Day 9 Sharing Reading

Day 9 Sharing Reading

Planning for share - I make sure that every two weeks students will post their reading tasks as a quality blog post. I have found that two weeks of learning and working is a good amount of time for them to get these complete. They also have the opportunity to read and comment on their buddies blogs and respond to comments on their own blogs. 

Blog Detectives

Students can be blog detectives and see what they can find out about students. Here is what I could find out about Anon. 

Homework from week 8

For my homework, I used one of the create tasks from the text Jump! Students had to take a screenshot of themselves and then using Canva design the background, added images and made some parts moving. 

Blogging

We blog every two weeks, as we have library time, buddy reading, school activities and teacher out of class interruptions during our reading time, which means less time in class reading. I use a colour coded system to ‘check in’ with my students. Pink means they need to make changes, orange means beginner, green is stepping up and yellow is a smart learner. I have noticed that students getting green are wanting to make changes to receive yellow. This is where I can give my students feedback and feedforward. 

Blog comment to Arya. 

 

Day 8 Create Reflection

Today we dove into how the create task is a vital part of the learn, create, share model. It engages the students and provides creative opportunities for them. Johnathan Neeland talked about students' needing a combination of science and art education in schools which we believe we do quite well through integrating reading with Inquiry, Science, Maori History and Arts. It was great to see Naomi highlight some of my previous create tasks such as our collaborative manu tukutuku (kite) and waka, where students removed the background and then added labels for the different parts they chose. It is humbling to know that these have been used and shared as examples to our cohort. 

Creating a One-Shot Video was a challenge because recording yourself can be a daunting and vulnerable thing to do. In saying that, I thought this would be an enjoyable task that I could incorporate into our novel study, so I have also added this to our task slides to complete in week ten when we complete the second book to The Last Wild trilogy.

I enjoyed being introduced to new websites such as Craiyon, Story Board and Pixton and I look forward to implementing these into the classroom. I have planned a task using Craiyon where the students will create an image of a character from our novel study The Dark Wild. 

One of our tasks was to create a scene from the poem Te Marama written by Kelly Joseph. I used Craiyon and searched keywords that produced an AI image of the moon shining through a window. For the task, we also had to reflect on what things were different, and similar and things I liked the most about my AI image. 

I found the document below really beneficial to complete as I was able to reflect on what create tasks I have done in the past and some that I can think about including in the future.  

RPI Day 7 - Thinking

 RPI Day 7 - Thinking

We want students to have reading competency and digital competency. We want them to be able to think about what they are learning and not just typing online. Moving students into higher-order thinking by answering not only literal questions but interpretive and evaluative questions. I have created a follow-up activity that I can use in the future with my reading groups. I looked into the issue today, should girls be allowed to play in a rugby tournament. The students will look at all the different characters and give reasons for their views and thinking. People have different opinions depending on their position or situation. 

Discussing Bloom's Taxonomy highlighted lower-order thinking and higher-order thinking. I have seen in class that having bookclub like discussions where the students lead the conversation analysing and evaluating the text is very powerful. 

We want to move on from literal questions as shown below. 

I liked the look of adding some information to the vocabulary as seen below. Students can open their text with Lumin and highlight information. 

I chose the text No Girls Allowed by Victor Roger as it has social issues around gender bias. It looks at the different characters perspectives as to why they think the way they do. 

Issue: Should girls be allowed to play with boys in a rugby tournament?
Character:	Point of view:	Possible reasons:
Riley
Callum
The tournament organisers
Zac
Jody
Riley’s dad
Riley’s mum
Aunty Tiff
Archie

Good readers think about what they know and other parts of the text and they bring it together. Multi-text helps us to understand more deeply. Students synthesising at Level 3 need to show a developing understanding of ideas within, across, and beyond texts:

I like this how it is asking the student to put the word in a sentence.

Vocabulary Day 6 Reflection - RPI

I have learned that vocabulary really matters and since starting the RPI course I have started paying more attention to vocabulary and today highlighted again its importance. I learned that there is more to vocabulary than finding the dictionary meaning or synonyms for the words. Students should be able to put their new vocabulary into a sentence or be able to find examples of the word used incorrectly in a sentence. Language can express knowledge so knowing when to use formal and informal language in speaking and writing is important.

