Anita's Teaching as Inquiry Blog

From looking at a holistic view I created an analogy of barriers in reading as the roadvblocks or speed bumps.  The road works are the strategies we are using to reduce these road blocks.

Looking into the shift made in reading so far.  In our hub we don't have as many at the beginning of the colour wheel. This is looking at all the boys in our Hub. Next data to look at the number of boys in my reading group.

By getting to know where we come form helps us build relationships and understand our backgrounds.  Some of us can speak more than one language, and can even read in other languages.

The ability to read and write does not develop naturally, without careful planning and instruction. Children need regular and active interactions with print. Specific abilities required for reading and writing come from immediate experiences with oral and written language.  Today in phonics we had a parent help with learners, saying the words, memorising the words, jumping them out and then writing them.  Other learners were seeing how fast they move up the sentence ladder.

The eye rubber  The ear muffler The clean freak The figeter The spinner The chair tipper The kid who goes bump The toucher The pencil breaker The clumper The slumper The jumper The quitter The hand swapper The letter Reverser The pretzel The fist The speed Demon The last kid picked for the team A Moving Child is a Learning Child - How to body teaches the brain to think. Gill Connell and Cheryl McCarthy 2014 See Design for learning tab for more information on this...

Education Gazette In today's Education Gazette  Educational psychologist and teacher Julia Westera is a passionate advocate for reciprocal teaching (RT) So Julia, what is reciprocal teaching? Reciprocal teaching is a package of strategies that increases a student’s ability to access and understand what they are reading, especially challenging text. It can also be used for small-group collaborative investigation. It involves four thinking strategies: clarifying, questioning, summarising, and predicting, as well as thinking about thinking strategies (metacognitive instruction).

This resonates with me, I have been introducing this with my learners to give more student agency - giving more ownership will support with help to increase motivation.

Research by Hayley Cockcroft.  Linking evidence from research to what is happening in the classroom. Spending some time observing and collecting student voice.

Monday 13th March I presented the Reading Together Programme to support parents who's child's reading is at Green or below on the colour wheel.  We had a great turn out of 18 parents, who took away strategies of how to read with their child at home.     Expected outcomes of effectively run workshops will lead to: gains being sustained over time gains spreading to older siblings parents/whānau gaining competence in helping their children’s reading at home stronger learning partnerships between parents/children/schools children more effectively engaged in their learning across the curriculum. (Ministry of Education 2014)

Identifying the barriers to reading at the early stages of primary school. How can we best cater for the different needs, reduce these barriers to raise student achievement.