Overview
During 2025, Evaluation Associates are developing online Professional Learning and Development (PLD) resources (self-directed & guided) to provide targeted literacy/te reo matatini and numeracy/pāngarau support to schools.
These recorded webinars, slide decks, and resources will be aimed at helping schools to accelerate the literacy and numeracy skills of students so they are ready for the co-requisite.
These new resources will be published here as they become available.
During 2025, Evaluation Associates are developing online Professional Learning and Development (PLD) resources (self-directed & guided) to provide targeted literacy/te reo matatini and numeracy/pāngarau support to schools.
These recorded webinars, slide decks, and resources will be aimed at helping schools to accelerate the literacy and numeracy skills of students so they are ready for the co-requisite.
These new resources will be published here as they become available.
Webinars
[ Video Resource ]
- Title: Science of learning - accelerating literacy/numeracy
- Description: Webinar about accelerating literacy and numeracy using the science of learning practices across the curriculum
- Video Duration: 60 minutes
- Video URL: https://player.vimeo.com/video/1097710949
- Transcript:
Kia ora koutou. Just letting a few others in. We'll make a start shortly.
(slide – title of webinar - Accelerating literacy and numeracy using science of learning practices across the curriculum webinar including the facilitators names – Ben Laybourn and Deirdre McCracken)
Letting a few more in. Hang on. Here we go. Alright team, we'll settle in with karakia first. If you go to that slide for us, Ben, please.
(Slide – karakia timatanga) (Deirdre speaking)
Kia ora. Me karakia tatou. Tau mai te mauri o te wānanga, Ki runga ki ēnei pūkenga,
Kia mātāmua ai ko te ako kounga a te tamaiti, Ko ia ki mua, ko ia ki muri o ēnei kōrero,
Kia puta ai ia ki te whaiao, ki te ao mārama! Hui e, tāiki e!
Welcome to everybody. Just a reminder. Next slide, please, Ben.
(slide – Tikanga mō Tēnei hui ā-ipurangi | webinar protocols) (Deirdre speaking)
About being in part of our Zoom. While we're doing this, while it is a webinar, we would love to engage with you through the chat. So please stay on mute.
Introduce yourself with your name and your school in the chat. Got a couple more to let in. Ask your questions as we go.
Contribute your thinking. This is about sharing right across our network. The more you guys can share with each other, the better off we all are.
And this session is being recorded and will be available online in due course, along with the PowerPoint presentation.
(slide – whakatauki) (Deirdre speaking)
If we have a look at our whakataukī that, oh, sorry, back one step. I'll introduce myself and then I'll invite Ben to introduce himself.
One step at a time. Nau mai, haere mai, tautī mai. Ko Tekoa te maunga Ko Hurunui te awa. No Hawarden ahau, Waitaha ki te raki. Kei Rangiora ahau, ko tōku kāinga inaianei. E mihi ana ki ngā tohu o nehe o kai Tūāhuriri e nehe nei au. Ko Deirdre tuku ingoa. It's a pleasure to be with you. I am Deirdre, part of the Te Manu Ka Rere team alongside my lovely colleague Ben. And it is with pleasure that we get to host you with this webinar today. Over to you, Ben.
(Ben speaking)
Kia ora koutou. Ngā mihi nui kia koutou. No Taratahi te Wairarapa au. Ko taraua toko maunga. Ko wāohine toko awa. Kia ora koutou. Ben, I'm based in sunny at the moment, sunny Carterton over in the Wairarapa.
We're actually both in very different locations today. I'm in Carterton and where abouts are you, Deirdre. You're travelling around schools at the moment?
(Deirde speaking)
I am. I'm in beautiful Murchison today about to work with the schools on the west coast of the South Island. It's a real pleasure.
(Ben speaking)
Just acknowledging everyone in the room, we've got about 29 participants at the moment. I do know that most of you have connections to the Te Manu Ka Rere project. I think there are some people in the room that have just registered out of interest from outside of that. Welcome on board as well. Over to you, Deirdre.
(Deirdre speaking)
Kia ora, Ben. If we go to our whakatauki. Adjoined with feathers, the bird is able to fly. What that does is connect us to our wider imperative. Think about this as a guiding light. It reminds us of the importance of our mahi as educators. For you in your kura and your schools, it's about leading and teaching so that our ākonga can be successful in NCEA, literacy, numeracy, te reo matatini and pāngarau. We're thinking about what are those strategies that we can use in the classroom that are linked to the science of learning that enable our young people to be as fabulous as they can be. They can access level one NCEA and they can fly while they're doing it. Why? We need to be able to bridge a big gap that exists at the moment. As many strategies we can have in our kete and the things that we might strengthen to enable that, the better we are at being able to do this.
(Slide – Ngā kaupapa o te wā) (Deirdre speaking)
Moving on to our kaupapa matua. The purpose of this is to develop our knowledge of science of learning strategies. There will be many that you are already engaging with, and there are hopefully some that might get you thinking about how you might strengthen it or even add those things to develop a knowledge of targeted and accelerative teaching practices and to enable that acceleration of literacy, numeracy, te reo matatini and pāngarau across the curriculum, not just in those short, sharp, small group initiatives that we're engaging with. Ben, over to you, sir.
(Slide – purpose and intent of the webinar) (Ben speaking)
In terms of attendance today, the intent of this, many of you are leaders and teachers as well. The intent of this is the strategies that support the mahi. It's really diving into that science of learning that's going to make a difference. Focus deeply on the CAAs that we're seeing in the year 9, 10, 11. In fact, year 7, 8, some of you guys in your area schools. I think it's really important that we not only talk about the science of learning, but the leadership of the science of learning, because it's you guys helping your teachers implement some of this.
(Slide – The Science of Learning) (Ben speaking)
As we go forward, the intent of this afternoon is to delve deeply into the science of learning. Now, this is not one thing, and it's not new either. I think it's coming to the fore as we're becoming more aware of the importance of it, that there's those developmental ideas, how we learn, how our brain works, how we learn socially, that all comes together. There's been science, good research done around this that is worth taking note of. That's the intent of this afternoon, to delve into some of that research and the big ideas and talk through them.
Now, I think you probably find yourself familiar with many of the strategies. The intent of this afternoon is to surface some of this thinking and go, how does this look in your school? I think you'll know quite a few of these concepts already. It's the clarity. I think we're all waiting, what is it, two days for our reading results, right? It's wondering, how did our kids go in the first lot of CAAs? What does that tell us about what we've done in terms of that run in? What can we learn from that as we lead into September? What can we learn from that to lead into next year?
(Slide - Building understanding) (Ben speaking)
I think as we talk about the science of learning, it's worth delving into that, going, let's have a shared understanding of how people learn in our school. Let's talk about our kids, in our college and their habits of being and their ways of interacting and their ways of thinking. Where they're at emotionally and what's going on in society that influences that. How do we shape that in their classrooms? Point one. Then how do we think about the teaching and learning that we're doing collectively? It's not isolated practice in different classrooms. There's some coherence to what we're doing in terms of how we're teaching these students. That comes down to that common language of teaching and learning. To have that shared understanding. We encourage you guys, once you get a copy of what's recorded, but also this PowerPoint, use it in your schools to have this conversation around what this looks like.
(Slide – The Science of Learning) (Ben speaking)
This afternoon, we are going to delve into five main components of science and learning. We're going to take about eight minutes each to unpack and talk through. This is a webinar, so it is quite a lot of us presenting to you.
We'll do a couple of activities along the way, but we will cover those five points:
Explicit teaching - What does formal assessment teaching strategies look like within literacy and numeracy to accelerate? What does cognitive load theory mean? How do we use that in our teaching to make sure stuff is committed to memory? We'll look at interleaving, retrieval and space practice and what that means in terms of different sorts of strategies, be that writing strategies, reading strategies, numeracy strategies. We'll talk about the importance of that metacognition and feedback, what that looks like. Also, the emotions and a calm environment. There are our five key foci for you guys.
(Slide – Unpacking the Science of Learning) (Ben speaking)
What we'd love you to think about, given we're all got a body of experience behind us, I don't know what your current shared understanding of the science of learning is. You probably have some background to this. You may already be doing some work in the space to strengthen capability in your school. When we say strengthen capability, what we're really looking at is how are you helping your teachers become better at this? Then three, what key practices might you strengthen and accelerate learning in your context? Not only students, but also teacher learning of this going on. You may need to do some conversation between staff or teams.
What aspects of the science of learning might you need to explore further? This is a quick taster, guys. This is literally an hour split into eight minutes per session. It's quick fire. Hopefully it's a stimulus for you to take away and go, oh, we need to find some more out about that. We've already run this workshop, this webinar once, and there were a number of questions that came out of that going, oh, where do we find resources? We'll be able to access this as a resource. But there's other stuff out there as well. Of course, that implementation challenge. We would like to help you, as Te Manu Ka Rere facilitators, figure out how you're going to implement some of this into your classroom and into your schools.
(Slide – Using the Science of Learning) (Ben speaking)
Let's just have a think about this. That application, far right on the slide. We are deeply invested in helping you guys figure out how to do this literacy and literacy more effectively at the early years in your college, in years 9, 10, 11. To do this, we need to think carefully about those science and learning strategies that you want to put into place and how that is tied into practical strategies.
As we go through this webinar, I'm hoping that will make the practical side of this really evident as we go forward. But it's worthwhile going. There is stuff we're thinking about. Those espoused theories and theories of science and learning. How do we make sure we have a very practical approach to this and help our teachers know what that looks like within their subject areas?
(Slide – The link to accelerated learning?) (Ben speaking)
And, of course, that deliberate link to accelerated learning. This, Te Manu Ka Rere is all about raising that achievement of literacy and numeracy this year. We are very keen to help you figure that out and have clarity of plan, clarity of strategy, clarity of what are we doing with these students in the classroom in a targeted way? How do we monitor that? How do we check progress? Given we've got, what was it, eight weeks until CAAs in September? That's a nice, focused span of time that we're going, okay, we've got some specific stuff we need to think about. Part of that acceleration is going, we've got some students that are probably at that point in that journey going, oh, we're not quite where we need to be. What specific focus and approach are we going to use for those kids? That notion of acceleration sits quite strongly in this contract.
Right, let's start off. Deirdre and I are going to tag team a little bit. Deirdre is going to start explaining explicit teaching and we'll throw some examples around as we go.
(Slide Explicit teaching) (Deirdre speaking)
Āe, thanks, Ben. If we're thinking about accelerated learning, then we are thinking about those deliberate acts of teaching. If we go to the science of learning and the importance of explicit teaching, then we'd like to highlight how important it is to not leave things to chance with our learners, particularly if we want to accelerate.
I spoke before about the large gap or the significant gap that exists for our learners at the moment in getting them ready for NCEA. That's requiring us to be tailored and targeted around what we do. Here's a couple of models that include some key considerations.
There's the assessment for learning model. It focuses in on six particular capabilities.
The high impact teaching strategies. Now, this one came out of Australia, whereas the assessment for learning model with the archway version has come out of Aotearoa, New Zealand. If you have a look at both of those, they have key strategies. They engage us in explicit teaching to enable our learners, one, to take greater responsibility for their learning. And in doing so, it enables higher engagement, it enables higher motivation. As they take that shared responsibility for their learning while we engage in deliberate acts of teaching, it's very, very worthwhile.
Ben, if we move to the next one, unless there's something you would like to say about that one.
(Slide – Explicit teaching) (Deirdre speaking)
Explicit teaching clearly and directly shows our learners ‘how to’. Some of the things we use quite deliberately are the setting of clear learning intentions and success criteria, modelling and scaffolding using clear, accessible and culturally responsive language, actively monitoring their understanding and responding to that in real time, providing supported and independent practice opportunities.
Now, we're talking about formative assessment practices in this. When Ben and I talk about formative assessment, we're talking about those minute by minute, day by day deliberate acts of teaching that enable us and our learners to know where they're at with the learning. We've been talking with schools about what does good look like in a set of criteria for success for NCEA literacy, numeracy, te reo, matatini and pāngarau so that learners can aim towards that. They can set individual goals to enable them to monitor it for themselves. If we engineer specific, explicit teaching strategies like enabling self-assessment, peer assessment, we activate our questioning skills, their ability to question. The more capable they grow and the better engaged they are in taking responsibility for their learning. Next one, Ben, please.
(Slide – Structure of an explicit lesson) (Deirdre speaking)
What it enables, if we have explicit teaching, it demystifies any cognitive processing and we tend to look at explicit ways of setting up a lesson. We have an opening, we have a body and we have a closing part of our lesson. A question was asked in our last running of this about what's the timeline? Well, that depends on your planning. That depends on how long your periods are. It depends on what the sequence of learning might be. The lesson might take more than one period. Some of our schools are privileged enough to have double periods and they might have one hour fifteen, or one hour twenty, or one hour and a half. It's whatever it looks like to open up and enable that initial engagement in learning. It might preview where we're going ahead. It should, could review the last lesson to invite learners to gauge where they're at currently around the criteria for success and enable them to set some of their own goals.
In the body, we're talking about modelling. We're talking about us. I wonder if we all know the model, I do, we do, you do, which enables us to show and then to scaffold some practicing and then give opportunity for independence.
Then closing, really ideal to have self-reflection in some way. I know that the Manaiakalani schools, they all engage in blogging to enable learners to reflect on the learning, whether it's one period or a sequence of lessons that enable the full learning. Review of that learning, thinking about what's coming next, and then opportunities to do stuff to practice their learning. Next one, Ben, please.
(Slide – Practical examples applied to literacy and numeracy) (Deirdre speaking)
Couple of explicit examples applied to literacy and numeracy. One there for year 12 English in terms of being clear, modelling and then checking learning. That's around a paragraph structure.
Then a second one there for year 11 numeracy in terms of multiple exposures, where perhaps there's some direct instruction and practice on the Monday. Then there might be some sort of real-world application a couple of days later. And perhaps some sort of quiz that enables the retrieval of that information that we have learned or the skills we have learned.
It's spaced out over time, and it's very enabling. One of the things I do wonder is how often we're explicit about telling our kids that we need to practice our ability to recall. We need to be able to do it over time so we strengthen our ability to recall.
(Ben speaking)
Can I just step in?
(Deirdre speaking)
Absolutely, Ben.
(Ben speaking)
I'm just going to step back in a bit here, guys. Explicitly, I just want to come back to this.
Two conversations that I'm finding I'm having a lot with colleagues is one going, what does explicit teaching look like in your classrooms for specific strategies? I'll give you a couple of examples. Often the CAAs I am finding that the explicit teaching of numeracy happens in the maths department. I think part of the conversation we need to open up there is going, if we're doing numeracy across the curriculum, what does that look like in different subject areas? If we have got a table of data or a graph or something in a subject, like social sciences, for example, or science, how do we explicitly teach in that space, so students understand that? Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of explicit teaching of maths happens in the maths department, but it's how do we enhance that for the students across the curriculum? That's part of the work we're doing a lot of with Te Manu Ka Rere.
It's worth exploring that, going, how do we model that? How do we scaffold that? And how do we make sure the students are really clear on what they're learning? For me, explicit teaching is captured in that clarity of learning. That's why that learning intention and success criteria become really, really important. The other one I just want to emphasise really quickly is in a number of schools, I'm finding the conversation around what does your lesson structure look like? Is it effective for your students to learn, and especially those tier two students that need that additional support.
How do we scaffold that opening so they are really clear on what they learned last time and what their step is for this lesson? How do I share that with them really clearly the learning for today so they have that clarity in their head, they understand it? How do we check in at the end? Because if we're thinking about those kids that are struggling a little bit with literacy and numeracy, we want to make this even clearer for them. Number two points, I wanted to emphasise there. Is that okay, Deirdre?
(Deirdre speaking)
Kia ora, Ben.
(Ben speaking)
Great. Cool. Let's move forward.
Can I just check? There's not a lot of chatter in the chat. If you want to throw in any questions as we go, please feel free. We will try to tie this back to real examples for you, but please just fire out and ask us as we go.
(Slide – Cognitive load theory from working memory to long-term memory) (Ben speaking)
All right, I'm going to talk about cognitive load, but I'm going to start with an activity to get you guys thinking. If you attended the last one, you'll have heads up what I'm about to do with you guys. But hey, most of you knew.
Let's play with cognitive load. Cognitive load is all about your working memory and how you use your working memory and ultimately shift it into long-term memory. I'm going to give you a series of numbers, and I'm going to say those out loud, and I'd like you to try to remember as many of them as you can.
A little bit of loading the ol’ brain on a… What are we? Monday afternoon. All right, this is going to challenge us. Now, I've got a series of… how many numbers have I got this time? A few people know of my challenge last time, so I've gone with a couple of extra numbers. Let's give it a shot. I'm going to say them out loud. I'm not going to give them to you visually. I'm just going to say them. I'd like you to remember them. I don't want you to write them down.
No cheating by writing down, okay? Here's the numbers. See how many you can remember. 10, 27, 4, 7, 22, 31, 2, 5, 17.
Okay? I'll say them again for you. 10, 27, 4, 7, 22, 31, 2, 5, 17. I'll give them to you one last time. See how you do.
10, 27, 4, 7, 22, 31, 2, 5, 17. Okay, hold those in your memory.
I'm going to come back to them in a minute. The whole notion of cognitive load… I'll talk to this diagram. As I've just given you some input, the stimulus, that's gone into your brain. Now, the stimulus I gave you is verbal. I didn't give you any images. I didn't give you any written stuff. You're attempting to hold that in your working memory currently, so your sensory memory has heard something. The chance you'll forget some of it, that working memory over there. The right is the short-term memory that you have.
Now, for our students, as you probably well know, their working memory is not that long, and we've got to really maximize it so that when we teach them something, we give them one to get it into their working memory, but then encode it and rehearse it into their long-term memory. Now, that's the whole notion of learning. You're thinking about when you're giving the kids a stimulus or an engagement activity, you're trying to hook them into that learning by their neurons, and you get those neurons to lay down that memory over time.
Now, the whole deal here is that if we overload their cognitive load, that information drops out. That's actually a really important consideration because classrooms are a busy place, and we want to really maximise that learning. We want them to be able to transfer from that working memory to long-term memory.
Now, this is one of the key concepts in the science of learning. How do we do this really well, so kids don't forget everything? There's a whole bunch of factors to consider in that. As we talk about this, we're going to give you some ideas around this.
So, in terms of the first strategy, dual coding, now, I gave you verbal triggers for those numbers. I didn't give you a visual point of learning. If I really wanted you to lay that memory down of those numbers, I would have given them to you so you could see the numbers. I probably would have done something more visually with it. So, if I want people to remember things, I would probably give more than one type of coding and some visual, verbal, other techniques as well. The effect is now you get better at recall.
In the explicit teaching, we talked about scaffolding, those worked examples. We really want to keep things narrow and focused so students are focusing on the stuff they need to remember. That's why using acronyms like PEEL or TEXAS are really useful for writing because you can use it as an acronym for a structure, then you can scaffold it.
So, in your brain, you have a schema, a way of remembering stuff. It's like a mind map where things link together. When we have worked examples and are strategic in how we scaffold things, we build that schema more effectively, which means it can be remembered easier.
Integrated materials, bringing things together so there's not too much attention across the board, that minimises split attention effect, also more effective. Space retrieval, we'll talk a bit more about space retrieval practice, but the idea is you've experienced something, you've learned something once, the neurons are fired, you do it again over a period of time, you fire the neuron numerous times, creating a pathway, and it builds down the memory. That's why it builds up long-term memory, hence shifting from short-term memory to long-term memory.
Righty, let's see how you guys are going. Let's go back to those numbers. Here's what I'd like you to do. I would like you to write down, you can pick up a pen or do it however you like, write down as many of those numbers as you can recall now. Just write them down on a piece of paper, go through your memory, and in about 30 seconds I'll read the numbers out and you can see how many we've got. Effectively what I did was I gave you a single method of coding, but I let you hear it three times. I kept it quite narrow, I gave it only in words. Nine numbers. Typically, your short-term memory can hold somewhere between four to seven, depends how effective it is and how you've learned it.
Right, let's see how well you did. I'll read the numbers out, then you tick the ones you got right, and then what I'd like you to do is put how many you got right in the chat. This is just a brief test on your cognitive load.
The numbers were 10, 27, 4, 7, 22, 31, 2, 5, 17. Right, when you're ready, feel free to add them in the chat, how many did you got right. While you do that, I'll slip onto the next slide.
(Deirdre speaking)
Oh, someone's got a really good short-term memory. Awesome. Pretty impressive.
(Ben speaking)
It is, isn't it? They got nine. I failed at my own test, guys. I really, really failed at my own test.
(Deirdre speaking)
Well done, team. That's awesome.
(Slide – Combine visuals with verbal explanations) (Ben speaking)
Righty. Let's skip forward. How are we going for time? Come on, let's start. Right, a couple of examples here. We’ll try to link it to different curriculum areas for you. Visuals with verbal explanation. Right, it supports comprehension and memory. So, in history, creating timelines for key events and accompanying images. Having those two things going on. I've got data, I've got images that help me. Then getting the students to annotate that. Summarising. Same with English. When you use storyboarding or map narratives, it's the same logic of having a visual that goes into text. That dual coding supports long-term memory by engaging in visual and verbal processing. Look for different ways of doing it. You guys are immensely creative teachers, as it is. What we're just encouraging you to do is going, how do we do this in a way that really embeds those memories?
Next one, retrieve space practice. Regular quizzes. This one here is space practice in health and PE. Again, we've got a lot of vocabulary that we're learning. A little bit of context. You know, we've got words like glycemic index, micronutrients, energy balance. We want them to be able to know the words, use the words, write about the words, share the words. Anything that enhances that by quizzing, checking in, buddy testing is useful.
Righto, Deirdre, how are we going? Can I just check in? Just any questions, guys? We've covered two. We've covered explicit teaching and that cognitive load. I just want to check in if there's any questions regarding those two topics before we jump forward. Okay, over to you, Deirdre.
(Slide Interleaving, Retrieval and Spaced Practice) (Deirdre speaking)
Kia ora, Ben. Ben's been talking about retrieval practice and spaced practice.
To add into that, think about interleaving practice. It's a learning strategy where you mix or interleave different topics or subjects while studying. So rather than focusing on one topic at a time, it's the strategy that is useful and it's not a strategy I have observed happening in classrooms a lot. It might be something that we can think about a little bit more and strengthen. It's seated in cognitive load. It enables students to revisit their learning, to commit it to long-term memory. The use of formative assessment practices are really helpful and useful in this. The strategies optimise the learning by encouraging deeper processing, by reducing forgetting, by improving the ability to transfer knowledge to new problems or to situations that are different to what students may have explored before. They help us to learn smarter, not just harder. They're ideal for both academic success and real-world skill building. Next slide, Ben. Is there anything you wanted to add to that?
(Ben speaking)
No, no, you keep going, Deirdre.
(Slide – practical strategies) (Deirdre speaking)
There's a table that kind of outlines the classroom application and then what the benefits are. I know, again, this is not new to most of us. This is stuff that is part of how we roll. It is, again, thinking about how you might strengthen that to enable acceleration. Keep that in mind. Next slide, please, Ben.
(Ben speaking)
Is there one thing I want to say in there? That's space practice. Often with the very busy curriculum we have and the amount of stuff we're trying to cover, we don't necessarily space practice out. We just keep moving forward on the stuff that we need to address. I'm thinking in terms of reading strategies and numeracy strategies that are cross-curriculum, going, how do we space that out within what we're doing? How do we make sure that students in the years 9, 10, and 11 are highly capable of those numeracy skills that are identified in the CAAs? Because ideally, when they engage in the CAAs, hopefully at some point in year 10, they've had a lot of practice over those two years or longer leading up to that. Some of that could be quite deliberate practice. The other one, I just want to emphasise retrieval practice. That is, we know students will use resources if they're available. This is using their brain, not their books. Retrieval is actively retrieving from your memory. The best ways to do that, those ideas, high stakes but quite fun. But we're really wanting them to recall from their thinking rather than diving into their book to find the answer. So even talking to them about why they don't bother to do that rather than getting back in their exercise book, whatever they did it on text.
(Deirdre speaking)
Right. Awesome. Thanks, Ben.
(Slide – Mix related concepts) (Deirdre speaking)
There's a couple of examples on the next two slides, an interleaving practice example that's seated in maths, year 10 maths, sorry. This isn't the teaching of it. It is the practice of it. It is the interleaving of different concepts over time that can really enhance how our students engage with their short-term and their long-term memory. Next example, Ben, please.
(Ben speaking)
Sorry, I'll just speak to that.
If you think about the learning they need to do to understand Pythagoras' theorem and the learning they need to do to find the error in the triangle, for example, you've got to work that up and then have that practice spaced out. I think that's quite important because often, in my experience with maths teachers, they'll teach Pythag and then they'll move on. Then they'll do trigonomic ratios and move on. Okay, we need to do some practice in there. Right.
(Deirdre speaking)
Thanks, Ben.
There's another example in terms of integrating diagrams and instructions. I've seen quite a bit of that in classrooms, particularly in science. All right, Ben, over to you. Metacognition and feedback.
(Slide - Metacognition and feedback) (Ben speaking)
Metacognition, that's a great word. Love it. Thinking about thinking.
Okay, we want students not just to do stuff, but we want them to think deeply about what they're doing. It's fascinating when we get the opportunity to talk to students. I often ask them what they're learning, and they'll tell me what they're doing. Schools that have put a bit of effort into metacognition and learning language, they'll tell us what they're learning and how they're learning. That's effectively the conversation we'd like to encourage.
If you look at all the questions on the right-hand side of that diagram, that's big enough on your screen. What am I doing? How will I do this? Why am I doing this? How does this link to something I've done before? What do I need to do to improve my performance? What is the most effective way of doing this? Can I apply this in other situations? How successful of this? How might I do it better next time? All those are great self-reflection questions. When students use them, they light up. I've seen students reflect deeply about how they're writing, what they've got in their content, how they've written it, what their next step is to improve it.
I think that with the information that you guys are getting from the CAAs and forming from the national report, also the NZQA report of strengths and weaknesses in student results, you can determine some of this really well going. I can help my students focus on the right stuff. I can be clear, and I can get these kids to think deeply about what they need to do differently.
