Beyond a Blackboard

After exploring the research, building my student profiles and hypothesising about my problem, it is time to think critically about my own practice. So far I believe that my students are not metacognitive readers. They don't consider whether or not they have understood something and they don't go back and reread when they are confused. This also means they aren't using strategies like questioning on their own. In other words - I'm not teaching them to self regulate, or supporting them to select the strategy they need! When researching I stumbled a lot about how reciprocal reading can be helpful at supporting kids to self regulate as they read (alongside the explicit teaching of self-regulation). This got me wondering how well I was really using reciprocal reading these days.  Fortunately, I have two reciprocal reading videos from my literacy classes from the past couple of years. Thanks Class OnAir!                       ...

As soon as we walked through the gates of Tamaki College, I was struck by the realization that I know very little about how New Zealand Colleges operate and how NCEA is structured. As someone who completed Cambridge exams, I need to develop my knowledge of NCEA and prepare my students for this as oppose to the high school that I attended. Fortunately, we were given the opportunity to spend our PLG day looking at other schools in the cluster. I spent my morning with a year 9 literacy class (lead by Vaughan Spudle ) and was really interested to see how the class was run. I was especially impressed with the accelerated reading program that they ran as I could see the benefits it would have with some of my learners.  In this program the students spend 20 minutes a day reading a book that is appropriate to their reading level. After completing books, they take a short comprehension quiz to determine whether they are ready to read a book at the next level. The students were all engaged...

In the modern world where truth can often be concealed, we must be able to sift fact from fiction. This is also the case for our learners, who must make sense of the information presented from various sources on the internet. During this week's MDTA PLG, we discussed the importance of teaching critical thinking in our classrooms. We considered how this could be covered in a various subject areas, including guided reading and social sciences. Caleb , an MDTA graduate, talked us through how he fostered critical thinking skills in his learners by discussing current events with them. He described how solo taxonomy can be used to support learners in developing this skill. Solo Taxonomy Model - HookED As I attended a professional development workshop regarding solo taxonomy at the beginning of the year, I intend to foster critical thinking through the use of this framework. I have introduced various critical thinking activities to my learners, including the hexagon task from H...