RPI Session 9: Sharing

 RPI Session 9: Sharing

I can see several links to this common practice model of 'reading for pleasure' with the reading survey I administered at the beginning of the year. This may be a good way to understand my learners at the beginning of each year and will give insights into how to ensure there are ways to engage learners so they are reading for pleasure. Whether that means have specific texts or series' in the class, finding text types they have indicated they enjoy and so on. 

It was interesting hearing about the difficulties with the authenticities of blog posting. We are just getting into blogging so I have never considered the motivations and repetitiveness that may come in the older levels. It is important to remind students that they share their learning, they are sharing what was most valuable for them - give them the space to share their voice. 

As we start to get into blogging I will ensure that students are given agency over what learning they share, because I want them to know that it is for them to decide what learning they do and don't share. 

Feedback:

Good reminder that the learners need to know and be able to say where they are now as well as what they can work towards next. Interesting to see the variety of ways we can give feedback.

Interesting to see the differences between the describing prompt, the scaffold prompt and the example prompt. We know what learners need what kind of feedback, I hadn't thought about the differences between the feedback, but this is something that I do anyways. 

Collaboration -  I am currently trying to include more activities across the board of all curriculum areas as well as student agency. This is something I also try to work on when sharing on the mat. 

- I would like to incorporate students to listen and respond to each others reading into my programme. 

I intend on doing my reading survey for the second time at the beginning of Term 4. I know that I can't squeeze it into the remainder of this term. 

I have been enjoying including more vocabulary focus into our independent activities during the week and students confidence in sharing new words has grown which is great. 

RPI Session 8: Creating

 RPI Session 8: Creating 

Today's RPI session was all about creating in reading. 

A good reminder about all the different variety of what creativity looks like. I am not the most artistically gifted person and I seem to connect creativity to art, but this is evidence that it is not restricted to visual art.

Building on creating well rounded strong readers, taking part in a create activity related to a text proves that you understand the text well. 

Create task register: It is always awesome to see the different activities that others come up with and I look forward to digging into those to see different ideas. 

Explore different create tasks:

- I want to get students to create a video using drawings to retell the story. 

Awesome idea for students to be able to see themselves in the create activities. 

Creating the book trailer: I loved the fun activity. It was a little bit uncomfortable but a good challenge and interesting way to share and recommend a book to someone. I look forward to including this into planning and it will be great to offer students the opportunity to collaborate while doing this review, will be nice to get different perspectives of the text. 

Piggybook - extended metaphor. I am going to look in our school's library to see if we have it and read it to my class. 

Overall I am excited to plan reading going forward as now I feel like I have a wider range of ideas for different create activities that incorporate different resources and materials. I am looking forward to getting children to record themselves reading so they can hear themselves reading with fluency and expression. 

The padlet activity was a nice reminder that everyone is working on different things and to not feel overwhelmed with all of the resources provided and shared today.

RPI Session 7: Thinking

 RPI Session 7: Thinking

Awesome visual of the different levels of thinking. It was interesting to hear this being unpacked and to think about what my different ākonga are doing when they are thinking and reading texts. Interpretive and evaluative are the higher order thinking skills being referenced throughout the day. Reminder to push students to read between and beyond the lines, and show don't tell. 

Really interested in reading this text as a whole class - will implement it in my planning for shared reading next week so that all students can experience higher order thinking, whether it is a students personal idea or thought/ what they hear another peer share. We saw some awesome vocabulary based activities with words plucked from the text so that will be handy to have those resources already up my sleeve. 

Analysis vs summarising:

- Summarising paraphrasing into fewer words

- Analysis: examining subject from different elements, or breaking it into different perspectives - supports to extend and deepen understanding

Important to note that at all levels need to be looking at and unpacking language features.

 

Activity - provocation: "To be brave you have to be scared." 

I thoroughly enjoyed this activity debating this with the breakout group. There were two sides to the argument but it was clear that either side could completely understand the other groups perspective, and collectively we were in agreement with a slightly different definition of bravery and the feelings including, but not exclusive to being scared are closely linked with bravery. 

I have found it difficult to find a provocation in the any text I chose for ākonga next week - likely due to the level of texts. I look forward to incorporating a provocation and discussion into the programme when we are reading texts that have strong themes which would inspire an appropriate and provocation. 

Today's session was a good reminder that we need to continue to push for extended discussion and critical literacy. I think my next step is to figure out what critical literacy will look like in my classroom and how I can simplify/adapt activities to suit Year 3 & 4 learners. Continuing to push the vocabulary focus I have been maintaining since Day 6 as well as extended discussion with a focus on critical literacy will certainly keep us busy!

RPI Session 6: Vocabulary

 Vocabulary (and decoding)

Listening to Dorothy talk about different apps for vocab. It would be awesome for students to create some vocabulary activities to be used when we start our Tuakana-Teina library sessions with a new entrant class. 

