2018- Reading Instruction

T1, Wk 7

During my end of year appraisal I noted that an area I felt that I lacked confidence was reading instruction. This year my professional goal is around improving my reading instruction.

So far my plan to improve this area of my practice is to; observing those in around the school who are acknowledged as being literacy and reading experts (RD, JM, NM) and looking into using the Chapter Chat program with my literacy class next term. I have discussed with AW the possibility of using Chapter Chat as the main portion of my reading program for term 2. We will ensure that my class is some of the more able readers and set aside time in our weekly plan to allow us to participate in the weekly twitter sessions on Fridays. To prepare for this I need to look into options to make the book available to a whole class/group without purchasing lots of hardcopies.

After appraisal I will; evaluate my own performance by pinpointing what I think it is that I need to work on, look through the effective literacy/reading practice books

Term 2

Chapter Chat

I have made the decision to trial Chapter Chat for our syndicate as a way to deliver reading instruction. Chapter Chat includes reading aloud to the students followed by optional activities and a weekly twitter chat in which the students interact with other students from around NZ to chat about the weekly reading and answer questions.

I am trialling this program to see if it is a feasible option for reading instruction however I am prepared to supplement and change the post-reading activities in order to cover the specific gaps of my learners.

Wk 4

After 4 weeks of the Chapter Chat program, I have found that the students enjoyment in reading is much higher. I have been reading the book aloud during our normal silent reading time, which has been great as it means we are not taking away from the instructional time and it makes the story accessible for all reading abilities. It has been great to see others from the syndicate joining us while we read, these students get involved and talk about the questions with my literacy class.

Having set tasks from Chapter Chat has been helpful. These make up the bulk of my independent activities. I struggled in the first couple of weeks to figure out the best routine in order to have the class prepared for the twitter chat on the Friday. I have learnt that having the questions displayed while reading is helpful and as we read a section that relates to a question we discuss and answer it in our learning groups so they have it organised and aren't struggling to remember for Friday.

During this week I have made a much larger effort to look at our reading progressions and see how I can cover the skills and strategies within the Chapter Chat activities. We have focused on summarising this week. The students have written letters from the point of view of a character in the book, summarising the events so far. We also looked at a small paragraph of the text, which describes the children building their raft. The class found the key words and important details in the text in order to draw then construct a replica of the raft.

I have found so far that having their reading instruction based around one text has been great, I am aware however, that my class is all students with a reasonable level of reading and decoding.

My next steps are to incorporate more opportunities for the students to read aloud, to me and to each other. I am also going to complete a short survey with my literacy class i order to gain feedback from them about their experiences with this style of reading instruction.

Support Visit T2 2018

This term my support visit is based around my goal of improving my reading instruction. Out of this I hope to gain some valuable feedback, particularly from the student voice.

More info is available in the Mentor Support Tab.

Feedback from literacy class

In the last couple of weeks of Chapter Chat I gave my class a feedback form so they could share their views on Chapter Chat along with the way I have taught it.

They gave me some good things to think about; they felt rushed and didn't enjoy doing Twitter on Fridays as we had Whanau groups during part of the set question time. They loved the hands on activities and wanted to do more context specific things.

Final thoughts & Looking into next term

I have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of Chapter Chat this term. I realise that I need to read the story more in advance in order to be able to link what we are reading in to their gaps and next steps on our school reading progressions.

I noticed this term that I wasn't hearing my group read aloud. While this was fine for most there are a few who it would be beneficial for them to still be reading aloud on a more regular basis. Pre-reading would give me the chance to find appropriate texts that link in to the Chapter Chat novel. This would also allow for the students to show that they can make connections to other texts. This may be beneficial next term when the main text may not ben as engaging as The Explorer has been.

I did struggle this term having the Chapter Chat activities released on a Friday afternoon/evening as it meant I was either doing the activities a week late or couldn't fully plan reading until the weekend rather than on a Thursday afternoon with everything else. I have provided this piece of feedback to the Chapter Chat organisers.

I am keen to continue with Chapter Chat as the main driver behind my reading program. I will take full advantage of the technology integration provided through Chapter Chat such as Google Draw and Scratch, along with looking into the vocabulary and creating a class dictionary which we can add to as the term goes on.

Term 3 2018

This term I am focussing on integrating the Chapter Chat program with more of an emphasis on a guided reading model. I have split my literacy class into three reading groups and our reading time will be split, starting with a Chapter Chat related activity which they can complete when not with a teacher (often a creative task) followed by smaller group work.

These changes are in an attempt to hear my students read aloud more as there is a wide spread of abilities.

I am also adjusting how we interact on twitter, changing the focus from quantity of tweets, having the students attempt to answer all of the questions, and having them be very average quality. Instead we are answering the questions throughout the week individually in order to have a record of who has the ability to answer questions about what they have read and on Fridays in groups of 3, only answering the 3-4 questions they are most excited about/the oes they believe they have answered best.

To encourage great tweets we will be unpacking the Chapter Chat guidelines on tweeting and showcasing the students who do an excellent job.