Did we make enough progress

Reading ability - Feb

Student	A	B	C	D	E
Reading level	2	2	2	2	2
Reading age	5.0	5.0	5.0	5.0	5.0
Chronological age	5.04	5.03	5.04	5.04	5.04
Errors	13	25	10	14	40
Self corrections	0	0	0	0	0
Accuracy    %	75	52	81	73	18
Comprehension of text	3/4	2/4	2/4	1/4	0/4

Reading ability - Nov

Student	A	B	C	D	E
Reading level	10/12	10/12	7/9	10/12	7/9
Reading age	5.9	5.9	5.6	5.9	5.6
Chronological age	6.0	5.11	6.0	6.0	6.0
Errors	5	15	2	14	23
Self corrections	0	0	0	0	0
Accuracy    %	96	89	99	90	83
Comprehension of text	5/5	5/5	5/5	5/5	3/5

What they are reading this week - should be 12/13/14 at end of year 1

I feel this is due to setting up the system of 3 levels per week both with teacher and on sunshine classics and everyday checking sunshine classics and working on difficult areas with the group.

Writing ability - Feb

Student	A	B	C	D	E
e-asttle	below	below	Well below	below	below

Writing ability - Nov

Student	A	B	C	D	E
e-asttle	at	at	at	below	at

My students really enjoy writing now. They know the system we use and the Yolanda cards and the scrap piece of paper have been amazing.

Verbal communication

Using the flying fives room, the all important microphone pen, and the questioning cards - tell me more… combined have grown my students confidence to share their work and ideas verbally in pairs/ groups and whole class.

What would I do the same:

• Yolanda Phonics/word card
• scrap paper
• writing every day - modelled
• 5 texts per day - as whole class
• sharing circle every day
• Begin year in Room 10 at least 1 session per week
• 3 levels of reading per week
• Sunshine classics

What would I change:

• Provide updates to the students more frequently - as graphs
• Provide the marking matrix for e-asttle
• Gold medals each day for reading/writing
• Split the writing modelling sessions sooner
• Share a sunshine classics book each week as a whole class

Plan to reach reading targets

It is now term 4 and a big push is needed to hit our reading targets.  

Big questions:

What is required to hit our targets.

To hit our targets we need to move through the reading levels.

How can my practice change to help students achieve these targets.

I need to provide more opportunities for reading, that is with the teacher, in groups, with buddies and independently.

I need to provide a larger range of texts e.g. not just covering yellow 1 (level 6) and then moving onto yellow 2 (level 7) a few weeks later. I will begin to provide 3 levels of reader each week to be read with myself e.g. Yellow 1,2 & 3 (Lv 6,7 &8)

Running along side this I will provide 3 sunshine classic books per day at the different levels and on a daily basis check the reading results. When I notice similar errors I will use this to guide my teaching practice. Once a week as a group they will also read a chosen book and complete the activities during guided reading time with the teacher.

After each guided reading session the students will go and read their book again as a group.

On Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays we will buddy read with room 2.

Rethinking my practice

My team leader shared her folder with me from a recent workshop from the Auckland literacy Expo for teachers which involved exploring the writer in the reading and the reader in the writing.

The Effective literacy practice in years 5-8 have undertaken studies that show that teachers who have a firm grasp  of the reciprocal relationship between writing and reading and who continually make explicit connections to their students between reading and writing are the teachers whom exemplify 'best Practice'.

In Room three during big book, poem and guided reading we continually consider grapho-phonic sources of information when both reading and writing. We are also looking to locate the different types of punctuation and how these change our understanding of a text.

We also look at features in writing such as "describers" and how these help the reader to get an image in their head of the characters etc. Here we are looking at our poem for the week and finding the describers that the author has used. 

After time with reading recovery

Since hearing from the reading recovery team I have been implementing the findings. One very valuable tip was for at writing time. We have always shared our story before writing, planned through the use of a picture and then come back together to write a shared story together before the students then go off independently to write their story. Big difference not only do we use our Yolanda cards but as shared by the reading recovery team we provide a piece of scrap paper for the unknown words. this allows students to write the sounds they can hear for the whole word before entering this into their book. We have been following this structure for the past 5 weeks and here are the results that I would like to share:

                                                                      BEFORE

                                                                      AFTER

BEFORE

                                                                      AFTER

BEFORE

                                                                          AFTER

                                                                    BEFORE

                                                                     AFTER

                                                                    BEFORE

                                                                      AFTER

Reading results Term 2

Looking at reading result graph at syndicate meeting:

We discussed where the students need to be by the end of the year, Green level 12-14 and what changes we could make to our programmes to help the students achieve this target. To report back with ideas at the next meeting, Tuesday week 8. Where we will also be hearing a report from the Reading recovery teachers to advise us of trends that they are noticing on the 6 year net.

Reflection

It is week 6 of term 2 and we are up to letter 'Rr" of our stage 2 phonics, (second time around). We have been covering 5 letter sounds per week and in the second time around the capital letter of the sound is being introduced.

Students have been a lot more engaged at writing time after introducing the sound and high frequency word card from the Yolanda phonics course. During shared writing the students are encourage to find the sound we can hear at the beginning of a spoken word. It is like a little competition as students see who can put their finger on the correct sound first, or shout out what colour flower we need to be looking at to find our high frequency word.

Our big whiteboard is now set up with a picture card and next to it the capital and lowercase letter that matches the first sound of the picture, for example Kk kangaroo.

Spelling is part of our reading rotation where we get to practise our list of words, writing them out on the whiteboards and taking photos of them in our reading books, highlighting them and then recording us saying the word on our iPads.

It is testing week this week so I will share the results as I get them.

Learn - Collection of data

Learn

Students are arriving to school with little letter/sound knowledge and a lack of confidence to share their ideas. How can I help them to gain this knowledge in order for them to become good writers and communicators.

Letter and sound knowledge

Student	A	B	C	D	E
Letter name	2	5	2	2	2
Letter Sound	1	2	2	1	2

Verbal communication

Student	A	B	C	D	E
Unwilling/ unable to share a story verbally	✓	x	x	✓	✓
Share a personal story with a buddy verbally	X	✓	✓	X	x
Share a personal story with the class verbally	X	X	✓	X	x

Writing ability

Student	A	B	C	D	E
No letters or numbers	✓	x	x	✓	✓
Random letters	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Some High Frequency words	x	x	x	x	x
Can complete a sentence starter	x	x	x	x	x

After looking over my collected data I have chosen to select Achievement #5 for my learning inquiry.

Achievement challenge 5

Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/key competency using language, symbols and texts.

Not much improvement after 2 weeks. I am attending a Yolanda Sorryl Phonics workshop next week as it will have been 6 years since last attending. This will help determine if I am implementing my phonics correctly. My goal is to stay the same

'To be able to say a word and recognise (identify and hear) the first sound/letter of the word so that this can be recorded in their writing.'