Manaiakalani Reading Practice Intensive - Know your Learners as Readers - Day 2

Day 2 was a very intensive day. I feel shattered at the end of it! 

We had a quick look at our assessment data from the PAT Pānui Reading Comp testing. Three of my tamariki are incomplete: one was away and been away a nearly every day I scheduled to run it for him, then two just mucked around and gave answers and attitude in such a way I know they weren't taking it seriously. They will have the joy of resitting with a mentor watching over them.

I have always looked at the ARBs for maths, but no so much for reading. Having the opportunity to look more closely at these was good and I have many ideas for how to use them. The readings a short but varied. I rarely use poetry and that showed in the PAT test as a low area. They were unable to identify metaphors and to picture the scene in their heads and answer the questions correctly. I love poetry myself as my parents gave me poetry books as a child - why aren't I modelling this to my tamariki? Moving forward I will definitely be using these in my reading groups to create discussions and discover how the akonga are thinking and why they are answering the way they are.

My class has quite a few gaps and I'm glad I'm on this course to help me to plug those gaps and to ensure the success of my tamariki with reading. 

I feel a little overwhelmed with the tracking sheet. It requires a lot of time to build up the data and then once it is full, the data needs to be tracked again in other ways at my school. When we get into using it though, we will have some evidence to drop the repetition and just link everything to the comprehensive tracker! Sooner rather than later would be a good outcome. It would be great if the rest of the school used these also as it would mean that as students move through the school we would have the data being tracked and what has been covered. We track students through HERO and know where they are up to, but it is only as good as the data being input. At the senior end we inherit the data from previous teachers and there can be gaps that aren't gaps or things marked off that need re-visiting.

I always give a WALT for my lessons and we discuss the Success Criteria (SC). The tamariki do have the opportunity to help decide what the SC should be, but often it may be only one sensible SC offered by them, but at least that gives them a hand and a feeling of co-creation. I will be working on trying to get more out of them though. The splitting down of the AO, LI and SC was a great exercise and one I hadn't thought about it. Also the backwards planning. Makes perfect sense. It's how I handle things in my own life - want to go on holiday? What do I need to do to get there in the months prior to leaving? Same with what the tamariki are expected to be able to do at the end of a unit or similar. So what do I need to do to get them there?? I LOVE THIS. 

The dive into why we do assessment was interesting along with the 7 characteristics of expert teachers. The surprise was that establishing and maintaining high expectations with the learners effect size was so high. I think I do have high expectations, but am I making sure the tamariki know this? I will be taking steps to ensure that I am communicating this clearly, both at a class level and at an individual level. 

Over the past two weeks I have used the supplied slide with inferencing work for reading times in my class. This has been a steady battle with teaching them to learn how to use it and the expectations it has on them and self management. The first week I did no group reading because my time was spent teaching them where, what, how and when to do the activities. My biggest struggle is the tamariki that came from the ipads and have little or no digital knowledge. I have several tamariki that have not used chromebooks before (from outside our school or using ipads) and that has been a learning curve for them that can monopolise time somewhat. Next thing, it's morning tea!  There is also a lack of ability in quite a few to TRY new things. They sit, look and do nothing. Walking around the room, discovering tamariki that were zoned out and not saying they needed help, or not even made it onto my class website surely upped my steps for the week but showed a lot of "helplessness" this year in the cohort. "Someone will do this for me" also showed up with older students completing the work for those friends who didn't get beyond getting their device. I need to work through this and have responsibility and self reliance as a goal for them. 

I am looking forward to using the template slide with the graphic organiser with the week's work to access,  and having the tamariki settle into their reading more. The best thing is seeing that they have gotten books out of the library now - those titles that were in the best fit book choosing exercise! I re-ran the activity with books from inside my classroom - it was a race to find them on the shelves and to read them. This was an amazing result. I will continue to do this activity and vary it somehow to keep putting books in front of them to read and choose. I may get them to try choosing a book for a partner to read based on what they say they like and see if that gets titles in front of them to get excited about. 

We are starting to write book recommendations with covers next week so that they can see what others like. I am going to work with the school librarian to do this in the library too. I think the teina would like to see that their tuakana liked a book as they model themselves and their behaviour on the older tamariki.