 

There were many Google Slide documents that I have taken a liking to so I have linked them to a new vocabulary folder that I will begin incorporating into my reading lessons. Others in our break out talked about how they use a 'word of the day' and have challenges throughout the day using these words. I thought these were great ideas and I too want to implement something like this to create a word-rich environment. Using this Word Power chart would be a step up from what we currently do for word work.

Reflecting on the way I currently teach new vocabulary, it is more of a 'rinse and repeat' type approach where I am not referring back to new vocabulary the following day to reinforce these new words. Students get reinforcement of these words with their follow-up activities but I do not think this enough exposure just writing the definition once or finding a synonym for the word. 

I want to have a go at using some vocabulary apps such as WordWall, Vocabulary.com and Quizlet. I am also interested in creating some vocabulary activities like the one below, although I need to look into this. So if you know how to use the drop down chips that would be super helpful. 

I learned about Rebus Puzzles. I have done these a few times but didn't know the name of them. I am not usually very good at these but I had fun finding the phrases for the kids ones. This could be a fun way to engage students.

 

Day 5 Reflection - RPI

Reflection on homework We are currently testing, so listening to my student's reading and prompting some of them to read clearly for the purpose of the other person hearing them would be beneficial. I hope to focus on fluency as mentioned in Day 4 in the coming weeks after testing has been completed. I like to make notes of how their reading sounds in my planning sheet during guided reading and this too has informed my report comments.

Reading site design

At Saint Mary’s our reading learning is available digitally, it’s rewindable and it is easy for whanau and students to access. In Pompallier Hub we all have similar layouts for reading on our site and we use the taskboards for each reading group. Groups, instructions and learning intentions are all visible on our task boards and we often have students using this digital platform when they are away or sick.

Digital reading apps 
I am not currently checking in on students' progress on Epic, and after having a quick look, I found I can see who has opened the texts and how long it took them to read the text. I am thinking a check-in once a week could be beneficial to keep students accountable. Maybe on a Monday as that is the day they should be reading and doing the learn part of their taskboard. A suggestion was that students could screenshot whatever they have completed at the end so the teacher can see what they are doing. Otherwise, we have no idea what they are doing.

I want to incorporate students commenting on blogs as part of my task boards for reading. This could be a button that takes them to the Pompallier Hub student's blog links and would be a great extension for those fast finishers. I used to do this activity frequently, but due to our busy schedule, it has become difficult to make time for it. Therefore, incorporating it into my reading routine seems like a logical solution.

I use a blog log with a colour-coded system to track my student's independent work like follow-up tasks and have used this to inform my report writing and what the students know. I notice that students are more engaged in trying to get yellow, the top colour for a quality blog post and will go back and make changes if they are not quite there yet. 

I want to add in Read Theory and/or LiteracyPlanet to my taskboards for extra reading practice and reading mileage. I can view students' progress and so can they, so they can come to ask for support on their next learning steps.

Timetabling to empower learners 
Below is how I timetable and plan my reading. Students have a very visual rotation slide for each day with Bitmojis and icons that help make it more appealing. There are three guided reading sessions, shared book The Last Wild by Piers Torday follow-up tasks, taskboard and follow-up activity. A wondering I had was around the groups I see. I often do not have enough time to get through my three 15-minute groups, so I wonder if I take two groups a day instead? How would this work? If I took two groups I could have time to roam the class after a group and check in with students' independent work as this is something I do not currently have time for.

Integration of

Science is something that is easy for us to integrate through reading as we use the House of Science boxes. A wondering is if I can integrate art more into my reading and maybe even maths. 

Reading Like Writers (and other high-expectation activities)
We are working on descriptive writing next week so reading a passage like this could be beneficial for some groups to point out effective language features. I enjoyed the scaffold when writing my own paragraph, and it goes to show that a story does not need to be lengthy. This also made me think about the types of texts that I select for my students in reading. The way that they begin, their language, how the passage ends... How does the author hook in the reader and engage them?