Starting Out in 2017

The priority learners I will be working with this year are drawn from several Year 7 & 8 classes. They are all Year 8 students who have reading ages of 8 - 8.5 years and are 12 or almost 12 years old as at the beginning of the year. There are 5 students in the group and we meet 4 days a week for 30 minutes during their literacy rotation.

From the end of 2016 running record testing results I discovered that all these students had some struggles with decoding strategies (or lack of them!); vocabulary knowledge; and comprehension at higher levels.

My interventions will involve specific, systematic teaching of decoding strategies from sounds and words that follow regular patterns to those that are irregular and more complex. The students will be introduced to high-interest, non-fiction texts to build vocabulary knowledge and comprehension. 

I expect to spend more time on skill building at the beginning and more time on vocabulary and comprehension as the year progresses.

My goal is for each student to make at least 12 months progress in reading and for there to be some carry-over to other curriculum areas. 

Refreshing

Many of the tutors attended 'refresher' sessions held over 2 days recently. When organising training for tutors I am always conscious that:

          *the tutors are volunteers and have busy lives elsewhere

          *the students benefit most when our programme runs 4x per week

However, from time to time the students are unable to come to reading because of special assemblies or sporting events and these provide an opportunity for tutor-only sessions. Fortunately I was able to take advantage of two such events earlier this month.

It has been encouraging to see (and hear) tutors implementing some of the strategies around decoding that we discussed in our sessions.

We also discussed having a goal of the students ending up with a zero in the box named 'errors', and ways we can make this happen. This idea came from a discussion we had about some notes I had taken from Laughton King's book, Reaching the Reluctant Reader, where he writes about motivation using the analogy of investment and pay-off.

All the tutors who came to the 'refresher' sessions expressed their appreciation for the content and the chance to discuss with one another the issues they have in common in regards to helping our students become successful readers.

Spring!

1st September 

This term is the term when some of the tutors fly away for the winter, to warmer climes! Others have experienced ill-health or had family members needing major surgery. As a result, the students have not always had their usual tutors and this has impacted negatively on the consistency in the programme.

But spring has arrived, and with it, the return of most of the tutors. Yay!!

The focus continues to be on reading mileage with tutors supporting students with decoding problems and comprehension of text. The underlying strength of this programme is always the positive, trusting relationship between tutor and student. By this time of the year, the tutors have a pretty good idea of what each individual student's strengths and weaknesses are in regards to reading and we - the tutors and I - have come up with ways to attempt to 'plug the gaps'.

I have begun to run 'refresher' sessions following on, and adding to, the PD we did in the first term. The emphasis this time is decoding strategies including:

 *short vowel sounds (there is a visual card in the boxes to use to support this)

 *making syllables

 *making words into 'pictures' by drawing around them (for visual learners)

 *using flash cards to promote fast recognition of letters/sounds(for some students only)

Many of our students are making significant progress towards reading @ an age-appropriate level.

What's Happening?

I organised PD for the volunteer tutors in the week that our students were camping on the school grounds in the latter part of term one.
We discussed what we noticed about our readers; some characteristics of dyslexic readers (taken from Laughton King's book "Dyslexia Dismantled" - used by permission); and what we were already doing that seemed to be making a difference.
Most of the tutors came to these sessions, and some shared about dyslexic family members, giving further insight into the struggles that students who find it hard to learn to read face.  
Since then, I have noticed that the conversations I have with tutors about individual students have been more focused on what appears to be happening and what we can try to do about it.
Some things we are working on.
1. Noticing and adjusting our approach with individual students. It's not 'one-size-fits-all'.
2. Revisiting vocabulary for both word recognition and understanding of meaning.
3. Choosing stories with the students that will be engaging.
4. Not assuming they will remember words they have seen before (some students need      hundreds of exposures to a word before it becomes instantly recognisable)
5. Keeping on being patient and celebrating the small improvements in accuracy, fluency  and most importantly, comprehension. 

It's a work in progress!

     

A New Year - A New Inquiry!

Four days a week, for most of the year, volunteers from the community come into our school to support children in Years 5 & 6 whose reading age doesn't match their chronological age. I am the co-ordinator for this programme which is known as Reading Support. Most of the tutors come once a week, some twice, and they spend 15 minutes with each of 4 students. The time is mainly spent reading - that is, the student reading to the adult from texts that have been graded at the appropriate level. However, the conversation between the adult and child is also very important.
This programme has proved effective in raising student achievement in reading over the 20+ years it has been in operation. I feel it could be even more effective if the tutors were given specific training in helping students with learning difficulties. 
While most of the students on Reading Support have not been formally diagnosed with specific learning difficulties, there are clear indicators that this is the case for many of them. I would like to become a more skilled 'reading teacher' myself and to be able to teach the volunteers skills and strategies to become more effective. 

So this is what I am inquiring into this year.
How to recognise whether a child has a specific learning diifficulty, what it is, and what to do about it!

The End of the Journey?

My group finished at the end of term 3 as I have a role with whole school testing in term 4. But I have good news to share - all the students made progress during the year!

Some points to note:
Our group time was in addition to instructional reading with the class teacher.
AE had made no progress in reading for more than 2 years prior to this year.

Reasons for Success
* Less distractions - our group met in a smallish room which we had all to ourselves
* 100% teacher focus - there were no other students for the teacher to 'manage' at the same time
* Time spent building a culture where the students felt safe to show their weaknesses meant that they could ask questions without fear of 'put downs'
* Texts were carefully selected and introduced
* Choral reading gave the students confidence and modelling
* Collaborative follow-up tasks provided support and success
* ???

I will almost certainly be working again next year with some of the same students and I am confident that continuing with, and further refining these strategies, is the way to go!

Term 3 Update

Update

In term 3 I looked for texts that were related to our school-wide inquiry ‘Trade and Enterprise’. We also read some texts about leisure activities such as caving. Mostly we started with School Journals then moved on to online texts, newspaper articles and videos.

I found that the students had little prior knowledge to draw on so I did lots of gifting of language and filling in the gaps. However, one student had some ‘lightbulb’ moments when he realised that he had seen something on Discovery Channel about the topic and was able to relate it to the group. 

The students have started to use their imagination after having this modelled for them from the beginning!

There were some excellent clips online relating to some of our texts and the students were very engaged when watching them. They generated comments and discussion. Sometimes they wanted to watch these repeatedly - it’s easier to watch and listen than to read!

I realised that while earlier in the year the students were inclined to waste time when they used their devices, but by term 3 they were much more likely to stay on task. 

We have mostly continued to read texts aloud together. At times students have spontaneously read captions or snippets of information out loud for others, especially when looking online, or from newspaper articles that I have found relating to our topic.

I have presented students with purpose-made follow-up activities more often in term 3. The students have engaged with these and chosen to work collaboratively most of the time. I have included activities involving reorganising information and finding evidence to support statements.

On reflection, there has been a shift in engagement and skill level. I am encouraged!