Day 2: Homework

Rules Around Talk

For the past two weeks, I have been working on implementing ground rules with each reading group. I have modelled to each group what this would looks like, then we have co-constructed a success criteria and after discussions they used it to assess their conversation. Straight away they could identify what they needed to work on next which was usually to include others in talk or to speak one at a time. 

We are working on building talk into a book club conversation about the text we are reading and I have seen already great shifts in students participation and sharing of ideas. Students who were reluctant to share their thoughts and ideas are now joining in with discussions because they have to share their ideas with a buddy first and then when we have our group discussion students pick up on those students who have not shared and include them into the discussion. 

Analysing PAT Reading Comprehension Data

After assessing students on their reading comprehension and assessing the data, I noticed a trend that students are struggling to make local inferences. I have since started explicitly teaching students how to make inferences and this will be a huge focus throughout the year. Once a term I will assess my lowest group using ARBs to see if they have made any progress. 

Day 3: Text Selection

This week we focused our learning on text selections. We practiced selecting suitable texts for 'pretend students' depending on their reading level, interests and most urgent next learning steps. We had discussions around how we group our students and if they are place in groups for ability and how often they may move groups. Ashley and I chose to create a reading group for students who needed to work on summarising as their learning intention.

This session we discussed on students recording themselves reading aloud, and I am thinking that this would be an important next step in my teaching and tasks for students to complete. Students hearing themselves reading aloud is important for improving their reading aloud and their pronunciation. This is part of our homework so I will work with Super Squad students and they can record themselves reading aloud.

Today I worked on a new task board for ANZAC Day next term and have tried a 'new and improved' layout that is more visual for students. I will trial this next term and see how this goes. This is as far as I have got below.

We had a look at the text coverage tab in the workbook and I started added the texts that I have used for each reading group already throughout the term. This is a great way to keep track of the types of texts that students have read so that they can be exposed to a variety of text types and genres. We do not actively ‘monitor our text types but we relate them to our big ideas, e.g sustainability, Te Tiriti, ANZAC Day, so this will help us keep a closer eye on what they have done.

Discussions around Finding the time to read with lower groups or individual students without them just reading with the teacher aide is a wondering of mind. This can be a challenge with everything we are trying to get done so it can be a challenge to read with those students with such limited time.

SUMMARISING

This afternoon, we looked at summarising and one thing that stood out to me was that even if a child can summarise at a lower level when they start reading more challenging texts they need to revisit summarising because the text itself is more challenging with broader concepts. I also noted that deleting the less important parts of a text to write a summary can be challenging for students and we need to be able to model this to them, do it together and then they can try summarise on their own.