Day 9: Sharing Reading

Naomi reminded us that all the reading studies suggest that those students 

that read beyond the classroom and that partake in that  ‘wider reading’ 

(ie. they read at home). These children will have an increased/accelerated 

gain in reading. 

Cluster blogs throughout NZ that can give you lots of ideas,

especially in regard to ‘create’ activities with reading. 

The above link looks like the image below.

Scale scores are really important when looking at PAT comprehension results, 

if you just look at a stanine it will include where children should be 

at for March next year.

Students need around 7 exposures to new vocab words to lodge it into 

their long term memory. That's why it is important to have a broad diet of text. 

The notion of a reading community is really important now, 

both inside and outside the classroom. 

Great interview template to get family involvement with reading: Link

Day 8: Creating Reading

Dorothy explained how using the ‘create tasks’ help students re-organize 

their ideas based on the engaging texts that they have read. 

Creativity - It has been a defining characteristic of humanity since the 

beginning of time. 

A huge hook to many learners is the opportunity to …create. 

Carrot or the stick with educators - the carrot with reading is definitely 

the create side of things. 

We want to empower learners to be creators of content, not just consumers.

With create- sight, sound and motion give us the biggest bang for buck as 

they make the environment the most engaging.

Dorothy spoke about  "mode-switching" affords deeper cognitive processing too 

which is also what AI tools support. Eg from writing to talking. 

I found this really interesting: Professor Jonathan Neeland, Creative Fellow, 

Warwick University stated:  That games are biggest uptake of recorded classical 

music in UK!

I think we need to keep this in mind Georgie discussed it and I 

totally agree -Creative employment is increasing and we are likely preparing 

children for jobs that are not even available yet….

Idea of tighter or looser ‘create’ instructions. Tighter instructions create 

channels and form parameters or guard rails. However, you need to keep 

in mind if you constrain the create activity to much all the create outcomes 

from the students will look the same. Loose create instructions can be 

beneficial too, to get some out of the box ideas. 

Sometimes I struggle with creating ‘fun’ create activities for my students. I need to refer to these websites for inspiration. 

• Summer learning journey

• Eye catching blog posts

• Literacy exemplars - Design rich creative experiences 

Day 7: Thinking in Reading

Dorothy started off our day by talking about a good real world example of 

why being able to read critically is so important. She spoke about scamming. 

We need high degrees of reading competency to figure out what is real and 

what is not. There are so many high level scams out there at the moment. 

She discussed a brief one where people were being asked to pay money 

for road taxes from Waka Kotahi by clicking a link that was sent to them in an email. 

Below is a great Auzzie based resource to help have those conversations

with kids around mis/disinformation. Manaikalani were asked 

to trial this and they have now included more NZ based examples. 

In this new age of ‘fake news’ the veracity/truthfulness of information 

is something we always want to get to the bottom of. No longer is an article 

or story on the internet or news always factual. 

Importance of being able to read more deeply to get a complete understanding 

of what is going on. I think we often focus a lot at the literal level. 

Robust debates are something that I would like to introduce more in my teaching. Especially in a style of class vs class. I have done it before in relation to the topic: Should animals be 

kept in zoos. However, I need to branch out further. 

These examples above help show our thinking in categories. The higher 

you go up the more abstract you get with the thinking.

Georgie stated that NCEA is built off SOLO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayefSTAnCR8

Good example above of figurative language and comparing one thing to another.

 

Provocation is a great way to get children to critically think about different ideas.

A man called Rupert Wegerif said that we have discussions like 

these to get to the ‘best truth’.  Great to challenge each other on 

different viewpoints and weigh up these and their rationale. 

The above screenshot allows students to make really deep reflections on the content 

that they read. 

Day 6: Vocabulary (and decoding)

Below is a list of a number of great apps that schools can use to help with vocabulary.

With reference to the picture below we need to think about 

what weight we give to vocabulary in our reading programs. 

The strong rationale is explained below:

There a multiple aspects to knowing word as described in the picture below:

4 key elements to developing vocabulary from research:

Word Consciousness:

Deliberate, robust teaching of words:

Cracking unfamiliar words; see the strategies below:

Important to remember when reviewing syllables that vowels carry the 

sound of the syllable. Love the tip below too….

Morphology is the study of how words change. 

Morphemes have meaning and phonemes just have sound.

Above is an example of how a root/base word is made up.

Some great resources for chunking challenges that could work into your spelling programme:

-https://thesyntaxproject2022.squarespace.com/lessons

-https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OGj9PHSVSf6efo2qBGdSMrZvtAJOco7a/view

-https://atlasabe.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Morpheme_Matrices-rev072120.pdf

I think overall my biggest takeaway from today is that when students 

reach year 5, around two thirds of the reading problems that they 

encounter are related to vocabulary. Therefore, I would love to incorporate a 

greater variety of vocab activities in my timetable. I love the morphene pdf that 

was shared above and I would like to incorporate it into my spelling programme. 

