Sharing in Reading - RPI Day 9

The running theme for our final day of the RPI was the impact of connection on our learners. How fostering a reading community through deliberate acts of sharing has a powerful impact on all learners.

As educators, we constantly strive to create meaningful learning experiences for our students, and today we recapped and delved deeper into the power of connection and sharing our learning in the classroom and within our wider communities.

 "Connectivity remains a core part of being human," and being deeply connected with others is not just a social skill but a fundamental survival instinct.

Fiona Grant talked about the Manaiakalani kaupapa and how important the 'Share' part of 'Learn, Create Share' is. She shared how Manaiakalani has embraced this concept, using digital tools to build communities and promote learning.

Sharing Creates Connection

Fiona shared with us about the early days of Manaiakalani where the goal was to provide learners with an audience to help them develop a sense of self-worth. Sharing work on blogs goes beyond the linear process of learning; it becomes a loop where new learning is stimulated through comments and feedback. It opens doors to inspiration, growth, and opportunities for everyone involved, fostering a sense of belonging and purpose in the learning community.

The Learn, Create, Share Model

The Learn, Create, Share approach enables the sharing of reading values, texts, and learning among learners, peers, teachers, whānau, and the wider community. It's not just about reading a text; it's about connecting with others, sharing insights, and collectively growing as a community of learners.

Naomi’s Top Tips for Creating and Sharing on Blogs

• Plan for Regular Sharing Opportunities: Think of a two-week cycle that includes all subjects, ensuring every learner has the opportunity to create and share content on a blog.
• Incorporate a think/peer/share step: Add a simple think/peer/share step to the creation process. This could be as basic as comparing answers, instantly turning the learning into a collaborative experience.
• Use Multiple Assessment Methods: A range of formal and informal assessment methods should be used to make informed judgments about students' progress and achievement. Looking closely at a student’s blog can provide valuable insights.

The Role of Feedback and Feedforward

Georgie reminded us about the role of feedback. Feedback is an essential component of effective teaching and learning. It's not just about the amount of feedback but its quality. Research suggests that feedback should be specific, descriptive, and provide clear next steps for improvement (Absolum, M - Clarity in the Classroom). Effective feedback involves:

• An understanding of the desired goal
• Evidence of the student's current position in relation to that goal
• Guidance on how to close the gap between the two.

Clarke (2003) outlines three types of prompts that can be used depending on the learner’s needs. Good to keep in mind when marking students' learning.

• Reminder Prompt: Reinforcing previously discussed strategies, e.g., "Remember we talked yesterday about words with italics and what we need to do with our voice…"
• Scaffold Prompt: Guiding the learner through the process, e.g., "Try rereading that sentence again and put emphasis on the word in italics to show amazement…"
• Example Prompt: Provide a concrete example, e.g., "Try emphasising the word in italics with your voice to show amazement, like this: 'You aren’t going to eat that, are you?'"

The Importance of Collaboration

We then talked about how to encourage active participation in reading communities. It is vital to establish, maintain, and refine sharing and collaborative practices. You need to plan for these oppotunties.

 Collaboration can take many forms, including:

• Paired or Buddy Reading: Listening to and responding to each other’s reading.
• Co-Creating Responses to Texts: Discussing and collaboratively writing responses.
• Blog Commenting and Peer Feedback: Engaging with peers through constructive comments.
• Sharing Enjoyable Texts: Encouraging learners to share the books they love.
• By embedding these practices in classroom activities, we create a vibrant, collaborative learning environment where every student feels valued and heard.

Engaging Whānau in the Reading Journey

This is always been the hardest part of teaching for me so was great to hear some ideas about how to engage our whānau.  I have always known that for learners to fully engage in reading communities, it's essential to build connections with their families and the wider community. Here are some ideas that were shared for classroom events that invite whānau to participate:

• Book Week: A week dedicated to celebrating books and reading.
• Favourite Book Character Dress-Up Day: Encourages students to engage creatively with their favourite texts.
• Plays from Parts of a Favourite Book: Bring stories to life through drama.
• Author Visits: Invite local authors to share their writing journey.
• Sharing Family Stories: A day where families share their favourite texts, be it family histories, legends, or even Bible stories.
• Kaumātua Story-Sharing Day: Involve elders in the community to share their stories and wisdom.
• Tuakana/Teina Pānui Tahi - Shared Reading Day: Promote reading partnerships between older and younger students.

