunks is fairly similar to Word Families.  You can google for endless activities for this.  I do have a magnetic set of word families that are fun.  But I prefer that activity done under teacher aide supervision otherwise the magnets end up everywhere but where they should be when packed up.

You Must Be Joking is where I have jokes. The "question" part of the joke is written on one card, the "answer" part of the joke is on another card. They have to match the two to each other. When they do, they write the joke on a piece of paper, date and sign it and glue it into the "You Must Be Joking" book. Good for middle primary, Years 3-5.  The jokes are usually based on the theme, like I have heaps of space jokes, animal jokes, sports jokes, and lots of school jokes for the beginning of the year.



Punctuation is pretty worksheet based.  There are a lot of books out there that you can use to teach how to use punctuation and do editing.  I have worksheets from various books that I use for this. 

Here is an example of a worksheet I use mostly with younger students and we mark together using the interactive board as with the Success Sheets.

Even though it is a sheet I would use with younger students, it never ceases to amaze me how many times I have to use this with older students to reinforce that all teachers expect them to be using these and correctly.

For Antonyms I have a book with worksheets, but there are also some cool games out there that the kids can play.  I would also use brainstorming and illustrating for this, and matching the antonyms on a wall display or in a game.

Research would give the students the opportunity to take time to research independently for the topic study.

Make It is when I want the students to make something.  When we did Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the Make It activities included making a golden ticket using gold paper (that is like gold to get!), the boat from the chocolate river out of pink play dough, and constructing a factory from boxes.  When we do the Rugby World Cup, Olympics or the Commonwealth Games it could mean making medals, flags, national costumes, etc.

You Choose allows the children to choose which piece of work they want to work on.  It may be something they are close to finishing and want done, or it maybe something they are far behind on, or something in between.  The purpose is to instill some personal responsibility.

Sometimes I use You Choose to have a variety of activities in the box to choose from to complete to do with the topic.



Puzzles can mean jigsaw puzzles (great for younger students) or things like crosswords, wordfinds, mazes, brainteasers, wordplay, what is different in these pictures, kims game, matching games etc.  I usually have it topic based.

Life Education Books is for when Harold and the Life Education team is part of our learning programme.

NIE is for Newspapers in Education from Fairfax newspapers like the Waikato Times which I sometimes get to support a topic.  Occasionally we got newspapers focused on road safety, so I worked Road Safety in to the Tumble at that time.



Fluency Boxes is for when I want them to read for practise using books we have already used in guided reading and a reading level or so below.

Fantastic Facts is kind of a fun research thing.  They use the books for the topic and find an interesting fact that stands out for them.  They write it on a piece of paper, date and sign it and glue it into the Fantastic Facts book.  It is hilarious to go through and see what they have written at the end of the topic.

Poster is obviously about making a poster.  If you have an activity that requires them to make a poster for any topic, they can spend some of their Tumble time doing it.

Several of my topic units include a Postcard writing activity.  My space unit has them writing as though they are a tourist on the planet of their choice.  My Anzac unit asks them to write a postcard from Gallipoli explaining to their parents the conditions they are experiencing.

Advertise It! is where I want the students to come up with an advertising campaign for some aspect of our topic.  It may mean a Wanted poster for a character.  It could be a menu for Mr Fox's feast.  It may be an advertisement for tourism to a planet.

Ad-ing Words is about focusing on adjectives and adverbs.  The card is laminated and the chidren use whiteboard markers to brainstorm words that describe what the character looks like and how the character moves in the bubbles.  They then use the brainstormed words to write a sentence or paragraph about the character on a slip of paper which they then date and sign and glue into the Ad-ing Book.

Crafts is for if we were making some craft like activities.  My class made these pom pom birds for our New Zealand endangered native bird study.  We were wrapping that wool around two cardboard discs at every opportunity.  It's great for keeping them still during a read to session too (with guidelines).

Tell Me! is when the kids record orally an explanation or opinion about something they have read or discovered.  There are lots of great apps and programs on iPads, tablets and laptops to do this, or you can use one of those microphones that then connects through a USB cable to download to a computer.  Seesaw would be a great app to apply this to as well.