That autonomy, that ownership, that student agency, whatever you want to call it, is helping them think and engage in that learning themselves.
(Slide – Metacognition is the process of…..) (Deirdre speaking)
Ben, it comes back to being deliberate, doesn't it? It comes back to some of those formative assessment strategies or deliberate acts of teaching that enable us to engineer opportunities for students to be able to do that.
(Ben speaking)
Totally. I think that clarity is key. I know what I'm learning, and I know how I'm going to learn it. Then I can check if I've learned it. Then I can think about what my next steps are. That means I own it as a student. I'll give you an example. This is quite a personal example. My daughter, she's at college. She's special needs, and she just attended CAA in May. It was fantastic. It was really interesting talking to her about what she put into her writing and what she didn't. She could talk me through that, which was pretty cool. That's what I hope we can get our students doing. How do we get them to really think about their thinking? Hence this quote, taking that step back away, getting enough distance, see what's going on. See those thoughts, what they really are.
(Slide – Practical strategies) (Ben speaking)
Here's some practical examples, real buildable ones. Metacognitive reflective journals. Journaling, however. I've seen this done digitally. I've seen it done practically on a little notebook, physical notebook. I've seen it done just as a conversation at the end of a lesson, where you go, what did we get out of today? What did I learn? How did I learn it? How well did I learn it? What's my next step? Any of those questions we had up before, great stimulus for that reflection. You could use a range to check in, especially if you've got some targeted focus on some numeracy and literacy strategies. What did you learn while doing this strategy? How did it go for you? Would it help you access text? Did it help you write more effectively? What's your next step? And of course, if you've got, you're working in buddies or got quite a collaborative space going, that peer feedback going, hey, we've got some success criteria here. Let's have a look at it together. How did we do? Then of course the goal-reference feedback loops. That's quite flash language, but here's what we're trying to achieve in class. I'm going to give you some feedback on that, that specific feedback from teachers.
(Slide – self-reflection) (Ben speaking)
We've got a few more examples here. The example of that reflected journal in English, History, or Social Sciences. I'm a science teacher, so I come to this with having done quite a bit of this in a science space, where students, we did a lot of reflection. Remember the lessons we tried to set aside at least five minutes for them to reflect at the end of the day going, what did you learn?
(Deirdre speaking)
Some schools are using exit passes, Ben.
(Ben speaking)
Yep, that's another good strategy.
A lot of ways to do it. Remember team, what we're trying to do here is stimulate this conversation for you and take it back to your school and go, how do we do this? If these just trigger some ideas for you, that's cool. If you take it back to your departments and go, hey, we're interested in looking at how we reflect at the end of the lesson. What strategies are you currently using? Which ones can we add to? Then here's the next example.
(Slide – formative feedback) (Deirdre speaking)
We'd be delighted to, if you were to share in the chat any of these strategies that you use currently that you find are very effective with your learners. There are a lot of people in the room that I think would enjoy knowing that they're doing the right things or to learn from you about new things.
(Ben speaking)
This example we've got up on the screen at the moment, that formative feedback, I think with digital spaces, that has increased massively. Sometimes too much, if you're responding to emails ridiculous hours. But in terms of education, people on Google Docs, giving that feedback specific to what you're trying to achieve is really helpful.
I think in the bottom, that timely, specific action was really important and giving students a chance to respond to that feedback is critical of the way that it's always done. And if you're thinking about, in my case, the writing aspect, the CAA is going, there's stuff we probably want to get feedback on in a very dynamic way with our students. We want to see more compound, compact sentences in what we're doing. We want to see the grammar and punctuations a bit more correct. That sentence wasn't grammatically correct, but it made sense. We really want to help them lift that level. What are we giving feedback on and how do we do it so they get a chance to respond to it?
(Deirdre speaking)
Ben, it just nicely links back to the explicit teaching, doesn't it? Also, the formative opportunities that students can give each other, particularly when we as kaiako often take, shoulder that responsibility all the time. We're the ones that leave the learning exhausted and our learners are still quite buoyed. Sharing that responsibility through self-assessment and peer assessment and feedback can be important as well.
(Ben speaking)
Now, we've sent out to the Te Manu Ka Rere schools, we've sent out the literacy pack of 10 lessons and also the numeracy pack, I think we've sent out to most people by now. Now, it's in those packs of resources that you can see some of the stuff evident in terms of clarity of what's happening in each lesson. You'll see that it's given opportunity for that reflection and metacognition and feedback is part of those lessons as well. It's worthwhile delving into that. If you haven't received them, you can let us know because I know they are pretty much good to go. I was pretty quick, taking them and getting them out to my schools, but I think we're still getting them out.
Righty, on to the last one. How are we going for time, Deirdre? 4.14pm. Ah, there we go. Thank you, Deirdre.
That'll be shortly to all schools or just the Te Manu Ka Rere schools?
(Deirdre speaking)
The Te Manu Ka Rere schools are getting these resource packs from their facilitators. In due course, the Ministry will have those available to others.
(Slide – Emotions and a calm environment) (Deirdre speaking)
Righty, how about you for this number five? So the last one we're exploring is something that we put a lot of work, time and energy into, and that's managing the emotions and the environment for our learners. We know it's significant and it impacts either positively or negatively on learning. If we are to think about the specific considerations, so Ben, if we go to the next slide, please.
(Slide – key considerations) (Deirdre speaking)
We have these seven things that are really important and have come through the research.
Environment and culture for the classroom, highly important. Again, I said earlier about not leaving anything to chance. We need to be deliberate about this. In terms of creating an emotionally safe and calm environment, we're responsible for that. If you go back one slide, Ben, please.
Positive relationships for all of those learners here in Aotearoa, that's significant. We're all working on it. Many of us are working through Russell Bishop's work. We're working through PB4L, and we're working through formative assessment strategies. Quite nicely, those three things work together in unison to enable our learners, and particularly in that emotional and emotionally settling way to create that calm environment.
Cultural identity and practice, co-constructed tikanga, rules, ways of being. If we want to manage or support our learners to manage their distractions, then we need to co-create what that looks like, sounds like, and what it doesn't. Then something that might be useful is how do each of your individual learners want to be approached if they move away from what you've agreed to in a classroom? How do you currently do that? I know I've worked in schools where the old adage was public praise and private punitive kōrero.
We have restorative and relational practices, and I've alluded to PB4L and Russell Bishop's work.
We also have the balance that needs to be kept between the positive and the negative that's happening in classes. When I think about that, I think about how we explicitly teach our kids to actively listen. How do we do that? How do we model that? How do we enable them to do that? It's the same with giving and receiving feedback. How do we explicitly enable that so in a very constructive way, we enable them to give positive feedback and to give feedback that could be negative and actually doesn't have to be. It could be through an inquiry question or it could be through something you wonder about.
And the final thing, really important, to have fun.
Ben, if we move on to the next slide, please.
(Slide – Emotions and Calm – Practical strategies) (Deirdre speaking)
Here's some practical strategies.
Co-constructing the tikanga and the rules. Positive teacher and student relationships.
The cultural identity. The restorative, relational, and fun culture. In terms of literacy and numeracy, we can build confidence to speak, read, write, or to problem solve. We can enable our learners to take risks and ask questions.
There's real value in enabling group, setting up groups. Say there's three to four students where the goal is to enable every individual to show they have learned. The collective responsibility exists for everyone in the group to enable the learning together.
You can employ little strategies. I've been talking with schools about traffic light strategy so that learners have the choice as to whether or not they need to draw their teacher into their space or they're happy to wrangle with whatever that is. That, again, is an explicit strategy that we can use to enable learners and enable them to take risks within their small group and ask questions.
We can employ strategies that enable teamwork, that social aspect of learning, to enable them to trust one another. There's a couple of examples on the next two slides.
(Slide – pro-actively build relationships) (Deirdre speaking)
Things that I've observed in classrooms, I know that many, many teachers and leaders spend a lot of time in this space thinking about whakawhanaungatanga, enabling that personal connection. That's not only between kaiako and ākonga, it's also between ākonga and ākonga. Why it works? Because in this way, our learners feel safe. They feel seen. They feel valued. I come back to deliberate acts of teaching and not letting anything to chance around learning. Next one, Ben, please.
(Slide – Using humour, circle check-ins & restorative kōrero) (Deirdre speaking)
This is something, I don't know if I've never not observed it, humour and check-ins and the restorative kōrero. We do this deliberately. And across Aotearoa, we tend to do this really quite well.
Anything you want to add to that, Ben, before we move on?
(Slide – key considerations) (Ben speaking)
I was just thinking, just coming back to here, actually. These bullet points are massive. I know how complicated potentially each of these are. I used to be a DP and leading some of this stuff in the college. It's tricky. We're trying to help adults learn different ways of doing stuff. I know that when we fire as facilitators, we're sharing some ideas here. This is simply stimulus going, let's have a think about this. I want to anchor it deeply in our approach to the CAA. It's going, when we're working with students and when we see potentially some of the stuff not happening, how do we help teachers improve their practice to get that relationship slightly better, to get that environment calmer?
I was working with a gentleman just the other day, fantastic example, and he was describing to me his class. It was a numeracy class. He decided to have a specific numeracy class in the school. He spent a lot of the time in the beginning of the year, just getting that class in a space of learning and calm and a very high positive teacher relationship. Those kids found that reassuring, it reduced the stress, it made it emotionally safe, it made them focus on learning. Now, I think as schools, we need to think very carefully about how we do that, especially with some of our students who are anxious about an assessment and they see the CAA as high risk, high stakes, and how do we reduce that for them? How do we get that calm for that cohort that we're going to do some focus work on in the next eight weeks? You can't do it all. You're going to have to think very carefully about what you put in play. But once again, some of the slide deck is there to challenge you going, maybe we need to think about that. Maybe you need some teachers that do spend those two minutes a day, for 10 days just to get that relationship better with a specific student.
Maybe it is thinking about how we have a chat, a class chat about how things are going. I think all those strategies are useful. Our job as facilitators for this webinar is to stimulate you guys to think about it going, what do we need to do differently? Because at the end of the day, what we're trying to help you guys figure out, is the next slide, which is acceleration.
(Slide – acceleration in literacy) (Ben speaking)
We really want some of these kids to make better progress than they have been. What do we need to do, very specifically? Out of this report we're going to bring you, which came out fairly recently, last year, 2024.
(Slide – Acceleration in Literacy) (Ben speaking)
There were some key points that link totally to what we're talking about, that explicit instruction, that we need to really help them understand reading comprehension and what strategies work for students, direct vocabulary instruction right across the curriculum. We want kids to know the language in our subjects and we want them to be able to read stuff in our subjects that they can access information through.
We need to teach those reading comprehension strategies. Now, in the Te Manu Ka Rere resource packs that we've got, there are specific reading comprehension strategies that you guys have access to. I've shared them with all my colleges and colleges have chosen ones that are appropriate for them, and subjects have chosen strategies that are appropriate for their areas. Delve into that.
We want the meaning and structure of key vocabulary and text to be taught explicitly. We want to help you guys address that disengagement in learning through what strategies are we using? How are we hooking into interests and background knowledge? I think out of that report, there's those points on acceleration literacy and then, of course, I've got the ones on numeracy as well.
(Slide – Acceleration in Numeracy) (Ben speaking)
That notion of a structured lesson, we talked about that earlier, the beginning, middle, and end. That explicit instruction.
How do we make that explicit instruction online so that the kids can get access at other times? That development of mathematical language, given the literacy requirements in the numeracy assessment, we've really got to work on the kids' ability to interpret the questions. That shift from concrete to pictorial to abstract, we didn't talk about that much in this, but doing something physically, going to, I've got a diagram or picture that explains it, to abstract thinking in maths is quite important. We do notice from the data that use of number lines would be really useful. You know, numerical number knowledge or numbers, fractions, negatives, where they all sit, how they interrelate, is really useful. And of course, that word problem instruction. All those key foci help us to accelerate the kids' ability in numeracy and literacy.
Righto team, we're coming up to 4.25pm. I know there was a lot of talking there. Hopefully that gave you a bunch of ideas.
(Slide – Questions & sharing ideas) (Ben speaking)
We've now got an opportunity for questions and sharing our ideas. If you do have any questions, please feel free to put them in the chat. The chat has been very quiet, but fire away if you've got any questions.
What we've endeavoured to do this afternoon is to share practices that you can take away and talk to your teams about. We posed at the beginning those five questions.
(Slide – Unpacking the Science of Learning) (Ben speaking)
Part of the Te Mauna Ka Rere work is helping you guys have a very clear implementation plan between now and September. I would encourage that within that time period, there are some conversations around these ideas, the science of learning, what it looks like for your students. I know in the schools I'm working with, there’ve got specific cohorts they're focusing on. A number of schools are focusing quite strongly on Year 10. They're going, okay, we're going to put a bit of effort in between now and September, because some of them had a go in May. We know most of them are ready now. Some are focusing on Year 11s, because they have a cohort that they really want to go across the line. Some of them are focusing on Year 9. Not so many anymore. That's why they're not seeing anyone.
(Question about accessing resources) (Deirdre speaking)
I think you'll find it is available on the Ministry website. The link takes you to other links. It's not straightforward, I have to say. We'll find it for you. Kia ora, Janet.
(Slide – Next steps:) (Deirdre speaking)
This last slide, before we finish up, is really about the old adage of a goal without a plan is just a wish. If there's anything that you have as a takeaway today, put it down, write it down and put it into action and enable yourselves as leaders or as kaiako to do something with it. Particularly in the classroom for our learners, there's an awful lot of PLD out there that goes nowhere. Do take it back to your teams. Have the whakaaro and the korero to enable, well, what next? What's the possibility? Think about acceleration of your learners learning for literacy and numeracy, te reo Matatini and pāngarau, so they're successful in NCEA.
We have, as Ben said earlier, this window of eight weeks to make a difference for some of our learners who have sat the CAAs already and have another opportunity in September. It is also essential that we enable those learners who perhaps are doing their passing of literacy and numeracy through achievement standards and they're doing this internally and externally, so they've got a wee bit longer. Think about what that means for that team.
(Participant shares URL to question asked previously)
Oh, you found it, Ben. Kia ora.
(Ben speaking) Someone found it. Thank you, Rachel, for finding that. Thank you.
(Deirdre speaking)
Thank you so much, Rachel.
(Ben speaking)
I think one of the big challenges with this material that we're sharing this afternoon is effectively, like you guys have attended, which is fantastic, and you go away and reflect on it, but the challenge is as leaders, how do we impact other teachers in our team within the school? I think that's the bigger challenge going, hey, we've got teachers as leaders, you've got teachers that you want to help improve their capabilities in this space. What does that look like and what needs to be focused on? That's hence why we're suggesting having a clear plan here would be really useful. That's part of the leadership challenge of CAAs.
Right, here's our up-and-coming webinars. I haven't updated this, so there might be some on this that I have passed. Yeah, that first one has already passed. Apologies.
The assessment for learning, the one at the top, you might have attended, which would have been cool. Deirdre was the facilitator on that as well. We've got a recording of that somewhere.
We've just had the second iteration of science and learning, and then we've got this one coming up, the supporting area for language learners with NCEA. That's Julie's. Julie is facilitating that, isn't it, Deidre? Julie Luxton? She's brilliant. Absolute guru on ESOL. Well worth attending.
Then we've got these other two. Do we have dates for those yet?
(Deirdre speaking)
No, not to my knowledge. We don't. The recordings team will be available from the Ministry website.
(Ben speaking)
We don't have a time around that, eh?
(Deirdre speaking)
No, we don't. I'm sorry. That comes down to some of those administrative tasks in the background. Keep a lookout for it.
(Slide – karakia whakamutunga)
A big thank you to all of those who have joined us today. We appreciate your attendance, your thinking in this space, and what you intend to do going forward.
Me karakia tatou.
Tēnei rā te whakairi ake i te kete o te wānanga,
Tōna mauri nō runga, nō Rangi, nō raro, nā papa.
Tēnei te mauri o te mātoranga, ka whakatakina ake, kia wātea ai enei pūkenga.
Hui e! Kaiki e!
[ File Resource ]
- Title: Science of learning - accelerating literacy/numeracy slides
- Description: Slides to accompany the Accelerating literacy/numeracy using the science of learning practices across the curriculum webinar
- File URL: https://ncea-live-3-storagestack-53q-assetstorages3bucket-2o21xte0r81u.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-07/05%20TMKR%20Science%20of%20Learning%20workshop.pdf?VersionId=51vZYcHp3ELTO6_rZrA6RECq9FuNn5fK
- File Extension: pdf
- File Size: 1MB
- Science of learning - accelerating literacy/numeracy slides.pdf
- Description: Slides to accompany the Accelerating literacy/numeracy using the science of learning practices across the curriculum webinar
Science of learning - accelerating literacy/numeracy slides
[ Video Resource ]
- Title: Targeted support and accelerating numeracy learning
- Description: Webinar about Targeted support and accelerating numeracy learning
- Video Duration: 57 minutes
- Video URL: https://player.vimeo.com/video/1095806873
- Transcript: Kia ora tātou
Kia ora tātou, ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa, nau mai, haere mai ki o mātou hui tēnei ahi ahi. Lynette and I really appreciate your being here. I know you've got some very, very busy, busy business going on at school.
We will get straight into our kōrero. We're going to start with our karakia. I know some people will be hopping into the meeting as the day goes, as the session goes.
Kia ora tātou, and we'll start with our karakia.
(Slide - Evaluation Associates company karakia) (Doreen speaking)
Ka pai? Ok, me karakia tātou. Tau mai te mauri o te wānanga, ki runga ki enei pūkenga, kia mātāmua ai, ko te ako kounga a te tamaiti. Ko ia ki mua, ko ia ki muri o ēnei kōrero, kia puta ai ia, ki te whaiao, ki te ao mārama, hui e, tāiki e!
(Slide – Introduction slide for Doreen Bailey) (Doreen speaking)
Kia ora tātou, ko Doreen Bailey ahau. He uri au no Te Aupouri, no te Ngāti Manu, Ngāti Tarawhai, me Tūhaurangi hoki. I nā e nei kei Rotorua tōku kaunga noho, e ngāre kei Kororāreka hoki tōku kaunga noho.
I live between Rotorua and Kororāreka. Kororāreka is way up the other end of the motu. But my whānau are down here and I've got mokopuna who are down here.
That's why I centre myself in the middle of the Bay of Plenty. Just a little bit about me. I've got a bit of teaching experience under my belt across primary, intermediate and the secondary sectors. Teaching maths years 9 to 10, 11, most of my recent teaching. Former tumuaki at Te Kura Takiwa o Taipa, which was a huge highlight of my life. Leadership roles in Kahui Ako and Far North Principles Association.
Currently I lead the team at Evaluation Associates for Niho Taniwha, so supporting cultural capability and leadership. Really specialising in building that culturally responsive practice, bilingual education and effective use of data. So, bringing all of that to the korero that I have with my schools with the literacy and numeracy project we have here.
I'm an accredited facilitator through Evaluation Associates. Ko e nā, that's me. I'll hand over to Lynette to introduce herself and then we'll get on with our session. Kia ora.
(Slide – Introduction for Lynette Hay) (Lynette speaking)
Kia ora Dors. I have spent twenty-eight years now, twenty-eight years in education, twenty-three across primary, secondary and tertiary. And the last five years outside of the classroom with EA.
My specialty areas, well, my secondary subject specialisation as you see there, digital technologies and computer science. However, when you're in primary you kind of learn to teach pretty much every subject and then you specialise when you get up to the secondary area. As with Dors, cultural capability and in terms of accredited facilitation.
I'm also one of the maths and stats team that are delivering the refreshed curriculum across NZ at the moment, which is a wonderfully challenging task at times. Forty-five and a half thousand teachers, I think that we have to take care of. There's a team of sixty of us.
I'm from Niue, Niue Island, but I'm married and settled here in NZ. Kia ora.
(Slide – Webinar goals) (Doreen speaking)
Kia ora. We're going to have a look at what the goals are for this afternoon.
We're going to clarify what acceleration means in the context of NCEA numeracy and really understand how that differs from general progress or remediation. We're going to understand the distinction between numeracy and mathematics and how this impacts acceleration strategies. We're going to identify specific factors that slow or enable rapid progress for learners who are yet to meet the co-requisites in numeracy and then really explore how all kaiako can deliver targeted support that accelerates numeracy learning in real world cross-curricular context.
That seems to be quite a challenge for our schools as we're now sort of further down the road in this project. I'll shout out to my schools with Gisborne Girls High and Tongariro. Kia ora.
We’re really looking at that whole school strategy that, you know, that we look at with all kaiako focusing in on numeracy. And then we've got a few high impact strategies we're going to share with you that you can implement immediately and see what you can do in the next few weeks. So that's what we're going to explore this afternoon.
(Slide – What does acceleration mean?) (Doreen speaking)
What does acceleration mean? What does that mean? In the context of NCEA, it really refers to targeted teaching that enables students to make rapid progress towards meeting the numeracy correct. It's not about teaching faster or covering more content, but about being really strategic and timely with your support. So how are we noticing students, how are we noticing the gaps and then what are we going to do differently? Acceleration strategies are responsive, they're focused and often short-term interventions that help learners catch up or meet key goals within weeks.
Lynette will pop into this hui as she wants to share anything as well. Because we've got some experiences that may give you more clarity.
(Slide – what acceleration IS) (Doreen speaking)
What acceleration is - It's intentional and focused. It uses diagnostic evidence to identify key capabilities that students need for success in upcoming learning and assessment and addresses them precisely. Thinking about your own setting, what sort of evidence do you have, that you use to identify those key capabilities? Often in our high schools, we have certain people who are really good at doing that and that they the wear the pōtae to do that.
But often it doesn't spread across the school. How do we do that in a much better way? Acceleration is time-bound. Targets improvement within a limited framework to support their readiness for the future and learning opportunities.
In this sense, we're looking at the NCEA Literacy and Numeracy or real-world application. They're success oriented, so they support students to strengthen core numeracy capabilities so they can really confidently engage in curriculum learning and assessment, not just pass the test. They're embedded also in meaningful context. Grounded in rich relevant learning tasks that build transferable skills, not test drills. So that's what acceleration is with a bit of an overview.
(Slide – what acceleration IS NOT) (Doreen speaking)
Now, what acceleration is not.
It's not about remediation. You don't need to go and think you have to reteach everything, just the essential capabilities that unlock access. If there is a gap that a student has, it's not about reteaching all of the things. It's just about reteaching those specific things that need to be clarified or practiced.
Acceleration is not unfocused. It's informed by evidence and designed to strengthen specific capabilities.
Ongoing tutoring. It’s not ongoing tutoring; it's not indefinite support forever. It's targeted. It's short term and designed to build learning independence and readiness. It's timeliness. It's in the moment.
Then it's not also about teaching to the test. It's not really about preparing for one assessment. It's about building that enduring numeracy capability that enables success across the context. Including but not limited to NCEA.
That's really leaning in on that space of every teacher being a kaiako of numeracy, and how we make that very real for our students. That they're building that capability and understanding on an everyday basis and being able to apply it.
(Slide – Reflecting on acceleration) (Doreen speaking)
Reflecting on acceleration. I just want you to think about - examining intervention approaches. Ask yourself some of these questions.
What data or evidence do you currently use to identify students who need acceleration? Rather than just general support?
What does targeted support look like in your context or subject? Who delivers it and how often? Do you have push in programmes that go into classroom? Or do you have withdrawal programs that come out? Do you have specific classes for numeracy? Some schools have set up some specific literacy and numeracy classes.
Do your current interventions aim to catch students up, or move them forward faster?
When in the year do you typically begin focused support for numeracy? Is it soon enough to make a difference?
Looking at targeted support - Who delivers it and how often? Do your current interventions aim to catch students up or move them forward faster? When in the year do you typically begin focused support for numeracy? Is it soon enough to make a difference?
If you've been waiting all of this time to wait for the numeracy to happen and then wait for the results, we're sort of well down the track in terms of time.
As we go through, if you've got any thoughts about these things, you can add to the chat and Lynette will pick up on that and come through with the questions or kōrero. Please feel free to add your thoughts in those chats. I'll give you a couple of minutes to have a think about one or two of those questions.
(Slide – Numeracy vs. Mathematics) (Lynette speaking)
(Slide – What’s the difference?) (Doreen speaking)
What's the difference? Difference between numeracy and mathematics, and as you can see, we've got a list there. Maths is a discipline, abstract concepts going deep into algebra, geometry, calculus and reasoning; Often taught as a standalone subject; The focus is on conceptual understanding, procedures and problem-solving strategies. Examples are solving quadratic equations and improving geometric theorems.
Whereas numeracy is the practical application of math skills in everyday contexts like budgeting, measuring, interpreting graphs. It's cross-curricular rather than a standalone. It appears in science, technology, PE and social studies. Focuses on functionality, using math skills to solve real world problems. Some examples are estimating cost, reading bus timetables, interpreting health statistics. I would add in things there like working out your KiwiSaver. If I'm going to go and sign up for a contract and I want to negotiate my pay. All of those things that the numeracy helps us in our everyday lives. These are really essential skills. So important.
(Lynette speaking)
I want to just add something in there if I can, there Dors.
(Doreen speaking)
Yep, sure.
(Lynette speaking)
With a number of our students that went, it's really important that they understand the difference between the two. Because it's actually, the struggle is often not the mathematics. It's about interpreting and applying that to unfamiliar situations. As we go on a little bit further, we'll talk about some challenges that come along with a lot of these exams. That it's not really the math test first. It's a literacy test before you can even get to the numeracy.
(Doreen speaking)
Because it's multiple layers, isn't it? It's like what am I being asked to do? I'm not going to give you some given some discrete numbers to tutu with. I'm being asked to solve a problem. The literacy in all of that is the challenge as well. Just like you said, Lynette.
(Slide – How this impacts acceleration strategies) (Doreen speaking)
How does this impact acceleration strategy? If you're accelerating in maths, you're tending to focus in on filling those conceptual gaps. Understanding pace, value, fractions. Building fluency with maths procedures like your number operations, your algebraic manipulation, and you're advancing through curriculum levels more quickly through compacted or tiered content. Whereas acceleration and numeracy focuses on improving students' ability to apply their mathematical knowledge in unfamiliar or everyday contexts.
