RPI: Reading Survey Results

 As part of getting to know our students and their attitudes in reading, we conducted a survey with questions provided by our RPI course. It delves into the thinking and attitudes of our learners in relation to what they like to read and their reading habits in and out of school.

My results weren't too surprising, and still provided great insight into reading habits outside of school, and the types of books my class likes to read. Below are some graphs to highlight some of the questions students answered. 

To give some background on my students, although we are a year 7&8 class, my highest reader is currently reading at 9.5 years old. My lowest readers are at 5.6 years and I have a big chunk (10 students) reading at 8-8.5 years. 

Here are some of my findings:

- Overall, students thought they were good at reading

- This translated to students saying they actually like reading at school (I was not expecting this)

- A high majority of students 70% do not like reading in their own time

- In terms of what their teachers think about their reading capabilities, the class was split 50/50

RPI - Day 1: Reading is core

This year I am very fortunate to join a whole lot of teachers joining the Friday RPI Cohort 3. Today was day 1.

The following are some of my reflections or things I've picked up from the day. 

Acceleration! We need our students to make more than one years progress in reading, writing and maths, in order for them to cope with the curriculum as it opens up more when transitioning into high school.

One of the things we covered today was reader profile. What is the profile of a good reader? how do we gather this? and how can we unpack or address this in order to be successful readers?

What I was reminded about, and really landed with me was the slide below about Whanaungatanga - fostering connections to learners' identities.

Todays segment on professional reading will definitely be one slide deck I will revisit to familiarise myself with more of the literature out the there in order to support my knowledge and kaupapa around reading.

A digital tool I will be making more use of will be the Canva whiteboard with sticky notes. Here is one where we shared about how we gather student data about their reading interests.

I also really liked studying the Pillars of Practice and highlighting our strengths and what we could work on. I hope to revisit this at the end of our 9 days of RPI and have made more change colour to green!

Overall, I feel like I had a bit of a head start as my whole team of 5 teachers have been through RPI and as a result we have implemented many of the tasks and extended discussion tasks we looked at today.

Across Schools CoL 2025

 Talofa Educators!

For those who are new to this space, my name is Latini Ilaoa and I have been fortunate enough to be an Across Schools CoL Teacher again for 2025.

This is my 11th year teaching Year 7/8 at Pt England School. Last year, I focused my inquiry around mathematics and accelerating students in Years 7/8 in order to cope with the transition into high school.

This term, I am also picking up RPI (Reading Practice Intensive). Due to this, I am still tossing up whether to keep with Mathematics as my focus for inquiry (more so now with the new curriculum refresh), or switch to Reading to align with what I will be learning about in RPI. So far, looking at my class data this year, I'm leaning more towards acceleration in Reading as a focus for my inquiry. I'll unpack this more as I gather more testing data.

Below is my booking form with time slots I am available for on Thursdays and Fridays. Please feel free to share this with your fellow teachers and school leaders. I am more than happy to travel to you, meet online or book a room here at Pt England School.

If you have any questions, please email me: lilaoa@ptengland.school.nz

I look forward to connecting with teachers across our cluster.

Faafetai lava

Latini