One of the biggest deficits our students have is vocabulary.  So I do the Vocabulary Expander to give children the opportunity to expand their vocabulary and to learn words specific to our topic.  I type up the words, print, laminate, cut out, stick a velcro dot on the back and stick it on the wall.  The kinesthetic part of taking it off the wall, putting their name on the back to claim it and putting it back on the wall at the end of the session is important.  If there is a name on it already, they have to choose an alternative word.  You can "ring fence" a group of words for less or more able students exclusive use. 

So once they have chosen the word they have to use a real dictionary to find the appropriate meaning for the topic.  They can only go digital to find the meaning of the word if none of the classroom dictionaries contain the word (it does happen).  They have to write out the meaning, preferably in their own words, but also show that they understand how the word can be used by writing it in a sentence of their own.  They then present it on A4 paper (or use the computer to present it and print) with the word as the title and including an illustration.  It then goes into a class book for all to refer to.

Below is one I prepared for the Waitangi Day unit I did in Term 1 2014.

Thesaurus Rex is when they have to find all the synonyms for a set word, then they are recorded for all the class to use.

Similes is where I want to to investigate and write similes.  And the same for Alliteration.  I have used this as an opportunity to decorate our class with examples.  Here are some similes my class didd last year.

Some topics and books lend themselves to maps, so I thought Map It! would be a great way for the children to be creative in a slightly different way.

Draw It! is the same kind of idea.  Sometimes getting the kids to draw for a topic or a book is a great way to get perspective.  I also have some cards with drawing activities and cartoons that I can use for this.

Topic would be used to work on any area of the topic the student chooses.

I could use Read It! for the children to read from the books in the topic section of our library or I could use this for the children to read what they want to read.

Computer - I may have specific websites or programs I want the students to use.  On occasion I will let them choose the activity on the computer (within reason).

Re-mix is where they may take an object from the topic and recreate it.  For example, when we did a Dr Suess unit and read If I Ran the Zoo, we "re-mixed" a whole lot of zoo animals to create new animals altogethre.

Some of us a still lucky enough to have a listening post or some variation of it.  One class I had had lots of laptops and we could use those to listen to stories too.  So that's the idea behind Listening Post.

And Publishing gives kids a chance to do the publishing of their stories during the Tumble time.

I had a class with iPads so I put I-Pad in the tumble.  I may specify particular apps I want them to use.  Or I may not.

Play It! is when they play games like Snakes and Ladders, Connect Four, Guess Who, Jenga, Battleships, Ludo, some card games, some word games.... now you may be thinking some of these things are not really literacy, but it is.  Oral literacy.  Oral language needs practising.  And during Play It! they're doing it without realising.  There is also co-operation, fair play, negotiation, and all those other social skills in play.

Record It gives the children an opportunity to record a poem or a passage of a book.  Some of my struggling readers I would get them to record reading their reader independently as a check on how they were going.  They can record Readers' Theatre.

Film It! is when they video something.  For the Rugby World Cup I had my class research famous parts of rugby games, re-enact it on video and edit it together with commentary.  It was a lot of fun.  We also had a go at the Fair Go Ad Awards one year.

So that's a snapshot of what my taskboard labels are about, but I have done so much more within this format than I can possibly explain, and I've spent long enough on this post today! 

I would love to hear from you in the comments section about some ideas you have from your class.  Thanks for reading to the end and I hope there is some inspiration for you.

Teachers Matter Conference 2015: Simply the Best

Last week I went to the Teachers Matter conference, Simply the Best, at the Novotel in Rotorua.  This conference is hosted by Karen Boyes of Spectrum Education, a leading advocate of Habits of the Mind in New Zealand.  This was my first formal PLD (professional learning development) of 2015.

One of the things that I found different about this conference were the number of 'connected' people there were in the room compared to going to a ULearn or and Educamp.  It seemed like I was only one of five people tweeting at the beginning.  Maybe there were eight tweeters by the end, but they were not very prolific.  I was tweeting out as much as could hit me, as well as participating in many other Twitter conversations on a variety of discussions at the same time.

It seems to me that we still have a very large group of teachers who are still not technology savvy and are still far more comfortable with pen and paper.  While I strongly believe pen and paper still has its place, we are teaching the future of our country, and they need technology capable teachers. 

