Nathan Wallis - The Developing Brain from 3 - 7

Last night I went to hear Nathan Wallis talk about neuroscience and brain development in children aged 3 - 6 years old. He had so many amazing things to say and was hilariously funny too!

Some things to note:

• The first 1000 years of a persons life are the most important for brain development. Face to face contact, smiling at your baby, and lots of talking help your baby to collect all the data they need for life.
• Through the years of 3 - 6 the most impt thing for children is to play, play, play.
• Chn don't need to spend time at kindy getting ready for school. That's what school is for!
• Us first born females rule the world haha! We get a lot of face to face time with our parents as there are no other children yet. Birth order importance doesn't matter if you're not the first born in terms of success.
• Male frontal lobes not really fully developed until 26 - 32. Females between 18 - 24. Average is 26. Of course, it sways either way too in terms of averages.
• We mostly measure success in children on language, not motor skills for example. One lady asked "How do you get a 5-6 year old boy to focus?" and Nathan answered that his focus was probably motor skills. If you asked him to be a transformer with his body for half an hour, he could probably focus. In reading or writing however, he might struggle with those tasks. Developmentally they might just not be ready.
• Stop expecting 5 year old boys (especially) to act like 7 year olds etc. And don't compare their development to girls, as it's not a fair comparison.
• Having children saying sorry - Often it might be a chuck away 'sorry' and doesn't really change anything. Instead asking the child "How are you going to repair this relationship?" makes them take more ownership. He also said that for a 2 year old, you'll have to do about 90% of helping them with the apology. When they're 5, you might help 70% of the time etc. Students need your help in these situations.
• Be kind to children and don't push them too hard too fast. Children will learn to walk and crawl when they are ready. By us standing them up before they are ready doesn't help them. It's the same with reading/learning etc. 

Thoughts on my future practice:

• It's really interesting seeing boys in my class who I can identify as just needing to play still, even though they are 7 and 8. I'm wondering how I could possibly incorporate more play time in for them during the day. I do let them have developmental around once a week, but am wondering where else I could fit it in. Lots of the boys in my class still love the blocks and equipment.
• It's a really hard balance in our current education system to fit in play,  as parents and the community want to see us 'teaching' and that is measured in language mostly. The National Standards should apply before Year 3, in my opinion as it is just not fair, espcecially as then students who are below hear that they are below for 2 years, which is not going to help their learning either. 

I'm a student again! Eeek!

72276 Literature and Information Resources for Children and Young People

I've just started the above course, through the Open Polytechnic - Kuratini Tuwhera. I will record my notes in this blog as part of my professional development.

Reading One: Knowledge of the Client Group

Cerny, R., Markey, P., & Williams, A. (2006). Outstanding library service to children: Putting the core competencies to work. Chicago, IL: Association for Library Service to Children, American Library Association.

• Libraries have direct links to communities, so staying in touch with local services, and up to date with other community groups helps you to best cater for your own clientele. 
• Children and YA go through different stages of development and it is important for the library to reflect those stages.
• Involving parents and engaging with them is important for families and their children as the aim is to build and encourage literacy for all. 
• Librarians generally work with the widest age bracket of all educators, from infants to the elderly.
• Change is always happening and librarians need to keep up with those changes, both in society and community, and also technology.
• Librarians also need to build relationships with educators to engage with them and their needs for the students they are working with. The aim is to make a symbiotic relationship.

Key stages of development and how that effects a library

Infancy - 0-2

Biggest stage of growth and development, egocentric and dependent on family, all experiences sensory; perfect time to start reading out loud to baby and engaging with them through tone and language. Modeling from parents huge.

Toddlers, ages 2-3

Beginning to refine physical skills and showing some independence while asserting self more, understanding more concepts like cause and effect, likes to play independently still. Library programs and reading should still involve caregiver, and books with lots of repetition, rhyme and simple stories.

Preschool, ages 4-5

Highly developed language skills and is playful with language too, enjoys sequencing, rhyme, silly stories, beginning to understand bigger world than just family and home; At library can sit for longer periods of time and do simple activities with independence.

Primary, ages Y0-2

Beginning to think logically and learning is hands on, asking lots of questions, and personal life still dominates thinking and emotions; At library they are beginning to enjoy reading themselves and have a more developed sense of humour and of bigger concepts.

Middle grades, Y3 & 4

More independent academics and complex reasoning, while having mind opened to new concepts, enjoys collecting and hobbies, becoming own person more with sense of individuality, and influenced by outside friends more than family.

