Duration: 2:46
Literacy coaches, Gill Aldworth and Denise Brown talk about their role in supporting teachers with their inquiries and how teachers are using the literacy progressions, refining what they are teaching, and being very specific and forming their next steps.
Gill Aldworth
Our role as literacy coaches requires us to be a leader or a guide and work really tightly with the teaching as inquiry process to help teachers inform their practice.
Denise Brown
As a literacy coach, I’ve been into all the Year 1 classrooms and observed the teachers in action, usually going in looking for those deliberate acts of teaching.
Vicki Pimenta
Well done, so you are answering lots of questions about this story. So, not only have we been looking at predicting, you guys have also been answering some questions about this story, which was actually your goal, wasn’t it?
Denise Brown
Giving them feedback then on their next steps forward. At the end of the sessions we’ve often taken notes on and listened to the students voice, what the students have to say about their learning, even with the five year olds that they are able to articulate where they are at and what their next steps are in their learning. We’ve then talked with the teachers about how that will inform their inquiry, the things they can focus on, how they can narrow down what it is they actually want to achieve with the children. It’s helped them to target their priority learners and work out what they need to do to improve their learning. As a team, and with the teachers, we’ve worked on making the literacy progressions more child friendly in child speak, so that the children can articulate their next steps.
Student
I’m on orange, and I am trying to, I can retell the story correctly using my own words.
Denise Brown
So as part of our reading programme, the children are using the iPads to read the QR codes as part of sometimes a rotation in the reading programme. So they are listening to what their next steps are and then, as they are coming to guided reading at the teaching table those next steps are in the modelling books and the children are able to identify them and put it all together. The kids are much more able to have learning conversations with each other and with the teacher about their next steps in learning.
Gill Aldworth
What we have noticed the most as literacy coaches is that teachers are more inclined to really refine what they are teaching. We are actually choosing one or two things that we really want to work on with the children and being very specific and forming their next steps.