Novel Study Activities To Promote Consolidation Of New Language

To begin this term I am changing my Reading programme to focus on giving the students choice. I have previously taught a "Novel Study" unit which gives the students opportunities to choose their tasks based on their own ability. It has worked to varying success, however, my time in this class has indicated many of the students struggle with having to think for themselves.

Instead of giving the children the full "menu" of 30 or so choices I have selected one comprehension plus one or two creative type activities based on expectations for each group. During this first week I gave all groups the same tasks to complete, however, the majority of the class failed to meet the deadline. I am looking at differentiating and assigning specific groups more appropriate tasks next week to see if this improves their output. During Teacher Conferencing all students have been happy with the brief and the expectations on when and to what quality their work must be completed, so the real challenge here is to push them towards being more self driven than they are used to.

The Year 6 children are of concern as they have a tendency to sit, nod, then go away and work on something completely unrelated to their assignments. Is this due to developmental factors, attitudes, or other reasons?

EDIT: An interesting complication arising from these tasks: By week 4 all Y6 students had latched onto an older student and tried to collaborate on the tasks. They obviously require either more scaffolding before being given self driven tasks, or they need to manage their time better. I am changing things up in W5 so that each group can focus on a common activity with aligned tasks.

Target Student Data T2 2018

Planning for Term 3

Takeaways from Term 2:
1. Students are using a higher level of language in Maths. This appears due to the game style of learning, but I am wondering if this will cement itself in their knowledge when we put questions in another context. NExt term the focus will be on continuing fractions, decimals and percentages. I am looking into getting Kiwibank to fund the class working through the Banqer programme as part of Financial Literacy. Context rich jargon, as well as rich tasks will test whether or not the students are linking their new learning or not.