Raising Reading Achievement

This year my inquiry is focussed on accelerating my students reading progress. I am really enjoying this focus and I feel that I have set up my class well - they understand my expectations and they are rising to the challenges that I am presenting them with.

For my learners who are reading below their biological age, I am focussing on mileage and being able to summarise what they are reading. I am assigning two journal articles a week (with one joint create activity) to achieve this. In term 1 our focus was understanding texts at a literal level, but this term we are beginning to focus more on evaluating the text and making inferences. These students also need to develop their vocabulary so that they can comprehend increasingly challenging texts. I have used reciprocal reading to ensure that my students are discussing new vocabulary, the ideas presented within a text and that they are consistently summarising chunks of texts.

                  

For my student reading above their biological age, mileage is not a problem. They generally have a love of reading and can happily select a text at their level and summarise it. They need to work on evaluating a text and considering the authors choices, main themes and concepts within/across texts. Some also need to increase their vocabulary. I have presented these students with one longer text a week with some challenging concepts and vocabulary. I am purposely selecting a range of authors who use different techniques and have varying styles of writing.

    

From my testing so far, this approach is working for both groups of students. My average shift is about 12 months, so we are on track for our goal Manaiakalani goal of 1.5 years progress in a year.

                                              

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