Looking through our school statistics from Access It, our library system, I have realised that we have a school of readers! Boys are as engaged as girls, if not a bit more, and reading a lot. I found the most popular authors which were a surprise. Classics like books by Roald Dahl and Dr Seuss are still very popular, and new classics are emerging, including David Walliams and Andy Griffins. Geronimo Stilton, Daisy Meadows and The 13 Story Treehouse books are also very popular.
I will present class findings to each teacher at our next Comms meeting. I printed off what are the most popular books in each class and who are the students who are not borrowing books. I think giving a personal reflection back to each teacher will help them to know their classes reading patterns better and to be able to engage with that with their class and individual students.
I also gave Ash our reading data for ERO next week.
Showing posts with label PTC 12. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PTC 12. Show all posts
Tuesday, 23 May 2017
Saturday, 13 May 2017
NZ Authors James Russell, Dawn McMillan and Janet Martin
Yesterday I went to the Dorothy Butler Bookshop in Ponsonby to meet James Russell, a New Zealand author of the Dragon Brothers books. He did a reading from his first novel and demonstrated the augmented reality on the maps in his books with his ipad. As we talked I found out he is in the middle of promoting his books and is doing school tours, so I have emailed him about dates for coming to our school.
New Zealand authors are amazing because they are so accessible to schools. Last year I organised for Janet Martin and partner to come in as part of our Book Week. They had puppets and sang songs from their books. I thought they were best suited to the junior school, but surprisingly the seniors enjoyed them too. It just shows the power of a good story and song, and a real life performance.
Last year during the same book week I made an experiential book walk which read Dawn Macmillan's story Colour the Stars. Ash had printed out the story on huge pieces of paper and each page had a station to experience alongside the words.
The heater was to experience the feeling of the colour yellow.
What green feels like.
Bubbles were the stars bursting from the sky.
The stars are as abundant as the grains of sand.
I emailed the pictures of the Book Walk to Dawn McMillan and she said she would love to skype us. I only just got around to organising that meeting this year, so Room 12 were lucky enough to have an interview and book reading from her. She was amazing, and as an ex teacher built fantastic rapport with my students.
We love authors in Aotearoa!
Wednesday, 10 May 2017
Diversity in our books in our school library
I have just started a 5 week online course through the National Library. It is called Developing Library Services - School Libraries Supporting Learning - Primary.
I will share my notes later on from my readings so far, but I have been reflecting on the diversity of books in our school library. Over the past year and a half in the library I have been reading a variety of blog posts and ordering books from the public library to research and find more diverse books. America is making great progress in picture books about diverse cultures, genders and real life people who have not really be recognised in junior books. I know that New Zealand is making progress in this, but these books can be hard to source.
During the course I was directed to this site http://www.pacificpicturebooks.co.nz/ which I will look into to purchase more of these books. We have a few in a our library already, but not many. Here is another site Seeds Child Care Shop I will look into.
Our school library has lots of books about and celebrating Te Ao Maori. I am always on the hunt for more though! I have been making a real effort to find books about Indian, Chinese, Korean, and African American cultures. Our school collection is growing slowly but surely.
I will share my notes later on from my readings so far, but I have been reflecting on the diversity of books in our school library. Over the past year and a half in the library I have been reading a variety of blog posts and ordering books from the public library to research and find more diverse books. America is making great progress in picture books about diverse cultures, genders and real life people who have not really be recognised in junior books. I know that New Zealand is making progress in this, but these books can be hard to source.
During the course I was directed to this site http://www.pacificpicturebooks.co.nz/ which I will look into to purchase more of these books. We have a few in a our library already, but not many. Here is another site Seeds Child Care Shop I will look into.
Our school library has lots of books about and celebrating Te Ao Maori. I am always on the hunt for more though! I have been making a real effort to find books about Indian, Chinese, Korean, and African American cultures. Our school collection is growing slowly but surely.
Raising Achievement Course
Yesterday I was on the Raising Achievement Course in Parnell with 4 colleagues. It was about best practise for our Wave 3 children, who often have learning issues with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and autism. These children are often undiagnosed as well, which can make teaching these children a challenge.
Raising Achievement Shared Notes
We learned about the different Learner Groups.
1. Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work, or other activities
2. Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities
3. Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly
4. Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (not due to oppositional behaviour or failure of comprehension)
5. Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities
6. Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (such as schoolwork or homework)
7. Often loses things necessary for tasks or activities at school or at home (eg toys, pencils, books, assignments)
8. Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli
9. Is often forgetful in daily activities
Raising Achievement Shared Notes
We learned about the different Learner Groups.
- 1st wave learners: Students learning above standards.
- 2nd Wave Learners: Mainstream students - performing at the national standard or roughly a year below, but within range to be pulled up. Any supports provided, when taken away, these students will meet standards.
- 3rd Wave Learners - Some kind of specific learning difficulty: ADHD, Autistic, Asperger, Auditory and Visual processing disorders. 22% of students fit into this category.
- 4th Wave Learners - Special education: Physical, sensory disability - make up about 3% of our students. These are ORRS funded. 10/11% - Dyslexia, 1% - Dyspraxia, 3% - Autism, 5% -Auditory Processing, Visual Processing - no percentage yet,
Where to next
I have a student (maybe 2) who I think may have ADHD inattention. They are both under the same RTLB so I will follow up with her about my observations and where to next to best support these students.
ADHD Inattention1. Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work, or other activities
2. Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities
3. Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly
4. Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (not due to oppositional behaviour or failure of comprehension)
5. Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities
6. Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (such as schoolwork or homework)
7. Often loses things necessary for tasks or activities at school or at home (eg toys, pencils, books, assignments)
8. Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli
9. Is often forgetful in daily activities
- We were shown two highly recommended resources which we will talk to management about to see if we can implement them school wide to address our struggling readers and spellers. They are the Alpha to Omega spelling programme and Key into Comprehension series. We already have the last one at school and I have used a few of them and really liked them. This series is awesome for teaching inferencing and reorganising for students to think deeper about a text.
Reflection
I am really lucky to have started my teaching journey in the Junior School with the New Entrants and Year 1's, so I was well trained on how to teach students how to read. Going up to the middle school I can still put these skills to good use to help my struggling readers. It was interesting to learn that most learners need to see something about 7 times to learn a new task or piece of knowledge, whereas for our strugglers they need to see it up to 49 times. Repetition is key!
The above text was given to us as an example of how difficult some of our students find it to read. The words jump over the page and with dyslexic children especially, the b/p/d/q letters are quite tricky. We tried reading it with difficulty, and then the lecturer asked us to tell us what we had just read. Our comprehension was terrible as all our energy had gone into just trying to decode. Pretty eye opening about the struggles some of our children face every time we ask them to read.
The above text was given to us as an example of how difficult some of our students find it to read. The words jump over the page and with dyslexic children especially, the b/p/d/q letters are quite tricky. We tried reading it with difficulty, and then the lecturer asked us to tell us what we had just read. Our comprehension was terrible as all our energy had gone into just trying to decode. Pretty eye opening about the struggles some of our children face every time we ask them to read.
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