Reading Practice Intensive - Day 4

 

Day 4 - Guided Reading (& Comprehension)

Term 2 - Day 4 - and we are back into it again! Although attending online, I'm not well and my brain is not functioning at full capacity today. But here goes!

We begun in our smaller breakout groups to go over our home work tasks, and although they are complete I still have a few things to do on my "To Do" list (long term plan of text coverage on my teacher workbook and my digital modelling book).  It was great to share a tip about using Canva for the Year 3 students to record themselves read - that way all of my readers can do the same task with half on Chromebooks and half on iPads.

No insights from Dorothy today as she is at my school at the Manaiakalani Convenors hui, and I miss all that excitement working from home.

What did I learn that increased my understanding of the kaupapa and pedagogy of the Manaiakalani Reading Programme ?

We started by going over the Manaiakalani Pillars of Reading Practice again. Last term (on Days 1-3) we focussed on the first two pillars. Pillar 1 - Planning for Ambitious Outcomes and Pillar 2 - Planning to Use Diverse Texts. Day 4 (today) will continue to focus on the second pillar with more of a focus on Guided Reading. Guided Reading is still considered to be an important part of a classroom Reading programme in NZ but it is only as good as the teacher's knowledge brought to each session. That includes - a pre-identified small group of learners; shared learning needs of the group; and , texts selected to support the learning needs and engagement considered. Guided Reading should not be taught in isolation but with integrated links to other instructional approaches like shared, buddy and independent reading.

The gurus of Guided Reading are New Zealander, Dame Marie Clay, and American women Irene Fountas and Gay Pinnell. Irene Fountas and Gay Pinnell have extensively developed the work of Dame Marie Clay in the United States, and created substantial Guided Reading resources.

While we are focusing on Guided Reading in today's session, it doesn’t happen in isolation. There are also read aloud (which we would call reading to) where the teacher reads to the learners, shared reading, and independent reading. All reading learning does not happen through Guided Reading only, learning will also happen during these other important reading opportunities as well.

What did I learn that could improve my capability and confidence in teaching reading?

I enjoyed the learning about Prior Knowledge and Background Knowledge prior to reading a text, this is something very important at our school with our second language learners. Seeing this in action with the video and the transcript from Whaea Anita was really good. It was interesting to learn about the two different approaches of introducing the learning intention (purpose) - something that makes so much sense but goes against what I've always done!

What did I learn that could be used with my learners? 

I love the idea of using the student's recordings of themselves read to observe their reading behaviour - the LTR-WWW Protocol (Listening to Reading - Watching While Writing). Also love the Fluency Scale rubric - and this is something my more able students can assess themselves on. It was a little tricky without the actual text in front of me and on my screen instead, meaning I had a screen split in 3. In my trial one it was good to be able to stop and start the recording if I wasn't sure what the student said. Background classroom noise is something I need to talk to my students about this though. I do also wonder how much time this would take to do each student once a week, and would this get faster as I got better at doing it?

I have further work to do on my Digital Modelling book. It was good to see how this connects with everything else in today's session.

What did I learn that could be shared within my wider community, with either colleagues, or whānau/aiga?

What will I take back to my team? So much! I think today's session has connected some of the pieces of the puzzle/elements of the previous days. I will share ideas around prior knowledge/background knowledge, when to share learning intentions, the Fluency Scale, the LTR-WWW Protocol, and some graphic organiser ideas.

But in a few days when I am feeling better and a bit more human!