It emphasises reasoning, estimation, interpretation and communication. And it's often tied to functional benchmarks such as those used in the NCEA Literacy or Numeracy Co-requisites assessments. That's why we're here. It's about that work. How we support all of our kaiako in our school to be those kaiako of numeracy, and how to understand what they can do to support our ākonga achieve that numeracy.
(Slide – Acceleration through targeted support) (Doreen speaking)
When you've got some targeted support, so that's one of the most effective levers for acceleration. If you've got your target support, the features of that are precision, timeliness, relevance, responsiveness and a low cognitive load. Your precision really helps teachers address the actual conceptual or skill gaps. How do you find those gaps? And then how do you develop a strategy that's going to help them accelerate and understand and close that gap? Avoiding unnecessary repetition.
Timeliness - delivering the support when it's needed, not weeks later. Prevent widening the gaps. You're leaving kids behind if we don't close those gaps up early. As we move on with lessons, they get left behind and the gap gets wider.
The relevance - using those real-life contextual tasks to make learning meaningful, improving your transfer and retention.
Responsiveness - adapts to the learners pace, allowing for faster movement through the curriculum. This is a challenge because we're asking our teachers to really be able to diversify their teaching and adapt their teaching to meet the needs of all of their ākonga in their class.
Low cognitive load - breaks down complex problems into manageable chunks so the learners can focus on reasoning. Not giving them much more, much more, much more. Just breaking that right down until we can actually get them into little chunks and then getting them to practice a lot of that there.
(Slide – Every kaiako is a teacher kaiako of numeracy) (Doreen speaking)
Every kaiako is kaiako of numeracy. That's the statement from the Ministry of Education.
(Slide – LNSiS self-review tool) (Doreen speaking)
When we've been working in schools, we've used the literacy and numeracy self-assessment, self-review tool. What we want to be doing is all working towards embedding and sustaining this progress in literacy and numeracy across our curriculum.
Every kaiako is a kaiako of literacy and numeracy, and if you're in that space of building an awareness - your kaiako are aware of the changes and understand their responsibility to cater for the needs. If they're planning for change - your kaiako are planning for changes. They're contributing to the whole school readiness plan and are supported to adapt their practice to cater for the diverse needs. If you're implementing change - the kura is prepared for the changes. They're working collaboratively to strengthen their literacy and numeracy to cater for the diverse needs. If you're embedding and sustaining - kaiako are supported by a whole school literacy and numeracy approach and actively support the diverse needs of all ākonga. So that's why I wanted to keep using this time that we have together to stretch ourselves towards that embedding and sustaining. But if you can think about where your school is right now and just judging from what evidence you have at your fingertips, in your head about where you would be.
I wonder where you'd place yourself on this LNSiS, this self-review tool.
If you're putting yourself in planning for change, how would you be working towards implementing change? But also asking yourself, why would I put myself in planning for change? Are our teachers just planning changes? Are we actually on the waka yet? Have we got the readiness plan going? Do we all have a common way of talking about this in our school? Are we adapting our practice? Can we talk about what we do differently in our pedagogy? You might be planning for change, but what might working towards implementing change mean for you as a school?
(Lynette speaking)
I encourage you to think about one instance or opportunity where numeracy is currently present in the programme or subject that you're currently teaching. The reason why I bring that up is because often there are subjects that lend themselves quite easily to numeracy. Whereas with others they may have been professionals in their field and then have come into the teaching profession as specialist teachers, but may not have had that opportunity or that length of time to develop teaching as a professional practice and may need some help to see where numeracy occurs a bit more naturally.
(Doreen speaking)
We're in for the long game. The long game is that all kaiako are teachers of literacy and numeracy at the end of the day. The short game is how are we going to get these kids across these line, across these challenges with the co-requisites and then also how are we going to plug those gaps so that we're not stressing out when the students are in year 12 and they have to keep relying on the achievement standards because those avenues are going to close down for us. We've been building numeracy.
(Discussing questions and statements from the chat) (Lynette speaking)
For example, my one was Technology, so that was easy enough. Computer science, the mathematics just naturally occurs. What about some other subjects? Cooking, there's a lot of numeracy in that. The music teacher, that kind of stuff. What if they've come in from their profession and have done some teacher training, but haven't spent as long in their training or experience?
For example, my subject was Technology, so that was easy enough. Computer science, that just naturally occurs.
Angus has put in the chat, I love mathematics and feel our department carries a lion's share of the responsibility to prepare students.
Sometimes other teachers don't know where numeracy fits into the subject and may need a bit of assistance.
We're going to drop a link to some case studies in the chat later on. There's a whole section in there, of a lot of information. There's a literacy and numeracy matrix that we can drop a link into the chat. Lynette are you able to do that.
(slide – phase, responsibilities and actions, examples) (Doreen speaking)
When we're looking at that building awareness phase, we've been discussing it a bit, here's the responsibility and action descriptions, you know, again, recognising that literacy and numeracy are part of everyone's role.
An example is a science teacher attends a staff meeting where the literacy and numeracy co-requisites introduced. They begin to reflect on how they ask students to interpret data or explain processes clearly.
If you're planning for change, you are engaging with school-wide planning and identifying adaptations in your own areas.
Example, a PE teacher works with the literacy lead to co-plan a unit. I was in a school the other day that they were doing exactly that. The PE teacher was developing a whole unit and he was working with the literacy and numeracy leads, so he could then really explicitly teach in his subject exactly what he needed to do. Looking at the words that were pertinent to the particular subject and then going from there. That was really successful.
Implementing the change - Teachers and leaders being collaboratively applying those strategies and day-to-day teaching. Actively trialling and evaluating those changes to practice. Once you're implementing those, you’re actively looking at what's working. A social studies team is redesigning an assessment so that students justify their position using statistical data, supporting both outcomes and numeracy competencies. They meet weekly to share what's working. These are examples of how you'd be implementing change.
If you're at the embedding and sustaining end of the continuum, your school timetable would include some cross-curricular literacy and numeracy blocks, perhaps. PLD is embedded annually and a coaching model supports ongoing growth. All subject teams use common language for scaffolding, reading and reasoning. Those are some examples of how that LNSiS rubric goes.
(Slide – numeracy audit) (Doreen speaking)
Here's a question for you. What opportunities currently exist within your teaching programme for students to develop and apply their numeracy skills? If you can share one in the chat right now, we'll have a look and do a little bit of an audit.
(Discussing questions from the chat) (Lynette speaking)
The numeracy requirements of explaining, justifying and things like that, which are the higher order thinking skills. In terms of solo taxonomy, if your assessment tool, either if you're using e-asTTle or PATs, will provide you with data that shows whether your students are able to use the higher order thinking skills of relational or abstract to respond to answers, as opposed to just simple recall.
(Doreen speaking)
That's where we have to deliberately teach. Deliberately teach how to solve problems, give them some scaffolding.
(Slide – What affects Success in Numeracy?) (Doreen speaking)
What affects the success in numeracy?
(Slide – Common barriers to success in numeracy) (Doreen speaking)
Some of the common barriers are often affective, that’s the confidence, the mindset of our students, because a lot of them face things like this, think it's maths, can't do it and stop. It's not just the academic and some of it's cultural as well. A lot of our kids have that maths anxiety. You often hear of parents even saying, I was no good at maths. I don't expect you to be as well. Also, there's that huge fear of being wrong because it's either going to be black or white. The fear of being wrong is a very real thing for our kids and not understanding. It really shuts down their willingness to try because then they might set themselves up for a little bit of being exposed that they don't know what their understanding is.
Students often face unfamiliar context if a question uses terms like mortgage payments or electricity usage. If these aren't part of their lived experience. They can cause real confusion and they're more likely to disengage and switch right off.
Low confidence is really common. Even when students know what to do, they may second guess themselves or not attempt a solution at all. How are we breaking down all of that whakamā or that anxiety or that lack of willingness to try and be wrong? It's OK to be wrong. It’s about how we do that in our teaching programs and the way we teach to do that, to break that down and support our ākonga. These are often the barriers.
(Lynette speaking)
I just add to that as well. You mentioned not only parents having math anxiety, but in our experience or currently with covering the refreshed curriculum for maths. A lot of our teaching, our current teachers also have math anxiety. That's another consideration as well.
(Slide – Common barriers to success in numeracy) (Doreen speaking)
We often see that students don't fail because they don't know the maths. They struggle with the language of the question and the multi-step problem solving and knowing where to start. For example, students misunderstanding something like approximately how many. When you unpack that, that would really throw a lot of our kids out of kilter, wouldn't it? Approximately how many? If they're not used to thinking about estimation and making things make sense, they may really stop and be possum in the headlights.
Confusion when data is shown in unfamiliar forms like pie charts versus tables. If they're used to tables and they get pie charts, that might stop them.
Students stopping after one step when multiple are needed. Calculate and then compare. There are lots of layers to this. This tells us that the barriers are not purely about maths content but about navigating and communicating in numerous ways.
(Slide – Let’s unpack an example) (Doreen speaking)
Let's have a look at an example. Two groups of year 10 students are taking part in a design challenge day. Each group follows a different schedule of timed workshop rotations with fixed breaks in between.
Even that bit of orange kōrero there is quite challenging when you really start to go deep on that. The questions here are, what time does each team finish their final workshop before lunch? Number two, how many more minutes in total does team A spend in workshops compared to team B? Which team spends more total time including both workshops and breaks in the full pre-lunch session? And how many minutes? And then they've got the schedule on the side. Team A schedule and team B schedule there.
I was looking at this today when I was preparing for this kōrero and I thought some of my students would be looking at question one would go, OK, if I'm a on the lines learner, I'm looking for final workshop and I can't find final workshop words anywhere in team A and team B schedule. So not even understanding that I have to do some stuff before I find the final time. You know, immediately I'm disadvantaged because I'm looking for on the line stuff.
We've got to teach our kids to look at on the line, between the lines and beyond the lines. We need to go deeper to just even understanding that little bit.
Have a think about which other barriers are here and which barriers might affect student success in this example. How could we support their success? If you throw some ideas in the chat, what are some of the things, the other barriers in this particular example? For example, how many more minutes in total? Okay, it's electronic. Yes, they want to write things down and circle the key data.
Have they got some supports there for them to help to understand? Have they been taught a scaffolding way of unpacking these? A lot of our students would look at this and think they're doing a literacy exam, not numeracy. The way the schedule is laid out as a list instead of as a table, immediately disadvantaging their thinking, isn't it? They then have to teach our kids to go okay, what information have we got? How do we unpack that? Us being conscious of these things really makes a big difference when we start to practice our students at unpacking problems.
(Slide – Let’s unpack an example) (Doreen speaking)
Let's have a look at another example. Aroha is helping prepare food for a school hangi. She pours 2.4 litres of water into a large pot and says it took her three minutes to fill it using a tap. Her classmate Nikau says that means the tap delivers more than 0.75 litres of water per minute. The question here is, is Niko's claim reasonable? Use the measurements provided to explain your answer.
So, again, what sort of barriers are there in this example? Then how could we support ākonga success? Throw something in the chat. What do you think? What does reasonable mean? Do they know how to justify? We've got to teach these things. Students often don't understand the different operations and which one to use. What's a hangi? That might be completely unfamiliar for a student.
The big one here is reasonable, isn't it? What does reasonable mean? It's quite a broad idea there. Anybody got some ideas about what we do to support ākonga success? Helping to reword the question. That means the tap delivers more than. That's a complex way of saying out of the tap came. Showing them how to put it into words.
The cube structure is a really good strategy. We're going to share that with everybody else as well in just a moment.
Having those scaffolds, having those ways of unpacking, rewriting, rethinking and drawing is a huge thing to.
(Lynette speaking)
You might notice that one there. It says it's Nicole's claim.
But there's nothing there that states the word claim. It says her classmate Nicole says, so if they don't know the word claim, then they may not know what the question is actually asking.
(Slide – Let’s unpack an example) (Doreen speaking)
In this example here, kākahia are becoming rare in Aotearoa. A conservation group is running a protection project to help restore kākahia numbers in local rivers. A single adult kākahia releases between 200,000 and 500,000 larvae each breeding season. Only one breeding season occurs every two years.
There's a lot of information there. Question, if all the larvae survived, about how many kākahia would you expect to get from one adult in eight years? Show the calculations you use to get your answer. Yes, a lot of science language here.
Again, that question, what are the barriers and how can we support?
(Lynette speaking)
Some of you mentioned earlier students who have just recently come to New Zealand. One of the things I deliberately did when I designed these three examples of the questions that we just had is to try and give examples that normally pop up. You'll notice also there is no picture that goes with that. Some of you mentioned earlier students who have just recently come to New Zealand. One of the things I deliberately did when I designed these three examples of the questions that we just had is to try and give examples that normally pop up. You'll notice also there is no picture that goes with that. If you didn't know what a kākahia was, it doesn't matter if you live in New Zealand, if you have no idea, it's actually a shellfish. I only know that because I Googled it.
(Doreen speaking)
I had to Google it as well because I had no idea it was freshwater mussel. Immediately when I talk about larvae, I think of worms. So, you know, I'm completely out of context.
Lots in this question here and lots of barriers. All right, so we'll move on to the next one.
(Slide – NCEA Numeracy Planning Resources) (Doreen speaking)
This is where we were talking before about the numeracy planning resources that are all available on the NCEA website. There's a lot in there. I'm not sure if you've been able to find those guides for alternative education. There's a list there of guides that have been broken down into examples of what you can do in each of these subjects. If you've not done it yet and not found these, there's a little link down the bottom there, that you can copy, or take a photo of, and find these.
If you can share those around with your staff. I know one school that I've been working with printed them all off, gave them all out to their different departments. And then departments that these weren't specifically designed for picked up ones and thought, oh, we could actually adapt that and use that idea.
It's just a starting point, but they are quite good in terms of giving you some ideas about where to go. Weaving that numeracy throughout your subjects.
(Slide – Are they ready?) (Doreen speaking)
Are they ready? When we are considering whether to enter our learners, reflecting on whether they display a level of readiness. Academically - does a data include a level of knowledge and understanding that would serve as a foundation for the student to leverage off? All of these factors, if we think about them before they're ready and you've just come through this week of getting your students to enter the CAA, some schools have not entered their students into the numeracy, some have and you've all done it quite differently to each other. Are they ready academically.
Emotionally - do they have that confidence that they can engage? Some of the feedback we've had is they sort of understand that this is quite important and they're ready to give it a go.
The assessment literacy - have they got the skills needed to access the question and know what's required? For example, explain versus describe. We're going to have to teach the students the difference between those two things. Lynette was talking earlier about the more advanced levels of thinking with the solo taxonomy, about how we prepare our students to answer those high-level questions.
Digital literacy - can your students confidently navigate the online space to do the task? Scrolling, single word answers. I think initially some of the students that did some of the testing didn't realise there was more and they missed out on finishing the whole test because they thought they'd finished. All those sorts of things. Are they ready?
(Slide – Practical Strategies to Accelerate Progress) (Doreen speaking)
(Slide – Where do the gaps lie?) (Doreen speaking)
Where do the gaps lie? We need to support and accelerate our students with numeracy, knowing what your learners strengths and gaps are, and then using formative assessment tools eg. e-asTTle or PATs.
You'll all have your different ways of understanding where the gaps lie. These can really quickly hone you in on what your learners needs are and what to focus on next. Also, just things you do on a daily basis too, and you understand and know in time that your students are either getting it or not getting it, and there are gaps in the class, in their learning.
(Slide – Strategies to support numeracy) (Doreen speaking)
You teach clearly and step by step.
Use diagrams and visual tools to show your thinking.
Teach the students to spot patterns and problems eg. you're getting two similar ones. You've done one, get another one. What are the patterns? What have you done? You've done this before, but something slightly different.
Help students think about their thinking.
Stretch the students thinking with challenging tasks.
Extending them once they've practiced a few things that have gone particularly well and they get that under their belt. How can you support them into the next one?
(Slide – Strategies to support numeracy) (Doreen speaking)
This is one of the strategies that schools use to unpack a question. This is RAVEN. This is designed for literacy and numeracy tasks where reasoning is required.
Read - the question carefully.
Ask - yourself what I already know, what's being asked.
Visualise - the situation with a sketch, number line or table.
Estimate - and calculate what seems reasonable. Again, that word reasonable. We're getting them to think about what makes sense.
Note - your reasoning using everyday language and numbers.
Different frameworks for different purposes. This one here is where reasoning is required. One strategy is not going to fit all of the different situations you'll be teaching about.
The next one is the U.P.S check strategy. This involves three steps.
Understanding the problem. Reading it again carefully, what's being asked, what information is given.
P is for plan. You decide on a strategy or writing an equation or using other techniques.
Solve is carry out the plan.
Then check. Verify that the answer is reasonable. Again, that reasonable is coming up and make sure it answers the original questions. All of these are sort of similar, but they're all a little bit different.
The cube strategy. I've got a couple of friends who really love this cube strategy. It helps students remember the steps involved in solving word problems.
Circle the numbers, identify and circle the numbers.
Underline the question. What is asking you to do?
Box the keywords that are key indicators of the operation deep to be performed. Like what's the total? What's the sum? What's the difference? Boxing those keywords. You're going to deliberately teach those operational words.
E is eliminate the extra information. There might be some superfluous stuff that they don't need.
Then solve the problem using identified information and operation.
There are three strategies we've just shared with you. There are some others. Reads, ride and fast draw. I know there are a bunch of other ones for literacy, but these ones are designed specifically for numeracy. Is anybody using any of these regularly? Or are you using another one that we haven't mentioned? If you pop that in the chat and just perhaps say a little comment about how well it's been used across the school.
I think the benefit of these things that the students learn the strategies and then they get to see them in all the different settings. If you're doing it in this subject and that subject and that subject, it's normal. It's becoming completely normalised in your school.
Is there anybody using anything different?
I think when you find a common, something that you can use across your school, it strikes up conversations with your staff so they can share. You're getting that shared understanding of what you're doing and you can have those discussions about what's working for you and how well those things are going.
(Slide – try it out) (Doreen speaking)
If you chose a strategy. What would you need to explicitly teach or model for students to successfully answer this question? On average, people in Aotearoa New Zealand use about 150 litres of water per day for household purposes. The population of New Zealand is just over five million people. Here is a headline ‘drought danger!’. You need some knowledge about what drought is.
Kiwi’s use over two hundred and seventy billion litres of water per year. Is the headline realistic? Explain your reasoning using the information provided.
Grab one of those strategies and see if you can have a quick go at how you would unpack that problem using one of those.
(Lynette speaking)
In this one here, our focus is to get you to think about what would you need to explicitly teach or model?
Using any of those strategies or scaffolds going through and talking it out, circling things, finding out what the actual question is. Is the headline realistic? What does realistic mean? What's the difference between explaining and describing, arguing, that kind of stuff?
(Doreen speaking)
It's even really good for us when we're teaching our senior students too, isn't it? Because all of their assessment is unpacking a problem. You've got to write about what you've discovered and then explaining your reasoning is often the part that gets left out in that. Justifying, explaining what words do I use? How do I get practised at that? There's a lot in that.
Big ideas, aren't they? We often throw a whole lot of these problems at our students without really picking through. I think the more we use these scaffolds, the more we use the strategies, the more we understand about what we're asking our students to do. Then we can help them and then find out where the gaps are.
Thank you very much for giving that a go.
(Slide – Challenge) Doreen speaking
Our last question for you, on our last slide, what could you do specifically, what could you do differently? What is one thing you could implement in the next three weeks after having this little korero today? Then how will you be able to check its effectiveness?
Thinking of what we've shared with you, what's one thing that you could take away and put into place in the next three weeks? Then what are going to be the measures of success that you'll be looking for?
(Doreen speaking)
That was our final question to you all. I hope you've been able to take away something from this afternoon and use it as something practical and go and share the conversation, perhaps, or do what you want to do.
If there's no more korero, if you want to…. (Reading out a message from the chat)
(Doreen speaking)
Try them out. Give them out to people and say, which ones do you like? And then see what people say. Get them to trial them with one of these students or a group of students, maybe, and then try and land on one for a start. Get that across your school and then perhaps diversify and look for some other ones.
Any final words from you, Lynette?
(Lynette speaking)
No, just all the best with that and give those things a go. As we mentioned earlier, it very much is about exposure, context and getting through the language. Even making it consistent across the school that each subject repeat a certain word so that students get used to hearing it. That reasonable is the same in maths and science as whatever else it is. That there is a bank of words that you just hear repeated all the time. Things like that.
(Doreen speaking)
I gave you that link before Lynette on this case studies. Now on that NCEA website as well, Lynette's going to pop a little link into the chat now. It's for the case study. Secondary schools that are doing something different. One teacher across the school at Kapiti College used a common language about when the kids are answering the question, they then had to go and justify why they said that. Yes, because, or no, because. They had to finish the sentences.
Whenever they were saying something. She said every teacher started doing that. Even just that one thing.
No, because, or yes, because. I can explain that because, you know, getting them to do that made a huge difference to their capability. There are a lot of those case studies in there. They're only about two pages long. You don't need to read all of them, but I'd say, you know, just pick out one and maybe sit around with one of your teams and say, well, what can we learn from this one?
They're really, really good supports. If there's nothing else, I'm going to close with our karakia. I'll just get Lynette to zoom us through to our karakia whakamutunga.
(Slide – Karakia whakamutanga) (Doreen speaking)
Ngā mihi nui, kia koutou katoa, mō tō awhi, mō tō kōrero i tēnei ahi ahi.
Thanks for your coming along to help our ākonga, help our kāiako do the best that they can and really improve their teaching and learning practice in terms of literacy and numeracy. Lovely to have you with us. We'll start with our karakia whakamutunga.
Me karakia tātou.
Tēnei rā te whakairi ake i te kete o te wānanga,
Tōna mauri nō runga, nō Rangi, nō raro, nō Papa.
Tēnei te mauri o te mātauranga, ka whakatākina ake,
Kia wātea ai enei pūkenga.
Hui e, tāiki e!
Kia ora tātou, kia pae o koutou rā. Pō marie and I'll see you again.
Ngā mihi nui kia koutou.
Ka kite.
[ File Resource ]
- Title: Targeted support and accelerating numeracy learning slides
- Description: Slides to accompany the Targeted support and accelerating numeracy learning webinar
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- Targeted support and accelerating numeracy learning slides.pdf
- Description: Slides to accompany the Targeted support and accelerating numeracy learning webinar
Targeted support and accelerating numeracy learning slides
[ Video Resource ]
- Title: Targeted support and accelerating literacy learning
- Description: Webinar about Targeted support and accelerating literacy teaching and learning
- Video Duration: 41 minutes
- Video URL: https://player.vimeo.com/video/1098648372
- Transcript: (Slide – Targeted support and accelerating literacy teaching and learning. Facilitators names – Renee Neville and Julie Luxton) (Renee speaking) Tēnā koutou katoa
(Slide – Targeted support and accelerating literacy teaching and learning. Facilitators names – Renee Neville and Julie Luxton) (Renee speaking) Tēnā koutou katoa, nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to our second webinar in our series and it is around targeted support and accelerating literacy teaching and learning. First up this afternoon we're just going to open with our karakia.
(Slide – karakia timatanga) (Renee speaking) Me karakia tatou. Tau mai te mauri o te wānanga, Ki runga ki ēnei pūkenga, kia mātāmua ai ko te ako kounga a te tamaiti, ko ia ki mua, ko ia ki muri o ēnei kōrero, kia puta ai ia ki te whaiao, ki te ao mārama! Hui e, tāiki e!
(Slide – Targeted support and accelerating literacy teaching and learning) (Renee speaking)
Tēnā anō, welcome. Julie and I are just going to take a moment to introduce ourselves. I will kick that off. Ko wai au, ko Tararua ngā pae maunga. Ko Ruamāhanga te awa. Ko Takitimu te waka. Ko Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa tōku iwi. Ko Ngāti Moe tōku hapū. Ko Renee Neville tōku ingoa. Engāri, e tupu ake au ki Waiuku. E noho ana au ki Waiuku inānianei. I whakapapa back to the mighty Wairarapa in the south of the North Island down by Wellington, just up from Wellington over the Rimataka Hill. I was brought up in the equally mighty but not as large Waiuku and now still reside there with my family, with my husband and my two children. I have a secondary background in teaching. I'm a visual arts teacher by training. I worked for a long time in supporting ākonga Māori through Te Kotahitanga and Kia Eke Panuku in the school that I was in before stepping into a senior leadership position at a different school. It was in that role that I had the opportunity to initially engage with literacy and particularly with Julie, as she supported us to develop our school-wide approach to teaching literacy. I came to Evaluation Associates Te Huingā Kākākura Mātauranga from that position, my primary work stream is with Niho Taniwha and developing cultural capability to improve teaching and learning for ākonga Māori. It is a real pedagogical focus that I bring to our Te Manu Ka Rere literacy and numeracy support. That is all from me and I'm going to pass over to Julie. Kia ora, Julie.
(Julie speaking) Kia ora, Renee. Yes, some of my teachers are in the audience. Some of them know me already, but I'll just do my little mihi. Ko Aoraki te maunga. Ko Waitaki te awa, no Ōamaru i te Waipounamu ahau. Engari kei Tauranga moana, tōku kainga ināianei. Ko Julie Luxton tōku ingoa. My name is Julie Luxton. I'm currently based on a peninsula called Ōmakoroa between Katikati and Tauranga, been here for many, many moons. My background in teaching is as an English specialist teacher, but midlife I kind of moved a little bit into this English language space, which is where my interest in language and literacy has come from. Most of the schools I've worked in have been in the eastern Bay of Plenty of Ōpotiki College or western Bay of Plenty, Katikati, Te Puke. A little bit of time living in Tonga and in Fiji. That's my background. Born in Ōamaru, Janet Frame country. Some of you will know of Janet Frame, but long time now living in the western Bay of Plenty. Renee and I worked together at her school in the literacy space. I've also worked in Te Kotahitanga for University of Waikato. I've done a bit of work with secondary literacy project also for University of Waikato, currently involved in accelerated learning and literacy and structured literacy approaches. And in Te Manu Ka Rere as a follow on from the LNSiS, where I was working in many schools in Auckland last year. A bit of skin in the game in terms of the challenges that we are facing at the moment with the new NCEA, well not so new, NCEA literacy and numeracy requirements. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your time.