I did wonder at times if people considered me rude to be tapping away on my tablet constantly.  But at ULearn or Educamps this is the norm.  Connected teachers are sharing their learning with their VLN (virtual learning network) and having discussions with people who are not present in the room as well as those who are.

Part of the conference really focused on encouraging teachers to engage their learners, but some of the presenters need to work on that themselves.  Others were great.  They got you up and moving, or stopped to allow controlled discussion in your group on a set of questions.  Some had hand outs, which I considered to be valuable.

Steve Gurney was an outstanding speaker in my opinion.  Firstly, if you are a New Zealander and you don't know even half of what Steve has achieved in his multi-sport career, then you must have lived under a rock!!  He is a legend of his own time. 

And his stories were real.  He talked of failure being the biggest part of his success, along with perseverance and creativity.  Steve talked about how important risk is to the development of our students and young people. 

Steve was definitely a highlight and his workshop about rapport was interesting too.   He made an effort to walk his talk by getting us to abandon and move the tables and sit in a semicircle to enhance his message.

Michael McQueen (http://michaelmcqueen.net/) was also a stand out speaker.  He spoke on generations.  We are now teaching Generation Alpha, and he described the differences between them and the other generations: baby boomers, Generations Y and Z.  He also described some trends to come and gave some sage advice on dealing with Gen Alpha and their parents who have a Vitamin NO deficiency.

I had the opportunity to join a round table discussion with him later in the morning where we discussed strategies and theories and experiences in regards to Gen Alpha and the differences with the other generations.  Michael came across very genuine and was an engaging speaker.

The other workshops that stood out for me was the Habits of the Mind workshop with Karen Boyes (@karenboyes) and the Leadership workshop with Megan Gallagher (@buttonsmeg99).  Both these ladies used the art of small group quick chats expertly.  Karen is very good at taking the visual learner with you on a journey.  Meg's ideas on leadership were a breath of fresh air, or though we may disagree on aspects of staffroom culture. 

Below is my Storify of the tweets from the Teachers Matter conference.  I have headed each group of tweets with who the speaker is or who is taking the workshop.

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

Dr Adam Lefstein - Keynote 2 - ULearn14 - Teacher professional discourse and learning: what we talk about when we talk about our practice

The second key of ULearn14 note was presented by Dr Adam Lefstein from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.  This is his bio from the ULearn site:

Adam Lefstein is Senior Lecturer in Education at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, where he conducts research and teaches about pedagogy, classroom interaction, teacher learning and educational change. He’s particularly interested in the intersection between research and professional practice, and how to conduct research that is meaningful, rigorous and helpful for educators.

His recently published book, Better than Best Practice: Developing Teaching and Learning through Dialogue (with Julia Snell, published by Routledge), investigates the possibilities, challenges and dilemmas of dialogic teaching and learning, and offers practical tools for using discussion of video-recordings of classroom practice to hone teacher professional judgment.
Previously, Lefstein worked as a teacher and facilitator of teacher learning at the Branco Weiss Institute in Jerusalem, where he also directed the Community of Thinking programme.

You can find out more about Dr Lefstein's book at http://dialogicpedagogy.com/ and follow him on Twitter at @ALefstein as of today.  Click here for the collaborative document from the Keynote.

Below is the Storify of the tweets I and others tweeted during Dr Lefstein's Keynote presentation. 

Sadly Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media landscape and none of my Storifies exist anymore.  😭😭😭😭

A day later (and then several weeks later) I have had a chance to reflect on what we heard from Dr Lefstein yesterday.  Teachers tend to talk a lot.  We talk all day to students, we talk to the parents who we encounter in our day and we talk to our colleagues in meetings, in passing, at lunchtime.  But how often are our conversations with our colleagues of a quality that the participants come away with something they know will improve their practice?

In 2006 I was lucky enough to do the Middle Leadership Course at the Leadership Centre at the University of Waikato.  Murray Fletcher was the facilitator of the course and one of the centre points was active listening.  This keynote gave me pause to go back and reflect on what I learnt in this course and to synthesise what I know already with what I heard yesterday.

I was particularly taken by the comparison of teacher professional discourse being compared with a doctor's medical round.  When doctors do their rounds they have each other to discuss the patient's condition with.  They may consult with the nurses who have a more direct care of the patient.  They toss ideas around and come up with a diagnosis and a treatment plan. 

