Reading Practice Intensive - Session Nine (Final Day)

Session Nine: Sharing Reading

Sharing about Reading

Students sharing their work allows them the opportunity to create connections and to establish authentic audiences in their digital spaces that can build their understanding, and raise their achievement. 

Allowing students the time and the space to work on their blogs, to visit, and leave thoughtful, positive, and helpful comments on the work of their peers is something that I need to implement more deliberately in the timetable, as well as ensuring that they are sharing and reflecting on the work that they are doing on their own blogs.

Participating in Reading Communities

What does participation in a reading community mean? In the new curriculum we have an emphasis on participation in a reading community, but what does it mean? It means allowing students an opportunity to for students to share their ideas, and opinions on the texts they have been reading, and make recommendations to others about the texts they have found interesting or enjoyed. By doing this we give students the opportunity, not only to reflect on their own reading and learning, but also to take on board what other like-minded students have read, and what they might like to read next. Sharing is also an important part of formative assessment as it gives us opportunities to check out how children are learning as they progress through the year. 

Making Reading Visible

Using the blog is critical in making reading visible, and allows for easy connections with others around what our students have been reading, as well as an opportunity for feedback from whanau, teachers, and other students.

We can use the blogs to reflect on learning, and create a record of learning over time, independent reading, and the reading/writing connection, and probably the most important element which is giving the students the opportunity for self-expression, and higher-order thinking.

Our schools take part in something called the Summer Learning Journey, a blogging challenge that takes place over the summer holidays, and we found that the students who took part in it improved their writing, not just formatively, but summatively through their results in e-Asttle writing assessments.

We also want to encourage students to share on their blogs more spontaneously, and not make it a chore, and we can do this by encouraging them to share their ideas, and experiences that take place outside of the classroom. If we can create value in sharing their ideas on their blogs we can continue to make it exciting, and engaging by giving them the opportunity to have their own voice, and by engaging, and commenting on each other's blogs we give them a great sense of importance to what they are sharing.

Feedback

Blogs, Google Docs/Slides, etc. give us as teachers such a valuable opportunity to give students feedback, particularly rewindable feedback that they can go back to in order to guide their next steps. Giving feedback is such an important part of teaching, and effective feedback evidently has a great impact on learners' progress, so how do we make sure that we are giving good feedback?

Good feedback follows three basic forms; Evaluative (making a judgment, usually summative), Descriptive (giving specific information about where they are at, and describing gaps), and Generative (feedforward, and guidance for improvement)

Collaboration

Collaboration is such an underrated tool in our teaching kete; their lives outside of school will frequently rely on them being able to collaborate with other people, and gives them such valuable opportunity to learn from others, and to help each other to overcome difficult challenges by relying on others, and being reliable in helping others. 

In school it can look like; listening/reading/responding to each other, discussing and co-constructing responses, commenting on each other’s blogs, peer feedback, and sharing texts that they’ve enjoyed. 

Scaffolding this collaborative/feedback opportunity can be important so they learn to give constructive feedback to each other, learn to take on feedback, and to learn from others in a positive way. 

Whanau Engagement

One of the things I have encountered in my conversations with many students over the years is that many of the students with lower reading levels share something in common - reading is not commonplace in their households; they don’t have people who read in their households; they don’t see people reading, they don’t have books in the home, and they are not encouraged to read in their spare time. One of the things I want to push for is encouraging students to shift that paradigm, if they are not having reading modeled to them, that they can model reading at home for others, whether that be parents or their siblings. 

Final Day

Today marked the final day of the Reading Program Intensive, and what a privilege it has been to be a part of it - I went into the program with a great sense of false confidence around my reading teaching practices and boy - did I get a reality check. Humbled and feeling slightly overwhelmed at the beginning, the program, alongside my wonderful mentor Mrs Nua, have scaffolded and supported me to reevaluate a lot of my practices and to view reading through a new lens. I originally came to PES as a secondary trained teacher of English, and for me, reading was focused on the analysis of texts, the ability to identify, and explain language features, and to break down texts to their foundation in order to “better understand” them. Moving to primary it became apparent that these skills were simply not the focus, and although it took me a while to get there, I feel reinvigorated as a teacher of the English language to find engaging and interesting ways to teach my students, not only how to read, but to get them reading to learn. The change from assessment-focused learning to learning skills, and strategies has been refreshing, and while summative and formative assessments are still a critical part of my teaching practice it feels great to explore a wider range of avenues through which we can build our students' skills, strategies, and to foster their love for reading inside the classroom, and out.

A massive thank you to our facilitators, Naomi, Georgie, and Toni - thank you for sharing your wisdom, and guidance with us - this has been an invaluable opportunity, and I hope I can maintain, sustain and implement everything you’ve taught me, and do all of your hard work justice. Nga mihi nui!