To start off I would like to include this once a week. I also think using the likes of 

a jamboard for reading groups to make sticky notes around unknown words 

which they can refer back too would be really helpful during my guided

 reading sessions. I also loved the resources that were provided for the robust, 

interactive vocabulary approaches. 

Reflection on the Read Like Writers, Write Like Readers lesson

Reflection on the Read Like Writers, Write Like Readers lesson 

These are the prompts we were given and the example piece of writing that I completed from them. 

Imagine a quiet place (Remote setting - is it in the woods/church/wharf/graveyard

The time of day - quiet - (Is it midnight, is it dawn breaking, sun setting)

What sounds can you hear (Is it owls hooting / bird song / traffic)

There is something in the air (Is it smoke/ something rustling in the trees)

We can just make out someone in the middle of the setting (Name the person)

There is this thing there as well (Is it a bench / playground / water fountain / dim street light)

What is the person doing (How are they interacting with the thing?)

What is a question that the person is wondering or thinking?

Model

The graveyard was silent that crisp autumn morning. The sun was peeking its way through the trees and the only sound that could be heard was the crunching of the Graveyard Janitor piling dirt up from another hastily dug grave. There were 22 all up now!! The shovel had become heavy like an anchor weighing down the janitor with every shovel stroke. Now and again there was the odd rustle of bushes or trees as if someone else was moving through them …..watching. A few minutes later the dim lighting provided by the street lamps went out and day was upon us. The ambulances would be coming soon! How many would there be? Who would be in them? Would they be one of his relatives?

Reflection: 

I really liked the level of the detail in the scaffolding for this piece of writing. It followed a good logical flow and allowed for lots of creativity. 

Day 5: Planning a Reading Programme

Dorothy discussed what ubiquitous access to learning looks like…… 

at a base level this picture describes it:

A good example of an independent task board:

Dorothy explained how ‘Blogs’ are such a good resource to amplify reading and writing.

Keep in mind that when designing a reading programme that children will go through the

Doing different activities with writing eg. Persuasive writing heaps of good 

resources can now be found on Epic books:

The ‘daily five’ is a group of literacy activities that we need to be aware of. 

It is used in lots of junior areas of the school.

Keeping track of the Mahi - I really liked this set up. 

Read theory is a great application to present children texts and then 

questions and feedback related to those texts. It adapts questions based 

on whether you get the answers right or wrong. Read Theory are apparently 

using AI at the back end of this to assist with this. Read Theory is often a 

program that is used to help students prepare for tests such as PAT’s. Once you have 

assigned a task to the kids they could take a screenshot of what they have completed 

for the week to help with accountability.

Here is an example of what Read Theory looks like: 

It was good to note that the Sunshine Classics app is free to all Manaikalani Schools:

Below is a really good set of instructions that I am looking forward to implementing

During my ‘Buddy Reading’ time this year with Room 8. 

Interesting point - Kids imitate and then appropriate texts from their reading into their writing. Rebecca Jesson calls it ‘borrowing’. This can help children immensely with their writing. 

Here is an awesome website to get some great picture inferencing resources from:

RPI: Day 4: Guided Reading

 Important to keep lots of time in our programmes for this (see below)

Principle aims for guided reading: 

Post reading conversations are important at the end of guided reading 

sessions to consolidate knowledge and check students engagement 

eg. Describe one thing that you have learnt from the text. 

Leading with the authors purpose first rather than the LO when 

starting the guided reading lesson. This approach helps the children

really connect with the text. 

Remember to note that fluency is going to play a big impact on 

comprehension. 

Included here is a ‘Learning to read’ protocol that you can use 

in your guided reading programme to formatively assess where your

students are at.

You could also have children assess each other using a similar rubric.

 Peer to peer assessments are really powerful. 

Above are some types of questions that you could refer to during the 

discussion time in your guided reading lesson based on the LO that you are

teaching. 

Great website from Panmure Bridge School showing graphic organizers 

for follow up reading tasks for our reading sessions.

Here is a really good example of planning that was shared with us relating to the question: Should animals be kept in zoos?

Today was a really good comprehensive look at what a guided reading

lesson looks like. I was interested to learn that leading with the authors

purpose was the first step in the process. Recently, I have been leading

with the LO. I also found it interesting that you should only spend around 

5 or so minutes discussing the key points around your learning intention. 

This time is a lot shorter than I had envisioned.