Raising Achievement Course

Yesterday I was on the Raising Achievement Course in Parnell with 4 colleagues. It was about best practise for our Wave 3 children, who often have learning issues with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and autism. These children are often undiagnosed as well, which can make teaching these children a challenge.

Raising Achievement Shared Notes

We learned about the different Learner Groups.

• 1st wave learners:  Students learning above standards.  
• 2nd Wave Learners:  Mainstream students - performing at the national standard or roughly a year below, but within range to be pulled up.  Any supports provided, when taken away, these students will meet standards.  
• 3rd Wave Learners - Some kind of specific learning difficulty:  ADHD, Autistic, Asperger, Auditory and Visual processing disorders.  22% of students fit into this category.  
• 4th Wave Learners - Special education:  Physical, sensory disability - make up about 3% of our students.  These are ORRS funded.  10/11% - Dyslexia, 1% - Dyspraxia, 3% - Autism, 5% -Auditory Processing, Visual Processing - no percentage yet, 

Where to next

I have a student (maybe 2) who I think may have ADHD inattention. They are both under the same RTLB so I will follow up with her about my observations and where to next to best support these students. 

• ADHD definitions

ADHD Inattention
1. Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work, or other activities
2. Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities
3. Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly
4. Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (not due to oppositional behaviour or failure of comprehension)
5. Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities
6. Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (such as schoolwork or homework)
7. Often loses things necessary for tasks or activities at school or at home (eg toys, pencils, books, assignments)
8. Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli
9. Is often forgetful in daily activities

• We were shown two highly recommended resources which we will talk to management about to see if we can implement them school wide to address our struggling readers and spellers. They are the Alpha to Omega spelling programme and Key into Comprehension series. We already have the last one at school and I have used a few of them and really liked them. This series is awesome for teaching inferencing and reorganising for students to think deeper about a text. 

Reflection

I am really lucky to have started my teaching journey in the Junior School with the New Entrants and Year 1's, so I was well trained on how to teach students how to read. Going up to the middle school I can still put these skills to good use to help my struggling readers. It was interesting to learn that most learners need to see something about 7 times to learn a new task or piece of knowledge, whereas for our strugglers they need to see it up to 49 times. Repetition is key!



The above text was given to us as an example of how difficult some of our students find it to read. The words jump over the page and with dyslexic children especially, the b/p/d/q letters are quite tricky. We tried reading it with difficulty, and then the lecturer asked us to tell us what we had just read. Our comprehension was terrible as all our energy had gone into just trying to decode. Pretty eye opening about the struggles some of our children face every time we ask them to read.