RPI: Day 3 - Text Selection

 Day 3 of RPI kicked off with Dorothy covering what reading in a digital world looks like for us teachers, as well as students. One of the parts we covered was around the use of reading apps. I am so glad Dorothy said it out loud as it needed to be said - but reading apps are NOT a substitute for instructional reading sessions with an actual teacher. Instead, by using the built in affordances provided by most of these apps, they can be used as an independent timetabled reading task. Making good use of, and sharing with students the dashboard data provided in most reading apps ensures that it also doesn't just become busy work.

One work on I took away from Dorothy's segment was to sign up to more toolkits to ensure I am making the most of the digital affordances provided by the Chromebooks in class. 

Using appropriate texts: Mirrors, Windows and Sliding doors

I had come across and been exposed to the kaupapa of ensuring students could see themselves in texts, as well as opening their world views and experiences through text, but I hadn't heard of the 'sliding doors' part. Having a diverse set of texts to choose from, ensures texts could go both ways where they could see both mirrors and windows, but also stepping in and out of the different worlds as written by Rudine Sims Bishop.

One real useful segment we covered today was the use of text sets. We had covered this last year as a team but this time I fully understood the 'why' behind each text we were choosing. I originally selected texts based purely on theme. Today we learnt about a ramp text - which was a middle ground text the whole class/group could cognitively access easily. This could be used as a springboard into the 'anchor' text which is a main/meaty text you wanted the group to focus on. From here you'd also attache a poem, video, graphic text or poster to go with to provide extra information and support the main anchor text.

I am looking forward to completing my own text set for ANZAC for week 1 of next term. I am also going to try out the Kakapo group taskboard provided in todays session on one of my groups.