Tag: REMOTE LEARNING

The Politics of Learning From Home

The Coronavirus has exposed many holes in our current society, none more gaping than the access to technology experienced by thousands of New Zealand students who are unable to actively participate in education, either in class or remotely, due to a lack of electronic devices or internet connection. The New Zealand Government announced arrangements for 17,000 Chromebooks or iPads to be shipped to homes across the country to attempt to address this glaring disparity, however it remains a point of contention that adequate resources were not available within the education system prior to this global emergency.

Recent television news reports attempting to show the brighter side of The New Normal have often focused on higher decile schools and their response to the crisis: small bubbles of happy children in classrooms adequately supplied with digital technologies and the vast majority of their community ensconced at home, learning remotely with their teacher just one mouse-click away. Sadly, this is not the reality for many New Zealand learners.

Education in New Zealand is currently at its most unequal. Some children are thriving in this new online era, uploading pictures and videos of themselves completing a learning task, communicating daily with friends and teachers while being tutored by supportive family members. Others may have to share technology with siblings and compete for bandwidth with harried parents working from home. There are those without devices who are completing hard copy home learning packs supplied by the government, and there are yet others for whom home is not even a safe place, let alone one where learning can take place.

Teaching colleagues have spoken during the lockdown of how difficult it is to make contact with students and their families outside the physical bounds of the school, as bubbles migrate and regroup under the different levels and lack of access to technology limits communication between home and school. Administrators and teaching staff try to make contact with a family using a mobile number that has now been disconnected, or visit a home only to discover that no one now resides at that address. The most difficult times for a society are felt even more acutely by its most vulnerable.

Inequality within the education sector has long been acknowledged, but it seems to have been treated as just another sad fact of life. In my first teaching position at a decile one school in Mt Roskill, the staff decided to hold a school disco to fundraise for sports trips. After the teachers sourced the sound equipment, set up the speakers and spent two afternoons decorating the dilapidated school hall we raised just over $300 from the entry fees and the sales of donated food. My next position was at a decile eight school where the disco, quiz nights and other fundraising initiatives run by the highly supportive PTA raised over $2000 each. The contrasts between those schools were stark: a new swimming pool and a dedicated computer suite in the higher decile school; an absence of swimming lessons, and 28 dated laptops on trolleys to service the entire school in Mt Roskill.

Disparities in education due to disparities in welfare cannot be completely redressed by investment in schools alone, but this must be part of the solution. Currently we seem to be operating two curriculums within the same country, one digital, connected and future-focussed, and one paper-based, reactive and isolated. Centralised funding of digital devices would alleviate pressure on schools struggling to find capital for technology while also providing staffing and curriculum resources, perhaps a nationwide scheme for schools similar to the current laptop provision for teachers could be enacted to ensure a 1:1 ratio of devices to children in classrooms.

As the world develops a new modus operandi in the the wake of Covid-19 and more and more companies embrace the option of remote working, questions may be raised about how education will be altered in the coming years. Virtual-classroom learning has become a booming industry in China, where one tutor connects remotely with classes of fee-paying students at mutually agreed times. In this situation, the teacher becomes a contractor, choosing their own working hours in a gig-economy manner similar to an Uber driver. Perhaps in the future, remote learning could be adopted as a kind of outsourcing, a way to semi-privatise education as the running costs are passed onto the domestic household.

One thing that has become clear is how vital it is to have a physical space to act as a focal point for communities. In the good times, a school is a place where friendships are made, both between students and between their families. There are connections born out of rites of passage: the first day of school, sports teams, school plays, sitting exams. In times of hardship, schools can often be the only avenue of support, connecting people with services they could otherwise not have accessed.

Hopefully this crisis will enable a realisation amongst those with political power which will be remembered long after the lockdown ends. Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s pre-Budget speech today called on people to “acknowledge that things weren’t perfect before Covid-19”, and that we should not squander the opportunity to use the economic re-set of the Coronavirus to address these long-term issues. There is so much potential for positive social change at this moment, the zeitgeist tangible in the teddy bears in windows, fuelled by the message “Be Kind”. Let’s hope it lasts.

