Special Groups
Special Programmes in 2022
There are a large number of Special Group and Support Programmes which run across the school to ensure that the huge and varied needs are our tamariki and catered for.
Junior Programmes
Reception Class and Child Support Worker/ Better Start Literacy Approach
Early Intervention Groups
Sunshine Decodeables Reading - Yr 2
Quick 60 - (Reported on separately)
Reading Recovery
Senior Programmes
Senior Reading Groups - 3 groups of Year 7 and 8's taken by Jenni Clarke
Reading Support Years 5/6 (Reported on separately)
Reading Support Years 7/8 (Small groups taken by Jenni C)
Agility with Sounds - Helen Squires and Support Workers
Online Programmes/Applications
Reading Eggs
STEPS Programme (online programme)
Other
Child Support in the classroom
In 2022 we have continued to try and be very deliberate in terms of ensuring that we had the right level and appropriate intervention or support. There is huge need across the school and it has meant that this resource is essential and we need to continue to be creative with the way we cover the various needs at each level of the school.
Reception Class/Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA)
The introduction of a Reception class in 2017 has continued to ensure that our newest arrivals at school have a settled and consistent start to school while also being introduced to the Pt England Way. In Term 3 of 2022 BSLA- a structured Literacy Programme, was introduced in the Reception Space.
"The Better Start Literacy Approach is a structured approach to literacy instruction for Year 0 to Year 2 classrooms, to support children's early reading, writing and oral language success. It has been developed by our team specifically for our New Zealand educational and cultural context and controlled research trials have proven its effectiveness. It includes the systematic teaching of critical phonological awareness skills and letter sound knowledge skills through fun, games-based activities, activities making explicit links to the reading and spelling context, and structured small group reading sessions using the new Ready to Read - Phonics Plus early readers series. In addition, the approach includes explicit teaching in vocabulary skills and in building children's oral narrative and listening comprehension skills through quality children's story books. The Better Start Literacy Approach follows a structured phonics scope and sequence that is used in the class and small group reading teaching." From Better Start Literacy Approach Website https://www.betterstartapproach.com/
The following have undergone training to begin to embed this pedagogy in the Reception Class. This training includes a micro-credential achieved from Canterbury University all three of us are in still in the process of completing this course.
Toni Nua - Facilitator/Mentor
Deb Shirley - Classroom Teacher
Elaine Forbes - Teacher Aide Training
See Junior Data for a summary of the progress for this first cohort of BSLA students.
2022 Year 7 & 8 Reading Groups (Mrs Clarke)
Midway through term one, 28 students with reading ages between 7 & 8.5 years were grouped according to identified gaps in decoding strategies to work with Mrs Clarke using mainly AWS (Agility With Sound) activities.
The number of students was reduced in term 2 when Reading Support started and the 18 students who remained continued with AWS activities.
In term 3 a comprehension component was added. These groups were discontinued in term 4 when whole school reading testing was commenced.
Except for a small number of students, attendance in these groups was low and irregular. Four students from 18 made 12 months or more progress in 6 months and a further 4 made 6 months progress in 6 months. The remaining students either made no progress or were unable to be tested due to non attendance. At the time of writing, end of year results were not available for inclusion.
In future, a more balanced programme that includes more emphasis on comprehension strategies seems to be needed, as many students made no or minimal progress through failing the comprehension part of testing.
AGILITY WITH SOUND
The Agility With Sound intervention continued this year with students in Team 4 (Year 4-6) and Team 5 (Year 7-8) who were reading well below their peers. This Programme was designed by Betsy Sewell as an Intervention for older children who have struggled to learn to read. Students were selected who had a weakness in sound to letter knowledge. A focus for this year was to consolidate the AWS programme working 4 days a week within the classroom setting with Support Workers, in addition to 3 withdrawal groups taken by Helen Squires. We started in Term 1 with 10 groups of Team 4 students (39 students) and 1 group from Team 5 (5 students). We were able to have 3 terms of fairly consistent classes but in Term 4 this consistency dropped off considerably. The end of year reading results for these students were mixed. For the Team 4 children 3 made 2 or more years progress, 19 made a year to less than 2 years progress , 10 made less than a year's progress and 6 students didn't make any progress. For the intermediate children 2 made 1.5 -2 years progress and the other 3 made only less than 6 months progress. The key to the programme is consistency so this will be something to monitor more carefully next year.
ESOL
At Pt England a large percentage of the students have a language other than English spoken in their home. The following numbers of students received funding from the Ministry of Education to support them to access the curriculum in English. As is the case in previous years the number of NZ Born children who are receiving funding continues to be the largest of these groups. We need to continue to ensure that we have programmes and support in place to cater for their diverse needs and to continue to monitor their progress appropriately.
2022
86 Chn. receiving ESOL funding
Refugee Background: 2
Migrants: 19
NZ Born: 64
2021
107 Chn. receiving ESOL funding
Refugee Background: 4
Migrants: 19
NZ Born: 84
2020
119 Chn. receiving ESOL funding
Refugee Background: 5
Migrants: 23
NZ Born: 91
2019
127 Chn. receiving ESOL funding
Refugee Background: 5
Migrants: 26
NZ Born: 96
A variety of Interventions and small group programmes are in place to support these children depending on their background and their various needs. Some of the funded ESOL students are included in both our 'Quick 60' and 'Agility with Sounds groups'. Other interventions such as the Senior Literacy Group, Reading Support, and one on one support from our Child Support Workers are used to support these students. The 'STEPs Web' online Programme has also been used as a resource to support these children.
A continued goal for these students in 2022, was to better track the outcomes over and above the ELLP data. This will be shown through the Reading Level data and will be presented here once we have it all in. (add graph of progress here)
The goal for 2023 will be to input the ELLP scores into HERO (this wasn't achieved in 2022). With this, it is hoped that we will be able to keep a more visible record and tracking of these students and ensure that we have the most appropriate interventions in place to support them in their journey as emerging bilinguals.
Toni Nua
December 2022