Academic Reading

Our next CoL PLG is this afternoon and we have been asked to read a piece of academic reading and to highlight some quote from the text to share with our colleagues. We have only been tasked to read the first few pages however I have found it very interesting so far so I think I will continue reading it to the end. The reading is "Analysis and Discussion of Classroom and Achievement Data to Raise Student Achievement" by Mei Kuin Lai and Stuart McNaughton. This is a very fitting article as I have been looking at my data for both my CoL inquiry and RPI that I am currently taking part in. From the first part of the article here are the five key quotes from the text that stood out to me. 

• In the late 1990s, research on schools involved in Ministry of Education projects indicate that there were a sizeable proportion of schools that did not analyse and use achievement data to improve their practices, but recent research indicated that most schools now regularly use data to inform their practices (Lai and McNaughton 2010). 
• Using a broad range of data is recommended, including data from assessments, observation of students in class, homework and ‘student voice’ (e.g., student questionnaires).
• The literature indicates that focusing primarily on achievement information, such as on national standards or high-stakes assessment, has failed to improve students’ literacy achievement (and by implication, failed to improve teachers’ practices).
• It could be one or several of these issues that is the cause of the poor score, and teachers need to know how to put together a teaching programme that can address these issues.
• For all these reasons, we argue that connecting achievement patterns to teaching patterns is essential if teachers are to draw the appropriate inferences from the achievement information to develop more effective teaching practices.

I am looking forward to discussing these key points this afternoon during our CoL PLG and will reflect on this on my blog after our meeting, so watch this space!

RPI Day Two: Know your Learners as Readers

For our week 2 RPI I had to jump in a few days early as we have our year 5 and 6 camp starting this week! So I was very lucky to be able to join the Tuesday crew and learn all about knowing our learners as readers. This has been a really enjoyable session as it has reminded me of some hidden gems in PAT as well as taught me some new things that I am very excited to try out in my classroom over the next few weeks.

Assessment 101
For the start of our session today we look at formal and informal assessment data and how this can lead to more reliable judgement. This was a really great start to reflect on the things that I am doing in the classroom for formal and informal assessment and what I can also add to strengthen this. I do notice things about my students as we are reading and often just keep these in my head rather than writing them down or sharing them with others in my space to read. This got me thinking about out first week of RPI when we talked about modelling books and having somewhere to store this information so that it is shared with others in my team and my release teacher. So that again has been added to the to do list so watch this space!!

Keeping track of learning
We were introduced to the teacher workbook, which upon reflection is a great resource that has been shared and there are so many things that I will take out of this and use for my own tracking and planning. This is also something that I hope to share with my team so that we are all on the same page with our planning and tracking. The assessment part of this workbook is something that I will start using. I have been using something similar however they are all under a range of different tabs so I like the idea of having this all in the same place. I am really excited to use this with my data collection.

Assessment Tools 
I really enjoyed this part of the session as it made me think about all of the wonderful things elements that are available with PAT data. I have used some of these areas previously in my inquiry however have forgotten some of the gems that there are. I do really love looking at data and cannot wait to have a look at all of my data in depth in the next few weeks. One thing that I found really cool was being able to look at the class or group as a whole in comparison to the norm. This was something I had not used before and I can't wait to explore it in more detail. 

Learning intensions and success criteria
The final part of our session today was looking at learning intentions and success criteria. I really enjoyed using the planning part of the workbook. I currently use sheets but I think the way this has been set out is something that I will implement. It is such a good tool to look across groups and to keep track of students reading ages and levels. I think again this is something that I will trial myself for the rest of the term and see how it goes and if successful will share with the rest of my team for planning next term. 

I really enjoyed today's session and getting to meet the Tuesday cohort of RPI teachers. I have definitely learnt a lot and cannot wait until after camp to reset my reading program in my classroom!