(Slide – Tikanga mō tēnei hui ā-ipurangi) (Renee speaking)
Just a little bit of tikanga for this online meeting. The way of working together this afternoon. A few protocols. If you could please stay on mute, just avoid any loud noise or distraction or feedback. It would be great to meet you and see who's in the room with us. I have a lot of things going on, on my screen, so I can't see everyone, but it would be great to know who was in the room. If you can pop your name and your school into the chat. Alongside that, feel free to put any questions in the chat as we go. There is some time for Q&A at the end. Just finally, this session is being recorded and will be available online. It will be sent out with our slides to you as participants after our hui this afternoon.
(Slide – Ma te huruhuru, te manu ka rere) (Renee speaking)
Ma te huruhuru, te manu ka rere. Adorned with feathers, the bird is able to fly. This whakataukī was gifted to us by one of our Māori medium facilitators. It reminds us of the importance of this mahi and the important role that we play as educators. All of our ākonga need the knowledge and skills to succeed in NCEA, to fly and beyond as they move into their lives and into the workforce. Foundational literacy and numeracy support our ākonga in their journey from school and into their careers. It is our role to provide them with the necessary learning as they begin their journey. This webinar, targeted support in accelerating literacy learning, supports teachers in implementing effective targeted support to accelerate literacy learning in preparations for students achieving the NCEA common assessment activities or the literacy co-requisite, particularly at Year 12, but also using pedagogies that are applicable across all year levels. We'll explore some high impact strategies, some diagnostic tools and practical implementation techniques.
(Slide – Ngā kaupapa o te wā) (Renee speaking)
As we go through today, we are going to define what effective targeted support and acceleration means. Looking specifically at those terms, understand how targeted support can accelerate literacy learning and explore some high impact acceleration strategies. Again, to support students learning for an achievement in the NCEA common assessment activities for the literacy co-requisite.
(Slide – whakairo tuatahi | starter questions) (Renee speaking)
Julie, would you like to go through that?
(Julie speaking)
Kia ora Renee. Yes, what we'd like to start with is a little bit of finding out where you're at and what is already happening in your schools. I'm really cognisant of the fact that schools are already doing some really good things in relation to the NCEA co-requisite for literacy and numeracy. We just want to focus in on effective targeted support and what your understanding of that is, what you feel its characteristics are, and what are you already doing in your school in terms of targeted support for the NCEA co-requisite for literacy specifically? What is already happening in your school? How are you trying to accelerate those learners to cross the line, if you like, for the literacy co-requisite? What are you already doing in terms of the practical classroom strategies and in terms of working with the students who need a bit of extra support to get across that line? What's already happening? We'd like to give you the opportunity to discuss this in breakout groups. Then we want one person to be able to feedback from each group to the whole group some of the key ideas that came out from your kōrero. Renee, if you're ready, will you weave your magic?
(Renee speaking)
If we are ready, I will do that now.
(Julie speaking) Has anyone got any questions about what we're wanting you to do? Is it clear from the slide and from my guidance? Excellent. Kia ora Renee.
(Renee speaking) Here we go.
(participants enter breakout rooms)
(Slide – what is effective targeted support?) (Renee speaking) As we consider those learnings we just shared, we move into a definition of what is effective targeted support.
(Slide – What is effective targeted support?) (Renee speaking)
You may have seen this one earlier in one of our earlier sessions. It is from the Understanding Collaborative Planning for Learning, Inclusive Education website. It breaks it down, in terms of support into universal, targeted and tailored. The one that we're focusing on is in there right in the middle, that targeted approach or tier two approaches. They are in-class approaches, targeted support for small groups. They can be in-class or out-of-class, focused instruction for small groups of specific knowledge and skills that they need.
(Slide – what is effective targeted support?) (Renee speaking)
It builds on the universal or tier one classroom teaching. In that previous diagram, you will have noticed, or you may have noticed that they are overlapping. They are simultaneously implemented.
There is continuity between the classroom teaching program and targeted support. Again, so it's overlapped. The students benefit within that targeted support from additional practice and repetition of key skills, rather than being cognitively overloaded.
The third bullet point, targeted teaching accelerates progress through focused small group instruction. There's the explicit teaching that we're hearing about in terms of the science of learning. Instruction that models skills, addresses specific needs and helps students apply learning in new context. It's not just additional lessons. It is very targeted in terms of the knowledge and skills that is being taught.
It also reflects students' cultural identities, languages, knowledge, beliefs and experience. In terms of literacy, for example, the ideas of windows and doors. Reflecting their own, providing a view and then providing that space where people can see themselves.
(Slide – What is effective targeted support?) (Renee speaking)
Characteristics of targeted support. Designed for small groups needing additional scaffolding. Intensive focused instruction connects and builds on the classroom program. Frequent explicit instruction of their key knowledge and skills. Additional time to practice. The use of diagnostic information and formative assessment, whether that be e-asTTle, our literacy learning progressions, PATs or subject-based assessment. There's using formative assessment to identify the skill gaps and really targeting the skill gaps. It's not teaching in reverse. It's not teaching back. It's teaching forward. It is also intentional, time-bound and goal-orientated.
(Slide – What is effective targeted support?) (Renee speaking)
Julie, ah no, this one's mine. This is the suggestion. Sorry, Julie. This is a suggestion from our ministry colleagues around targeted support, specifically for our NCEA literacy and numeracy CAAs.
So small groups of approximately four or five students working between one and two hours a week per group. Much like the booster classes that we've heard talking about earlier in our kōrero. They should be designed to support the learning and practice of key literacy and or numeracy skills and assessment preparation.
Assessment preparation in terms of building those assessment capabilities and the idea of perseverance and stamina to sit for that extended period of time. The timing of the session is to be flexible to fit into individual schools' timetables. It needs to be adapted to fit your context.
There was initially a suggestion of two rotations. One before the May CAA and the other before the September CAA. We know that there are ten good quality teaching weeks between the May and September CAAs. There is the opportunity to provide some really good, focused, targeted intervention in that space. This one is yours, Julie.
(Slide – What is effective targeted support? - reading) (Julie speaking)
Kia ora. Just moving on to some examples of what could be considered effective targeted support, some specific strategies that you might like to consider or are probably potentially already using. The notion of direct vocabulary instruction is really important. The research that sits behind the value of vocabulary for reading comprehension is decades long. It's a key indicator of comprehension success and achievement. Vocabulary instruction is worthwhile. That does include morphological awareness. This has come through, of course, in structured literacy, science of learning research. It's a joy to my heart to know that morphology is back in vogue, it having been on the back burner for many years, because about 60% of multisyllabic words come from Greek or Latin. It gives kids curiosity about words. If they know, for example, that grad comes from the Latin word for step, that helps them understand a whole host of words like gradual, gradation, grade, that's interesting. It's intrinsically interesting, and we can help our kids develop a love of words through morphology. It also helps them transfer that information when they meet a new word, if they have some understanding of the base or root word or of the prefix, then that's going to have great transfer in terms of understanding new words as well. I cannot stress enough the value of morphology and as part of your vocabulary, direct vocabulary instruction.
There are some strategies that I've referenced there, things that I think work really well. I won't go into each one of them. That would take a bit of time. But at these links, when you do get the PowerPoint, you will see a short explanation and a two-minute video of these practices being enacted. They come from ESOL online. Sometimes there's a secondary example, sometimes a primary example, sometimes both, but it just shows how these strategies can be used in a classroom. You see a teacher putting them into practice.
You hear the teacher talking about why they use them. Sometimes you hear the students talking about why they're valuable. Time doesn't probably permit me to go into a lot of detail about each of those, but you can explore them if you don't already know of them.
Vocabulary jumble, by the way, is sometimes called word splash. I found that from Renee recently. Vocabulary jumble, word mapping, clustering words together that have things in common, whether it be meaning or form, and the Frayer model as a particular example of a word map. You can explore those at your leisure.
Explicit modelling and teaching of reading comprehension strategies. Best practice in schools is that they are using similar strategies and have common understandings across different learning areas. For example, there's a case study for Green Bay High School available online,
and it talks about their approaches to reading and approaches to writing, which are across all learning areas. There's a common language for students and a common understanding of what good readers do and how to support struggling readers to utilise those strategies that good readers do. The importance of pre-reading in terms of previewing a text, having a purpose for reading a text, pre-teaching of the vocabulary again comes into play there. All of those pre-reading skills are so important for our struggling readers. Skimming and scanning is another one, of course.
The anticipatory reading guide is really cool. It's just five or six statements that might be a bit controversial. The students agree with them or disagree with them, have a little kōrero about them in pairs or groups, and then they read the text to see if their true-false is correct. Really useful little pre-reading strategy to prime the students for the text they're about to read.
Comment codes, the idea of making comments like main idea, supporting detail, exclamation mark, or I disagree, that kind of active reading that comment codes can provide is really useful.
Summarising comes into play with things like reciprocal teaching, which I imagine many of you are using in your schools, where the students predict, summarise, they make predictions, summarise, clarify vocabulary perhaps that they don't know, and then ask questions to the text. Active reading taking place in that really, really valuable strategy.
Graphic organisers you'll be familiar with, and the I-Charts is a useful one, recommended in the literacy pedagogy guides across different learning areas for synthesising information across texts, which in the assessment report for the reading, it produces quite a few problems for our kids having to look at different texts and then come to a point of predicting the right answer. That's more challenging than just looking within one text, so I-Charts are good for that. Explicit text structure instruction, understanding different text types or forms, and what the conventions or language features of those texts are.
Then the collaborative or paired reading strategies, which I've also referenced in terms of reciprocal teaching, but jigsaw reading is also valuable. So that's just some practical ideas that I think could be incorporated into your effective targeted support if you're not already doing these things. I hope you'll explore them later.
(Slide – What is effective targeted support? - writing) (Julie speaking)
In terms of writing, sentence combining, which is actually in question three as a kind of close exercise now where the students have to combine two sentences and they're usually given the joining word or the connective or the conjunction, a really valuable skill for teaching grammar and for extending the range of sentences that students can write, which is one of the criteria for the writing, that there's a variety of sentence structures from simple, compound to complex. Sentence combining, research is clear about the value of that for teaching grammar, if you want to call it grammar.
Use of scaffolding paragraph structures. Today, for example, I spoke with a teacher who was working with a group of English language learners to try to get them across the line for writing. In their school, they're using Texas. She just put Texas down vertically. The students wrote a sentence for each of those things, and then she took that scaffold away and the students worked with the paragraph to try to make it flow. Simple, simple technique, but the value of acronyms for struggling writers is clear.
Dictogloss, I'll let you explore that. It will take me a bit of time to explain it, as Renee knows, because we've been talking about that recently, but it's a valuable strategy for improving
paragraph writing in a cooperative manner, and it integrates all the different skills of listening, reading, and writing.
Shared writing, again, just passing it on. The students write little bits. That's valuable for kids who really struggle with writing big text, and they share the content and just pass it on.
Writing in text frames, you'll be familiar with already.
Modelling is really important. A lot of schools are really focusing on the different processes, the stages of writing to emphasise that you start with your purpose and audience, and you gather your ideas, and then you're trying to organise them. Your brains are organising them. It is actually a process. It's not just something you do as a oncer and then say, I'm done, miss. That focus on process is really important, and particularly at the revising and proofreading stage, because accuracy is a bit of a problem in terms of the writing co-requisite. As a marker, I can testify to that. It's improving, but there's a lot of work yet to be done in terms of accuracy.
Peer editing, again, that's recommended. Using a checklist is recommended in the LPGs across the board for different learning areas, and also error correction to just focus on the importance of aiming for accuracy for your audience, out of courtesy for your audience. It's really hard reading a text which has no full stops and is like lines long. Courtesy to the reader and then, providing that feed-forward feed-back.
Kia ora, Renee. I probably rabbited on too long there but never mind.
(Slide – what is acceleration / accelerated learning progress?) (Renee speaking)
All good. What is acceleration and/or accelerated progress?
(Slide – What is acceleration?) (Renee speaking)
What is acceleration? Advancing the learning of children who need to build prior knowledge related to the content at their current level. Accelerated learning is achieved through specific teaching strategies, learning conditions, or scaffolded supports that enable learners to acquire skills more rapidly than they would do under usual teaching conditions.
(Slide – Focus on acceleration…rather than remediation). (Renee speaking)
There's a focus on acceleration rather than remediation. It is fast forwarded thinking, it is forward focused, and it is not backward looking.
(Slide – Figure 1.1 acceleration and remediation: A comparison) (Renee speaking)
This table here, I'm not going to go through it all, but it's from the Learning in the Fast Lane book around the difference between acceleration and remediation. Again, it's not backfilling, it's forward focusing.
(Slide – What is acceleration?) (Renee speaking)
Some characteristics of acceleration practice.
Focuses on acceleration. It is data informed, so it uses effective diagnostic tools such as e-asTTle and PATs to identify students learning gaps and really target the learning to those. It's connected to prior knowledge, it builds a bridge between what students already know and the knowledge that you're trying to teach them. It is explicit teaching of those key information and skills that they need. It is scaffolded, just like Julie's example with Texas, it provides scaffolding to support the students to reach where they need to be before you take that back and they grow
in confidence and independence. It is guided by ongoing formative assessment. Back to you, Julie.
(Slide – What is acceleration?) (Julie speaking_)
Kia ora, Renee. This just elaborates a little bit on what we mean by the learning conditions that are part of acceleration because that previous slide talked about teaching strategies and we've touched upon a lot of those. What are the learning conditions which combined can support acceleration? Some of these things have already been said, but I think the slide is useful in the sense that it brings a few things together that would make acceleration more effective in terms of conditions.
Keeping it short and sharp and focused is really important. That is a lesson from the accelerated learning and literacy work that they talk about, dose and density and you're just keeping it really short and focusing on what the students need. It's very clear what the purpose of that short, sharp, focused session is. Anita Archer talks about perky pace, which is kind of sweet. Short, sharp, focused, perky pace.
That clarity of purpose is important for the students. They need to know and be able to say this is what we're doing by the end of this session. I will have a better understanding or my skills in this area will be improved. They know exactly what they're working on.
Again, that notion of front loading and pre-teaching is important and we're focused here on specialised vocabulary. That's the subject specific vocabulary, the learning area specific vocabulary that students need to know in their different subjects. Also, that academic vocabulary. Again, the academic word list is cited in the literacy pedagogy guides. Those academic words that are used across the different learning areas, they're not specialised, but they're used across the different learning areas. They are abstract. They are complex. They are sometimes not focused on sufficiently in class, but they provide particular challenges for learners. We also need to understand what the key academic vocabulary is that students need to know.
Then that scaffolding for new learning and front loading is part of that. Scaffolding is so valuable and we've covered some strategies for that as well.
Working collaboratively is really important. Something like reciprocal teaching, which I referenced earlier, that's very much a cooperative learning activity. Each student has a job to do. They're accountable to the team, if you like, which is kind of that definition of cooperative learning. Working together and learning from each other in a tūākana tēnā kind of context is really part of the valuable acceleration learning conditions.
Then again, as I mentioned before, very clear feedback, timely feedback, targeted to very specific aspects of the learning to give to learners within those short, sharp focus sessions. That's probably, it's just a little gathering of some of the key learning conditions that make for successful acceleration.
(Slide – How targeted support can accelerate literacy learning) (Renee speaking)
How targeted support can accelerate literacy learning?
Connected, it works with those universal learning supports for the whole class. Integrated, opportunities for repeated practice and avoiding cognitive overload. And finally, embedded, literacy acceleration is most effective when embedded in all learning areas across the
curriculum, not just literacy. Everyone has a role and responsibility to improve literacy in all learning areas.
(Slide – High-impact acceleration strategies) (Renee speaking)
Some high impact acceleration strategies that we've touched on across our previous slides, but explicit teaching, being explicit, systematic and cumulative.
Activating prior knowledge, including that idea again of cross-curricular literacy initiatives, having a common language so that students get that reiterated across all those learning areas.
Scaffolding.
Assessment for learning.
Having clarity in the classroom, clear learning intentions and success criteria. Students have the opportunity to work towards those goals and reflect on their success. Specific academic feedback and feed forward within rapid feedback cycles and including some error correction and improvement.
Developing oral language. Integrating oral language activities. As Julie's just touched on, those dialogic and cooperative learning strategies are really effective for that. The opportunity to share with each other and talk to one another builds literacy.
Collaborative learning opportunities and cultural responsiveness using culturally sustaining text selection and ways of teaching and learning, which are culturally appropriate for all of our learners.
There will be a handout emailed with these slides as well.
(Slide – Explicit Teaching of Key Concepts) (Julie speaking)
One of our schools, Renee, calls them hits and lits, remember? Hits and lits. It's quite nice. That's the sort of focus of the PLD. Hits and lits. High impact teaching strategies and literacy strategies. I just thought I'd throw that in, Renee.
(Renee speaking)
Do you want to do this slide too, Julie, while you're on a roll?
(Julie speaking)
Explicit teaching of key concepts. This is, I do, we do, you do. It's an ‘archerism’ from this woman called a researcher called Anita Archer, who's highly respected, particularly in the science and structured literacy world. Again, there's nothing new about this. Back in the day when I taught writing, I used to use what was called the apprenticeship model, which is this. I do, we do, you do. So that you're modelling to students, for example, how you would write or how you would comprehend a text. What do you do when you're reading a text? What would you think aloud? You show the students how you read. You show the students how you write through modelling. Then you provide an opportunity for the students to do something together with the teacher, with each other, that they're working on that initial learning and they're using the success criteria to do the work themselves. We do a cooperative activity in the centre there, for practice in a safe context.
Then you do. That is when the students work independently. That could be in pairs or groups. Doesn't have to necessarily be on their own, but they test out their learning, if you like, on their own or in small groups.
So that's a kind of nice little mantra. I do, we do, you do in terms of the apprenticeship model of teaching, reading or teaching writing.
I just want to reiterate Renee's point about the importance of oral language. I think sometimes in our schools, we don't provide sufficient opportunities for students to use the academic language orally before we expect them to put it in writing. You know, the mantra, which Renee will have heard from me a thousand million times is reading and writing float on a sea of talk. It's a good thing to remember because those oral language opportunities are crucial to build kids confidence and fluency. Thanks Renee.
(Renee speaking) Kia ora, Julie.
(Slide – Connecting to NCEA) (Renee speaking)
Weaving it all together, connecting our targeted support and acceleration strategies with what we're doing in terms of our NCEA literacy common assessment activity. We plan explicit literacy teaching opportunities that accelerate literacy learning across the curriculum. Everyone has a role to play. We provide targeted support for small groups within those learning areas in those classes for additional support for those learners who need it.
We can also practice with previous CAA questions, including the digital version. Using that digital version will help students become familiar with that platform and develop their digital readiness and ensure that they are prepared to take on that digital assessment. We can also support ākonga and their whānau to understand the NCEA literacy co-requisite common assessment activity and how they can support their ākonga at home.
(Slide – Whakaaroaro | active reflection) (Renee speaking)
I was just going to say perhaps we won't put them into breakout groups, but we'll just pause for a moment so that people can reflect. We've been through a lot of information, so just pausing for a moment and doing a 1-1-1 reflection. One thing that has affirmed your thinking, one thing that may have challenged your thinking or challenged you to make a shift in practice and one burning question.
I'm going to get you to hold on to that burning question just for a moment because our next slide is the opportunity to ask those. If you take that burning question that you have, pop it into the chat and in our next slide we'll have the opportunity to answer those. I'm going to pause now.
(Slide – Q&A) (Renee speaking)
Anything at all. If you don't want to pop it in the chat, please feel free just in the next few moments to take yourself off mute and ask the question. Kai pai, me hone tonu. We will carry on then.
(Slide – next steps) (Renee speaking)
There are a range of webinars coming up as a part of this webinar series. There is also the targeted support and accelerating numeracy teaching and learning, assessment for learning and assessment literacy for acceleration, accelerating literacy and numeracy using science of learning practices across the curriculum, supporting English language learners with NCEA
literacy requirements. Then we have two focused on our Māori medium, Te reo matatini and me te pāngarau.
(Julie speaking)
There is a question in the chat, Renee, from Cherie. What are other kura doing to engage and support whānau to understand and appreciate the importance of the CAAs? Has anyone got any anything positive that they are currently doing in that space? To share with Cherie. Any other thoughts in response to Cherie's question? I know in the LNSiS self-review conversations that was often seen as an area of need that schools often felt that was an area they needed to work on.
Just to tautoko about what Glenda said as well, they're all really good strategies that I have seen and heard of across the motu, but that ongoing communication is really, really important. It's definitely not a one and done scenario. It's definitely that ongoing communication is really necessary. I know as a parent myself, one, two emails can get missed amidst the many that you get. But there will be one, there will be one that catches that catches your eye. So that ongoing communication is really, really important, especially for the important messages as well.
(Slide – next steps) (Renee speaking)
The other supports we have coming up as a part of the Te Manu Ka Rere support is drop-in coaching sessions. They'll be done, at the opportunity to engage with other kura and leaders and kura across Te Manu Ka Rere schools and bring your problems of practice. We'll have the opportunity to wananga and talk through those together.
There's also the second supporting success session with your dedicated facilitators. I know that I have started many of these with the kura that I'm working in, but they are also there. Then in moving into the end of this term, there'll also be the opportunity for more on-site visits, so school visits.
It might not be that they work out this term and they might be at the beginning of next term. I know that having the opportunity to work with the data from your May CAA will be really valuable in that space as well.
Thanks, Emily. A great idea in the chat around presenters who come to school from NZQA who come to the Pacific Group as well as Māori Whānau Rōpū, presentations at night for about an hour. That sounds really valuable.
(Julie speaking) Fantastic.
There are resources for supporting whānau online that have been supplied by NZQA. I'm not sure how well utilised they are. Perhaps those are the published materials to which Emily is referring.
(Renee speaking) I think NZQA brings slightly different ones, Julie. I have experienced one of those hui before and they're slightly different, but the ones on the ministry website are so incredibly valuable.
(Julie speaking) NCEA.ed, yes, those are the ones I was referring to. Thank you, Emily.
(Slide – next steps) (Renee speaking)
g, additional tools and resources, the links are all there that you will be able to access when you get a copy of the slides. The ones for whānau aren't in there, but I will put the link into that email that you'll get in response to your participation in our webinar this afternoon.
Nō reira. That is the end of our webinar content for today. Ngā mihi nui kia koutou. Thank you all so much for your time, for your participation. Just round off our session this afternoon with karakia whakamutunga.
(Slide – Karakia whakamutunga) (Renee speaking)
Me karakia tatou. Tenei rā te whakairi ake i te kete o te wānanga. Tōna mauri nō runga, nō Rangi, nō raro, nō Papa. Tēnei te mauri o te mātauranga ka whakatakina ake, kia wātea ai ēnei pūkenga. Hui e, tāiki e!
(Julie speaking) Oh, cool. Translating NCEA material into their own languages. Wonderful, wonderful, Emily. That's fantastic to hear that that's happening to help our English language learners' families to understand. Kia ora.
(Renee speaking) Thank you all so much.
(Julie speaking) Yes, thank you for being here. Thank you for your time.
[ File Resource ]
- Title: Targeted support and accelerating literacy learning slides
- Description: Slides to accompany the Targeted support and accelerating literacy teaching and learning webinar
- File URL: https://ncea-live-3-storagestack-53q-assetstorages3bucket-2o21xte0r81u.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-07/TMKR_Targeted%20Support%20and%20Acceleration%20-%20Literacy_PDF%20slides.pdf?VersionId=Mi13gc3.cP_HARckDyqLifUbHx3Xej7r
- File Extension: pdf
- File Size: 1MB
- Targeted support and accelerating literacy learning slides.pdf
- Description: Slides to accompany the Targeted support and accelerating literacy teaching and learning webinar
Targeted support and accelerating literacy learning slides
[ Video Resource ]
- Title: Supporting English language learners with NCEA literacy
- Description: Webinar about Supporting English language learners with NCEA literacy requirements
- Video Duration: 50 minutes
- Video URL: https://player.vimeo.com/video/1111080427
- Transcript: Kia ora anō everyone
Kia ora anō everyone, let us get started with this afternoon's webinar supporting English language learners with NCEA literacy requirements. Before we go any further, I will open us with karakia.
Tau mai te mauri o te wānanga,
Ki runga ki ēnei pūkenga,
Kia mātāmua ai, ko te ako kounga a te tamaiti,
Ko ia ki mua, ko ia ki muri o ēnei kōrero,
Kia puta ai ia, ki te whaiao, ki te ao mārama!
Hui e, tāiki e!
(Slide – Introductions) (Lynette speaking)
Fakaalofa lahi atu, to everyone, my name is Lynette Hay. I'm based in Auckland and I work in both the primary and secondary sectors. I'm in the team with Julie for Te Manu Ka Rere and have been working across education for the last, nearly going on 29 years now, 23 years in the face-to-face with students and the last five years as a facilitator with Evaluation Associates. And I'm going to pass you on to our lovely Julie. Kia ora Julie.
(Slide – Introductions) (Julie Luxton speaking)
Kia ora Lynette. Kia ora everyone, ko Julie Luxon tōku ingoa. I've been in education for many moons, I'm a woman of a certain age, lots of experience teaching in the secondary sector, initially in English but then in English language and I've been in the English language world in a number of capacities as a teacher, as a facilitator and also as a national moderator for English language and EAP unit standards. So English language is my passion and it's an absolute privilege to be speaking with you today about the challenge of the NCEA co-requisite for our English language learners.
(Slide – Key focus questions) (Julie speaking)
We've just got a couple of focus questions that we hope to address during this session. What practices support English language learners, the practical side of our role, what can we actually do in our classrooms and what practices will help accelerate English language learners learning because we know that acceleration is required for our learners who arrive, very proficient in their home languages of course but needing a lot of support to catch up with their peers and to be assessed against the NCEA literacy requirements.
