Beyond a Blackboard

This week I taught English to my literacy class, who I hadn't taught altogether since Week 8 in term one! Because so much time had passed, and new students have joined, it has felt a little like gaining a new class. After revising the class norms, it was quickly down to business and I took a few opportunities to read with my students to see what I noticed about their reading. I was particularly interested to read with the students who have made little progress, and to confirm their reading ages (displayed below). Y7 Boy 10 Y7 Boy 10.5 Y7 Girl 10 Y8 Girl 11 Y8 Boy 11.5 I definitely saw the same traits in my learners as I recorded from the start of the year: they were not monitoring their own understanding of a text. Some of my students developed misconceptions about a text as they misunderstood parts of the text and rejected information that contradicted the view they held. I found that the learners above really struggled to make inferences or access the dee...

After gathering baseline data and consulting research literature, it is time to plan an intervention! In my previous posts, I have outlined the methods that I used to identify my students needs, current achievement levels and my current pedagogy. I also reflected on the research that I consulted which related to my inquiry question: How can I support my students to monitor their own understanding of a text and their use of strategies? My main insights so far have been;  Reciprocal Teaching / Reading is a valuable strategy for supporting metacognition, but I am not doing it justice I discuss self-regulation strategies with my maths class, but not with my literacy class at all! While I teach reading strategies, I often don't ask my students what strategy they used to make sense of a text, or discuss using different strategies at different times. In response to these insights, my students needs and the literature I have decided to start by making a few change...