My Intervention - What changes have I made so far?

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 1. Teaching Metacognition 

I have continued with my intervention from 2020 in regards to teaching metacognitive skills. We rate our understanding out of five and explain what we need support with. This has worked out quite well, as it has definitely taught the students to think about their thinking - that we actually read for understanding and not because the teacher says so!

2. Mileage 

I have increased mileage massively - the students read a journal article (and often a poem/image etc) every day. I tend to give them a short create activity that accompanies these and then link the texts across the week - either by theme, genre, topic etc. This means that the students are reading/ completing the activities independently during several of these lessons as I do not read with every group every day. 

3. Taking the scaffolds away

As such, I have removed the scaffolding some of my students came to rely on. They realise they actually have to read the text themselves, rather than waiting for the teacher to call them and support their understanding.  I've often still been quite mean and 'picked on' students at some point of the lesson to summarise the books/ discuss the characters to check that they have read for understanding. This has reinforced the idea of understanding what you are reading - the teacher can't just explain it for you!

3. Vocabulary

I have done a lot of work in vocabulary in writing. We have discussed parts of speech and the importance of using good words - they are the building blocks of meaning. I have started incorporating this more in reading, where we work out the meaning of a word by replacing it with another that would make sense - looking for adjectives to replace adjectives for example. I still need to do more of this in reading and teach the students more skills involving vocabulary. However, can tell teaching grammar and vocabulary in an English language context is hugely supporting my students who are learning English as a second or third language.

As I am now about half way through my term long intervention, I will continue to adapt my intervention in response to my learners. My biggest 'tweak' to my practice is definitely to increase my vocabulary teaching through reading - placing more emphasis on discussing the vocabulary in texts.

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