Manaiakalani Reading Practice Intensive - Reading is Core to Learning - Day 1

In typical Vicki fashion, I managed to be sick on the first day of the course! But credit has to be given to the facilitators for their support and the interesting nature of their presentations -  I loved every minute of it.

It was great to go through and be reminded of what makes a good reader. I read before I went to school and was always supported by my whānau to read. I still read morning, noon and night and can't do without a daily fix of some reading or another. I love to learn and I found it easy throughout my school years. Not so for a lot of my class and I can see where I can shore up my practice to help pass on my absolute love of reading to my tamariki. My community is a small one deep in poverty and inequity and reading is one way of helping them to lift themselves up and out into the world and make great gains.

The pillars of practice make it "easy" to see where I need to focus my energy on in the classroom, and beyond.

In assessing where my tamariki are with their reading disposition, I already have data on what they like to read, when, where and how they feel about reading. But I have not yet done anything with it. I can see how I can now get their buy in as to what they can do to help themselves read more, and what I can do also. 

The exemplar reading slide with activities is a great resource. I already use some of these activities, but to see it laid out in both the younger and older reader levels was excellent. I will be endeavouring to use this format with my class as much as I can this term. I have levels from pre-emergent to 15/16 year old readers in my class although all seem to have a "helplessness" attitude with regards to learning that I am trying to overcome. This format will help make delivering my programme a lot easier.

I would also like to introduce a tuakana/teina reading group in the library at lunchtimes. I have a lot of tamariki that aren't into playground rough and tumble and spend time in the library. They love showing leadership and the teina are in awe of them. This will grow relationships across classrooms and the school and give a lot of tamariki the reading mileage they aren't currently obtaining.

I was sick the day of school three way parent/teacher/student interviews and will be rescheduling these after school in the coming weeks. I am now going to add some extra questions to my agenda about reading for the whānau. Maybe me getting covid was a blessing in disguise!