Online Guided Reading

During the Covid-19 lockdown I participated in several online webinars, one of which was a session run by guided reading expert Hilton Ayrey. I have followed Hilton Ayrey since my first years of teaching, as I was attracted to his Story Bytes series of guided reading texts. These texts consist of 4-5 paragraphs of writing which are differentiated by the addition or substitution of vocabulary in varying degrees of complexity, hence the same topic or story can be read at a range of different reading abilities.

At the beginning of the webinar, Hilton prefaced the session by stating that he was not sure whether this online approach would be suitable for all teachers, and that he had in fact received feedback already from teachers who felt trying to hold a guided reading session online during this lockdown period would be too difficult for many students. As he was also producing content in a time where the situation may change with little notice, he acknowledged that by the time he had perfected a lesson plan, the lockdown may be over and it may be business as usual, therefore he asked us to assess whether this system could be used by a Teacher Aide in class instead.

The first thing he covered was the administration that needs to be done before a lesson can begin: sharing the materials before students arrive by having the text clickable in a link, establish protocols such as having microphones on mute, having hands up signals etc, the sort of classroom management most teachers would be familiar with but in a virtual environment. The four paragraphs of text were displayed on a powerpoint which presented one paragraph at a time, and then one sentence each from that paragraph on the next few slides to focus the group clearly on the text at hand.

Hilton’s guided teaching model is 20% of time spent explicitly teaching, and 80% of time spent on independent practice, however it is not a straight 20% front-loading, 80% go-away-and-practice, as that ratio first implies. Rather it is a rotation of explain, model and guided practice throughout the lesson. Hilton will ask for roadblocks- unfamilar words which may impede comprehension, and then offers students a chance to clear those roadblock themselves or offer a solution to another’s problem. Ayrey says it is important that not a lot of time is spent on clearing roadblocks as this can eat into lesson time- one attempt from the student or one attempt from a peer, and then the teacher can give the information so that the reading can progress.

The lesson sequence is broken into four steps: 1. Teacher modelling, 2. Student reading practice, 3. Explanation of what has been read, 4. Bridge back to the story. The goal is to get through one paragraph in six minutes, so pace is important. One benefit of doing online guided reading is that as a teacher you do not need to worry about keeping the rest of the class on-task while working with a group!

After going through the learning intention and success criteria, we began with a reading of a sentence: The duck landed on the water. Hilton pointed out that the Explain part of the lesson sequence needs the student to demonstrate that they really understand what the text means, not merely retell it. In this case, restating “the duck landed on the water” would not constitute a good explanation, students need to make reference to the fact that the duck had been flying and that it had come to rest on the surface of either a lake or a river, not a puddle as in reality this would be too shallow for a duck to land on.

We then began reading the first paragraph of the text in our heads, Hilton read the first line aloud and modelled how to break down the sentence and explain what each bit meant using the phrase “I think that…” We then had to decide whether we thought he had understood the text or not. We then read a sentence aloud together and one of us offered an explanation of what it meant. We then each took turns reading a sentence aloud and explaining what it meant using “I think that…” There was no interjections from other students or the teacher at this stage.

At the end of the paragraph the teacher may ask whether there are any roadblocks, difficult words or idioms that a reader may not be familiar with. The reader is offered a chance to guess at the meaning, before it is opened up to the rest of the group to try. Hilton drew attention to this part, only one peer should be given a chance to clear the road block, any more and the time spent on it is too long. Roadblocks should be cleared ideally within 20-30 seconds as the purpose of the reading is not to spend a long time teasing out the meanings of words.

Finally, once all the sentences in the paragraph have been read, Hilton selected a sentence from the paragraph and gave us two minutes to convincingly explain what it was about, with points being given either to us as a group or to him if we couldn’t explain- a good strategy for engaging participation. He broke the sentence down into small chunks and we explained each bit until we had successfully explained the entire sentence. For instance, the sentence “Usually he would wade in and his heavy body would sink to the bottom of the river” would be broken into parts “Usually he would wade in”, “wade in”, “His heavy body would sink”, “Would sink to the bottom”. After we had explained the paragraph, Hilton asked for a prediction about what would happen next to bridge the discussing back to the story again.

At the end of the session he asked us what we had been learning to do (Unpacking sentences), why we had been doing that (training our brain), whether we felt we had become better at this, and how we knew that we had become better. As a class teacher I am aware of the benefits of reflection on learning and self-assessment, and in future I would make more of an effort to include a reflection and self-assessment like this at the end of a guided reading session.