I really enjoyed todays sessions about reading and can finally say I have caught up homework from Day 3 and Day 4 of RPI. As I only have 3 days a week in class, I have to make sure I am super organised to try and implement or try out some of the activities and programmes we cover so that I am able to collect sufficient evidence and also students get a decent go with me in class.
Dorothy's session this morning covered the 3 click rule around our learning sites and what we need to ensure students learning is visible. I feel my team do this very well and have been doing so for a few years now. An area of improvement for our own site would be to intentional with have the following elements as shown in the slide below.
Another part of todays session covered 'Reading Apprenticeship' - I definitely need to implement the use of this specific language so students know what is expected when they are asked to move into these groups. Reading Apprenticeship - is the metacognitive discussion on reading processes. This is for students and led by students.
One part I really enjoyed today was in our breakout groups. My group was with Naomi and our session was called "read like writers and write like readers". This was great fun and she's modelled it just like how we could for our students. This reminded me of some PD we did some 10+ years ago called 'Reading - writing links' by Rebecca Jesson and she called it "cameo texts". I really enjoyed this session because as Naomi shared, it definitely beats trying to get 2 alliterations or 'make sure you use at least one simile'. But rather students have an extract of text which models exactly what you would like your students to replicate. The hardest part for me in creating this would be creating the scaffolded part especially when you want to use more than one text.
Having us teachers model and try out some "Think Alouds" today was very useful as without the practice and monitoring from our facilitators we probably wouldn't be doing this justice or even doing it wrong.
I will also aim to have a better go at collecting text sets from EPIC to help with reading in class. Overall another super useful session and I look forward to using some think alouds in class.