Lastly, Naomi led us through a reflection of everything we learned during the RPI. She reminded us that the "Learn, Create, Share" model is the bedrock of our shared pedagogy, and that layering these key ideas across the pillars of practice is how we cater to the needs of all our learners.

Final Thoughts 

Reflecting on all of the RPI sessions, I feel that I have learned valuable insights into enhancing my current reading practice to better support my students. I have gained many useful tools to help shape my student's dispositions, skills, and independence to become lifelong readers.

We explored many practical tools for effective reading planning and assessment, which will help me design more tailored and differentiated learning experiences. I also learned how to implement and sustain some of the key points in the Manaiakalani reading practice model in a way that aligns with my school's needs.

The RPI provided me with new strategies and inspiration to help my students become confident and passionate readers.  Thank you, Noami, Goegie and Anna for sharing this learning journey with me. 

Create in Reading - RPI Day 8

You don’t empower people by just being consumers. Teaching people to read and not write, teaching people to play and not design is the way to make customers and consumers and not producers and creative thinkers”

James Gee, New London Group 

Our session today kicked off with Dorothy (Manaiakalani) sharing why the 'create' part of the learning process is so important for our students. "It engages and empowers."

Dorothy talked about how many people know about "Big-C" creativity where extraordinary people like Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa or Einstein's groundbreaking theories are considered highly creative but there are also everyday forms of creativity that are crucial to having a well-rounded society. When our students enter the workforce they compete with one another and employers want creative individuals on their team. As teachers, we must support our students to develop their creativity and be innovative about and deliberate in how we plan for these opportunities.

Dorothy also talked about how It's important to recognise the significance of creative thinking in the new age of AI. You can use AI tools to share learning, and these tools can also be used as a conversation starter during a task or a way of visualising what students are thinking about a text. Dorothy mentioned that 15-year-old New Zealanders are recognised as the 5th most creative thinkers in the world, so we must be doing something right!

Kaupapa of Creativity and Empowerment

“That Hook” was the phrase of the day. The message was clear that learners who have the opportunity to create are more likely to be engaged. Through creativity, learners are empowered to combine existing knowledge with original ideas in new imaginative ways. This kind of thinking from the next generations is what our current global climate needs to tackle the numerous problems our planet is facing.

We watched an interesting video by Professor Jonathan Neelands, a Creative Fellow at Warwick University which again highlighted the need to teach and support creativity in our students. He believes that creativity should be a part of every subject, not just the arts, to help students think critically and solve problems. This makes students more adaptable and ready for future challenges. He also talked about the importance of keeping learning fun and engaging by sparking curiosity and imagination.

This made me think that our students also need to learn how to use technology creativity (AI for example) so they can tackle big issues, like our current environmental problems, in a new way.

Thinking about how time-poor we are Naomi shared some great ideas for how to include both short and long opportunities to respond to the text. Think about where the task best fits!

Here are Naomi’s top tips for Routine Opportunities: Short Responses

• Before reading: You might introduce the text by getting learners to sketch the setting described in the opening paragraph, or draw and annotate the meanings of symbols from the book cover.

• During reading: You might stop to get learners to demonstrate (e.g. ‘hopscotch’) during guided reading or pause to improvise an interview with the character from a novel.

• After reading: Make the recipe, dress up as a character, storyboard events, draw an object, or construct 

• We discussed the concept of "tighter" versus "looser" design when creating follow-up tasks.

• "Tighter" design involves using templates like stencils or graphic organisers to provide clear parameters or "guard rails" for the learners to focus their learning.

• "Looser" design, on the other hand, involves open-ended tasks where most of the creative responsibility is placed on the learner.  Noami suggests including a reflection or a written prompt to help students connect their work to the learning objectives.

Choice:

Georgie then talked about how choice can be managed when giving students opportunities for creating: 

Her top tips were:

• Tools: Choice of app, material, style, resource, for example, a Google Drawing or paper/pencil sketch.

• Task: Choice of showing the key events in the story that influenced a change in the main character OR how other characters influenced the main character to change.

• Product: Choice of timeline, poem, collage, storyboard, animation, screencast, painting.

• Outside the Create by working together to contribute to the design or co-authoring and co-constructing.  