(slide – Webinar goals) (Julie speaking)
And these are our goals. Some of these things you will probably already be quite familiar with so we'll be able to go through them quite quickly. We will take into account readiness, what that looks like specifically for English language learners and in a more general sense. We'll focus on vocabulary which is so crucial for our learners. We’ll look at some effective teaching approaches and strategies for reading and writing and very briefly touch on the approved level three English for academic purposes unit standards. That will be a very brief touch. We don't have time to deal with that in a lot of detail because it's a workshop in itself.
(Slide – Whakawhanaungatanga) (Julie speaking)
Before we start, it would be really lovely if you could put into the chat what your role in the school is and a little bit about your English language learners in terms of ELP stages perhaps, where they come from, their home languages, just a little bit of an indication of your context would be very much appreciated for whakawhanaungatanga. We'll give you a bit of time to do that now.
(Slide – NCEA readiness)
(Slide – Are your learners ready for the challenge?) (Julie speaking)
Thank you very much for introducing yourselves via the chat. The first focus as we mentioned is on readiness. How do you know when your students are ready? I think you need to consider multiple factors. Your knowledge of the learner, ESOL principle number one, know your learners. Your observations and conversations are really important and they're not to be undervalued in relation to more formal assessment. The formal assessment data obviously is part of the story, just part of the story. You need multiple sources of evidence to reliably determine whether your learners are ready for the challenge.
As indicated on the standards themselves, there are a number of tools and frameworks that you can use to support those decisions. In particular, e-asTTle and PATs, ELP matrices, those seem to be the two main frameworks that are used for English language learners. Not many schools are now using the LPFs and the PaCTs and a few schools look at Pathways Awarua, but predominantly for resources to teach the reading and writing requirements.
(Lynette speaking)
Can I just add in there before we move on to the next slide, Julie, just in regard to e-asTTle. A number of you will have known already that e-asTTle was put to pasture in June. However, it is not supported, but it has not yet been switched off. I do know that there are a school and you would have also heard that the new proposed tool, the SMART tool, will be coming out. But that's all we know about it at the moment. If you are using e-asTTle and you still want to use e-asTTle, I think you've still got to the end of the year.
(Julie speaking)
That's right. Thank you, Lynette, for that reminder.
(Slide – e-asTTle as an indicator of readiness) (Julie speaking)
What is the data telling us? In terms of the evaluation report in 2023, now that does refer to 2022 pilot data, but the evaluation was substantial, huge sample size. English language learners scoring at or above the recommended readiness level 4A or higher in e-asTTle reading or writing were more likely to succeed in the CAAs. Then the next slide will provide more information about that. In terms of teacher, the voices of teachers, many teachers have been saying if they're 4A for e-asTTle reading, then they've got a 50 percent chance of passing.
(slide – Chart 14: Secondary student achievement for Literacy and Numeracy standards compared to e-asTTle scores – overall results 2022) (Julie speaking)
This is the data from the evaluation report, albeit, as I say, 2023 based on 2022 pilot data. But it does indicate that e-asTTle 4A is the tipping point so that if the students are at 4A for reading, they have 79 percent of the students achieved and at for writing, 72 percent. This was based on achievement data where we had e-asTTle data to compare, and I think it was about 30,000. It was huge. It was a huge number of students that were involved in this data set. And 5P, it was 90 percent for reading, 79 percent for writing. And by 5P, it's 97 percent for reading and 85 percent for writing. If they're below 4A, they've really got less than a 50 percent chance of achieving. But 4A appears to be something of a tipping point.
(Slide – ELLP as a readiness measure for ELLs) (Julie speaking)
In terms of the English language learning progressions, which you will all be using for ESOL funding, this is the ministry statement that they think that achieving full mastery at stage three of the ELP indicates readiness for the co-requisite. But anecdotal evidence from teachers suggests for me that ELP stage four, mastery stage three, but moving into the stage four is potentially a better indicator of success. Just a reminder that the value of the ELP is that teachers do use a range of tools, informal and formal, to determine that ELP stage. It's a rich source of information about learner readiness.
(Slide - ELLP as a readiness measure for reading) (Julie speaking)
It's interesting to look at these diagrams at the front of the English language learning progressions to see what the comparisons are in terms of the levels. The co-requisite is set at old New Zealand curriculum levels, upper level four, lower level five. Mastery of level four is where they're targeted. You can see here that that puts the reading text at 3B. I've done a bit of an analysis of the ELP reading texts to see where they sit in relation to curriculum levels against a number of measures. Definitely I think 3C is better. Similarly with the writing, though, it's much closer. The analysis I've done of the ELP writing text, it does place it at mastery stage three. So that's quite accurate for writing.
(Slide – Teacher observations: Readiness and success factors for ELLs) (Julie speaking)
Then what teachers have told me, as I've worked with English language specialist teachers, some of the stuff is axiomatic, that the longer they've been in Aotearoa, the more time they've had to develop social and academic English. Just a little point I didn't make with regard to e-asTTle, students should have been in English medium education for at least two years before that tool is used with them.
Language proximity to English, the same alphabet, can make transfer of skills easier, much harder for those learners who come with a completely different alphabet, very vastly different languages, and interaction with native speakers in things like clubs and choir and sports and so on makes a big difference according to teacher voice.
The next one is really quite important. It is anecdotal, but the schools where the learners have spent time in junior English as an additional language classes are quite strong. They have those foundational skills for reading and writing in English. Sometimes our students are fully mainstreamed without English specialist support too soon, but those schools where they have that strong support and often that pathway that goes through English language unit standards right up to EAP, those schools are tending to get better results, which is again a no-brainer really. Then this is what schools are doing, tutorials and targeted workshops, not just for ELLs, but for other learners as well. The whole school focus is really important.
(Slide – Effective practices that support NCEA Literacy) (Julie speaking)
You will be familiar with this ministry resource, effective practices that support NCEA literacy, these 10 effective practices which are unpacked. What I've done here is I've asterisked those that are so similar to the ESOL principles. There's such a close relationship between this document, effective practices, and the core ESOL principles that you'll find on ESOL online. I've just put a little asterisk beside them. For example, Providing many opportunities for learners to read and write, that's your multiple opportunities to learn that is in the ESOL principles
Connect reading and writing, maintain a balance between receptive and productive. So very, very similar guidance there.
I'd just like to point out also that today, the 31st of July is the day that I've been informed all the ESOL online materials that have been retained will migrate to Tāhūrangi. There are links here that we might have to modify a little bit, I think, because if that migration happens today as planned, we'll have to notify you of the Tāhūrangi links. It's going to look a little different on Tāhūrangi, as you can see by that little image.
(Slide – Vocabulary matters)
(Slide - Why vocabulary matters) (Julie speaking)
I'm hot on vocabulary. Vocabulary is so important for all learners, but obviously especially for our English language learners. In research that Gleeson did in 2010, vocabulary was identified as the top gap, the biggest challenge for English language learners. That was research done in New Zealand schools. Globally, there are decades of research that tell that language knowledge strongly links to academic success, especially for expository texts, and that means vocabulary. In the United States, one researcher said that the achievement gap for low socioeconomic students in the United States was actually a verbal gap, a language gap.
The next statistic from Bromley 2007, just notice that 70 to 80 percent of the words in a text will mean that students are likely to understand the general meaning or gist of the text. We'll go back to that figure later.
(Slide – Challenges of the CAA vocabulary) (Julie speaking)
I think we're all aware of the vocabulary challenges for English language learners in the CAAs, which affect their comprehension, and also the contexts are often hard for our students to access.
(Slide – Understanding vocabulary) (Julie speaking)
Vocabulary frequency data. Those of you who are English language learning specialists will know this information, that high-frequency words make up a large proportion of texts, even academic texts. Between 75 and 80 percent of the words in any text will be within the first 2000 high-frequency words, and there's the new general service list that lists those words. In fact, it goes a little bit beyond into the third level, the third thousand level. So, this just indicates which words are high-frequency, mid-frequency, and low-frequency. The academic word list will be familiar to you. Those are those difficult words that are not curriculum specific, but occur across all learning areas, and they're really hard for our English language learners because they're abstract, they're complex, they have a high learning burden, and they often have different meanings in different subject areas. They're really challenging, and they require explicit teaching for our English language learners and specialised subject-specific technical words. That graphic, by the way, is not to scale.
(Slide - Vocabulary strategies to support ELLs) (Julie speaking)
Again, some strategies. Vocabulary grids, often before and after vocabulary grids, can be useful. They track their understanding of key words for a topic before their prior knowledge, and then their deeper understanding after a lesson or even a unit of work.
Word cards or Flashcards. Again, decades of research support the value of word cards for English language learners. Simplest thing is the home language translation on the back. The bilingual connection is the simplest, most powerful, most effective one, but the word cards can have other information on the other side as well, around definitions that could be in English as well, or it could have a picture, or even things like formal, informal, those kinds of pieces of information about the words.
Mind maps and word clusters, showing connections between related words, that's a commonly used strategy.
I love ‘I Have…, Who Has?’, because it's a cooperative activity where the students each have a few cards, and it's sometimes called Loopy, so it's an ‘I Have’ this word, ‘Who Has…’, and they give the definition. You'll probably be quite familiar with that. It's very effective because it's cooperative and because it requires reading, listening, and speaking. It integrates those skills.
Kaitiaki o te kupu. This is where you're going to study a text or a topic, a poem or something, and before you do that, you give each student a word or two words that they become the experts on. When you go to read that text or start that topic, those students are kaitiaki or guardians of those words.
Morphology. Morphology is huge in the structured literacy approaches. It's something I've always used in my classroom, the word parts, my students understanding the most common base or root words. It's a kind of word consciousness. I think students are very interested in the whakapapa of the words, so I strongly advise teaching your students explicitly the most common bases or roots and the most common prefixes in particular.
(Slide – What strategies do you already use?) type your responses in the chat.
In terms of vocabulary, if you just want to take a moment now to put what strategies you already used. I've just put a few of my favourites on the PowerPoint, but you may also have some that you think are worth sharing with the group. We'll just give you a moment to type some strategies in the chat, which the lovely Lynette will monitor for me.
(Slide – NCEA Literacy: Reading) (Julie speaking).
(Slide – What does the Reading CAA assess?) (Julie speaking)
Okay, now let's look at NCEA reading. As I mentioned before, I think we can go quite quickly through the first slides because I'm sure that you are very familiar with what the reading common assessment activity assesses, what it looks like. It's assessing reading comprehension, independent comprehension of a range of texts in real world contexts. Foundational literacy is the target.
(Slide – Learning – Reading Matrix) (Julie speaking)
This is the matrix with the big ideas, the learning that cannot be left to chance, making sense of written text, reading critically and reading for different purposes. You will be familiar with this. Note that vocabulary knowledge is there as one of three bullet points in Big Idea 1. I have found these assessment specs quite useful to use with teachers across curriculum areas because they're quite accessible and teachers can say, oh yes, we do that in science or we do that in technology, and it shows where they can contribute, you know, that shared responsibility of literacy across the school.
I found this quite accessible, more so than the unpacking literacy document. But since then, there are also the learning outcomes for reading and writing, which are very, very useful for teachers. I tend to move on to those as well.
(Slide – Reading US 32403 – Term 3 2024) (Julie speaking)
This is an example of the range of texts, six texts, which were used in the Term 3 2024 CAA for reading. You can see that the texts are all quite different. There's quite a cognitive load for learners, all learners, but particularly our English language learners, moving from these texts on completely different subjects in different text types.
(Slide - Areas requiring improvement – Reading 2024) (Juli speaking)
In terms of the report for reading 2024, and actually since we prepared this PowerPoint, I note that there is an interim report for the May 2025 event as well online. This is the advice from the markers of the reading CAA. That vocabulary is right up the top, the ability to work out meanings of words, and for that, morphology is useful, given that 60% of multisyllabic words in English come from Latin or Greek. So, it's really good bang for the buck for our kids to know that.
Close reading strategies. They've pointed out that skimming and scanning, the students can often do, but close reading is going to require a lot more practice for our learners, understanding the language features and text structures and why they're used.
Another big one for teachers is critical thinking and awareness. Many of my teachers in the schools I'm working with for Te Manu Karere, and previously in South Auckland, acknowledge that critical thinking, that critical reading skill is something they needed to focus on much more explicitly. Hearing the voices, understanding the writer's purpose, the voices that are there and the voices that are not there in the text, and that's really important for our learners at the moment when we have a lot of misinformation and disinformation online.
(Slide – Reading CAA: Challenges and implications for ELLs) (Julie speaking)
(Slide – Challenges of the NCEA Reading CAAs) (Julie speaking)
Let's take a look at the reading CAA and some of the challenges. As I mentioned before, unfamiliar vocabulary and unfamiliar contexts. The CAAs are designed to have Kiwi contexts and Pacific contexts, but those contexts might not be familiar to a lot of our English language learners.
That is a major challenge. Also, reading across multiple texts. The markers have also cited that that is an area of difficulty, particularly for English language learners, just having to synthesize and cross-reference across different texts in order to answer those questions. And obviously, inference, abstract language is a big challenge for our learners.
(Slide – ELLP Reading – Stages 3-4) (Julie speaking)
Looking back at the ELP reading, I was interested in the stage three, stage four, given mastery of stage three was seen as a readiness factor. I think that I would say that the text in the CAA probably sit on the border of this, you know, between stage three and stage four. When you look at things like a variety of sentence structures, they certainly include that. They include passive constructions and some low-frequency words, which we'll look at later. The text generally, from my analysis, sits on that boundary between stage three and stage four, as one would probably expect.
(Slide - CAA Reading Term 3 2024 Q.3) (Julie speaking)
Here's an example of a term three 2024 question, ocean navigation around the world. Looking at the complexity of this text as an example for learners, they do have an introduction, which is good. You know, some questions there, an introductory statement. They've got the title, obviously, to help them with the focus. Visual support is there. They've got subheadings and frames. This is just part of the text, not all of it. There was a glossary for this one. I think three words were glossed, some of them being te reo Māori words. There are definitely complex sentences, relative clauses, and passive voice. Pronoun reference is another area that our learners struggle with in a way perhaps that native speakers would not. So those are some of the issues that our learners might face when reading a text such as ocean navigation around the world.
(Slide - Reading CAA Term 3 2024) (Julie speaking)
I have been analysing all of the CAA texts since the 2022. I haven't yet done 2025. I've been analysing them for vocabulary level, because vocabulary is one of those challenges for our learners. This is the vocabulary profiler. There is a link on the PowerPoint as well. You can see that the vast majority of the words are in the first 2000 words. You've got 75 plus 7 of the words will be in that first 2000. In this text, there are only 2.38 of the words that are academic. In other texts, that percentage has gone up to around 7, which I think is a little high for a foundational literacy text.
In general, over time, I think the texts have improved in terms of their lexical difficulty and having fewer academic words. You might be interested to see the CEFR level. I've got the link there to Text Inspector, which you can use to get your Common European Framework of Reference level and the reading age. There’s a link there to the website that I used.
(Lynette speaking)
I've just put those links into the chat as well, Julie.
(Julie speaking)
Thank you, Lynette. Thank you very much.
The other thing I do want to mention, before Bromley, we cited Bromley, who said that 70 to 80% of the words in a text needed to be understood to get the general meaning or the gist. For independent total comprehension, that percentage is much higher. At least 95 to 98% of the words in a text need to be known. The implications of that for our English language learners in terms of the CAA will be obvious.
(Slide - Some implications for ELLs) (Julie speaking)
What do we do? We teach vocabulary intentionally, as I'm sure you do, focusing on the high and mid frequency words and helping them manage low frequency items using context or morphology, use pre-reading strategies, teach students the value of pre-reading, previewing to activate their prior knowledge or set a purpose for reading. There are a number of strategies that we can use for that. That's really important for our English language learners, previewing the text, having a purpose for reading. Model and practice, skimming, scanning, close reading, as I mentioned before, which is identified as an issue. Guided reading opportunities to think aloud, showing students how you would approach a text using support and giving them practice and reading across multiple texts. You know, that cross-referencing, that synthesis that I mentioned before, and I-charts are a good way of doing that, of practicing that skill. They are also recommended in the literacy pedagogy guides for all the different learning areas across all of them. And critical reading, really important that we look at that with our learners.
(Slide - Strategies to support ELLs with reading) (Julie speaking)
Here's some strategies which we'll go through fairly quickly. A long time ago, I read an article by Paul Nation, who's a Victoria University guru on vocabulary and English language learning, and it was called The Curse of the Comprehension Question, which is a bit of a provocative title, but this was a key message of that reading. I'll give you a moment just to read that. [pause for audience to read quote]. So, the key point is that when we are teaching reading comprehension, we need to develop the ability to comprehend texts, not just one text, that today's reading will support the reading of tomorrow's text. Now, that was back in 1979. And on the next slide, I read a very similar message, 2025, in a Shanahan blog. Are we teaching reading comprehension? I'll just give you a moment to read this, essentially the same message as Paul Nation made in 1979. [pause for audience to read quote]. So, you are teaching students to read other texts on their own with greater understanding by, you know, when you write a good reading comprehension exercise, as Paul Nation called it back in 1979.
(Slide - Pre-reading) (Julie speaking)
Here are a few strategies for pre-reading. Most of these you'll be very familiar with. The anticipatory reading guide or anticipation guide is a favourite of mine, very similar to the yes, no, make it right. I've put one there, an example that I use with an alternative education institution, an article from Stuff. Just four or five controversial statements, the students decide whether they agree or disagree beforehand, and they talk about those statements with their peers, and then they read to see if the text itself confirms their thinking or disagrees with it. Simple strategy, but very, very effective.
(Slide - Literacy systems – Reading) (Julie speaking)
I think you'll be familiar with the others. Yes, in terms of the curse of the comprehension question, and using strategies that can be applied to all texts, there's a case study online, and there's a link there to Green Bay High School, and they had posters that they put all around the school for reading. They call them literacy systems, a structured approach to literacy, and these were the skills that they identified, survey, skim and scan, read, clarify, review. So, they had these posters with this guidance around all the classrooms. So, there's a common, a consistent message about what makes a good reader. What do you do to support comprehension?
(Slide – Pukekohe HS Literacy Team 2022) (Julie speaking)
Pukekohe High School took a similar approach. I have permission to share this with you. They have posters, WE READ, Why, Expect, Reach, Extract, Apply, and Digest. It's an acronym, and they had these posters around the entire school with those key questions. For example, why I ask myself, why am I reading this? What is my purpose for reading this? What information am I looking for? So, all around the school, that consistent messaging about what good readers do before, during, and after. The template on the right could be used with any subject area, any text at all. It is a really effective approach.
(Slide – Reading critically) (Julie speaking)
Reading critically, I've just put two resources here. You may be familiar with the Te Rauru Whakarere Evaluation Framework, kaupapa Māori informed approach. That link is on the literacy pedagogy guides as well. On the other side, I've put a simpler poster from Susan Sandretto, who did some research on critical reading with primary and secondary school students. Quite useful, I think. [Lynette pastes link into the webinar chat screen]. Thank you for that, for the link, Lynette.
(Slide – Reading Strategies) (Julie speaking)
These resources were put on the ncea.eduction website relatively recently. When you go into that link, when you get the PowerPoint, or Lynette might even put it there [in the chat], there's a whole list of strategies for reading. Most of them come from ESOL Online, or from the Ministry’s Effective Literacy Strategies book that's been around a long time and is also available online. You can see they explain the purpose and the source and the application of that strategy, and then they give some instructions to teachers. I think those are very useful resources. If go to that link, they'll be in a zip file, so you can just download them to your computer, and you will have access to them. I put comment codes there because that's one of my favourites.
Again, on the same webpage, they've got these unpacking co-requisite outcome resources. Given that you'll be looking now at the May CAA results, you'll be analysing those and which outcomes the students were stronger in, or which outcome they need more support with. This provides some information about what you can do if that particular outcome is an issue. And on the right-hand side of that table at the bottom, you've got links to strategies that you can use in the classroom, which would support improving that outcome.
(Slide – NCEA Literacy: Writing)
(Slide – What does the Writing CAA assess?) (Julie speaking)
Again, we'll go through a similar pattern for writing. It has to be independently produced, obviously, and it focuses on real world communication skills. The topics are usually linked to real world contexts. The big ideas, there are only two of them, as you well know. Big idea two is the one that's assessed in question three, where they have discrete point grammar, punctuation, spelling questions. Again, I've been analysing since 2022, the topics and the task, what the purpose is, the audience and the text form for the writing CAAs. it's interesting that they distinguish the text type, informative or persuasive, or a bit of both, and the form where it's written. It could be in an email, it could be in a community website article. They make that distinction between text type and text form. It's actually in the standard itself and the definitions. That gives you a pattern and a lot of the texts that require persuade, giving your opinion, that's a common one. Or discussion, which is where they get to show both sides of the picture, for and against.
(Slide – Writing CAA challenges for ELLs) (Julie speaking)
The challenges. Again, if their vocabulary is limited, they might often have difficulty interpreting the task instructions. I think that's something that also some native speakers, according to the markers, need to read the task a little more carefully. That idea of structuring and organising the ideas. There is a planning sheet, but sometimes students choose not to use that. And of course, control over structure, grammar, cohesive devices. Our English language learners are still developing those skills and revision.
(Slide – ELLP Writing – Stages 3-4) (Julie speaking)
Yes, in terms of the English language learning progressions, there are no checks for stage four. When I look at stage three, I guess you could say that that's approximately at the level of our writing CAA.
(Slide – Sample assessment task) (Julie speaking)
An example of an assessment task, which you'll be familiar with. There is support there because those bullet points can guide the structure of the text that the students write. You'd be telling them to use those as their paragraph topics if they need that kind of scaffolding and support. There is a bit of support and scaffolding in the topics. I think these are the benefits of learning more than one language? I sang when I saw that. That's wonderful for our English language learners.
(Slide – Areas for improvement – Writing 2024) (Julie speaking)
The markers listed these as areas for improvement for the writing at the end of last year. And as I mentioned, the interim report for May 2025 is now available on the NCQA website. Following instructions, the guidelines, as I mentioned before, an issue for a number of learners going off topic, organising their ideas, relevant examples and sufficient detail when developing those ideas, a variety of sentence types.
[Question appears in the chat].Catherine's got a question there, Lynette, which I will address. The CAAs for reading in numeracy are redacted because of copyright. But your principal's nominee, you as a teacher should have access to unredacted past papers. If you go to your principal's nominee, every teacher should have access to those. It's just they can't be published because of copyright. You got anything to add to that, Lynette?
(Slide – Strategies to support ELLs with writing) (Julie speaking)
Strategies for writing. I think of writing as involving five key aspects, process, fluency, structure, complexity and accuracy. That notion of planning, drafting, editing, revising, for which our learners might need scaffolds. They would need some modelling from you as a teacher or even co-construction, perhaps. Fluency is really important. Lots of opportunities to write, multiple opportunities to write where focus is just on building their confidence and their speed rather than accuracy per se. Logical organisation and paragraphing. This is where you can use your graphic organisers. You can also use some acronyms, which we'll touch upon later, having model texts and scaffolds. Complexity brings in that sentence variation and linking. I cannot emphasise enough the value of sentence combining as a way of teaching grammar. Sentence combining is actually assessed in Outcome 2, Question 3, because the students, it's just a gap fill. They have to put the connective in to join the two parts of the sentence and they have a choice of four through the multi-choice. But sentence combining, teaching students how to combine two different sentences, whether they be combining into compound or more complex, particularly complex, to build that variation is an incredibly valuable activity.
There was research done back in the States some time ago now, a big meta-analysis of effective practices for teaching writing to adolescents, and sentence combining was right up there. It was an effect size of 0.5, I think, which is quite high in the literacy space.
And then the accuracy, providing opportunities to focus on errors and correct their errors, maybe with peers or maybe just little ‘do nows’, I guess, at the beginning of a lesson.
(Slide – The writing process) (Julie speaking)
How have schools been approaching this? On the right, you've got what Green Bay High School, the case study school, which you can use a little video and you can see it online, what they did, and also, again, what Pukekohe High School did when I was working with them back in the day. It is interesting that both of these schools focused on process as the key point for the posters and the common messages around the school. They focused on the process with purpose and audience right at the top, and then the writing process going through to editing and revising common messages for the whole school. Very helpful for our learners.
(Slide – An apprenticeship model of teaching writing) (Julie speaking)
There's nothing new under the sun. When I was learning on structured literacy, I remember using the apprenticeship model of teaching writing many moons ago, but it is very much that structured literacy approach where you brainstorm ideas, you model it through maybe talk demonstration, deconstructing an exemplar, then you do co-construction, do one together, either teacher and learners or learners themselves, and then independent. That kind of structured literacy approach works really well for our learners, all learners, but particularly English language learners need that apprenticeship model.
(Slide – Practical classroom strategies) (Julie speaking)
Some practical classroom strategies, which I will have to go through quite quickly. I imagine many of you are familiar with these. Graphic organisers, we've already mentioned, to plan the structure of the text. The PEEL scaffold has been used by many schools, the point, evidence, explanation link, but it doesn't seem to matter what they use. Some schools are using TEXAS, but that scaffold is really very helpful for our learners for building paragraphs and bringing in that evidence and detail that the markers said is lacking in some of the writing, and many schools are using the same acronym across all learning areas. Eg. How to PEEL in social sciences, how to PEEL in technology, how to PEEL in visual arts, etc.
Checklists are recommended again in the literacy pedagogy guides, and here we have our sentence combining tasks again. I've repeated that because repetition of important messages is valuable, and connectives close, which is essentially what is assessed in the question two, the discrete point questions. I cannot emphasise the value of that enough. Much more useful than grammar exercises for our English language learners. Linking words and map and sorting out the different connectives according to what their function is. Does the connective have the function of giving a reason or a consequence, or is it a contrasting connective? It's useful that learners have a range of connectives for different purposes and functions, and there are various things online that you can see.
