Structured word inquiry

Making sense of spelling

This has certainly been a challenging year; my first experience within the PYP and also being introduced to Structured word inquiry. The first exposure I had was with groups of adults and while I was immediately intrigued I found it hard to relate back to the students in my ELC3-Reception class. Lyn Andersen then came and demonstrated exactly how to do a lesson with my class and the hands on, kinesthetic approach she used made a lot more sense. I'm still learning definitely, so I'm not going to try to talk in too much depth about this approach but the following is what I gathered most from the workshop. It was great to learn some more tools of Structured word inquiry, Lyn did a great job of fitting it all in on one day.

The hypothesis before Structured word inquiry:

The function of English spelling is to represent pronunciation

After:

The function of English spelling is to represent meaning and structure

Free base is a base that can be a word on it's own
e.g Word sum: base - play - re + play - word - replay

Bound base is a base that needs to be in another word
e.g base - struct - struct + ure - word - structure

Orthography - study of  writing system

Morphology - structure of words

Etymology - relatives/origin of a word

Grapheme - each sound in a word - angles brackets < ph >

Phoneme - single sounds within language - slashes /t/ 

Morpheme - prefix, base, suffix

When looking at single letters or sounds it is called 'Phonological inquiry of a letter or grapheme'

Monograph e.g f

Digraph e.g ph

Trigraph e.g ugh

Example of a Word web

Jumps                                       Jumper

                   Jump

Jumping                         Jumped

Example of a Word matrix

dis	please	ed es ing	ly
un		ure ant	ly

Example of a Word flowchart

How a word flow chart works

Phonetic alphabet

Lyn Anderson, BeyondtheWord

Wordsinbogor.blogspot.com

Pete Bowers, WordWorks

www.wordworkskingston.com

Real Spelling

www.realspelling.fr

LEX Linguistic Educator Exchange

linguisteducatorexchange.com

Real Spellers

www.realspellers.org

Etymonline

Word searcher

IB Dunia Teachers' Conference

International Baccalaureate world

On November 22 2014 was the Dunia ('world' in Bahasa Indonesia) conference hosted by JIS (Jakarta Intercultural School, at that time known as Jakarta International School). There were many different workshops based on PYP education held by IB educators throughout Asia. Participants attended a keynote address first and then three workshops of their own choice.

Keynote address: The IB Dunia Journey

Speaker: Vivek Bammi, from JIS. 

It was an enlightening speech about the PYP in the modern world, Vivek referenced Eric Jensen's Brain based learning and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Psychological androgyny. He then spoke about research into the link between the Islamic synthesis of Eastern and western knowledge and the renaissance. Vivek emphasised the importance of new languages emerging today such as those is Australian indigenous culture. He challenged the teaching of politics and wars as opposed to studying caste systems. Vivek offered the perspective of Buddhism and eastern theory rather than the 'Original sin' ideology and that religions, even the same religions can be different based on the place they are followed. He also showed images cave paintings from Sulawesi that question previously held beliefs of the first civilisations. Vivek ended with anecdotes from his own experiences and his unique perception of the melting pot of Indonesian cultures. 

Reflective thinking

Speaker: Mala Manurung, from Sekolah Bogor Raya.

 It is equally important for teachers (as learners) to monitor their own performance as it is for students. Not only should teachers reflect on their own teaching and learning, they must also be able to make the process and reasons for reflecting explicit to their students. By doing this, they are modelling and practising reflective thinking strategies.  At the same time, students are encouraged to be responsible for their own learning. This is central to reflective thinking. What are the strategies that can be used to develop reflective thinking for teachers as well as for students?   

Comparisons were made between reflecting after a lesson is like using an old film camera as it can't be changed and reflecting while teaching is like using a digital camera as you can change it as you go. The importance of giving students the chance to reflect on lessons was also highlighted.

Self regulated learning - An alternative way to achieve academic excellence

Speaker: Laksmi Mayesti Wijayanti, from Sekolah Cikal Jakarta.

The idea that students can become the masters of their learning is still daunting. The theory of Self-Regulated Learning proposes that metacognitively, motivationally and behaviourally students can become active promoters of their academic achievement. This style of learning, which is widely recognized as an effective approach for the learner, requires learners to set goals and make plans before they start learning. Self-regulated learning involves cognition learning, through which the learner monitors his/her own cognition, motivation, and behaviour during the learning process and finally reflects on the result of the process itself. In this workshop, participants will understand the adoption of self-regulated learning in the process of teaching and learning. In particular, the transdisciplinary skills, profile attributes and attitudes, as essential keys to this approach, will be elaborated.

Three phases of self regulated learning were presented: Performance - Self observation, self control. Forethought - Task analysis, Self-motivation beliefs. Self-reflection - Self judgement, self reflection. Self regulation is divided into three forms; Personal, Behavioural and Environmental. We then took part in some hands on activities creating our own expectations for a poem, writing it and then self-assessing it.

Differentiated language learning in practice

Teaching language goes beyond the instruction of learners about what and how they should learn. Learners being the centre of learning is the key to teaching and learning language, a context whereby learners are treated as individuals with different language abilities and needs. In this workshop we intend to discuss the theory and practice of teaching language in answering the questions of “what”, “why” and “how”. In addition, we also plan to discuss language teaching and learning (learning language, learning through language and learning about language); and from the PYP perspective, implementation, evaluation and the impact on the three stake holders in education, that is learners, educators and parents.