Reaching out to whanau

The change of attitude to reading for most of my students is evident. Not only my focus group but also within the whole class. I am now starting to reach out to whanau to support parents and caregivers on how they can encourage my students to be readers at home. 

With the netbooks going home, the students are able to continue their learning by using the class site and also access information for research using the internet. There are always opportunities to read and learn using the netbooks. I am also encouraging the students to ensure they have a novel they are reading consistently. This is working for most of the students. 

Through conversations with one parent, she expressed her child is not engaged in reading at home. She would often fall asleep when asked to read. We brainstormed some ways to encourage her child t read at home.

- go to the local library

- borrow books which are of interest to the child 

- ask the child to share if the book is exciting or boring and why

- be consistent with encouraging the child to read

- for a parent be a reader too, model to your child

The parent left the conversation feeling determined to help her child foster a love of reading and also herself as a parent. 

My inquiry is not just to shift achievement but to shift the mindset of reluctant readers and all students to enjoy reading. 

Being innovative in my practice

During one of my observations I realised I really wanted to work with my groups who were text sharing but I was with another group deep diving into another text. I shared this with Jannie who suggested I have one week helping my reading groups share their texts. Therefore I restructured my reading rotations for this week. I am still finding that the deep diving is not 100% yet. It is a work in progress. I do not know the time frame when it will be a 100%. With each day we try and make progress towards our goals. Here is a set up of our deep diving group sharing this week.

We have a four day literacy cycle due to technology on Friday mornings. On Monday (Day 1) I spent time with each group unpacking their chosen text. The students had autonomy to choose which text they will share with the other groups. From day 2, one group was split into two and shared their text with the other groups.

From the discussions, I asked the groups to share their reflections of the sharing sessions with me. From the reflections shared with me and my observations during the discussions, I have been able to identify the the need for explicit teaching of how to share reading texts and deep diving within my reading groups.