Reflection and Sharing - ASL Report

Here is the final report from my time as an Across-Schools CoL Leader.. I had a great time learning about teaching reading comprehension and trying out the strategies on 9PKr.

Another highlight was getting my Mum to come in on Thursdays (our reading day) to help out and act as another reading buddy.

For 11 weeks from the start of Term 2 to the middle of Term 3, I just tried my best to increase reading mileage, vocabulary, confidence, enjoyment, and either 'learning to read' or 'reading to learn.' I had read a little literature about reading comprehension at that point, but hadn't started to synthesise what I'd learnt. Then for 4 weeks in Term 3 I actively tried to teach strategies given in the literature, in a way that was recommended by the literature.

Here are some of the good results - let me translate them for you:

In the chart above, it shows that every one of 9PKr's members improved their average Read Theory Grade scores at least a little bit (some definitely more than others) from the start of Term 2 to the end of Term 3. 

This data analysis table shows that 7 students increased their average score by more than 1 grade during the 11 weeks of me just trying my best. 5 increased by more than half a grade (0.5) in that time. 

When comparing the 4 week intervention to the 11 weeks of me just giving it a go, it's hard to make comparisons. The time is not a controlled variable, so I'm not comparing like with like! However, 6 students made a greater average grade increase in the 4 weeks than they did during the 11 weeks! In saying that, those 6 students also all shared a big shift in attitude towards science class, me, school and reading in that time as well - it was like they grew up a bit in those 4 weeks!

These next two graphs are pretty cool: 

This one shows that by the end of the whole reading programme (11 weeks of trying + 4 weeks planned intervention) 11 students had increased by more than 1 whole grade. Another 1 had increased by more than half a grade. 

And finally, this graph shows the pretest scores of the whole class on the left, and it shows the highest grade they reached at any point during the year. This data is less reliable because they maaaay have fluked it up there, but it does also show their potential! P even managed to reach the same reading grade (10) that I scored at! 

Literacy with 9TGn

9TGn is getting increasingly used to reading together in pairs and small groups, as well as discussing what they've read. I designed a litearcy activity to more deeply explore what an "ecological niche" is, in the context of Weta - New Zealand's Mouse. 

My recent readings have reiterated that it's not good enough to just give a scientific text to a class and expect them to engage with it, learn from it, acquire language or comprehend it in a way that's beneficial. 

I created a guided reading (with only three prompts and three discussion points this time - I've done some with more and they REALLY got into that one) and students got on with the paired reading with very little fuss. 

They helped each other with pronounciation of new words and some began to google the meaning of new words as they went. I thought this was interesting because I had created two versions of the guided reading; both had the same prompts, reading and discussion points but they had different glossary words down the side. They could have used the glossary for many of the words they Google'd but preferred to go to Google!

Also, a few students chose to do the reading online (the link was provided) but most of the others got out a pen and scribbled notes on their papers and used their finger or pen to read along with their peer. 

Version 1 of the guided reading here

Version 2 here

Glossary words weren't limited to scientific vocabulary, it also included 'rancid,' 'distinguished,' 'fascinated' and 'deter.' 

At the end of the guided reading and the discussions had taken place I gave out coloured post-its for students to share what they had talked about. 

Students found the second discussion point the easiest; identifying whether a weta was male or female using evidence from a paragraph. The second-easiest point was the first, about 'what an ecological niche includes' - but that required students to take the specific evidence about a weta niche and generalise it out; an ecological niche doesn't include living in a cave, but it does include where something lives. The most difficult point was the 'summarising a paragraph' one.  Some students struggled to combine information from sentences or identify the 'key point' or the 'gist' of the paragraph.

Unfortunately we ran out of time to do anything with shared post-its :( Perhaps I could have asked each small group to create a poster of the class' responses.