Reading

First week of the break - lots of sleeping, lots of reading whatever posts come up from various blogs I follow, lots of thinking about what I do in the classroom and what I believe makes a successful learning environment.

In Term 2 I did not teach reading groups. I found that the learning intentions in Term 1 were almost "fake". They were made up because I "had" to teach reading every day. Yet I dont think the students benefitted from this reading time. Sure, they enjoyed the time being in a group with the teacher, but even more so with their friends if they happened to be grouped together. I tried workshop groups but found reading to be less effective as the students chose to come down with their friends - not always because it was their friends, but becuase a lot of what happens in the class programme is cooperative and collaborative, therefore they probably did need to be learning together in order to complete their activity, whatever workshop it was that they chose to come down to.  

From PROBE EOY 2016, I had only the ELL students reading below expectation, the rest of the students were either at or above.  The PROBE tests I have completed during Term 2 shows the same - all students have increased their reading age and, apart from the ELL students, all are reading at or above chronological age.  The 3 ELL students did have instructional reading - Yunseo on her own, and Abby and Suhyeok together. 

Now this isnt to say that reading didnt happen. Reading did happen. Reading happened every day.  We had a class shared novel that we read most days. (Cry of the Taniwha) We summarised, we retold, we discussed characters, we discussed the setting, we looked for clues to reorganise parts of the story.   We looked at vocab and what to do when we met unknown vocab. We etsablished the traffic light system - 

• Red Words - cant read, dont know this word
• Orange Words - can read, but dont know the meaning
• Green Words - interesting words in this text

We read for information during Samoan Language Week, we compared information from various sources, we contributed to shared documents and read ideas others had written. 

We went to the library every week, a time the students asked for if we missed. Reading was silent and individual and engaged.  

I will establish groups again in Term 3.  The focus will be on Reciprocal Reading initially and then move into Literacy Circles. I have not successfully established literacy circles before so this will be a focus in Term 3 - with a strong emphasis on the Oracy aspect. The ELL students I will take every day for instructional reading with the focus being on vocab. These students will also be in a reciprocal reading group and later in the term, literacy circle group too.