• ‘Inside’ the Create by having learners' faces, voices and/or movements are ‘embodied inside’ the Create (e.g. photo, video, screencast, portraits)

Here are a couple of screenshots to remind me of some of the other opportunities I can try to develop creativity during reading sessions.

Another eventful day, full of valuable resources to share with my team, which will surely ignite creativity among my colleagues.

Thinking - Day 7 RPI

“ Students who are competent thinkers and problem-solvers. … reflect on their own learning, draw on personal knowledge and intuitions, ask questions, and challenge the basis of assumptions and perceptions.”   (New Zealand Curriculum p. 12).

Today, Dorothy (Manaiakalani) led a discussion on the framework for 21st-century learning and innovation, emphasising the 4 Cs as essential skills across different learning areas. Critical thinking is especially crucial for our young students in navigating life in the 21st century. With this in mind, we dived into a day all about how to teach our learners to think critically!

Dorothy’s thoughts about our students’ online presence were particularly insightful and valuable. Our learners make choices that put them into vulnerable positions online, so it was great to hear how the critical thinking aspects of Maniakalani’s pedagogy can help students navigate the digital world wisely. Teaching critical thinking in all years is more crucial now than ever before.

My top tip from Dorothy’s today (there are always many) is about trying Adobe Express podcasting to incorporate more text-to-voice technology opportunities for my students. It will continue to develop their oral language skills in a rewindable way.

Higher Order Thinking to Access Deeper Meaning

Next, we dived into different frameworks that help organise our student's thoughts that show a progression from simpler to more complex thinking. Higher-order thinking, which is more complex, requires more brain power and needs to be scaffolded. This is very clear when using Bloom's Taxonomy, something I used a lot in my early teaching career and a framework worth thinking about again when planning meaningful learning activities.

I found it valuable to revisit the progression from literal to higher-order thinking skills. It allowed me to reflect on the distinctions between interpretive and evaluative questions. I sometimes struggle to differentiate between the two and being reminded that evaluative questions often involve an element of interpretation, will help when using these questions in response to text activities.

• At the literal level (‘reading on the lines’) information is stated directly and can be located at one or more places.
• At an interpretive level (‘reading between the lines’) readers have to use their reasoning and critical analysis skills to work out an implied or suggested meaning (not directly stated).
• At the evaluative level (‘reading beyond the lines’) readers are making judgements concerning values, correctness or issues of wider social significance (and relating these to their own contexts and lives). 

One key idea that I noticed was that students need to be able to evaluate as they read so they can understand how they have come to think in a certain way. We should always aim to empower learners to go beyond the surface meanings, and not to take those meanings for granted (or as a given).

Critical Analysis to Read Critically

I enjoyed the sessions on how powerful it can be for our learners to look at a text from different perspectives or positions and to reflect on how well I am doing this in my class. To think like this my learners need to be able to critical analysis to solve the problem by evaluating or making judgments based on the text.  

Provocations, dilemmas, or perspectives can spark higher-order thinking but can be hard to understand. I need to make sure I plan in more opportunities for learners to revisit and talk about the text. This will help students remember and use evidence or vocabulary from the text to back up their views. 

The vocabulary activities I have implemented from previous RIP days are helping shift new vocabulary from being just understood to being actively used. Finding ways to keep encouraging them to talk freely about the text is key. A next step for my teaching practice. 

Lastly, we looked at analysing figurative language and how this helps readers extend their thinking skills through analysis and interpretation of language features. This included looking at different activities for students to respond to a text with an evaluative lens. We have been tasked with creating a few activities for our students to try over the next few weeks and I am looking forward to getting stuck in.

Vocabulary (& Decoding) - Day 6 RPI

Since I first signed up for the RPI, I have been really looking forward to attending today's session about vocabulary. Supporting my students in developing a strong vocabulary is an ongoing challenge in my classroom, and I'm always eager to find new strategies. As an experienced teacher, I know how crucial it is for students to have a wide vocabulary so they can express themselves effectively, both orally and in the written word. It's clear that students are at a disadvantage without this foundation.

Dorothy's (Manaiakalani) talk this morning reinforced this idea, emphasising that a strong vocabulary enhances all aspects of communication: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. She pointed out that improving vocabulary is essential for overcoming disadvantages in oral language development and early literacy.

