RPI Day 1: Reading is Core to Learning

What makes a good reader? 

This was the first question that was posed to us during our session today in RPI. We were given the opportunity to write down all of our own ideas before we unpacked the question deeper. As I was thinking about what makes a good reader I was thinking of all of the surface level aspects of reading and I was challenged in a good way to see the different elements that make up a good reader. It was a nice reminder of these key elements and to think about how I look at this in my own students in the classroom. 

This quote really summarised the key elements of what it means to be a good reader and really resonated with me. The things I really enjoyed was looking at all of these as a whole rather than just individual elements in reading and how we can make sure that each of our students are given the opportunity to be a “good” reader and know what it involves. 

Reading across the curriculum

This section of the day made us think about how reading fits across all curriculum areas. I really enjoyed looking at Robyn Anderson’s CoL inquiry from 2022 and seeing the student voice through the reflection of the data they had collected. It was great to see a real world example of how students can become confident readers who are engaged and excited to look at reading across multiple curriculum areas. I was fortunate enough to be part of CoL in 2022 and have heard Robyn discuss and share her findings and it was really great to be reminded of this and reflect on ways in which I could use this in my classroom. I think it is so important to have this reader survey to see what kind of readers our students are and what types of text they enjoy reading. 

How to grow good readers

I really liked having the chance to look at the pillars of practice and then highlight the areas that I thought were a strength of mine and then highlight the areas to strengthen and integrate. This was a really good way to see the parts that I need to focus on in my teaching and areas that I can develop and explore throughout the RPI journey. This is something that I will continue to refer back to along my RPI journey and I know I will enjoy moving things around as I learn and grow in these areas. 

Academic Reading 

For one of our tasks we were asked to choice an academic reading to complete and comment on. I chose to look at the reading called Teachers as Readers Report by the National Library of New Zealand. I really enjoyed reading this article and took a lot away from it. "Teachers’ aspirations for their students were closely aligned with their experiences of being readers themselves." this reading really made me think about how I can demonstrate reading to my students and also talk to them about different books. This is definitely something that I am going to be doing with my class. I have been meaning to set up BookFlixs in my class for a few years now and I think I will really try and get this up and running so that students can share recommendations with each other. 

Reflection

I really enjoyed our session today and I have learnt some really valuable things that I will take back to the classroom with me. I am looking forward to having my learners take the reading survey and see what types of readers I have in my classroom. Another thing that has been highlighted for me today is allowing for that extended discussion and the different ways I can work on this in the classroom. I really loved the idea of having a ball to pass around the group and allowing everyone to share thoughts and ideas. This is something that I will use in my classroom for sure. Establishing ground rules was a really interesting part of the session as this is something that I have tried to do in previous classes and it really resonated with me that you can set these up but you also need to follow through with this as well and sometimes in the business of the classroom I forget to keep these up which is why it hasn't worked so well in the past. I am really looking forward to implementing this in my classroom. 

I really learnt a lot today, it was a lot of information but there is so much I am wanting to try out and things that I want to look into in more detail. One other key thing I took away from today was that "talk can be risky." This really resonated with me as I was always the child at school who was too shy or scared to speak up in fear of getting things wrong. I want to be able to try and remove that barrier from the classroom and have the students feel that they can share and that there is no wrong answer, just different perspectives and opinions. I am really looking forward to trying some of the things in my classroom over the next few weeks and am excited to see what answers my learner survey has to show!