Christchuch MIT Presentation

RPI Day 3 - Text Selection

 Day 3 RPI - Text Selection

Over the last few weeks I have been continuing scaffolding the ground rules with my learners in my classroom.  I sat down with my mentor (Toni Nua) and she took me back to the data to see what my learners needed.  We looked back at our PAT Reading Comprehension results and realised that my target group had struggled with reading and understanding Poetry.  This goes to show I need to be doing more poetry with my learners on a regular basis rather than this being a one off in my class room (face palm).

We firstly went into our break out groups where Kiri explained to me how she did a poem every week with her kids a few years back.  I think this is a fantastic idea and am going to start trying to do a different poem every Friday.  I'll try to make a fun engaging create activity to go with it.

When looking at text selection with our students, we need to make sure as teachers we're having half of the texts as books in front of our learners and the other half being online texts/videos.  One thing I loved that Dorothy mentioned this morning was no matter how great online apps are, they’ll never do the job as a teacher, these apps should never be what your planning/learning is based around.

Pillars of Practise

Today we are looking at the pillar of 'Inside the Classroom'

Text Sets

This is the best part of learning, having different text sets about different ideas/themes/people/places opens you up to a world of learning/knowledge.

When looking at the image below, this is the best way of creating a text set.  It is important to pick a text you know that your learners will engage with.  Once you have chosen your instructional text, you need to choose a complementary text that will offer your learners more information about your theme. Next, you need to select a tension/challenge text, this is always the best for starting discussions, this makes learners look at the other side of the story/argument, learners have to use information that they have learned to support their ideas.  Lastly, the student selected text, I usually use an epic article, or a YouTube video, this is always engaging.

Today we worked on making a text selection, I did mine on a theme of the 'History of Kilikiti'. Students have the 3 texts to read and 2 YouTube videos to watch.  Click here for a link to the slides.

The one thing I would share with my syndicate from today would be what I learned from the text sets, but mainly how to use Journal Surf and the filters from the advanced search that you can use, I foound these great!

This was another amazing session, thanks heaps to Naomi, Kiri, Sharon and Dorothy for giving us this opportunity to better our teaching.  

RPI Day 2 - Know your learners as readers

 Day 2!

What an awesome start to day 2, Dorothy came on to our chat and really inspired me to get KPE (Korero Pt England) running at our school again!  I love letting my learners be creative with the follow up activity they get to do with their text set each week and what better way to do it than this! Watch this space...

This is the common literacy practice model that helped mould Learn, Create, Share with adding digital technologies this not only engages students but gives us access to the biggest resource in the world, Google.  

Collecting Assessment Data 

It's so important to use a mixture of both Formative and Summative Assessments to evaluate our learners.

Teacher Workbook

The next thing that we looked at was the Teacher Workbook, this was great to hear Naomi and Kiri talk about and elaborate the 'why' that we use this.  I've been using this since the start of the year and I love it! I love that everything is all in one Google Sheet.  You have all your data collated together and can continually check the progress your learners are making.  I'm going to be using the text coverage aspect of the Teacher Workbook so I know that my learners will be reading a range of genres.

Task Boards

I was lucky enough that my team leader (Rob Wiseman) has got our team of teachers using these for all core subject areas.  I like the idea of adding small tasks as well as the main tasks that you have for your learners during the week.

Next steps for me - Get in touch with Dorothy and find out more about Korero Pt England and see how I can use this in my classroom with my learners, this will relate back to the MIT Inquiry I did in 2018 where I made this resource.

RPI - Knowing your learners survey.

This year I will be inquiring into my reading practise as I participate in the RPI (Reading practise intensive). 

My wondering is: How do I develop my learner's ability to participate and engage in extended discussion about a text and how is this going to improve their vocabulary and reading comprehension?

Inquiry/RPI Update:

This week we have started doing Robyn Anderson's Reading challenge, I have changed her Reading challenge and adapted it to Epic (online book library), this is one of the rotations that I have in my Reading lessons.  By doing this I will get my learners reading a range of different genres.  After learners have read a text from Epic they screenshot the image and put it on the bingo board! When learners complete the board they receive a prize.

