Dani's Reflective Journal 2022

Today I learnt that there are many digital tools to help with keeping track of what/how learners are reading which I would like to try including: using voice to text for independent reading, Google forms as a reading log, google keep to make paper texts digital. So far students independent reading has been unmonitored so these tools will help a lot. I really enjoyed the fact that flexible grouping is useful in reading as I have only ever done one or the other. Next term I am keen to introduce mixed ability grouping maybe once per week or so and encourage reciprocal teaching in these groups. The multi text types based on a theme is something I really enjoy searching for especially when reading is integrated into our topic. In Term 2 our topic focus is "Where else other than Earth, can humans survive?" It was great to have the opportunity to brainstorm ideas and search for texts. I have found a combination of fiction and non-fiction, as well as multimodal texts such as videos,...

 This week I have introduced making good quality predictions to the class. This was a skill I thought my students would find easy, however they have really struggled with it. During lessons I have had to really unpack what it means, how to do it well and how we know we are successfully doing it - more than once with each group.  Introducing the WALT and SC have really helped the students to understand what predicting is and given them the language to use when describing their own predictions. The part students struggled with the most, was making a prediction that was justified using the clues given. Once the students were clear about the SC we then used this information to practice making predictions using the text title, subtitles, pictures and captions. They then had to explain why they made the prediction they did.  Making good predictions has also been modelled to students during our shared novel sessions. I am currently reading The Twits by Roald Dahl to the class. I...

What did I learn that increased my understanding of the kaupapa and pedagogy of the Manaiakalani Reading Programme? Reading programme design should be based on both formal and informal data e.g. surveys to gather reader profiles, PAT assessments. Encouraging learners to use technology to turbocharge their learning (e.g. podcasts, recording themselves and opinions) and posting this onto their blogs for others to see can be a great motivator and chance for them to engage with an authentic audience. What did I learn that could improve my capability and confidence in teaching reading? The amazing data collection and planning tool will be a massive help to inform the types of things I should be using to inform my practice and student's needs. I really like how it's your one stop shop to be able to collect and analyse data to then use it to plan rich learning content that students need to learn. What did I learn that could be used with my learners?  Careful and clear construction of ...