A recent study by Starship in Auckland found that most children in the Tamaki area start school at a developmental level of 3-4 years. They assessed 120 children between June 2016 and May 2017, including 25% Maori, 27% Tongan, 19% Samoan, 13% CI Maori, and 16% from other backgrounds. This of course is not a new phenomenon and like many schools in Auckland, many of our students at Ōwairaka are running to catch up from day one. Fortunately, research has provided us with some key approaches to support accelerated learning, such as explicit vocabulary instruction.

My notes from today that I will be taking back to my team are:

“An interest and awareness of words” 

(Scott and Nagy, 2004; Anderson & Nagy, 1992)

Building Word Consciousness: Foster an interest in and awareness of words through rich incidental exposure and explicit teaching, using a three-tier model focusing on multiple exposures and word selection.

Robust Teaching of Words: Teach words thoroughly, covering their depth and breadth, syntax, orthography, and phonology. Strategies include using morphology to understand academic vocabulary (Tier 3 words) and teaching methods to crack unfamiliar words.

Principles of Robust Vocabulary Instruction:

• Direct, learner-friendly explanations
• Connections to students’ lived experiences
• Playful and engaging use of words
• Interactive engagement
• Follow-up through multiple encounters with new words.

 

    

To reach a 15,000-20,000 word vocabulary by literacy, students need to acquire about 700 words annually. Tier 2 words are ideal for targeted teaching due to their high utility and impact on verbal functioning.

Practical Classroom Strategies:

• Pause and express interest in new words
• Encourage students to identify and record high-value words during reading
• Challenge students to use these words in various contexts
• Maintain a 'Cool, New Words' space and promote students as 'Word Wizards'.

 

It is a nice feeling when you realise that you and your colleagues are on the right path when teaching our students to have a wide and diverse vocabulary and a better understanding of morphology. In Years 4 to 6, the WordLab spelling program (Literacy Innovators) is used and complements the phonic program (Yolanda Soryl) taught in Years 0-3. WordLab teaches decoding skills in multi-syllable words, compound words, morphology units, and word chunks.

So what is next for my teaching practice? 

I am going to plan in more time for word work using the robust, interactive vocabulary approaches:

• Word Associations
• When have/might you ..?
• Which would YOU ..
• Degrees of Meaning. 

I am also going to focus on teaching questioning skills using both the Q-A-R questions and the role prompt cards. I know this will help build more independence and student-led conversations during guided reading sessions. 

Another great session and as a bonus today came with many ready-made resources to share. I look forward to trying them with my class next term. 

Reflection Planning a Reading Programme: Day 5 RPI

This week's mahi was a deep dive into how to plan an effective and engaging reading programme that caters for a diverse group of learners in our classrooms.  Below are the ideas that resonated with me today and what I will be sharing back with my team and school over the next few weeks. 

Class Sites

When setting up a dedicated space for reading-related learning on a class site, keeping the Manaiakalani Programme's goals in mind will help guide our best practices: engagement, personalised learning, accelerated achievement, and empowerment. If the site is well-designed, it frees us up to focus on what we do best: teaching and responding to our students' reading needs,

Things to keep in mind when designing a class site:

•  "three-click" rule. Check how many clicks it takes for our learners or their whanau to get to this week's learning.
• Engagement is key! Think about creating a personalised space for our learners but remember, it shouldn't slow down the site. Make sure it's logical, efficient, and easy to navigate. 
• Don't forget the importance of bookmarks!
• Do we have clear, accessible spots on the site for learners to find independent resources and manage their learning on their own? 

Top tip: To check your site is visible, and everything is working, try out the site using an incognito window.

Teacher timetabling (‘rules of thumb’) 

A powerful discussion was around how to make the most use of the limited time we have in the school day by making sure we timetable our learning effectively.  When planning our week, consider how reading and literacy fit into our busy timetables. Reading time might not be confined to a designated block. We should look for opportunities before or after breaks for shared or independent reading.

When timetabling for learners we need to think about how to:

• manage our space while teaching
• enable learners to make choices and collaborate
• integrate valuable learning experiences
• empower learners to actively participate in their learning process

Recap on the Suggested Timetable Guidelines:

Literacy Sessions: Aim for 90 minutes per day, 4-5 days a week.

Reading Sessions: Schedule 45-50 minutes per day, 4-5 days a week.

Group Sessions:

Years 5-8: Teach two groups per day, each session lasting 45-50 minutes. Ensures that at-risk students are seen daily, while groups performing at or above expectations are seen twice a week. Groups below expectations should be seen more regularly, ideally three times a week or daily.

