Beyond a Blackboard

It feels so good to be back at Pt England this term. I feel refreshed from my maternity leave and eager to get back to business! I left part way through my most successful inquiry yet! My students were getting eyes on text like never before, we had great discussion and the whole class managed to read a novel (many for the first time). This meant that my students made great shift and I was really pleased with how I left them. The week after I left for maternity leave, New Zealand entered another long lockdown. Some of my students didn't return until the very end of the year, if at all. In term one, sickness and a strong message to 'stay home if you have a sniffle' from the government meant that attendance was at an all time low. This is still the case, it is now week five and there are a couple of students I have taught twice this term. Twice. I am definitely feeling the pressure to support these children, as they are often playing catch up and I am having to spend some clas...

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...

Despite not being able to conduct the pretests that I was hoping for, I have some insight into my students independent reading habits from the lockdown ( see this post ) as well as their test data from the start of the year. I am also in a unique position as I am spending a term teaching a different literacy class, which means that I am not 'living' my inquiry daily. It does mean, however, that another teacher is conducting the mid year running records with my students, which is great for reliability. To summarise the data I previously collected, at the start of the year student achievement in my class looked like this in terms of reading age:                             Interestingly, many of my students reading level (from probe/ pm running records) are close to their biological age, with a small group performing well below and a few performing well above. However, the majority of the students achieving at their...