- A good reminder that there are lists of interesting vocab used in all school journal articles. Need to tap into this when planning guided reading follow up activities. 

- Using smart chips to insert a map so they can understand where the place they are reading about is located. 

- Using the explore tool to unpack unknown words. 

I am really looking forward to using the word knowledge organisers both before and after reading next term. 

I am going to add the cambridge dictionary to our site and just.prounounce as well. This will be awesome to support children to break down the barrier of how to say these words - after they have been explicitly taught it. 

I would like to start doing wordle with my class at the beginning of everyday to integrate that problem solving and understanding letter combinations in words - as well as discover the definition of unknown words together. I think it will be tricky to begin with but after we do it a couple of times the students will become familiar with the process of it. 

Rebus patterns - these activities were awesome to do together - it could be interesting to do with smaller groups and watch them figure it out together and convince each other why. I wonder if this is an activity that we could do with buddy classes. 

Robust, interactive vocabulary approaches reflection: This was a great activity to force you to consider things and related it to your own personal experiences. I have made copies of these and will plan to use these relating to the texts we read in shared reading so that all learners experience those words and activities. 

Decoding:

Such a good idea to share this with students so they can self-assess their reading. Will look to begin this next term. 

The resource register is awesome and there is a wide range of very helpful activities. I have made copies/notes of some which my ākonga will benefit from. I plan on sharing these with my team. 

RPI Session 5: Planning

RPI Session 5: Planning a Reading Programme

Sharing ideas from feedback - game for extended discussion - 3 lives, they lose a life when they pause for too long - such a good idea so I will definitely be using this with some groups. 

Personal next steps:

- Reading timetable for ākonga to view

- Look into how to use LTR further to reap all the benefits of it. This will link nicely to the spelling rules we are looking at, as we have just started following 'The Code' spelling. 

I am interesting in looking into tracking sheets to monitor independent work. 

Purpose of independent activities:

Mileage

Comprehension

Vocabulary

Discussion

Tracking

Differentiation

Empowerment

Engagement

This was a good reminder to me about all the different factors that independent activities should provide. In the next coming weeks when planning, I will be checking that all groups have activities which integrate all of these aspects in some form, naturally not all at the same time. I am not sure if discussion fits into all groups independent activities, this is something to look at - but doing this in a way that the guided reading group is not distracted by it could be a challenge I need to factor in.

I did not realise that you can assign texts of a specific genre or theme on epic - this is great and I will definitely be using that tool for the epic app.

Buddy reading is something I have been wanting to fit into my programme for a while, I am hopeful that trying to do this in the library may be a suitable time, I will trial this in our next library session.

Linking reading and writing:

We did an activity today to be used as a away to integrate and push ākonga to imitate interesting writing styles, looking at interesting beginnings. 

Here is the poster our group (1) came up with.

I am looking forward to integrating this into my writing programme planning, in some way!

RPI Session 4: Guided Reading

 RPI Session 4: Guided Reading

Processing side and comprehension side to guided reading. Engagement to text, emotional side, intention of the author is important too. But we need to explicitly teach and model how to process the text and comprehend what the text is telling us. 

Learning intentions - aiming for 1-2 in a week. Naturally some learning intentions take longer to unpack than others, and it is good to refer back to last week's learning intention so that ākonga continue to use the skills that we being explicitly taught. 

The context of a text can be a challenge if students are not familiar with it. Good idea to front-load the context through an independent research activity or a vocabulary challenge so that we are ready to unpack the text and not spending our precious guided reading time doing the introduction. Using an anticipation guide is a good way to set students up for success while reading the text which doesn't take away from teaching time. 

Background vs prior knowledge

- Background knowledge enhances reading experiences.

- Prior knowledge is students own experiences with the context. 

Need to be careful about the questions we are asking so that we don't ask for prior knowledge. 

Fluency scale

 

Really interesting to see the different aspects of expression and volume, phrasing, smoothness and pace layed out in a table like this to see the progression. There is a learner-friendly fluency scale to use with learners so they can self-assess their fluency. 

Integrating into self assessing in partners using this would be beneficial, particularly looking at punctuation. We can link this to how we look at punctuation in our reading and self assessing for that. 

I am interested to see how it goes using the LtR to track a learners reading. 

Our adventure to donate picture books to our community library box...

Kia ora everyone,

As I analysed the results of the reading survey, my mentor and I realised that our local library is quite a distance away and one would need a family to access it. We then reflected and wondered if there are many picture books in our local community library box which is very near our school.

After being gifted a pile of picture books, we decided to donate these to the community library box and show students where they can access this wonderful resource. 

Today in our reading session we walked down to the library box to donate some books. Attached are some photos of our ākonga doing so - we also encouraged them to tell their whānau about this too! 

Jasmine