Preadolescents, Y5 - 8

Beginning puberty, can reason and research and find information and make up own mind about thoughts and opinions, starting to become self conscious and challenging authority, but still needs family, becoming more socially aware of others and self. At library developing new needs from books, possibly books about popular culture and friendships/relationships.

Adolescents Y9 - 13

Final spurt of brain development, lots of hormonal changes and physical changes more or less done, often seen as a child in an adults body, but ready to act as an adult, while also displaying toddler tendencies. Will need own space in library away from what might be seen as 'children's' sections, and will need to be treated as adults from library staff.

Thoughts/implications for my own practice

• I have been thinking about how best to change up the non-fiction as it seems to be such an under-utilised section of the library, due to the amount of books, and the disarray of the dewey decimal system. This course has already had some conversations about how to group non-fiction differently, and the networking meeting I went to the other day suggested different ideas too. I will keep thinking about this, as I am thinking of separating out a junior non-fiction area to make it more accessible to the junior children.
• It's a good reminder about child development as we are moving into a new space, so I will keep these thoughts in mind when we are creating our new library space, with the needs of the different age groups.
• I like the idea of a new space for early chapter books to transition the early readers from about Year 2 into chapter books. I saw this at Waimauku Primary and was inspired. Space in the new library might be tricky, but I'll see what we can do.
• This year I have already been doing a major buy up of books with really diverse looking families to try to represent our school community more. I have purchased a few books with mixed race families, as our school is very multicultural. When we displayed our languages books and I promoted them in Whanau Time, those books were hot off the display shelves, which was encouraging. 
• I'm wondering if potentially we could open the library up one afternoon a week, so that families can come in and enjoy the library with their children after school. Hmmmmmm......

Maths PD with Linda about CoL

Monday afternoon meeting with Linda and the middle school

Warm up game

• Warm up games - roll 2 dice. Multiply and get answer, add and get answer, then work out the difference: 3 x 4 = 12, 3 + 4 = 7 so 12 minus 7 = 5. You move five up on the 100's board.
• Salute - 3 chn play. 2 put cards on their heads, 1 calls out the sum of the 2 cards. Students with cards on their heads have to guess what card they must have.
• Addition wars/subtractions wars/multiplication wars
• Subitising patterns etc. 3 tens frames and one with 4 on it. 
• Around the world - just give them the answer and they have to do the equation
• Noggle - number boggle

Probability ideas

• Counters in a bag with 3 red, 4 blue, 1 green, no yellow. What are the chances that I pull out ......
• SKUNK - write on the board
• Toy Theater probability 
• Heads and Tails game - True or false
• Heads and tails combinations with number tree
• Show brainpop jr video of combinations
• Roll the dice with a buddy - 20 times - what number comes up the most - should be 7?? Tie it into stats - up to 12. Then compare with another group.
• Check in with AWS books - statistics 

Maths PD with Linda and learnings from CoL

• Lots of discussion about data collected and making sure we have the right information on Linc Ed.
• Linda talked to us about the equals sign, and making sure chn understand that it means 'the same as'. Gave us examples on how to use in class and what to teach. 
• 8 = 8. True or false. 
• Went into introduction to algebra.
•  __ = 21 + 5.
• Have been having awesome conversations with my class about the fluidity of numbers and great class discussions. 
• The above examples have been great for warm ups and extending learning of what math symbols actually mean. 

Senior School Observation

This morning I observed Alannah Lupe teaching writing to her Year 5 and 6 class. They started with a warm up on a whole class google doc adding a subordinate clause to a sentence Alannah had provided. Students were working collaboratively in groups of 2-3, each taking turns to contribute ideas and words to improve the sentence. They also highlighted the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in each sentence. Each group had their own box to add to, but could read other students ideas and gather inspiration from the whole class.

Alannah's class work very well together. She is an expert in expecting collaboration from her students and they understand that they can learn from each other. Throughout the morning I heard the students sharing ideas in small groups and with the whole class, giving feedback and feed forward in a very accepting way. The feedback and feedforward was oral and in writing in the google doc. Students were very clear on the expectations around this. Alannah said they wouldn't have been at this level in term 1, but through lots of practise they were well trained up.

Students moved on to ANZAC writing after the warm up. One student read his aloud to the class and also received feedforward and feedback. This feels like a very natural part of the class.

Implications for my practise

It was great to see feedback and feedforward done so well in Alannah's class. I can definitely step this up in my own class, giving clear expectations as to what this entails. Feedback - something they did well. Feedforward - something to improve on. 

I also loved seeing the shared google doc in action. I feel that my class are comfortable now with being familiar with their devices and that they would be able to handle something similar. I might try it this afternoon with a shared doc for ignition for our intro into Oceans.

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.