After doing the Reading survey with my learners, 2 major answers really stood out to me.  The first being that 25 learners in my class don't enjoy reading in their own time.  We've had big discussions in our class about what texts you can be reading in our own time, whether it be sports reports, animal facts, comic strips or a crime documentary.  We have started doing 2 x 20 minute blocks a week that we call reading for enjoyment where our learners are allowed to choose any text or online article that choose to read and this is silent reading time, although this has only been going for 3 weeks, it has been great to see our learners engage in 'reading for enjoyment' time.

The next data that really suprised me was that 9 students in my class said they don't think that I think they're good readers.  This comes down to how they view what reading group they're in and how they aren't confident readers.  I need to make sure that I continually praise my learners for the little achievements they make in reading.  I also need to celebrate progress that learners make in our class and let them know what reading age they achieve after they have done their testing,

RPI - Session 1 - Reading is core.

Wow what an amazing first day of learning.  Firstly want to say just how grateful I am to be a part of this programme.

What makes a good reader?

This was the first question given to us, I had written down; asking questions, critical thinking, comprehending a text, making predictions and having fluency whilst reading.  The image below is what we were shown after we had noted down the ideas we had.

This was really interesting and we were able to go into our smaller breakout groups and discuss these in further detail.  I'm finding that my learners aren't enjoying reading as much as they could be.  After reading about Robyn Andersen's inquiry about getting her learners to enjoy reading it has motivated me to try some of the outcomes she has had.  I have an intermediate class and think it would be a fantastic opportunity to buddy up with a junior class and go with them to the library so we can read them books about a range of genre and/or get the juniors to choose the books that will engage them.

Reading Across the Curriculum

This is a very important aspect that we were learning about today.  Richard Johnston (Panmure Bridge Principal) spoke in great detail about how reading is never going to be just in a 40 minute block eachday.  It's the core of everything.  It is used in every subject area and allows you to experience a wide range of genre.  Robert Wiseman (Team Leader) has implemented the Task Boards into our Reading, Writing and Maths programme which has really helped me with planning a range of genre each week and reading across the curriculum.

Pillars of Practise

I really enjoyed spending time discussing this aspect of Reading, I loved the idea of learning with the end in mind, it got me reflecting on my own progress and thinking about what I want my learners to know after each week, and be explicit with my learners about these WALTs and Success Criteria.  At the start of the year I did the 'Reader profile survey' with my learners and was really interested at the outcomes, these results will be shared in the above blog post.  Doing this survey really gave me a head start on knowing my learners.

Reflection

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 

One thing that I was shown today, this another one of Robyn's gems, was the Reading Challenge's she does with her kids, these are simple to complete, and there is competition to go along with it.  I'm sure this will be a hit with my boys that can struggle in engaging in follow up tasks from time to time.  We want our learners to be confident in their ability to read.  When thinking back to task boards and engagement, I need to be choosing themes and texts that are going to engage my learners, making sure they are reading a range of genres each week. 

In my class I currently have 'Epic'(Online Book Library) as a reading rotation, my learners love this, however, this is something that I'm not tracking.  I think Robyn's book bingo will be great for my learners as they navigate through the different genres of texts.

Day 1 was incredible, the slide/image below sums up my journey so far.  Teaching reading really is like rocket science, it's such a hard thing to do, however, i'm sure after i've finished this course I will have a greater understanding about incorporating this into my teaching to give my students the accelerated progress they are capable of.

Staff PD - Reading

Monday 18th September

This week was a really interesting staff meeting where we discussed what we are noticing, wondering about and what we can do to improve our reading programme based on the data we saw at our staff meeting across manaiakalani schools.

Update - Reading Inquiry

This year is flying and I'm thoroughly enjoying my Reading inquiry, after my testing I had mixed emotions, I was disappointed and pleased, out of my 2 groups with readers aged 8 and 8.5 years only 3 of the 10 made any progress.  I had conversations with my team about what I needed to change in my practise to support these learners.  My team leader Rob Wiseman spoke to me in depth about the RPI (Reading Programme Intensive) he has been on and showed me the Task Boards he had learned about, this promotes children to focus on a theme of reading for the week and gets them reading widely about one theme/topic.

Below is a screenshot of my weekly reading I have for one of my reading groups.