Something to try: Chunky Challenge - Incorporate morphology, syllables, prefixes, and suffixes into our literacy sessions.

Empowering Learners:

Something that kept coming up was how to empower our learners. First, we need to understand their learning needs and then structure and scaffold tasks accordingly. This might involve a teacher-directed tumble/taskboard or rotations approach or a more self-guided choice with a mahi tracker to support accountability. Adapting these specific approaches to your class and school's context is crucial as there is no 'one-size-fits-all' model.

A good reminder for my practice was to keep using digital tools for checking in with learners, such as screencast tools for "read to self" activities. This helps a teacher maintain a clear picture of their student's progress while freeing up teacher time at the same time.  However, the power of having regular teacher check-ins is essential to monitor and support learners effectively.

Digital reading apps - make sure they are fit for purpose!

Reading Like Writers (and other high-expectation activities)

The last few sessions of the day were about how to support our students to start making connections between readers and writers.  This involves supporting students to start thinking about how writers create meaning, and the tools/text features they use, which leads to deeper reading comprehension.

Encourage your learners to "magpie" forms, styles, language, and other features from the texts they read. This means borrowing elements to inspire their own writing, not copying directly from authors. This approach helps them develop their unique voice while learning from great examples. Helpful if you are not a confident writer yourself. To get a feel for what it is like to be 'in our student's shoes', Noami took us through a short writing activity.

Image yourself in this opening scene created by the author. As I read down what do you hear, see, feel, smell, and taste? Record words or phrases from the text that make you feel this way. Now write your own paragraph using the text as a guide.

My example - 

The forest felt alive that afternoon. The sound of bees buzzing busily in the dappled sunlight was almost deafening. Sighing, the old lady slumped down the rough tree trunk, resting on the damp mossy ground and glanced up at the old towering oak trees huddled around her.  “Am I lost,’ she whispered or “exactly where I need to be?”

This is a task I will be trying out in the following weeks as it links in nicely with our current writing programme. 

Another thought-provoking day with many little nuggets of new ideas to take back to my classroom and school. 

 

Reflection of Guided Reading (& Comprehension): Day 4 RPI

We started our mahi today with a comprehensive deep dive into what Guided Reading looks like in a New Zealand classroom.

The main objective of Guided Reading is to teach students how to use skills and strategies to understand an increasingly complex range of texts. Guided Reading is still considered the main part of classroom reading programs.

One thing became clear: the effectiveness of our Guided Reading sessions hinges on preparation and knowledge. That means carefully selecting reading materials, crafting thoughtful questions to guide our discussions, and planning engaging follow-up activities tailored to each gruop. It's all about setting the stage for our students learning success!

Guided reading is:

Top tip shared - You need to set up routines around the Guided Reading Session to make sure students have strategies in place so they do not disturb the teaching group- C3B4me.

Dame Marie Clay's (1960s) ideas about reading are what our traditional guided reading programme is based on and is a typical approach of most NZ schools. Today we were introduced to the Gay Fountas & Irene Pinnell approach. They are credited with the most expansive development and publishing of Guided Reading instructional resources for teachers.

This is an image of the Fountas & Pinnel Model.

Introducing Text and Purpose(s)

Introducing text and purpose(s) before observing learners reading means:

• Activate and/or provide needed background knowledge

• Help students make relevant connections to knowledge of texts, content and/or experiences

• Have students say and sometimes locate specific words in the text

• Use new vocabulary words in conversation to reveal meaning

When it comes to discussing text with students, one strategy we talked about is called the Goldilocks approach. It's all about striking that delicate balance in providing support for understanding. Picture Goldilocks searching for the "just right" amount of porridge – we're aiming for that same sweet spot. Too little support and the text can feel like a mountain to climb. But on the flip side, too much support can make it all too easy, missing out on valuable learning opportunities.

So, our goal is to find that perfect balance, where the support we offer helps students engage with the text effectively, without making it too simplistic. It's about ensuring the text is at that optimal instructional level where meaningful learning can take place.

Therefore, it is essential to strike a balance between the two. Depending on the teaching intention, or the group's progress of the text you can:

• Prompt students to make predictions based on the information revealed so far

• Reveal the structure of the text upfront;

• Draw attention to illustrations - pictures, charts, maps, cutaways - and the information they represent;

• Draw attention to the writer’s craft (or other features) you want students to notice (when reading) to support analysis.