(Slide – Writing Strategies) (Julie speaking)
Again, the writing strategies in zip file, not long ago put online, and there's combining sentences, which I put there of course because it's my favourite. You can access lots of good ideas in those ministry resources. It was great to see them up there. Same for writing, so this time it's the aspects of writing that are assessed in the rubric, so each one of those, okay, if this outcome is causing issues for your students and their feedback from NZQA, here are some useful strategies you could use to address that gap.
(Slide – Let’s recap) (Julie speaking)
Okay, there's a wee bit of a recap, the things that we've covered. We've looked at readiness, vocabulary, reading and writing, supporting reading and writing. Each of those, as I say, is a day's workshop in itself, but hopefully we've provided a useful overview for you or a reminder of some things that perhaps you haven't done for a while that will link nicely into supporting our English language learners with the CAAs.
(Slide – EAP Standards)
(Slide – EAP unit standards approved for ELLs) (Julie speaking)
Yes, very briefly I'm going to touch on these. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the English for Academic Purposes Unit Standards. Two of them have been approved for English language learners who are funded or recently funded or who are international fee-paying students. Only those students are eligible to use these standards as an alternative pathway to the CAAs, but they are definitely not easy.
So, writing a short text under test conditions 30507, the students have to do a lot of research to answer a particular research question, they have to structure their material, they have to use a formal writing style appropriate to an academic context and they have to acknowledge source material. So, there's a lot of synthesis going on where they read a number of texts and have to pull it all together under test conditions.
The reading one, again, quite high level, main ideas and supporting details identified and then processing relevant information from a text in a manner beyond simple information transfer, applying it to another context.
So, not really, I think, foundational literacy standards, they are designed for academic purposes. Great for students who are heading into tertiary study. So, just reiterating that message, these unit standards are not an easy option, they're very demanding and would require a lot of formative work.
(Slide – The EAP standards) (Julie speaking)
The EAP belonging units, you can see an image there of some of the teaching and learning sequences, there's level three belonging units, they are really good value as examples of scaffolded units for English language learners, they're very detailed teaching and learning resources, but they are not going to be migrated over to Tāhūrangi. So, if you haven't already downloaded those, if you're doing EAPs and you haven't already downloaded the level three belonging units, I recommend you do that tonight, because this is the day that the migration is reportedly happening.
(Slide – References) (Julie speaking)
Some resources which you'll be familiar with, an image of what the new Tāhūrangi ESOL Online site will look like by cultural learner success and ESOL support.
(Slide – What’s one takeaway or strategy you’ll try?) Type your response into the chat
So, I'll just give you a minute to think about something that you will try based on what we've been through today.
(Slide – Where to next?) (Julie speaking)
There's quite a useful article on the Education Hub called Effective Vocabulary Instruction, you can Google it, and it has an appendix which lists the most common base and root words, it's researched in terms of their frequency again as a principle, so the students would benefit from knowing those, it's Effective Vocabulary Instruction Education Hub. Okay, where to next? As well as all those wonderful ideas that you put in the chat. This is just a bit of some key actions that we strongly recommend you consider as a follow-up to our session today.
Building school-wide support and consistency is really important, that common messaging is important for all learners, but particularly our English language learners. Okay, I think that's it, unless there are any questions in the chat? Any questions or comments in the chat, Lynette, that I haven't seen?
[Question from the chat] (Lynette speaking)
Julie, will you be running any PD sessions?
(Julie speaking)
I would love to. I did run a series of workshops nationwide until term one this year, on this very topic, all-day workshops, and they were really well received. In fact, some of them wanted them to be two days long. We will have to perhaps, Lynette, talk to our team about that possibility.
(Lynette speaking)
If you do have any other questions that you'd like to ask, at the end of this webinar, feel free to stay online. I will close this portion of it, and also then press stop on our recording. And thank you all for joining us this afternoon. And thank you also to Julie, thank you for sharing all of your extensive, well, not all of it, because that would have taken a long time, but most of your extensive knowledge with us this afternoon. It's always a pleasure to listen to you, even if I've been with you a few times on this, I always learn something new. Let's close with karakia, and then you'll be able to stay on if you like.
(Slide - Karakia whakamutunga) (Lynette speaking).
Tēnei rā te whakairi ake i te kete o te wānanga,
Tōna mauri nō runga, nō Rangi, nō raro, nō Papa,
Tēnei te mauri o te mātauranga ka whatakina ake, kia wātea ai ēnei pūkenga,
Hui e, tāiki e!
Thank you, everyone.
(Julie speaking)
Thank you, Lynette, and thank you, everyone, for your time. It's a long day for you all. Really appreciate your taking time to be here. And if you have got any questions, Lynette and I can take them now.
[ File Resource ]
- Title: Supporting English language learners with NCEA literacy
- Description: Slides to accompany the Supporting English language learners with NCEA literacy requirements webinar
- File URL: https://ncea-live-3-storagestack-53q-assetstorages3bucket-2o21xte0r81u.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-08/Supporting%20ELLs%20with%20NCEA%20Literacy%20requirements_PDF%20slides.pdf?VersionId=EhLTD.fGdBBTR759zFxILfvnpNplO4hl
- File Extension: pdf
- File Size: 5MB
- Supporting English language learners with NCEA literacy.pdf
- Description: Slides to accompany the Supporting English language learners with NCEA literacy requirements webinar
Supporting English language learners with NCEA literacy
[ Video Resource ]
- Title: Measuring student literacy and numeracy readiness
- Description: Webinar about Measuring student literacy and numeracy readiness
- Video Duration: 49 minutes
- Video URL: https://player.vimeo.com/video/1098654503
- Transcript: Just before we start
Just before we start, I just wanted to go through some of our protocols here. I'd like to ask you to stay on mute, please introduce yourselves with your name and school in the chat, and as we go feel free to drop your questions in the chat as well. Deirdre and I will endeavour to monitor those as we go.
We've also got an additional Q&A session at the end so that people can ask any remaining questions. I will just come on, move on to the slide. Thank you.
(slide – Renee Leckey – Evaluation Associates) (Renee speaking)
So, kia ora everyone. Ko Renee Leckey tōku ingoa. I am a facilitator in the Te Manu Ka Rere team, along with Deirdre here, and my background is in history and social studies originally, a proud teacher of literacy across the curriculum. I have to say I've probably never been a great teacher of numeracy, but I'm learning heaps in this project and I'm looking forward to being able to have a go at that soon.
I have an assessment for learning and culturally responsive and relational pedagogy background, and I bring those lenses to the work that I do for Te Manu Ka Rere. Deirdre, I shall pass over to you to introduce yourself.
(Deirdre speaking) Kia ora Ren, nē rā te mihi atu ki a koutou.
(slide – Deirdre McCracken – Evaluation Associates) (Deirdre McCracken speaking)
Ko Deirdre tōku ingoa. I too am part of the Te Manu Ka Rere team. I have a background in secondary science and chemistry teaching. I also have a lot of foundations in assessment for learning, leading leadership capability, growth, and then literacy and numeracy across the curriculum. So, I'm really pleased to be able to be with you this afternoon to take you through this session.
(slide – Kaupapa o te wā) (Deirdre speaking)
So, today's learning focus is about exploring the readiness for the literacy and numeracy co-requisites, and I think it's a nice timely check-in for us all that perhaps we're going through these processes.
I know with the schools that I'm working with; it is part of our kōrero at the moment to ascertain where we're at with this. So, see this as a possibility for checking in.
(slide – What is ākonga readiness) (Deirdre speaking)
What is ākonga readiness? It's being ready for the assessment.
It means that ākonga are demonstrating that skill and they're at the level at which we want them to be assessed. And this is at the upper level four and the lower level five of the English maths and stats curriculum.
(slide – Readiness involves) (Renee speaking)
Readiness involves a range of different aspects and we're going to talk about some of them in a little bit more detail than others today.
We're going to take a look at how we can use assessment tool data to measure readiness. We're going to take a look at ensuring that students are ready in terms of digital skill and exam strategies and that whānau are also ready to support their children with the literacy and numeracy CAAs. And that sense of readiness also encompasses the concept of emotional readiness.
And Deidre and I had a wee back and forth about this before and decided we'd label it self-efficacy because it covers a number of things around student agency. It covers things around that sense of being able to achieve so that for students who might be extra anxious, that they have that sense of self-efficacy going into the exam and that we prepare our students emotionally for that as well.
(slide – How do measure readiness?) (Renee speaking)
One of the first things to look at is how do we measure readiness.
As Dee's already mentioned, that we're looking at a standard of literacy and numeracy that sits at upper level four and lower level five of the curriculum. One of the things that we want to do for our ākonga is enable their self-assessment as part of that sense of self-efficacy so that they are able to say that they are ready with a reasonable sense that they know what readiness entails. When teachers and students know and understand what good looks like at that upper level four, lower level five, and they have a clear set of criteria to work towards, it's about students and teachers knowing where they're going with the learning, how they're going to get there, and where they're at compared to the standard described, and they can show that. We're going to show you a couple of examples about how you may enable this in your schools in this presentation today.
(slide – What is the standard required?) (Renee speaking)
When we talk about the standard required, it's shorthand really for the big ideas for literacy and the process and content ideas for numeracy that are outlined or tested in the co-requisite standards.
This is what we are enabling our students to move towards so that they can experience success in the CAAs.
(Deirdre speaking) Ren, might I jump in here?
(Renee speaking) Yes, you might.
(Deirdre speaking). It's something that might be very useful to the coordinators of literacy and numeracy, those people who are leading the elevation and the acceleration of readiness for your learners, is to have a set of criteria that shows what success looks like in terms of the long game.
These big ideas and the process and content ideas are invaluable in creating that set of criteria for success. I've had schools ask me how they might enable this across the curriculum. What if learners had the agency to use that set of criteria in every subject that they are learning literacy and numeracy through, and how might that set of criteria be used for teachers and departments right across the curriculum? Thanks, Ren.
(Renee speaking) So, Dee, you're suggesting that from a teacher and a department perspective that the ideas that are laid out in the big ideas and the process and content ideas would be explicit in planning across the curriculum and would be able to be seen explicitly in teachers' learning intentions? Is that what you're thinking?
(Deirdre speaking) Āe, and it gives us the ability to map out the different areas of numeracy and literacy that we can bring to our own subjects. We can map it out in the unit planning, in the term-by-term planning, in the year planning. We can work together collaboratively to create that and make it really solid.
(Renee speaking) Kia ora Dee.
(slide – How do we measure readiness?) (Renee speaking)
When we're thinking about measuring readiness, we want to put to the fore here teachers' professional judgment as well as relying on different tools. One of the first things that we'd recommend is teachers using their formative assessment capabilities, those minute-by-minute and day-by-day judgments that teachers make about students' capabilities in their classes. Part of that is having a framework to work towards, and that's what we're referring to when we talk about understanding and knowledge of those big ideas and the content and process ideas.
Some of the things that we believe support these formative assessment capabilities are the clarity of learning intentions, the use of modelling and exemplars, and co-constructed success criteria from those models and exemplars, which are linked to literacy and numeracy-rich tasks, and that students are given the opportunity, using the success criteria, to self- and or peer-assess, and that using the success criteria we can give our students feedback on how they're progressing towards those literacy and numeracy skills and being able to experience success in the assessment and also in life, because literacy and numeracy are life skills.
(slide – Assessment tools) (Renee speaking)
When we talk about assessment tools, we see them working hand-in-hand with the formative assessment skills of the teacher in the classroom. There are a range of assessment tool options available to schools.
The two most popular, most schools I've talked to are using either e-asTTle or PATs, or a combination of them. Some schools are using the English Language Learning Progression, schools that have a large number of English language learners, and kura are using the Te Reo Matatini me te Pāngarau Co-requisite Readiness Tool as well. I haven't come across a lot of secondary schools that are using PaCT, I have to say, but there may be some. It's not a bad tool at all.
In this session, we're going to offer you some options or some examples of how the assessment tool data might inform teaching and learning. We're using e-asTTle as our example, however, PATs can also be used in this way.
(slide – Chart 14: Secondary student achievement for Literacy and Numeracy standards compared to e-asTTle scores – overall results 2022 graph) (Renee speaking)
I want to start just by sharing this graph, which is from the 2022 pilot evaluation, which compares student achievement for literacy and numeracy standards to e-asTTle scores and gives you an indication of why we talk about 4A as being that sort of hinge point for success in the CAAs. You can see that between 4P and 4A there's a marked jump in achievement of the
CAAs. It's definitely true that students below 4A can pass the CAAs, but their chances of doing so are much stronger 4A and above.
It's also true that students sitting above 4A sometimes might not pass the CAAs as well. I guess because it's a test, there's no guarantee. We used over 30,000 e-asTTle results were compared to student achievement in the CAAs to generate this data.
It shows a strong relationship between the e-asTTle score and the likelihood of achieving the CAAs, even though the two assessments are not directly aligned. I think it's important to note that, but there is a strong relationship because they both measure literacy and numeracy skills.
(slide – Example: e-asTTle Individual Learning Pathway report) (Renee speaking)
When we talk about using assessment tools, when we were talking about students’ self-assessment before and enabling self-efficacy, a great tool for that is the Individual Learning Pathway report, which can be generated by e-asTTle for students.
The idea of this report is to inform students of what their strengths are, so the things that were hard for them in the test that they achieved, the things that they achieved, so the things that were at the expected level that they achieved. Over here, we have the gaps. These are the things that were at their expected level that they did not get right.
That might suggest either that they need to relearn those skills, or it might just be a quick check-in by the teacher to see whether the student has those skills, and they just had a hiccup in the test, because at the end of the day, e-asTTle is a snapshot. In the blue box here, we've got the questions that the student got wrong that were harder than their expected level. This offers guidance for the student in terms of their next learning steps.
This report, and particularly focusing on this blue box, enables the student to see where their learning needs to go next in terms of literacy and numeracy.
(slide – Example of student self-tracking) (Renee speaking)
You might further enable a student by furnishing them with something like this. This is just an example of how you might enable a student to track their own progress over time in using e-asTTle in this particular example, or PATs, or whatever other tools you're using.
In this example, the student has both identified their e-asTTle grade and what was in the blue box for them to work on. I've only put a couple of things in there because space and readability was what I was thinking about. Then they've done the same for their next test time in Term 3 at the end of Year 9, in Term 1 at the end of Year 10, and in Term 2 in Year 10. Sorry, not the end of Year 10.
(Deirdre speaking) May I jump in?
(Renee speaking) Yes, go for it, Dee.
(Deirdre speaking) What something like this self-tracking sheet enables is that ownership and that responsibility that we can offer learners for taking a bit of charge, I guess, in terms of their learning and how they might progress towards their literacy and numeracy criteria for success.
I notice in the chat here; they mentioned that e-asTTle is going out and a new tool is coming. This is true. For now, for this year, e-asTTle, PAT, and some of your formative assessment
strategies are your key to being able to help learners know and understand where they're at, along with yourselves and along with their whānau. Thanks, Ren.
(Renee speaking) Kia ora, Dee. I also note that we have news from the Ministry that in May, they're expecting to produce a table that will help schools to align e-asTTle and PAT results with the refreshed curriculum. I'm not sure how that works for secondary because the refreshed maths and English curriculum are in draft form still, so I would expect that a bit later in the year, perhaps, for those secondary levels. (Deirdre speaking) Thanks, Ren.
(slide – Example: Using data to inform teaching and learning) (Renee speaking)
Previously, a couple of slides back, we looked at the Individual Learning Pathway Report.
This is a group learning pathways report, and it differs, I guess, in purpose. The Individual Learning Pathways Report helps to inform students about what their strengths and next steps are. This helps to inform teachers as to the strengths and next steps of a class.
When we read this, it helps to put that line down the middle, as we've put in there, and we're looking again at the blue and the red. Anything that's to the left of the line and that is substantially blue and or substantially red suggests gaps in your class's learning. For me, I would be looking at those things.
In particular, here, I've highlighted skimming and scanning for information as a big chunk that is a next step for 46% of the students in that class, and then there's another 13% with gaps. I would be looking to ensure that that was part of my teaching and learning program in order to help those students close the gap between what they know now and what they need to know in terms of literacy, know and do, I should say. I've also highlighted down here evaluating authors' purpose or intent in literary texts.
For me, as a history teacher, the first time I saw that I went, oh, I think that might be the responsibility of the English department because the language that they were using didn't feel familiar to me. However, after a couple of chats with some English teaching colleagues, they helped me understand or they helped me to put evaluating authors' purpose or intent in literary texts into language that I would use in social sciences, which is looking at things like purpose, message, audience, and bias. Once we put it in those terms, then I realised the role that I could play as a teacher of social studies in helping my students to be able to move their learning in that area as well.
I guess, in summary, what I'm saying is unpack the language of these e-asTTle reports so that all teachers across the curriculum can see where these things are happening within their subject and where they can strengthen this learning for our ākonga. Dee, would you like to talk about digital readiness? (Deirdre speaking) Kia ora Ren.
(slide – Digital readiness) (Deirdre speaking)
This has been part of the kōrero again we're having with schools and kura across Aotearoa, and teachers are working really hard to create that opportunity to enhance the digital readiness with their learners, so they're helping them to become familiar with the assessment platform, they're practicing using the device that they're going to be on, they're also making sure they've got the login details, the kids know that, they know how to pop them in, all those kind of little things that can unsettle learners if they're not sure and well-practiced around it.
(slide – Familiarisation with the assessment and digital skills for the CAAs) (Deirdre speaking)
One of the other things I'm noticing is the use of success criteria to describe the digital skills that are needed and how to approach the questions.
Teachers are coming up with their own individual ideas of how they see it and what might work for them and based on their understanding. There's also a lot of self-assessment against that criteria so learners know for themselves where they're at, where they need to go, where they're at, and their teacher is helping to scaffold how to get there. There's lots of examples I'm seeing out there and Ren you might be the same in terms of what teachers are using.
They're using past CAA papers through the NCEA website, they're using them as paper copies so that they can know and understand with the learners either individually or in groups or as a whole class what it means to unpack what the question's asking in the CAAs. So, there's the paper versions, there's also online versions using the likes of Smart Lab, some of you might be using that already, which enables the digital platform and manoeuvring your way around that platform. Again, the opportunity to look at what the questions are asking along with the numeracy and literacy that is part of that. YouTube video clips that are being produced and are popping up so if you were to put in preparing for the CAAs in NCEA, different YouTube video clips will pop up. Some of them are particularly from one person perhaps. There's one from, oh what am I thinking of – the guy with maths, he's really cool. (Renee speaking) Infinity plus one. (Deirdre speaking) Infinity plus one – that’s the guy. You might find that useful, your learners might find that useful.
One that I happened upon just this week that a teacher is using and that's TypeRacer. And this teacher is really interested in helping kids with their typing and doing it quickly. This platform is free, it enables kids to check their spelling because it will show them that they haven't spelt whatever it is that they're copying correctly, and it just gives them some confidence about typing in on the platform. I know there's been a little bit of kōrero around, perhaps our kids now need to be taking typing lessons in amongst everything else they do. So, this is a way in which you can incorporate it in your elevation and your acceleration of numeracy and literacy.
(Renee speaking) Dee can I just ask a quick question, are those free tools? (Deirdre speaking) My understanding is, I've been into TypeRacer, yes that's free. Smart Lab, I have a feeling there's a paid subscription you need to put to that. The YouTube video clips are free, and Ren you might be able to tell me about Infinity plus one. I know you have to subscribe, I don't know if you have to pay. (Renee speaking) No, you don't have to pay. (Deirdre speaking) Ka pai. (Renee speaking) He does it out of love. (Deirdre speaking) You've got to love a teacher who does it for passion eh? (Renee speaking) Yes he does. (Deirdre speaking) Awesome.
(slide – Kaiako readiness) (Deirdre speaking)
If we move on now to kaiako readiness, so teacher readiness, this is the poutama for it and ultimately what we want kaiako to be feeling is confident and capable in using readiness indicators to provide feedback for learners and the ways in which we can do this really sit heavily in pedagogical layers, setting the positive frame and Ren if we might move on to that next slide it will help us to have a look at that.
(slide – Supporting readiness) (Deirdre speaking)
So first and foremost, we should be focusing on our acceleration and not remediation. Acceleration is all about enabling the learner. It does sit very deeply in our pedagogy. It's the pedagogy around high expectations teaching. In particular what I'm hearing out schools is a significant difference it's making is when we show and tell our learners that we believe they can do it.
If we don't believe that or we don't believe that we can enable that, we and our learners are on the back foot right from the get-go. Part of that is the language we use. Part of that is the positive frame in which we talk to our learners about the journey for building literacy and numeracy capability.
And again, I'm seeing it out in schools, Ren you may be too, the more it's positively framed and that it is part of the big picture of literacy and numeracy so that we're enabled as adults beyond school, we're enabled to fly. That sets young people up with the confidence, starts building the self-efficacy, the belief in themselves that they can do this. Something else that's come to the fore in the korero that I've been having with schools and kura and that is our ability as secondary teachers to influence how people feel about themselves as learners in particularly numeracy and I have to say also science.
If our young people in our secondary classes can't see themselves as mathematicians, they don't believe they can do it, what that does is disable, disempower them as adults, them as adults as parents nurturing their own kids, them as possible teachers either in early childhood, in primary or in secondary because we second-guess ourselves and we don't have that belief that we can do it through hard work, the right scaffolding and our teachers enabling us. So as secondary, we have a huge responsibility to get the language right and to positively frame and it's really important in supporting the readiness of our kids for these assessments. In terms of high expectations teaching, if you haven't already been on to the Education Hub's website, there's some information, some research-based ideas, there's a checklist that we can use to hold up the mirror I guess and ask ourselves are we doing this.
In terms of self-efficacy and ākonga agency, deeply seated in being explicit about how we can build that, what we as teachers can do to build student self-efficacy, what kids can do for each other to build self-efficacy and the same with student agency. Unless we enable it and we scaffold it, it's actually not going to come to fruition the way we might imagine. Think of the times where we might have said to a learner or to their whānau, your child needs to take greater responsibility for their learning and what I wonder is that when we say that, in what ways have we enabled it? Have we scaffolded it? Have we been deliberate about making that happen? So, it's something to be mindful of in terms of the readiness.
Over to you Ren. (Renee speaking) Kia ora Dee, I was just going to add one thing there about the focus on acceleration rather than remediation. When we talk about acceleration, we're talking about teaching to the gaps that students have to close those gaps.
A really great tool, in fact there's two tools that have come out recently from the Ministry. There is one for leaders that is called Leadership Guide to Accelerating Progress and there is also a Teacher's Guide to Accelerating Progress that I think works really well with the focus of Te Manu Ka Rere and supports that. We've had a question in the chat, Fiona wanted to know if we can share the self-assessment template following this.
(Deirdre speaking) Can I check in? Is that the e-asTTle reading one? (Renee speaking) Yes, the example that we had a few slides back. (Deirdre speaking) Ka pai – sure can. (Renee speaking) Sorry, I'm just responding to her, and I will move on to the next slide.
(slide – Supporting kaiako readiness) (Renee speaking)
This slide I put together as a summary slide of what schools might look at when considering the professional learning that might be needed to support teachers to be able to teach kids what they need to know to be literate and numerate across the curriculum. And I kind of artificially
divided it into two things, what to teach and how to teach. And I say artificial because, of course, curriculum knowledge and pedagogy don't sit separately from each other.
They have a lot of links. When we talk about curriculum knowledge, we're largely talking about what is literacy and numeracy and enabling teachers to understand the generic literacy and numeracy that runs across the whole curriculum, that can be the same from one learning area to another, as well as understanding these discipline specific literacy and numeracy skills of their area, which means that in some learning areas, they might focus on certain literacy skills over others. So, for example, for writing in science, they might focus more on writing reports rather than writing a persuasive essay.
Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm prepared to be wrong, Dee. One thing that's come through from one of our colleagues is the idea that exposure to different text types is required for literacy. This is a story about one particular student who teachers had formatively assessed as being ready to sit the CAAs, but she'd not passed. When they went into e-asTTle, into the summaries and targets report and looked at that, they found that she'd only ever been assessed on recounts and narratives. She'd never been assessed on more of the writing that's appropriate at secondary level, such as persuasive, explanation and description writing. And so, she hadn't had a chance to do that learning or to be assessed on that learning. So, it had curtailed her achievement in the CAAs. So, it's really important to think about when your teaching writing across the curriculum to teach different text types explicitly so that students know which type of text they're producing for what purpose.
I think it's also key in terms of curriculum knowledge that all teachers become skilled in understanding literacy and numeracy progression. The refreshed curriculum documents will help with this and are probably your first call in terms of that. Then of course, finally, because teachers always want to know the strategies, what are the strategies? A lot of the schools that I've worked with or have been working with are really good at providing teachers, non-teachers of English, and non-teachers of maths with literacy and numeracy strategies that they can use in their departments.
I think a great way to supercharge your literacy and numeracy strategies, and this is where what to teach and how to teach are inextricably bound, when you combine the what to teach of your literacy and numeracy strategies with your assessment literacy and look at your assessment data from e-asTTle or PATs or whatever tool you happen to be using, and rather than providing generic strategies, provide strategies that reflect the needs of your students and the needs of their learning as shown by their assessment data. That will really enable teachers across the curriculum to strengthen student learning that meets the gaps that they have rather than practicing something that they may already be proficient at. We've already talked a little bit about the pedagogy that supports literacy and numeracy across the curriculum.
Assessment for learning is a key pedagogy in this space. One part that I would consider starting with is explicit teaching, where you're looking at the quality of your learning intentions and ensuring that when you're teaching literacy and numeracy, similar language is used across the curriculum so that students can be enabled to transfer their learning from one context, i.e. one learning area to another, so that they don't have to think too hard to figure out, oh, we did this in science last week, and now we're doing the same thing in social studies. We also encourage a gradual release of responsibility model when you're using explicit teaching so that you can use your formative assessment as you go along, assess which kids may need to spend more time with you in the we do space, and those kids who are ready to race ahead and who feel more confident in their learning can go into the you do space.
And of course, you also apply your knowledge of your learners for those kids who are maybe overconfident and should perhaps spend a little bit more time with you, and those who are perhaps overanxious, and you can encourage them to be more confident in their ability by trying you do. So again, it goes back to knowing your learners as well. One other thing that we do encourage is that spaced practice so that students have multiple opportunities to have a go at the skills that we've been talking about, the literacy and numeracy skills, so that they, you know, it's not a one and done, they get to do it a couple of times in every subject leading up to the CAAs.