Teachers do do this as well, but not usually as they teach.  It usually happens in the staff room at lunch time or in a meeting to create and IEP.  Because the nature of teaching is generally one teacher in a single cell room with many children, there generally is no other adult for the teacher to confer and work with to solve those problems or take a different tack with teaching the moment that it happens.  Our conversations tend to be reactionary, after the fact, rather than in the moment.

In regards to Rule 1: Don't talk about pedagogical problems, I agree that teachers as a rule are not used to people watching them regularly, to have people come into their classrooms and talk the practice of teaching as the teacher is teaching.  However, I believe that most teachers are pretty good at talking pedagogy, particularly if something is not right - however this doesn't seem to happen in the class... it's always and after thing and mostly focused on solving an issue rather than analysing and celebrating what works and then exploring the possibility of changing that up.  Often our pedagogical conversations are based on putting out a fire rather than preventing the fire.

Teaching is an aspirational vocation.  We all have great plans at being the best teacher we can be, having the most amazing programmes, engaging children in meaningful and inspiring learning.  But we soon realise that we can't juggle all the balls at the same time, if one thing is going well it may be to the expense of another, and there is always a bit more that we can do as teachers.

Which brings me to Rule 2: Don't mind the gap between teaching aspirations and classroom realities.  There will always be the gap between what we what to provide and achieve with our learners compared to what really happens, but even though we may never consistently achieve to meet the standards we (or others) set ourselves as teachers, we should never give up or lessen our expectations.  We need to continue to challenge ourselves and exceed our previous best to keep the passion alive and extend ourselves.  We need to be clear what our leaders expect of us and our leaders need to know what we expect of ourselves as well, which means discussing and planning your aspirations with your team or senior management.

Rule 3: Dichotomize is about the opposing forces in our classroom, in our teaching, in our own perceptions and realities which are facing off each day as we teach.  This has always happened, and always will.  But good discussion with a trusted colleague will help you to identify those which are really hurting your teaching and holding back students from achieving and will enable you to come away with a bag of tricks to try to change the situation.

Rule 4: Trust your own unique experience - this is important that our experiences shape us as teachers, but we also need to be open to other experiences by our colleagues, because they may spark and idea or a system we can make our own for the betterment of our own teaching and the learning of the students.

Rule 5: No precise professional language is where Dr Lefstein and I have a fundamental difference of opinion.  I find that teaching is littered with teaching language and phrases that people who are not teachers do not understand.  I often find myself translating acronyms like RTLB, explaining what synthesising in reading is, or a number of other things as parents and friends look at me with glazed eyes.  We have plenty of technical teacher talk.

Rule 6: Hyper-criticise Dr Lefstein showed part of a video of Sir Tony Robinson on a show called The Teaching Challenge and this is the blurb for the video:
Sir Tony Robinson, presenter of Time Team and Blackadder, hated school, but has returned to take on a history class at Shireland Language College in Smethwick, Birmingham.
His challenge is to teach a lesson on the worst jobs in history relating to the evolution of public health and hygiene since 1300. He faces not only the pupils, but also the school's formidable head of history, Colin Vigar, who offers a robust critique of Tony's performance. (2005)
And Tony was rigorously critiqued by Colin.  But is a rigorous critique helpful to a teacher receiving feedback?  Personally I don't think so, and neither did the room, nor Dr Lefstein's research.  Feedback needs to be structured, specific and constructive.

Rule 7  - seems to have disappeared during the keynote so we moved on to the next rule.

Rule 8: Focus on what's missing is when the discussion focuses on what did not happen rather than on what did happen.  That can be very down heartening to the teacher who is being observed when they are only told what they haven't done and should have done instead rather than building on what was achieved.

So what did I come away with from this keynote?

• Professionally discussing our teaching practice is important to helping me be a better teacher.
• The conversation needs to focus on what actually is happening.
• We shouldn't ignore our own experiences, but should be open to the experiences of others too.
• Feedback needs to be structures, specific and constructive - the aim is to build up the teacher to go forward, not tear the teacher down.
• It would be beneficial to have discussions with another professional as event occur, although in teaching this tends to be hard as we are a single teacher in a single room with a class most of the time.
• We should talk about the challenges we face and not be staunch.