Reading Practice Intensive - Day 4

So how do we learn how to teach reading? What support is given to teachers as they prepare for thier chosen profession or as they start as Beginning Teachers? And if teachers change levels during their profession, are they supported in developing effective programmes for learners who are at a different stage of their literacy acquisition?

Guided Reading is at the heart of a reading programme. Research clearly shows that explicit teaching of reading really does matter. Comprehension is a highly valued outcome of reading and there has to be regular, dedicated time given to reading so students can learn about reading. In a guided reading sesison teachers work with a small group of students so they can differentiate instruction, meet learner's needs and develop strategies and deepen the comprehension of texts. Teachers prompt and probe to develop understanding of texts. 

Day 4 of the Reading Practice Intensive (RPI) is focused on Guided Reading (& Comprehension). As usual I will not be sharing any content from the day but the day has provoked my thinking around guided reading.

Guided "Silent" Reading means students read the text silently at their own pace. If teachers do not know about this approach, round robin reading is often used. Round robin reading is where, one by one, each child in the group has a turn to read part of the text out aloud.

So what is wrong with round robin reading?  This means that text is broken into small parts that do not support a cohesive view of the text. If readers only read a small part of text it does not give them the opportuity to develop fluency, word recognition and comprehension. Readers will know when their turn is and can tune out until its their turn - or be busy rehearsing their part and they are not tuned into the text as a whole. Readers may stumble on words and others will call out the corrext word - this does not give the reader an opportunity to work out the word, or the teacher an opportunity to support the use of strategies to work out the word, 

For teachers, structuring a guided reading session can be supported by a planning framework. Teachers need to plan - there is no ifs or buts about this. They need to know how to design the learning,  RPI works through a Guided Reading Model and showcases planning frameworks to support teachers to plan for learning.

Teaching points need to be planned for. 1-2 (not more than 3) teaching points are critical to keeping focus and being able to develop these without being sidetracked or overloaded. How often do we get sidetracked or overload readers when working with texts?

One of the tricky aspects of guided reading is how to accomodate fast and slow readers so they can read the text at their own speed. Routines need to be established so readers know what to do if they finish before others. Teachers can support readers who are reading too slowly. 

Once the text has been read the tacher's role is to broaden discussion out to an extended conversations rather than serve and return. Prompting, provocations and big questions will stimulate a conversation that students can drive rather than having a set of questions posed by a teacher that only require one answer. This is a deliberate act of teaching that teachers need to develop so that readers are exploring ideas and acknowledging the responses of others.  

Reading Practice Intensive - Day 3

Today's theme is "Text Selection". This is where the rubber hits the road! Choosing texts for the reading programme has to take in so many considerations that are all equaly important like hooking students into reading, pitch texts at an appropriate level, build a wide reading programme, stretch student's reading diet, as well as how does Learning Create Share work with all of this?

Dorothy Burt talked in the Connecting with Manaiakalani section about the Manaiakalani Kaupapa and Shared Pedagogy in the Context of Reading. Part of her talk was about print text and digital tet. And how there is no versus between them! I have lamented the media wars lately about this v's that. We all need to be good teachers of reading, not deliverers of a certain programme, or a manager of an online programme.

Dorothy also covered digital tools to support reading and that we don't have to look far in our Google App Suite to find these tools. Voice typing in Docs can be used to support fluency - DFI covers this very nicely! Smart Chips in Docs is a great way to create Cloze activites. We can grab text from digital sources to repurpose so we can use it with our students which means we should never be devoid of material for our reading programme. And now on our Chromebooks we have Screen Cast with transcripts! Oh la la! This is such a great way for students to build oral fluency and check their transcript against the original text. Now to spread the good word to the teachers I work with.

One section of the day was on grouping learners. Teachers are very familiaar with ability grouping and probably this is the default mode for many classes. Mixed ability grouping needs to be built into a reading programme for many reasons. Research was cited which is interesting to read. 

Over the years I have seen many students swtich off reading because they are in the "low" group. It does not matter which way a teacher lists groups or names them, the studnets always can tell you which is the top group and which is the bottom group in the class. When studnets are stygmatised this has a huge influence on their attitide.

In regards to mixed ability grouping we were shown a video that has an analogy in it that really hits the mark. I won't divulge any details because of our NDC. This video really makes you think about high expectations and planning for ambitious outcomes. This is one of the elements of Designing Learning with the End in Mind.

Lots of us have worked with T-Shaped Literacy and the use of text sets. This was explored today. I always marvel at the range of material we have at our finger tips. Diving into Journal Surf in our bubble groups helped us explore texts and types of texts. Other great resources were shared like Ura Mānuka's "Love Reading" site and The Reading Tribe. Wow - such rich material!

I do quake at the way teachers do not know about resource hubs like Science Hub and Instructional Series on TKI. So this RPI is going to be great for teachers to find out about and explore these resources. 

The wider reading programme was a big section of today with us looking at independent reading, shared reading, novel studies and paired reading. Strategies and suitable texts were covered today. This is a great leg-up for beginning teachers. And there was a mantra in all of this - don't flog each chapter of a longer text or make studnets write in a boog log every day - those are the best ways to kill reading ejoyment. But here has to be some sort of accountability sturcture buitl in. Once again there was a bank of ideas being built up for teachers to use. 

Once again the day was intense and we are now seeing the coherence across the days. Today we used the knowledge of our readers in text selection from days 1 & 2. And as we are working through the sesisons feedback is sought about how the design fits, what adjustments need to be made and is there anything missing. We have the opportunity to provide feedback via a shared doc as well as a personal doc that is only shared with the research team. Such good systems and highly workable.

Reading Practice Intensive - Day 2

Titled "Know Your Learner" this day extends on the day 1 theme of knowing our students as readers and learners.

I am a data nerd and marvel at how digital technologies have put data at our fingertips. A school's SMS system is paramount to getting information in and out so that it can be used. From today it sounds like some SMS are not as easy to use as they should be - not that I would name them here. It is so hard for schools to cope with this as they have to pay for the service and then to trun around and change systems means more change etc etc etc.

Getting data out of a SMS or from online testing portals such as NZCER or e-asTTle and putting it in a Sheet is a great way for teachers to store multiple types of info about their class and have it all in one place without having to click away and try to remember where on earth some thing is or have to log on and go through the process of finding a test, finding the students, then copying the data. 

I have visions of the old type "assessment" log in a folder or pre-manufactured book and shudder! The pre-manufactured books were a nightmare with teachers having to hand-write everything in there. Ugh! Using a Sheet means you can fashion it to the needs of the learners and add any requirements that the school makes. 

Teaching students to use a Sheet is a great skill to develop in a class. Teachers can use this to track mahi. I have seen great examples of this in classes. It builds in personal accountability as well as the public sharing of what is done or not done as the case may be. This extrinsic motivation can aid a teacher lots as well as motivate a student to stay on task or complete and be recognised for their efforts.

Effect sizes were talked about today. This research of John Hatttie has become something that NZ educational leaders use lots to explain to teachers which facets of what they do are effective. 

Today I picked Reflection as the aspect Assessment Capable Learners (ACL) to work on. This link is not one that is used in RPI but embodies the aspects of ACL. ACL is bandied around lots and there has been a lot of PLD provided in schools about this. I'm not sure how schools view this work or how successful they have been with it as I am not privy to that sort of information. 

Today I only just managed to get my teacher exemplar done in the time allocated. Even though this RPI is focused on Reading, because I am not teaching a class full time, I have adapted what I have done today in the context of Quality Blog Posts. Students reflect on their learning in a blog post. I shall use it with a couple of my classes and see how it goes. My teacher exemplar is here.