Through that self-assessment as well, and through the use of common language around the learning intentions, be able to notice themselves how their skill in that area is improving, which informs that self-efficacy that we've been discussing.
(Deirdre speaking) Ren, you may have noticed that I've popped in the chat link to the five formative assessment strategies that have come from Dylan Wiliam. Some of you maybe all of you are aware of Dylan Wiliam and how he's influenced the use of formative assessment in our minute by minute, day by day, effective teaching practice. So, it's a, it's a nice summary of those five strategies. Then there's a book that's available, which I can't say enough about positively, in terms of those explicit concrete little strategies that enable the biggest strategies of assessment for learning. Ren's holding it up now. That's what the old cover looks like. The new cover is a little different. You can purchase it online. It depends on which platform you go to as to how much. Go find the cheapest version that you can. Get your hands on it. Unpack a chapter. Tutu with it in class. Trial stuff. Talk about what you've trialled, what's worked, how it's worked, some of the pitfalls you've experienced and incorporate that into short cycles of investigating what's going on in your practice and what it means for your learners in terms of acceleration.
(Renee speaking) My encouragement there in terms of those short cycles of inquiry too, is if you're in this webinar as a teacher, my encouragement is to invite your middle leader or a senior leader as well, if you're working with them, to come and observe your practice and to help you check that what you're intending to do is what's coming through to the students in your classroom as well. Then to be able to give you some feedback on what your next steps might be for your teaching practice as well.
Something else that's come out recently that might enable that is the teacher observation framework from ERO. It is very big, but there are parts of it that I think are directly applicable to literacy and numeracy teaching and learning, in particular the bits that are about explicit teaching and the learning environment and expectations. Those are probably the two best parts to start with. I wouldn't go into the whole thing immediately because, like I said, it's very big.
(Deirdre speaking) Can I jump in there Ren? (Renee speaking) Yes, sorry Dee. (Deirdre speaking) May I jump in there? (Renee speaking) Absolutely.
(Deirdre speaking) If you want to start small around observations for learning, then I also encourage you thinking about spending a little bit of time in a classroom for literacy and numeracy learning so you can do some possibility thinking. And if you go with a colleague or you go with a leader and it's agreed upon with the teacher, then things will spark as to how you might do things slightly differently or what you might add in here or there or what voice you might collect in the near future to know and understand how things are going, what you could do, what the kids are experiencing and what they think might be needed to make learning even better for them. So, there's a small starting point if you don't want to go big.
(Renee speaking) So Dee, you're suggesting perhaps visiting a classroom of a colleague who is an effective teacher of literacy across the curriculum and both seeing what they do and also considering collecting some student voice to check what the students are experiencing in terms of the learning.
(Deirdre speaking) Yes, and if it's teachers who are less confident, who might not be experienced in this area, working with them in a way that's non-judgmental and it's really just about being in situ and letting the ideas pop and then having a kōrero with that teacher around some of the things that you saw them doing, saying and how the kids responded to that and what they think about it. Was that what they intended? Was that the desired outcome? Because that focuses in on the teaching and learning relationship for working with that teacher. (Renee speaking) Kia ora Dee, thank you for clarifying.
(slide – Action process) (Renee speaking)
We are coming towards the end of our kōrero and I just wanted to summarise what we've covered. I feel like we've covered a lot of ground quite quickly, so thank you for bearing with us.
This is our summary slide of where we see readiness fitting in with your action plan or your action process for Te Manu Ka Rere and for literacy and numeracy success in your school. We see readiness data as sort of being a starting point for this action process and really analysing that data, both the assessment tool data, and the readiness and what teachers see happening in classrooms, progressing towards those big ideas and the content and process ideas for numeracy as well.
Then sitting in that space between that data and the outcomes in terms of the CAAs or the alternative pathway are the teaching and learning actions that happen. So, using that data to really target your teaching and learning so that you can accelerate learning and then assessing how that learning is going through formative assessment before considering who's ready to be entered in May, and who's ready to be entered in September. And so that's sort of encapsulating what we've discussed there as well as considering things like where are these students at in terms of their emotional readiness, how's their family supporting them, what are their family's thoughts about how ready this student is, and these are all things that feed into the decision on when to set the CAAs for each student.
(Deirdre speaking) May I jump in here again, Ren? (Renee speaking) Go Dee.
(Deirdre speaking) What I'm noticing across the schools that I'm working with is there's a combination of all of that. Some schools in response to, are taking along the community, whānau and students are putting all their Year 10s through the CAAs. Some are not doing that. Some are looking at readiness and monitoring that closely before they invite them to take the CAAs. Then some schools are doing a combination of both, depending on how they're seeing things and individuals perhaps in the overall. So, there's a whole mix of what's going on in schools. You know your learners. It's about finding the why and understanding that whānau, learners, yourselves, are all on the same page with you, why you're doing this and what it means for them. Thanks, Ren. (Renee speaking) You're welcome, Dee.
(Renee speaking) One of the comments I've had from a couple of schools with the shift in focus of Te Manu Ka Rere to Year 12s has been about putting kids who have been unsuccessful time and time again through the CAAs again. For me, that speaks to the importance of looking at all your readines
u help them to make the best decision for their learning and for their assessment and progress in the school. (Deirdre speaking) Thanks, Ren.
(Slide – Q&A) (Renee speaking) That brings us to questions and answers. Is there anything we've missed in the chat that you feel like we haven't answered or are there any other burning questions? We'd like to invite you to unmute and just share your questions with us.
So again, it relies on that student's self-assessment of readiness and understanding what they need. (Deirdre speaking) Āe, I also wonder if those schools who are framing things up positively around this is part of your journey, you can sit the CAAs as many times as it takes. The positive framing means the kids aren't feeling like failures. They're simply looking at this as ways of practicing, as ways of gauging their own readiness over time and looking at that bigger picture. That's helping kids' self-belief that they will get there, might just take them a little longer than some who have got it the first time.
(Renee speaking) Yes. I would, you know, with that in mind, it seems to me that it's important to check in with your students about how they're perceiving sitting the CAAs. If they're reacting to it as being very high stakes, it's causing them a lot of anxiety and not passing is diminishing their sense of self-efficacy and motivation to learn. Then I think it's worth taking a look at doing things differently. (Deirdre speaking) Good points, Ren.
(Renee speaking) Is there anyone else who would like to jump in with a question? Is there anything else, team? I see that it is almost 4.30pm and I'll look at wrapping up.
(slide – karakia whakamutunga) (Renee speaking) Okay. I just want to thank you all very much for your time today. We really appreciate that you've made the effort to come along to this after school. We appreciate the work that you do every day for your students. And I just want to say how much I've enjoyed working with the schools that I've been working with. I always think teachers are wonderful people because you care so much, and you work so hard for your students. It so often goes unrecognised and unacknowledged. I just want to acknowledge it here.
(Deirdre speaking) Āe, and I reiterate that, Ren. Teachers, you are doing a wonderful job. I'd like you to believe in yourself because what I've noticed out in schools is there's a lot of fabulous stuff happening that is elevating kids in terms of their readiness. So, believe in yourselves and keep talking, keep learning, keep checking in with us. We are simply a sounding board and we are here for you. So, thank you so much for all your hard work. We appreciate it on behalf of all learners.
(Renee speaking) Me karakia tātou. Tēnei rā te whakairi ake i te kete o te wānanga, Tōna mauri nō runga, nō Rangi, nō raro, nō Papa, Tēnei te mauri o te mātauranga ka whakatakina ake, Kia wātea ai ēnei pūkenga, Hui e, tāiki e!
And with that, we release our learning and send you off into your evening. I hope you've got a pleasant one planned and keep it up. Kia ora koutou.
Noho ora mai.
[ File Resource ]
- Title: Measuring student literacy and numeracy readiness slides
- Description: Slides to accompany the Measuring student literacy and numeracy readiness webinar
- File URL: https://ncea-live-3-storagestack-53q-assetstorages3bucket-2o21xte0r81u.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-07/TMKR_Measuring%20Readiness%20webinar_Slides%20PDF.pdf?VersionId=9TyeVoXS.VxmO2Ha9ArXU0jFvoE8ucbS
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- Measuring student literacy and numeracy readiness slides.pdf
- Description: Slides to accompany the Measuring student literacy and numeracy readiness webinar
Measuring student literacy and numeracy readiness slides
[ Video Resource ]
- Title: Assessment for learning and assessment literacy
- Description: Webinar about Assessment for learning and assessment literacy
- Video Duration: 54 minutes
- Video URL: https://player.vimeo.com/video/1099816197
- Transcript: Kia ora koutou and welcome to today's webinar. Our webinar today is focused on Assessment for Learning and assessment literacy for acceleration
Kia ora koutou and welcome to today's webinar. Our webinar today is focused on Assessment for Learning and assessment literacy for acceleration, and I'm delighted to have the lovely Lynette Hay being my technical support today. So, know that she is in the room.
Kia ora. Just one more minute just to let people come into the room and then we'll get underway with karakia.
(Slide - Evaluation Associates company karakia) (Deirdre speaking)
Me karakia tātou.
Tau mai te mauri o te wānanga ki runga ki ēnei pūkenga
Kia mātāmua ai ko te ako kounga a te tamaiti
Ko ia ki mua, ko ia ki muri o ēnei kōrero
Kia puta ai ia ki te whaiao, ki te ao mārama
Hui e, tāiki e!
Kia ora. Haere mai, nau mai, tautī mai, e ngā maunga whakahī o ngā hau e whā. Tēnā rā tātou katoa
Ko Tekoa te maunga, ko Hurunui te awa
No Hawarden ahau, Waitaha ki te raki
Kei Rangiora ahau, ko tōku kāinga inaianei
E mihi ana ki ngā tohu o nehe, o Kai Tūāhuriri e nehe nei au
Ko Deirdre tōku ingoa
Kia ora to you all and a warm welcome. It's lovely to be with you today and to have you in the room and I'm delighted too, to host this webinar.
(Slide – Text reads: Tikanga mō tēnei hui ā-ipurangi – webinar protocols) (Deirdre speaking)
Here are the webinar protocols and I do invite you to put your name and your school so at least I can connect with some of the lovely people that I am actually working with, and so might the lovely Lynette who's behind the scenes here.
There will be an opportunity to put questions in the chat as we go and an additional Q&A at the end.
(Slide – Image shows kākā silhouette from perched to flying. Text reads ‘Mā te huruhuru ka rere te manu – Adorned with feathers, the bird is able to fly) (Deirdre speaking)
If we look at this beautiful whakataukī, our work is nestled in this. ‘Mā te huruhuru te manu ka rere – adorned with feathers the bird is able to fly’. And the whole reason for this particular support around literacy and numeracy, is to be able to accelerate teaching and learning that's seated in literacy and numeracy, te reo matatini and pāngarau. I want you to keep that in mind as we're going through this webinar. It is to enable you, to empower you to give you opportunities to further develop your skills.
(Slide – Text reads: Ngā kaupapa o te wā - The purpose of this kōrero is to explore how Assessment for Learning (AfL) and assessment literacy practices help prepare ākonga for the Common Assessment Activities (CAAs) with particular focus on kaiako actions that accelerate progress.) (Deirdre speaking)
The purpose of this kōrero is to explore how Assessment for Learning and assessment literacy practices help prepare ākonga for the Common Assessment Activities (CAAs) and all of you have engaged your learners in some way over the last wee while in those CAAs. It has a particular focus on kaiako actions that accelerate progress.
(Slide – Graphic shows ‘Shift in ākonga progress’ encircled by Rangatiratanga, Manaakitanga, Te Whakawhanake i te Whanaungatanga ako, and Kōtahitanga. This encircled by the kākā graphic used previously. Text reads: Session outline. Define AfL. Contrast formative and summative assessment. Introduce the 5 key strategies of formative assessment. Consider effective teaching strategies that accelerate learning.) (Deirdre speaking)
A brief outline of our session today, just looking at the definition of Assessment for Learning, looking at the difference between formative assessment and summative assessment, to introduce five key strategies for formative assessment which nestles itself well in Assessment for Learning, and to consider those effective teaching practices that do indeed accelerate learning. In the last wee while most of you have engaged in some sort of tailored targeted support for your year 11s 12s and 13s to ensure that they experience success, and so we're interested in the first instance as to how that might occur with the support of thinking about assessment for learning and assessment literacy.
(Slide – Text reads: Whakataukī. Mā whero mā pango ka oti ai te mahi – With black and red the work will be done. The power of collaboration and the need for diverse contributions to achieve a common goal.) (Deirdre speaking)
If I think about this whakataukī, it is about ‘Mā whero mā pango ka oti ai te mahi’, the power of collaboration and the need for diverse contributions to achieve the common goal, and hence in the kōrero that I'm having with the schools I'm working with it is about drawing on their expertise the experience that they have, and nurturing it that right across the school. There's lots to be celebrated and lots to be nurtured along.
(Slide – Text reads: What is Assessment Literacy? It is defined as the knowledge of how to assess what students know and can do, interpret the results from these assessments, and apply these results to improve student learning and program effectiveness (Webb, 2002 p1) This is the use of any information about where students are on their learning journey, to inform next steps in teaching and learning.) (Deirdre speaking)
What is assessment for literacy? Well, it's defined quite clearly as the knowledge of how to assess what students know and can do and in order to interpret the results from these assessments and then apply those results to improve student learning. If we use this information about where students are on their learning journey, we can then inform next steps in teaching and learning, and we can invite our learners, our ākonga, to engage in thinking themselves about where they want to go, where they're at, and how they might get there with our support.
(Slide – Text reads: What is formative assessment? It’s you daily assessment tool! “Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting students learning. An assessment activity can help learning if it provides information the teachers and students can use as feedback in assessing themselves and one another, and in modifying the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. Such assessment becomes formative assessment when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet learning needs” (Creating the Schools our Children Need – Dylan Wiliam p. 10).) (Deirdre speaking)
What is formative assessment? It's our daily assessment tool. Some of the conversations that I, and I know Lynette has had in our schools, is about the minute by minute, day by day ways in which we enable ourselves and our learners to know and understand where their learning is at. It might be as simple as questioning, it might be more direct around engineering discussion in class to help them identify. An assessment activity can help the learning, and it provides that information that we need, and we can use as feedback.
We can use it to give feedback ourselves, learners can use it to self-assess, and they can use it to peer assess each other. That in turn enables them to set individual goals. I'm working with quite a number of schools who have individual education plans for their year 12s and 13s. They might have explicit literacy classes or numeracy classes and they're fully engaging in explicit strategies that accelerate learning.
(Slide – Text reads: What is assessment for Learning (AfL), and why focus on these teaching practices? It is the use of assessment in everyday teaching to help students understand where they are in their learning, where they need to go next, and how to get there. It is about using evidence from learning to adjust teaching and help students grow, rather than just judging performance. It is noticing, and recognising ākonga learning in the moment, then deciding on the response that will best support progress.) (Deirdre speaking)
Why focus on these practices? Well because it is that everyday teaching that helps students understand where they are at their learning, and if we can use evidence of what we've seen, what we've heard, what they have seen and heard for themselves and in each other, the more that we can share that responsibility, the greater responsibility that our learners can take, the more engaged they are, the more motivated they are to set those individual goals.
Particularly if we're looking at literacy and numeracy, we're looking at te reo matatini and pāngarau, they can keep their eye on the prize and they can know where to set their foci. It is about that noticing and recognising what they're learning in the moment, and then deciding on some sort of response. And many of us have that experience and we have some expertise in this area that we can use for ourselves, and we can then use with our colleagues and to nurture that on and grow it across the curriculum.
(Slide – Text reads: There are six teaching and learning capabilities. Graphic shows ‘Effective learning’ on a foundation of ‘Building learning focused relationships’. This is encircled by five aspects: Shared clarity about next learning, Promoting further learning, Clarity about what is to be learnt, Assessment literacy, and Active reflection.) (Deirdre speaking)
There's six teaching and learning capabilities and in our work. We deeply seat it in enabling learners. Working in ways that enable students to be agentic, ākonga to have some of the control, shared control about their journey. The first one is about building learning focused relationships, and many of our Aotearoa schools are engaging in relational pedagogies of - whatever the version is, whatever the model is - it's seated in the importance of relationship building. Not just relationships for caring, relationships also for learning and letting our learners know we care about their learning, we care about their successes and the outcomes that they achieve.
This is a model that we use in our work, there are other models and some of you will be engaging in those as well. If you feel that you did Assessment for Learning a while ago, then bring it back to the fore because it is in your kete, it is part of that raft of strategies that will enable the acceleration of learning, particularly for this in literacy and numeracy.
(Slide – Text reads: The link to accelerated learning? Taken from a report prepared for the Ministry of Education. “The concept of accelerated learning in relation to children’s oral language, reading, writing, and mathematics refers to advancing the learning of children who [need to build prior knowledge] related to content at their current year level. Accelerated learning is achieved through specific teaching strategies, learning conditions, or scaffolded supports that enable learners to acquire skills more rapidly than they would under ‘usual teaching conditions’ ... [It] relies heavily on continuous monitoring of student progress against benchmarks and progress indicators, ensuring that the learning process remains aligned with year-level expectations.” (Gillon et al., 2024, Accelerating Learning in Oral Language, Reading, Writing and Mathematics, p. 13).) (Deirdre speaking)
How do we link it to accelerated learning? There's a report that was prepared for the Ministry of Education in 2024, and it speaks very specifically about accelerated learning being achieved through specific teaching strategies, and that's where we're taking you today.
Thinking about those learning conditions or scaffolded supports that enable learners to acquire the skills more rapidly than they would under usual teaching conditions, or when we possibly leave it to chance, and we don't hone in on the deliberateness that we need to. It does rely heavily on that continuous monitoring and enabling ākonga to do it with us. I've had conversations over the last few weeks with kura in schools about how they are doing that, and if they have any data, how are they using it with ākonga, how are they enabling ākonga to map progress over time towards that outcome, specifically in literacy and numeracy, te reo matatini and pāngarau.
(Slide – Text reads: AfL is the bridge... between where the learner is and where they need to be. Graphic shows a line connecting two dots labelled ‘Here’ and ‘There’) (Deirdre speaking)
Assessment for Learning, AfL, is the bridge. It enables us as kaiako, as leaders, and as ākonga to bridge that gap between where we are and where we need to be.
(Slide – Text reads: ‘Summative versus formative assessment a brief overview formative assessment is for learning, while summative assessment is of learning’. Table: compares and contrasts formative and summative assessment. Formative assessment purpose: to support and improve learning. Summative assessment purpose: to evaluate and judge learning outcomes. Formative assessment timing: ongoing during the learning process. Summative assessment timing: at the end of a unit, term, or course. Formative assessment focus: next steps and progress. Summative assessment focus: final achievement or performance. Formative assessment feedback: descriptive, used to guide improvement. Summative assessment feedback: often limited, usually a grade. Formative assessment examples: quizzes, peer self-assessment, and teacher feedback. Summative assessment examples: exams, final projects, and standardized tests. Formative assessment key question: how can learning be improved? Summative assessment key question: how much has the student learned?) (Deirdre speaking)
Something that's always I think a worthwhile kōrero in secondary schools is understanding the difference between formative assessment and summative assessment. Also understanding formative assessment, that it's not just a practice test, it's not just having a go, seeing where you're at, doing some more learning and then having a go at the summative assessment. When we're referring to formative assessment, it's that minute by minute, day by day, deliberate acts of teaching that enable learners and ourselves to know and understand where learning is at and inform some next steps. On this table it looks at the aspect of the purpose of each, timing, the focus, the usefulness in feedback, examples and key questions that we might pose.
We'll let you have a wee look at that rather than reading it out. The key thing sits in the key questions. A nice metaphor might be the difference between growing the pig and weighing the pig.
(Slide – Text reads: Practical formative assessment strategies for small group accelerative learning) (Deirdre speaking)
Practical formative assessment strategies for small group accelerative learning, which is what many of you have been engaging in. And it's warmed my heart, and I know my colleagues in this work supporting schools, that you were well on this journey before we came to the table. I take my hat off to you, and I thank you for your energy and your focus and your deliberateness in this space.
(Slide – Text reads: Assessment for Learning in accelerative tutoring. Short, sharp, and evidence-driven literacy and numeracy boosts. Why this matters) (Deirdre speaking)
So why it matters, having that short, sharp and evidence driven literacy and numeracy boosts, is because our national data tells us that we've got challenges, and they're rather large, and they need to be addressed urgently. And that's part of that kōrero that we are having with you around this. The gap is significant, and the accelerative tutoring provides a targeted response to learning gaps. Formative assessment practices, those minute by minute, day by day deliberate acts can enable that.
(Slide – Text reads: What is Assessment for Learning (AfL)? Core principles. Focus = Formative and future-oriented) (Deirdre speaking)
Dust off what you know and understand about assessment for learning. These are the core principles.
It's clarifying learning intentions and success criteria. It's enabling that deliberate eliciting of evidence of student learning. It's providing that timely, actionable feedback, whether that comes from us, or it comes from self-assessment for every learner, or it comes from their peers.
It enables activation of ākonga ownership of their learning. Sometimes we might get confused or not fully understand what we're saying when we're talking about agency or self-regulation or giving our learners greater responsibility. It is about a shared responsibility and that shared responsibility enables that agency. While it's formative, it's also future oriented.
(Slide – Text reads: Example – numeracy. Table: gives an example of teaching strategies aligned to AfL practices. Check in – prior strategy on mini-whiteboard. Eliciting evidence – solve, explain orally. Feedback – scaffolded, “try splitting 48 into 40 and 8”. Exit ticket – how did you solve it, quick share. After table, text reads: Visible learning progress over 4 sessions) (Deirdre speaking)
Here's an example in numeracy. Multiplicative strategies. You might be a year 10 group, and it might be 15 minutes long. What's in the table there is what might be part of it in terms of AfL practice and an example of what that might look like in the classroom. What it enables is visible learning.
(Slide – text reads: Culturally responsive practices. Ako, everyone is both a learner and a teacher. Use mana-enhancing feedback (effort, growth). Connect learning to cultural contexts and identities. Scaffold in te reo Māori / Pasifika languages. Build whanaungatanga before focusing on achievement.) (Deirdre speaking)
One of the things we're all thinking about is that culturally responsive practice that sits alongside any formative assessment practice or effective teaching pedagogy, because we are situated here in Aotearoa New Zealand, so we all see it as important and we're all engaging in practices that are mana enhancing. The feedback is mana enhancing.
It gives constructive ideas for what's going well and constructive wondering or inquiry into what might be a next step. Could this be a possibility? It's connected to the cultural context and identities and languages of our learners and we all have different contexts in which that sits, of - I was going to say how much, but - how significant that can be in terms of shifts in kaiako thinking, and how we sit that alongside formative assessment strategies. The necessity of building whanaungatanga before focusing on achievement.
I said earlier the importance of relationship building not only in terms of caring, also in terms of learning. Our kids need to know we believe in them, that we believe that they will find success and if we're focused on literacy and numeracy, te reo matatini and pāngarau, then it's that focus in that kind of learning where they'll find success, in particular in level one literacy and numeracy, te reo matatini and pāngarau.
(Slide – text reads: How leaders can support. Actively lead the learning of kaiako. Observe short sessions with an AfL leans. Celebrate small wins and student voice. Provide time for kaiako to co-design learning. Use exemplars to share practice. Track progress over 4-6 weeks.) (Deirdre speaking)
How leaders can support? It really is about actively leading the learning of kaiako, and funnily enough any of the formative assessment strategies we might use in the classroom, they're absolutely useful when we are leading learning internally for our kaiako.
The importance of observation to provide timely and really focused feedback. In the world of empowerment, that looks like kaiako deciding on what those criteria for observation or observing against will be, because they're tutu-ing with something, they're trialing something and they want a bit of feedback for that particular deliberate strategy. It's about celebrating the small wins. Success breeds success, we know that, and it's also about celebrating the good stuff students can tell us about their learning and what it means to them when we engage with them deliberately and invite them to think about the ways in which they're learning, how they're learning, what they're learning, why they're learning it. Some of the conversations we've had with leaders are seated in a narrative around ‘this is a journey’, a journey for learners to become literate and numerate, to be able to fly in NCEA and then to be able to absolutely nail it in their lives beyond school, and so seated in that is being able to talk about literacy and numeracy being integral to that.
It's important to provide time for kaiako to co-design learning, maybe with each other and definitely with ākonga. Using exemplars to share practice, some of the conversations we've been having around what's the sustainable way of taking small steps one at a time, one foot in front of the other when the elephant seems so big, or the project and the gap is quite significant. Drawing on the experience and expertise of your maths department might be really important to you or that of your English department at this stage or you might be well on that journey and you've been doing it for a long time and you're putting one foot in front of another and you're enabling that example, the modelling.
People are trialing it in their classrooms, and then they're sharing with their colleagues, and then looking at the tracking of progress over four to six weeks. We are well past inquiring into our practice over a year and doing it as one big cycle. We've moved on from that. We are now all engaging in short cycles of trialing stuff and looking at what I've done, why I've done it, the impact I've had and how I know. If leaders can engage kaiako in that thinking and sharing in short cycles, all to the benefit of kaiako, them feeling comfortable, confident, and again that belief that they can enable learners to succeed.
(Slide – Text reads: Accelerating progress leadership guidance. How might this resource guide your deliberate acts of leadership? Image shows checklist for leaders for planning to accelerate progress. Available via Te Poutāhū) (Deirdre speaking)
We have shared with the schools that we're working with the accelerating progress leadership guidance and so you can find that in Te Poutāhū.
The Curriculum Centre is a resource. It's a nice checklist. It's a nice dot to reflect on to know and understand where you're at as a leader and leading this learning across the school and what you might want to do next.
