RPI Day 2 - Know your Learners as Readers

Connecting with each other 

Completing the questionaire for beginning the RPI threw a couple of provocations my way. The first, and most obvious, was this question:

PILLAR OF PRACTICE: DESIGN RICH CREATE EXPERIENCES

At least fortnightly, I give learners 'Response to text' tasks that balance higher-order thinking prompts with Create opportunities.

This directly relates to one of our Uru Mānuka Strategic Plan Goals, which we want to see improve in all our schools. It's certainly something that I noticed, in my Reading Observations at our kura, that needed to improve, rather than "busy work" post-reading group. 

We checked in with our group:

• What do you feel most proud of?
• What was most challenging?
• What helped you achieve your goals?
• What do you still need support with?

Connecting with Manaiakalani 

Emphasising that it is bringing an approach that supports the wider goals of the
TMP. has a relentless focus on improving achievement through best teaching practices.

This has come from a group of teachers who have been very generous in offering their learning, practice etc. 

It all began when there was less technology.

The scope was narrowed to focus on Literacy. For some, it was a combined literacy approach. For others, reading and writing 

The hook is an ideal representation... For young people who aren't engaging... a hook is needed to reel them in. In each school, Literacy Cycles were different. They were designed to consider "What does my practice look like?" How will I entice my young people into reading through create tasks. 

We delved into what this looked like back in the 2000s. Podcasting, back in 2005, before the rest of us had even heard of them.

The transfer of extrinsic to intrinsic motivation.

The importance of Learners' blogs! For half of the early learners, the hook was the Share component... knowing that someone out there was interested in looking at their learning. This is why we need to ensure we comment on our learners' blog posts. Positive, thoughtful, and helpful.

Chalk ‘n Talk

Assessment 101

Knowing our Learners as readers + Assessment Capable Learners

Planning for ambitious outcomes.

The work of John Hattie etc. 

0.5 is the equivalent of a warm body in a classroom. We need to be aiming for the things that give us 'bang for buck'. The things in the table above!

We're not relying on one measure... By pulling it all together we get a really clear picture of her they're at and where we need to head.

I love this analogy:

When utilising assessments, we need to have a working knowledge of the content as it comes out, including PLD on new changes as they roll out. This is probably an area for improvement. It's also a key role that I will play across the schools in our Kahui, as I summarise releases and push them out to the key people in each school.

What matters most is not so much the form of the assessment, but how the information is used to improve teaching and learning. Data can be used both formatively and summatively. Formative assessment use can be thought of as making decisions about “where to next”: what actions will be taken to move from where we are to where we want to be. Summative assessment looks at the data after the actions and asks how successful we were at making the changes we planned for. How much of a difference did we make? Did we achieve the gains we should have?

Deep Dive

Keeping Track of Learning

The Teacher Workbook. A one-stop-shop for storing tall reading planning assessment tracking and using information.

I love this format! I'm excited to start using this

Tracking our reader profiles

I really like being able to use the sort and filter capabilities when looking at the reader profile survey. It makes it really clear who can be targeted for potentially changing attitudes towards reading. 

Reading Challenges sit on the taskboard. To get value, we need to make sure that we check in on them. After 3 weeks, the challenges end for new ones to begin. How will they will be rewarded? How will I ensure longevity? 

In the old PAT's (sadly this is what we did)... they only looked at the top 3 types of Question-Answer Relationships. The new Panui version focuses on all 5.

So great to learn how to dive deep into the data from PATs to see how I can utilise it to design learning that clearly meets the needs of the learners after drilling down on the data.

Resources

RfE = Reading for enjoyment

"Key In" books - 

ARB's - Comprehension links (Why don't we use these?) Use the "item bank"

Developing Assessment Capable Learners using Learning Intentions and Success Criteria.

Thinking about how we are going to ensure a balance between the two of these.

Not everything needs an in-depth success criterion.

Around the time that we broke out to complete these blog posts, I was able to see the reading groupings made by my team teacher. Perfect timing, as it means that I can complete the workbook with these included. 

I'm very excited to begin using the workbook, with the progressions informing planning. It feels like I really can begin to pull it all together now and launch into some actual effective teaching and learning. 

I will plan a workshop for my colleagues, who have used PATs this year, to share with them how they can effectively drill down on that data to inform planning.

So... What next?

• create opportunities for learners to record themselves reading to self-evaluate for fluency, intonation and prosody.
• "Accountable Talk" - Look into that for oral language.
• Rich Create tasks - This is how we "hook" and engage our learners.
• Build in time for commenting on blogs, as a teacher as well as for the learners. Create a culture of not "lurking". Reading blog posts can be as influential on reading as the reading itself.
• Podcasting
• Set up a reading centre, where kids can come and read, but it has to be silent. (Read with the kids)
• Enhancing my students' RfE (Reading for Enjoyment) could help nudge achievement data.
• I can use the PAT data to design learning!!! Hallelujah!!!
• We need to make sure that we use the newer version at the end of the year.

Create tasks: 

• - Scratch, Tinker, Gamefroot - Create a game based on a story they've read.
• - Bookmarks; Create an alternative cover for the book you are reading.
• - Make a fake ID card for a character in the book.
• -BookTok Community - Share books they like to read etc.
• - Share on blogs, but perhaps push out posts via Facebook?
• - How can I utilise ebooks? 

Overall reflection

A big shift in pedagogical practice is underway, after today's learning. I feel like the roadblocks are coming down and the path is a bit clearer to be able to progress.

Constructing my blog post, complete with screenshots, as we went through the day was a lot more productive this week. A far cry from last week. I was adding to the "So what next..." list as I went, so it has become quite a large list by the day's end. Potentially a bit too much to chew through, but a great record of actionable things. The amount of things I intend to use with my learners is immense!

Term 1 reader profile survey

 Conducting the Reader Profile Survey was a real eye-opener in many ways.

The first, a complete tangent but thought-provoking... was the responses to the question "School Name". More than one quarter (10/38) of students responded by the name that they are called at school! It begs the question of whether this occurs in forms and surveys where we don't necessarily delve into the data. This is an accidental but interesting observation of their comprehension of the question.

I was heartened to find that the majority of our learners like reading at school:

This is particularly interesting because their previous experience of the way reading is taught will be drastically different, depending on the class they were in last year. Some will have experienced a multimodal approach, with agency over topic or theme. Others will have been in a more traditional setting with a reading group and specific text. Some will have had a formal structured literacy approach. It will be interesting to reflect back, later in the year, with the same question.

Given that there is specified time set aside daily for Silent Reading... it was alarming to find that more than half of the class were not currently reading a book for enjoyment. It is an expectation that is clearly declarative but not functional knowledge!

So now what?

• I am taking the books, genres, and topics that they have highlighted as enjoying and requesting an order from the National Library.
• I intend to encourage students to promote books that they enjoy so others may learn from them. A large problem seems to be that the learners don't know what they like.
• I need to start modelling silent reading with the learners. It's something I used to do, but this fell by the wayside as the time became utilised for other admin tasks.
• I need to develop my understanding of what girls read. As a Mum of three boys, & a girl that likes the same books asher brothers did, I'm like a fish out of water with making recommendations beyond Thea Stilton!