We talked about the difference between background and prior knowledge and how directing the conversation to the key ideas of the text is vital. The importance of having planned key questions relating to the topic was mentioned. This will support the discussion going in the right direction.

Background knowledge refers to the concepts, information, and text structures that are necessary for comprehending a particular text. This is usually provided by the teacher and supports the purpose of reading or learning intention/skills for the day. Relying only on prior knowledge can pose challenges, as students' understanding of the topic may be incomplete or inaccurate, potentially clouding their comprehension of the text from the outset.

Observing for Responsive Teaching

“Teachers are always watching children, but observations can be random and diffuse. You always gather information about whether children are behaving appropriately, finishing their work, or performing tasks accurately. But you need to make your observations far more focussed and productive when it comes to noticing the precise behaviours that relate to literacy learning…” Fountas & Pinnell, 2017, p. 215

Next step: Planning for time to listen to students reading out loud, to check for fluency is a new concept. This is something that I will introduce into my Guided Reading sessions this term. 

Next step: I learned something new from Nell K. Duke - The Listening to Reading-Watching While Writing Protocol. It is a formative assessment tool that can be used informally during guided sessions or during CRT by watching recordings of students' reading. Using the Google Slides record feature where students record themselves reading out loud every few weeks is a great way to manage this. 

FYI: The LTR-WWW is a tool that helps teachers conduct informal assessments during a guided reading session. It is not intended to replace formal assessments, but rather to draw attention to specific aspects of reading and writing between assessment administrations.

Fluency - a skill that needs to be taught.

Top tip shared - When using the rubric focus on volume and expression first - this can help remedy all others.

Next step: Something for me to use going forward is to get learners independently or with a ‘reading buddy’ to reflect and record on the rubric their next step for improvement around fluency.

Discussion & Teaching Points After Reading

Effective Oral Questioning - Open or Closed?  We need to know the difference between the types of questions we can ask and when they are appropriate. Here is a great visual to support this understanding.

Literal *concrete evidence (one sentence)

Vocabulary *Synonyms, antonyms & visualisation

Reorganisation *combine evidence (more than one place or order)

Inference *deducing & interpret  implied meanings

Evaluation *making judgements

Opinion *perspective/conclusion based on the above

It was clear after this session that what we as teachers need to get a conversation going, not facilitate a chain of questions and answers during our small group guided sessions. As teachers, we need to provoke the students into a conversation and then be quiet. Not always easy!

Some great question prompts were shared to support this. 

• “Let’s talk more about that because it’s an important point that the author is making …

• What other evidence do we have for that …

• So what was really causing the problem?

• This part makes me think …do you agree/disagree?

• If that’s the case, what do you think the author’s message is?

• So what’s the consequence?”

Next step: A new approach for my planning cycle is to start with reading the text for enjoyment during the first session. Then, I can introduce the learning intention and skills to learn either at the end of the first session or at the start of the next session. This will help make the reading experience more enjoyable for the students while also ensuring they understand the learning objectives. This is a key part of the Fountas and Pinnell approach.

Fountas and Pinnell offer ‘strategic actions’ to teach, prompt and reinforce skills.  This fits in well with the I do, we do and you do model that I use already in my classroom practice. Here is an example that was shared today.

Activating background and prior knowledge

I was introduced to Professor Timothy Shanahan who is an internationally recognised professor of education and reading researcher. His studies have shown that readers comprehend better when the text connects with their prior knowledge, and less when it doesn't. This means that establishing connections to relevant prior knowledge is important.

Some ideas ideas around this are:

• Fill learners in on appropriate background knowledge beforehand

• Knowing what prior knowledge to activate is crucial: text schema

• Don’t overdo it! 

• Respect the reader-text relationship

• Model connecting what’s in the text with what learners know

• Use an anticipation guide, KWL charts or background knowledge builders to support this skill

Lastly, we looked at ‘Response-to-text’ independent follow-up activities.

My key takeaway around this was the importance of giving learners various opportunities to respond to the texts using open-ended tasks. Like any learning, there should be time for learners to read, talk and respond to texts in ways that build their independence. Having an easy-to-access task board on your class site is the first step in supporting students with this.

Another interesting and thought-provoking day with some mahi for me to do around the Fountas and Pinnell approach to teaching reading. I look forward to introducing these new concepts during the term.