In our CoL meeting earlier in the term, Russell asked us to consider what we believed were key reading practices which are needed at the various year levels which we all teach. We are thinking about how we can create a consistent language across reading in our different schools across the classes in our school and also across the schools in our CoL.
The Ministry of Education resource, Effective Literacy Practice for years 5-8, states that the strategies which are necessary include:
- Attending and searching
- Predicting
- Cross-checking
- Confirming/ self-correcting
- Re-predicting
The Ministry of Education resource, Effective Literacy Practice for years 1-4, states that the strategies which are necessary include the above, as well as:
- Connecting prior knowledge to the text
- Forming/testing hypotheses
- Asking questions
- Visualising
- Inferring
- Identifying purpose/ POV
- Identifying/summarising main ideas
- Analysing and synthesising
- Evaluating
I asked the team 4 teachers what they felt were essential strategies required at our year levels for reading and we decided on the following two strategies:
- Retelling a story/text in their own words.
- Development of vocabulary.
Interestingly, retelling (summarising) is a practice for years 1-4 however, we still see it as one of the essentials needed at year 5-6. Development of vocabulary doesn't actually appear as a strategy as such, however many of the other strategies require a developed vocabulary knowledge to be able to be used.
I decided to take this away to find suggestions for how this could be taught consistently across classes.
I looked through some of the Sheena Cameron books to see what she thought about this. Her reading activity handbook has a whole chapter dedicated to focusing on words. In her Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies (a practical classroom guide) book (2009), Sheena Cameron discusses the following strategies for reading:
- Activating prior knowledge
- Self-monitoring
- Predicting
- Questioning
- Making connections
- Visualising
- Inferring
- Summarising
- Synthesising
- Skimming
- Scanning
As well as this, she also has a whole section of the text dedicated to building vocabulary knowledge, with suggestions for how this can be done.
Hannah thank you for your intensive investigations for your tool, which has a lot of traction for the future. I can see how the COL meetings with Rebecca and Aaron have influenced this challenge and how you have taken on board at each meeting the suggestions put forward by the research team and also feedback from your colleagues. I noticed how you have interrogated your practice and what changes you needed to do to get the outcomes you wanted for your priority learners. Did you find the issues of learning for the students in your investigation. Posting regularly Hannah has helped you to make sense of your inquiry and provide a coherent narrative of the journey. Thank you for sharing.
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