End of Term 3 reflection

Then and Now

After having a look at my mid year data and questioning why some of the students in my class hadn't made as much shift as I would have liked I started to look at my teaching as a whole and what I could change.

Up until this point I have been making sure that my whole class is settled and on task. This becomes a challenge sometimes and looking back I have realised that there has been less small group teaching than I would have liked. I will need to take a step back and focus on my small group teaching so that students are getting quality and uninterrupted learning time with the teacher.

By focusing on vocabulary I had been pre-planning which words I was going to focus on during small group discussions. I have seen a shift in my students, who are now picking out and vocalising the vocabulary that they don't know. I now have a loose plan of the vocabulary that will be looked at although now the importance has shifted to strategies that are in place and which ones to use.

In the future I would like to look at themes around my reading programme so that the texts that are chosen link from week to week. I am hoping that this will lead to more engagement and mileage in a specific context as well as building on new vocabulary. In the end of Term 2 reflection from I wanted to link my reading and writing programmes to give more opportunity for new vocabulary to be used. I will continue to try and do this.

End of Term 2 reflection

After a busy term I was a little worried that my inquiry was being neglected. However, I realised that I had tried some things in my classroom that were working but could be used more wisely.

I had made my WALTS specific to strategies to find unknown words. There had been a lot of discussion in small group sessions that had focused on the context of the story and breaking down specific sentences to understand new words. We looked at the make up of the words and finding familiarities with known words. These words that we had discovered in small group sessions were put up on the board for the week under a picture of that group picture.

I would like to give groups more opportunities to use these words that they are discovering. In Term 3 I would like to integrate my curriculum areas so that reading and writing are planned together. This way I am hoping that the students will be able to use these words from their reading, in their writing since they are planned around the same or similar context.

After small group discussions or as a warm up to the class I would like to introduce some word games to get the students thinking about ways to use words. For example, the game Word Sneak, like seen on The Tonight Show.

 

Learning new vocab

The beginning of the term was a great opportunity to introduce new strategies for learning vocabulary in reading lessons. The structure of my small group teaching has been modified so that new vocabulary is now discussed and made visually available during the week on the wall behind the teaching table. The task now is to have opportunities for the students to use this new vocab during the week in some way. I have introduced the game Scrabble to my reading rotation with bonus points given to any student able to use a new word learnt that week. I found that this was quite difficult but helped a lot with the students understanding word families and the ways that words can change with a couple of letters. Bonus! There is room to be able to link my reading and writing tasks to give another opportunity for new vocabulary to be used. I still have ideas such as crossword, word find and puzzle activities that can be created by the students. Lots of ideas - now to implement them!

First look this term

Inquiry focus for Term 1 2016

This year I will be inquiring into how I can get accelerated progress in reading using formative practise to inform teaching steps for my Asterix reading group. This group is below the national standard and are not receiving any extra reading support.

During small group teaching and running records early in the year I found that this particular group of students were lacking understanding of a large range of vocabulary. This was affecting their understanding of what they were reading.

My first steps will be looking at the way I can incorporate word work and visual aids into small group discussions and follow up activities that can be revisited at any time. I will be trying out a sentence or definition quiz template that these students can create to show their understanding of new word or word groups.

End of Term 4 reflection