(Slide – Text reads: Reflection and next steps. Plan for action. What’s one AfL idea you can trial next week in a small group tutoring session with ākonga?) (Deirdre speaking)
One of the things I invite you to think about, and I'd be delighted if you'd put it in the chat so that Lynette and I can see the sorts of things you're thinking about, is what's one formative assessment idea that might have popped for you either because you've dusted off what might have been parked for a while, or you've tried it in this one class and I hadn't thought about trialing this with my year 11s or 12s or 13s in terms of the short sharp, the tutoring, you know. What do you need to do to enable that, particularly around enabling engagement motivation when our learners may have sat multiple times and be feeling a little exam shy, because that's very real for many of our learners. So how do we use some of these little strategies to enable our learners? Lynette, anything coming through in the chat?
(Lynette speaking)
No not yet. What I have put into the chat is the checklist for leaders that you just referred to.
(Deirdre speaking)
Oh brilliant. Kia ora. So, when it does pop, we'd be delighted if you put it in the chat and shared it with us.
(Slide – Text reads: Practical formative assessment strategies for the classroom) (Deirdre speaking)
Now let's go beyond the short sharp to what you might do to enable accelerative learning in the classroom. What it might look like if you're considering the wider application of acceleration. Part of this empowering model is to walk alongside you for the schools that we are actually supporting on the ground, to enable you to foster practices that, again, they may have been parked for a while you may have done them with one class, hadn't done it with another, did it but this last year oh ‘I might think about it’, that's what we hope to prompt in you. Plus, we have a kete of ideas that could be added to strengthen what you're thinking.
(Slide – Lets expand this to apply it to everyday classroom teaching and learning and across the curriculum) (Deirdre speaking)
It makes me think of some classrooms I've seen that have been tailored and targeted for year 12 specifically where each of them have got IEPs and the kaiako are taking the opportunity to engage with every learner around setting individual goals, and then having one-to-one kōrero.
The teachers that I've observed have enabled learners to know and understand what they're learning, where their learning's at, why they are learning it, and what it matters - and I've been delighted to be able to have that kōrero with learners.
(Slide – Text reads: Key AfL strategies that support acceleration. Table shows strategies for use by kaiako, peer, and ākonga that relate to where the ākonga is going, where the ākonga is, and how to we get there? Table adapted with Aotearoa specific framing from: Wiliam, D & Thompson, M (2007). Integrating assessment with instruction: What will it take to make it work) (Deirdre speaking)
Let's expand this to apply it to everyday classroom teaching and learning. There are some key Assessment for Learning strategies that support acceleration, that enable that, where the ākonga is going, where ākonga are, and how we get to wherever we need to go, and they sit very much with either kaiako, peers, and ākonga themselves.
In terms of where ākonga are going ,it's about being clear about the learning to know and understand what the intention is or what the outcomes are, and many of the schools - again I'm working with, I'm talking with - looking at what that possibility is of knowing and understanding clearly what it means to have success with level one, and what the criteria are, and unpacking that again. That expertise sits within our maths and English departments and across the curriculum in pockets, because there are people who have taken an interest and are exploring and making a difference in that space.
Where the ākonga is it's about designing those rich learning opportunities that elicit and make ākonga thinking visible, and that might be self-assessment it might be peer assessment, it might be us designing very deliberate questioning, it might be us using a deliberate strategy like the basketball strategy which I know I've talked with my schools about, you know, a little strategy that you can look up and you might already be using, that can enhance learners knowing that they are going to be asked at any time, and that they can talk with one another, and it's okay to fail, and we encourage them to have a go. It deepens their thinking and their understanding, so supporting ākonga to be tuakana-teina and to learn with and from each other is an important aspect and developing their agency as I referred to before, by encouraging ākonga to reflect on and direct their own learning. How do we get there? It's about providing that timely specific feedback. Again it sits with kaiako, it also sits with peer, and it also sits with self.
(Slide – Text reads: We’re going to focus on 3. These enable kaiako and ākonga to know where the learner is going, where they are at any point in time and how to get there. 1. Clarifying, co-constructing, and making learning intentions and success criteria visible. 2. Providing timely, specific feedback that promotes next steps in learning. 3. Developing ākonga agency by encouraging ākonga to reflect on and direct their own learning) (Deirdre speaking)
We're going to focus on just three. We haven't got time to focus on a lot today, and I'm looking at the time and it's whizzing by already. These three enable kaiako and ākonga to know where the learner is going, and at any point in time where they're at, and how they might get to where they need to go. The three we're focusing on is clarity about learning feedback and developing that agency, by enabling them to reflect on and direct their learning.
(Slide – Text reads: Clarifying, sharing and understanding learning intentions. This is so kaiako and ākonga know where the learning is going) (Deirdre speaking)
Remember I said before it is about shared responsibility, and we have a role in responsibility ourselves to enable that in learners. For us to sit on all the information that we have, that we glean on a minute-by-minute day by day way, it would be really cool to share it with our learners and enable them to do the same thing.
(Slide – Text reads: Success criteria, process vs. product. What’s the difference? Both “process” and “product” success criteria are important for learning, but they differ in their focus. Process criteria highlight the key steps and actions learners take to achieve a learning intention, while product criteria describe what learners will be able to produce or do at the end of a lesson. Essentially, process focuses on the learning journey, and product focuses on the outcome. Image shows success criteria sentence starters: The things I will have done to show my learning, The steps I will have taken to achieve success.) (Deirdre speaking)
One of the key aspects is having criteria for success. There's two versions of this, and both of them are important in different ways and perhaps in different contexts, and in the time you want to use them. There's process success criteria and that shows us how we're learning the steps we might take to engage in the learning, versus the product - ‘I have learnt it, and I can show you that I've learned how to do this by doing this particular activity, or showing you the product of my learning’. Success criteria can be nurtured through exemplars giving learners an example of what is good an example of what's not so good, and inviting them to identify what the criteria for successful writing or numerical problem solving, so we can elicit that by being deliberate and using exemplars. Many of us, many of the people I'm talking with, are enabling some learning through, it might be several periods or several lessons for the learning before they invite learners to think about well what does good look like? What are the criteria for successful learning around this?
(Slide - Text reads: Success criteria, process vs product. Learning intention: To be able to write a paragraph using the PEEL method. Product success criteria, by the end I will have: Received peer feedback for at least 3 drafts. Completed at least 5 good paragraphs. Used the PEEL method. Process success criteria, remember to: Point, evidence, explanation, link. (Deirdre speaking)
Here's an example. I'll let you have a read I'm hoping it's not new to you. Some schools are using SEXY, some are using TEXAS, many schools though are looking at a common language across the curriculum, across learning areas, to enable students to know and understand that it doesn't matter which curriculum area they're in, we're going to foster this particular way of learning. If you want to learn other ways, go for it, and let me know I can help you with that.
(Slide – Text reads: Application to literacy and numeracy teaching and learning, and L1 NCEA co-requisites. Kaiako and ākonga know where the learner is going. How might you strengthen the learning intentions and success criteria to ensure ākonga are clear about what needs to be learnt, related to digital readiness, literacy and numeracy readiness, and co-requisite question readiness.) (Deirdre speaking)
If we're applying it to literacy and numeracy, te reo matatini and pāngarau, then it has been leading up to the CAAs, Common Assessment Activities, it's been about employing strategies that are deliberate in enabling digital readiness, literacy and numeracy readiness, and co-requisite question readiness. In my recent visits to schools and gathering student voice alongside the leaders in those schools, there's a fourth one that's popping and that's that exam readiness. I've had learners talk to me, and have listened to them talk to leaders about the fact that they have never had to sit quietly before, and how they felt about that and the anxiety that it created, so anything around the exam itself exam conditions, any of the rules that our principal nominees need to abide by, the kids need to know in advance what that looks like, what it sounds like, and what criteria for successful exam participation is. Really important.
(Slide – Text reads: Example. Kaiako and ākonga know where the learning is going. How might you create ‘I can’ statements to frame up success for the layers of readiness ākonga need to demonstrate their literacy and numeracy learning and capability?) (Deirdre speaking)
Some schools are using ‘I can’ statements to frame up success for the layers of readiness. There's all sorts of ways in which you can frame that up. Some might be using checklists, some might simply be making statements that, ‘This is what success looks like, sounds like, and should feel like’.
(Slide – Text reads: Providing feedback that moves learning forward. Kaiako and ākonga know where the learning is now.) (Deirdre speaking)
Now if we have a look at feedback that moves learning forward, it's knowing where the learning is now.
(Slide – Text reads: Feedback – what matters. “Feedback is information about the task that fills a gap between what is understood and what is intended to be understood. It can lead to increased effort, motivation or engagement to reduce the discrepancy between the current status and the goal...” Hattie and Clarke, Visible learning feedback. Graphic shows line connecting a dot labelled ‘Here’ with a dot labelled ‘There’.) (Deirdre speaking)
Again, it's enabling learners and kaiako to go from here to our desired outcomes, to reach our goals, it's information about the task that fills a gap, the gap between here and there. A lot of this work has been done with John Hattie and a lovely lady whose name escapes me, and it also sits in Dylan Wiliam's work.
(Slide – Text reads: Giving and receiving feedback. GIVING. With respect to the current piece of learning, feedback should be: Positive, comments on strengths demonstrated matched to the current learning intention and success criteria. Thoughtful / specific, evidence is provided matched to the current learning intention and success criteria. Helpful, something that needs to be strengthened/improved and/or a gap in learning matched to the current learning intention and success criteria. RECEIVEING. Listen and check I understand the feedback by: Summarising what I think the person said and saying it back to the person. Asking questions of the person to clarify.) (Deirdre speaking)
Giving and receiving feedback. Something I invite you to do is, in the chat share with us how you explicitly engage your learners in being able to learn, how to give and receive feedback. How do you scaffold that? What does that mean? What does it look like in your classrooms, in your kura, in your school? I'm interested to know. I think there's a whole variety. I do wonder how explicit we are, and if I think about when we're receiving feedback, have we helped our learners to actively listen? What does that look like, sound like? Are they looking us in the eye, are they thinking about what we're saying, could they possibly summarise quickly back? In my mind it's about paraphrasing - that might be a step too far, but – summarising, and then asking a question of the person to clarify what they think is being said to them, or to dig a little deeper. I’ll give you a moment to pop that in the chat. I'm genuinely interested to know how we're doing that because it makes a difference.
(Slide – Text reads: Giving and receiving feedback. Committing to doing something with the feedback. 1. Write it down: My strengths are. Things I need to strengthen / improve are. Gaps I need to fill in my learning are. The things I will do to make sure my learning is complete are. I will seek help from. The date I will have completed my learning is. 2. Get on and do the things I have written down. Image shows a notepad with writing ‘a goal without a plan is just a wish’) (Deirdre speaking)
One of the aspects that my observation tells me we could strengthen, and that's enabling our learners to write it down. I know there are schools who blog, I know there are schools that have exit passes, I know there are schools that have reflective journals - they might be in Google Classroom, they might be in OneNote - there's ways in which I'm seeing that some schools are really fully engaging the learners and writing it down so that they can reflect over time, they can look back and go well this is what my goal was, this is what I was working on, these are the things I acknowledged as strengths back then and what were work-ons, and now look how far I've come. So that gives them that agency, that self-regulated ability, to go look how far I've come, look how far I have yet to go.
Lynette anything coming through in the chat around feedback? Thank you, thank you lovely lady.
(Slide – Text reads: Peer-feedback. To enable this: Model and discuss effective and ineffective feedback. Provide sentence starters. Use structured protocols (see next slide). Start with ākonga in pairs to work with a provided example (an anonymous piece of work). Employ warm and constructive feedback against a set of relevant success criteria for the piece. Use sticky notes to add comments. Enable ākonga to critique their own piece of work.) (Deirdre speaking)
Applying this to peer feedback, some things that you might be doing or might consider doing, and that is modeling and discussing effective and ineffective feedback. Enabling your learners to observe you doing it, and to think about what you're doing, the way you're doing it, and what it means to them, providing sentence starters, using structured protocols, starting with the ākonga and peers with examples or exemplars, you could use anonymous pieces of work from the previous year, employing warm and constructive feedback - so that's about the language, and you can model that as kaiako - using sticky notes that might add comments to a piece of work, there are many of you I know who when you're looking at previous past CAA papers, are enabling learners to highlight, to annotate, to be really thinking deeply about what is going on with that piece of work compared to a set of criteria.
(Slide – Text reads: Student feedback sentence starters. Positive: excellent job on, I think your example, you did a super job on, your work displays. Need to improve: one suggestion would be, I think you could add, perhaps have a think about, one problem I see is. Ask a question: what are, how might you, tell me more about, is there any value in, where could you strengthen.) (Deirdre speaking)
Some feedback sentence starters: positive, need to improve ask a question. Notice the language and what I noticed is that online there are heaps of websites that talk about these sentence starters and give you examples.
(Slide – Activating ākonga as owners of their own learning. Kaiako and ākonga know where the learning is now and how to move learning forward.) (Deirdre speaking)
The third one is activating ākonga as owners of their own learning. This is seated in student agency, in enabling them to take more responsibility for their learning.
(Slide – Text reads: What is self-assessment? Self-assessment is a process where an individual evaluates their learning to identify strengths, areas that need strengthening, and gaps in knowledge, skills, and overall performance at that point in time. It involves reflecting on the success criteria (process and product) and current goals, identifying areas for improvement and setting goals to move their learning forward. This should include ‘how to’, ‘who with’, and ‘when to’.) (Deirdre speaking)
What is self-assessment? Well, it is about each individual ākonga evaluating their learning, and if you think about it, it is something that we do do, we can do with our summative assessments, where instead of giving a grade we enable learners to have the success criteria. I guess what I'm talking about is those school created, or department created assessments, rather than anything like an achievement standard, where learners are asked to find for themselves what the strengths are, what needs strengthening in any of those gaps in their knowledge. That engages them in success criteria, and that can be both product and process success criteria. It enables us as kaiako to have that kōrero about how to, who with, and when to, as part of their next steps. It can be incorporated into some of those strategies like blogging or reflections that we write in our Google Classroom, or in our OneNote, our exit strategies again around those questions, as well as perhaps what worked really well for me today as a learner, what did I find challenging, and then thinking, well, how am I going to address that, and helping them with it.
(Slide – Text reads: Why self-assessment. Ākonga can drive the process without having to wait for the teacher. It enables ākonga to check in around the quality of their learning and make choices around making improvements by: Looking at exemplars of what a good piece of work should include. Deciding on what needs practice, what doesn’t and what needs further learning. Seeking feedback and help from a teacher or peer. Updating short-term learning plans. Prioritising what their next steps are in order of urgency.) (Deirdre speaking)
Why self-assessment? It's so that our learners can drive the process without having to wait for a teacher. Quite often leaders and teachers have spoken in our kōrero about the pace. Is the pace right? How do they know? And one of the questions I offer is, well, how long do kids have to wait? If we're designing learning then how are we doing it in such a way that we're enabling learners to crack on. I guess we all observe kids waiting for teachers who are running around the room with the with the idea of nurturing every individual, as we do. How can we do that differently so we're not racing around the room, that learners are enabling each other, that the peers are supporting each other and using each other as resources for their learning, how do we do that so that we as kaiako can hover and look at the themes of what's going well, look at the challenges or where there are barriers to learning, and invite learners to come and sit with us to kōrero and unpack and move forward with any one thing. How what might we do that?
There's lots of strategies that are deliberate that enable that kind of thing. So do have a think about that.
Looking at exemplars, deciding on what needs practice, seeking that feedback, updating the short-term goals. How many of us give learners an opportunity to think about their own goals for learning? One of the things I invite you to think about is for literacy and numeracy, te reo matatini and pāngarau, how might they have goals for that, that they can go right I need to work on this and I wonder if there's any opportunities in science to be able to practice that, or in PE, or in social sciences, or technology? What does that look like? We often talk about literacy or numeracy rich opportunities across the curriculum, how do we enable our learners to drive that themselves given that they know what the criteria for success look like, and they know where their strengths currently lie, what they need to work on. Whether it's strengthening, or it's gaps, then enabling them to prioritise.
(Slide – text reads: Assessment literacy for our ākonga. We want our students to be able to: Recognise assessment as a tool. Actively engage in the assessment process. Interpret and respond to assessment feedback. Collaborate in the assessment cycle. Support peer learning through shared insight) (Deirdre speaking)
“Students need to be skilled assessors of their own learning and that of their peers and be able to use or participate in a range of assessment approaches suited to the subject, context, and purpose”, and that from Michael Absolum. If you don't know who Michael is, he is a guru here in Aotearoa around Assessment for Learning, informative assessment practices, and he's worth listening to. I know that he has been on Education Hub webinars with people so yeah, worth listening to. Lynette?
(Lynette speaking)
Just a question from Becs.
(Deirdre speaking)
Hi Becs
(Lynette speaking)
Is there a clear criteria for success for skills literacy in kidspeak?
(Deirdre speaking)
That probably, Becs, exists within schools. One of the things that we've been talking about again across the schools that we are working with is - it's more likely to be engaged with and owned by kaiako if it's created from within the school. Yes, we'd love something to be produced so we're not reinventing a wheel. And yet as secondary kaiako, we need ownership, we need to be able to see ourselves in it. Some of the expertise it exists in maths and English, and so how might you engage those colleagues to share their thinking? I had a kōrero today about how might we use the big ideas in reading and writing, and the content and process ideas in math alongside what English and math teachers know already, to create something that's useful. So again, I invite you all to add to the chat if you've got resources you're happy to share across schools, if you've got ideas or you've got other questions around that, please share in the chat with one another. You might be happy to share your contact and enable people to connect with you and to share that resource and anything else Lynette? Kai pai. What we want our students to be able to do is...
(Lynette speaking)
Oh sorry.
(Deirdre speaking)
Aroha mai
(Lynette speaking)
I've got a bit of a lag in my system at the moment, but Becs extended here, “... about having buy-in, but I find it frustrating that we are all recreating the wheel. They're not tapping into expertise. There's a lot of expertise in school as well”.
(Deirdre speaking)
Right, and so Becs I encourage you to reach out to your network and I know there's an amazing network in Ōtautahi. I was working with an Ōtautahi school today, and your school was mentioned - Papanui High, so reach out to your network and find out what's out there, because the school I was working with talked very highly of the cool stuff that you are doing. So, ako!
We want students to be able to actively engage in assessment as a process, to interpret and respond to the feedback, and to be able to collaborate in that cycle for assessment where we know where we're going, we know where we're at, and we know how we're going to get to where we need to go. That support of peer-learning through shared insight, so again the peer assessment, self-assessment engineering of deliberate discussion and activities, those kinds of things are really important.
(Slide – Text shows question which is read aloud) (Deirdre speaking)
Again, a question for you: how often over a series of lessons do you check in with your learners about their how their learning is going, and use a set of criteria for successful learning? Do your learners know what they can and cannot do? Again in the chat, I’d be delighted, Lynette would be too, just to know and understand what you're doing and what's working, how do you know it's working in terms of checking with your learners about how learning is going, and what are you using? Are you using Google Classroom? Are you using blogs, exit passes, reflective journals? What is it, what is it that's working for you? Are there some strategies you'd be prepared to share in the chat around deliberately eliciting that evidence from learners, with learners, for learners? We'll come back to them Lynette, as we go.
(Slide – Text reads: How is self-assessment going in your classroom? Here are some things you may wish to reflect on. What evidence do we have self and peer assessment is helping ākonga learning and not becoming just an activity we have to do? Do I feel I have the skills to self and peer assess effectively? Are success criteria always clear enough to help me to self and peer assess? Are systems and frameworks working for ākonga? Do ākonga have enough time, particularly for making improvements in ākonga learning? How could we make self and peer assessment even more dynamic in terms of learning?) (Deirdre speaking)
Something to reflect on. I’ll let you have a read because I know you're thinking about the question I put earlier, and there's a wee bit to read here. Lynette, anything coming through in the chat, lovely lady?
(Lynette speaking)
No, nothing at the moment.
(Deirdre speaking)
It's okay, absolutely okay.
(Slide – Text reads: Questions and sharing ideas) (Deirdre speaking)
I wonder, if there are any questions to go with the sharing of your ideas in the chat, this is our opportunity. In particular, in terms of networking and enabling. I'm going to stop sharing now so that I can see some lovely faces.
(Slideshow ends. Video shows Deirdre with a blurred office background.) (Deirdre speaking)
Okay I think that's a big enough pause to enable you to pop any questions or share any further ideas. Again, if you want to reach out to one another then I encourage you to do so. The more we network, the better able we are, and as part of the Te Manu Ka Rere work, because there is a team of us and we're working across Aotearoa and there's 140 plus schools engaged in this support, we have the luxury of this network now where we are able to share the good stuff. And there is Becs, as you said there's a lot of expertise in schools, and so we're able to share that love right across these schools that are engaged in this literacy and numeracy, te reo matatini and pāngarau support.
One of the things that is always good to do from some learning like today, is to identify an action you will commit to and to write it down. You know that old adage that a goal without a plan is just a wish - so I encourage you to write it down perhaps even strengthen your action plan that you have in place for literacy and numeracy teaching and learning. Think about some of those things that you might take from here, what you will do with them, how you will do it, and how you enable a sustainable growth and development across kaiako, across learning areas and departments, and enable your learners.
I think if there are no more questions or no more sharing, then we will bring it to a close. I thank you all for joining us, for engaging in the chat, we all appreciate that because it does feel like we have an audience out there, and as one of our colleagues said today in the school I was working with - “What's happened Deirdre? We seem to have shifted all our fabulous kanohi ki te kanohi opportunities with webinars where we don't get to engage”, and I just nod and I say, oh that's good feedback. The engagement in the chat is a good thing from our point of view. We wish this could be longer, and yet we know how busy you are, and it's nearing end of term so we thank you very much. I’ll finish with karakia.
Me karakia tātou
Tēnei rā, te whakairi ake i te kete o te wānanga
tōna mauri nō runga, nō Rangi, nō raro, nō Papa
tēnei te mauri o te mātauranga
ka whakatakina ake
kia wātea ai ēnei pukenga
Hui e, tāiki e!
Keep well team. It's almost end of term, and if you have any questions for us, please reach out - we'd love to hear from you.
Kia ora, ngā mihi nui.
(Video shows Lynette with an office background) (Lynette speaking)
Kia ora, mānawatia a Matariki
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[ File Resource ]
- Title: Assessment for learning and assessment literacy slides
- Description: Slides to accompany the Assessment for learning and assessment literacy webinar
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- Assessment for learning and assessment literacy slides.pdf
- Description: Slides to accompany the Assessment for learning and assessment literacy webinar
[ File Resource ]
- Title: Assessment for learning and assessment literacy slides
- Description: Slides to accompany the Assessment for learning and assessment literacy webinar
- File URL: https://ncea-live-3-storagestack-53q-assetstorages3bucket-2o21xte0r81u.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-07/TMKR_Assessment%20for%20Learning%20%26%20Assessment%20Literacy%20for%20Acceleration%20webinar_PDF%20slides.pdf?VersionId=dWyhUoSRGwMNBmWvm1bP1zlEy0D.TdXM
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- Assessment for learning and assessment literacy slides.pdf
- Description: Slides to accompany the Assessment for learning and assessment literacy webinar
[ Video Resource ]
- Title: Quality assessment practices
- Description: Webinar about Quality assessment practices
- Video Duration: 44 minutes
- Video URL: https://player.vimeo.com/video/1112094019
- Transcript: 2 of the current entries are planned to be general terms (as they are also used in the CoAs and other supporting documents) and 1 is currently tagged as just for MPT.If you could:for the non-general entry - add any subject names into column F 'any other subjects to tag' if you think the term and definition would be useful to be linked to themfor all entries - in column G 'comments'
2 of the current entries are planned to be general terms (as they are also used in the CoAs and other supporting documents) and 1 is currently tagged as just for MPT.
If you could:
for the non-general entry - add any subject names into column F 'any other subjects to tag' if you think the term and definition would be useful to be linked to them
for all entries - in column G 'comments', note any concerns about the term or definition if you feel they may conflict with use within any of your subjects or LAs
mark off in the column under your own name once you have checked them.
[ File Resource ]
- Title: Quality assessment practices slides
- Description: Slides to accompany the Quality assessment practices webinar
- File URL: https://ncea-live-3-storagestack-53q-assetstorages3bucket-2o21xte0r81u.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-08/Quality%20assessment%20practices%20webinar_PDF%20slides.pdf?VersionId=Q58LSYe3LiL8w.sEwfXHsX70VQeSO7fA
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- Quality assessment practices slides.pdf
- Description: Slides to accompany the Quality assessment practices webinar
Quality assessment practices slides
Resources
Evaluation Associates have designed a ten week programme to accelerate literacy and a ten week programme to accelerate numeracy. These are one hour lessons for teachers to use with small groups of students to improve literacy and numeracy skills in preparation for the NCEA Co-requisite.
Evaluation Associates have designed a ten week programme to accelerate literacy and a ten week programme to accelerate numeracy. These are one hour lessons for teachers to use with small groups of students to improve literacy and numeracy skills in preparation for the NCEA Co-requisite.
[ File Resource ]
- Title: Te Manu Ka Rere - Accelerating literacy learning
- Description: 10 lessons for accelerating literacy learning
- File URL: https://ncea-live-3-storagestack-53q-assetstorages3bucket-2o21xte0r81u.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-06/TMKR%20Literacy%2010%20lessons%20FINAL%2019%2006%2025_0.pdf?VersionId=.lU09J7Vyaq0j6Sj7keyzNy9IiGrojEc
- File Extension: pdf
- File Size: 4MB
- Te Manu Ka Rere - Accelerating literacy learning.pdf
- Description: 10 lessons for accelerating literacy learning
Te Manu Ka Rere - Accelerating literacy learning
[ File Resource ]
- Title: Te Manu Ka Rere - Accelerating numeracy learning
- Description: 10 lessons for accelerating numeracy learning
- File URL: https://ncea-live-3-storagestack-53q-assetstorages3bucket-2o21xte0r81u.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-06/TMKR%20Numeracy%2010%20lessons%20FINAL%20COPY%2024%2006%2025_0.pdf?VersionId=oy8fP7WASjPVp2zOcXC9HDMhIr9sKYiN
- File Extension: pdf
- File Size: 6MB
- Te Manu Ka Rere - Accelerating numeracy learning.pdf
- Description: 10 lessons for accelerating numeracy learning