RPI Day 5 - Planning a Reading Programme

Today we had day five of RPI which was titled planning a reading program. There were some really interesting ideas and new tools that have come out of todays session which I am excited to share as well as take back with me into the classroom. As always with RPI day's I love gathering all of this new information and trying to think about how I will add this into my following weeks planning. 

Reflections
At the beginning of todays session we were asked to reflect on the homework tasks and share what is going well and what we might need support around. As I shared in my breakout group I have found a new passion and excitement from reading planning since our last session. I have been adding and trying things in the classroom that were not too dissimilar to what I was doing but I feel a bit more inspired about them and thinking about how I can include student voice and really have students delve deep into topics and have discussions around what they are learning. I have had some really great conversations with Toni my mentor around adding in novels and other texts to really extended those readers which I am also excited to continue to put into practice. 

Class Sites
We were fortunate enough to have Fiona Grant join us this morning to talk through class sites and to think about the progression that these have made over the years. It was really great to be reminded of the four key goals for class sites and thinking about how we can ensure that our learners know how to navigate the class site as well ass sharing this with whānau. This has been a really good reminder for me to check that the class site is functional and that all of the links are working and to ensure that during parent teacher conferences this term that whānau do know how to access the class site. 

Looking at the bigger picture
The key focus for today was around linking reading and writing and finding ways in which
we can integrate the two. One key thing that stood out for me in this particular part of the session was having workshops and conferences with my groups. I think I so often focus on getting those guided reading sessions done and pulling out the key ideas and listening to the students read I often forget to check in with the learners and give them the opportunity to share their learning in a group setting. So this is definitely something that I am going to be adding into my timetabling going forward.

Teacher Timetabling
I eluded to this a in my previous paragraph about making time and ensuring the time for conferencing with the students. I do try and make time for this during our literacy rotations and I do always manage to get through my groups and see them enough times however sometimes these sessions can take longer than expected and it takes away from the conferencing time with the students. My big take away from this part of the day was to be intentional with my timetabling and add in these times. I think by having more detail in this timetable will make sure that I stick to it and that I have time for all of the things I want and need to complete in the classroom. So watch this space on this one! There never seems to be enough time in the day!!

Mahi Tracker
I currently have a turn it in sheet that the students use and we have been working on getting better at adding things this term. I have seen some really amazing ones today that are really clear and show the progress that I would like to try out in my class. So I am very much looking forward to revamping my current turn it in sheets to be more user friendly and visually appealing. 

Digital Reading Apps
This was a really interesting part of today looking at some of the digital apps in more detail. I currently use EPIC! in my classroom but I have discovered today how many amazing features it has that I am definitely going to be using going forward. I have added the students into groups and will be trying from next week to give them specific books to look at. I am also really excited to try out https://readalong.google.com with Fiona Grant recommended, I will be adding that into my choice board from next week!

Skill Builder Inferencing
Again another incredible skill builder session today all about inferencing. I am really looking forward to trying some of these tasks in the classroom. I always forget about how powerful it is to just use an image for inferencing and using that as a starting point. This part of today also reminded me of the key into inference workbook that we have a school so will be adding this into the mix as well. 

Read like writers and write like readers
This part of todays session was by far my favourite by looking into different ways that we can use journals and texts to model the way in which we want our learners to explore language and features in their writing. We read the opening paragraph to the story "Great Beginnings" which has a lot of really beautiful language to describe the opening to the story. From this we were then given some prompts and questions to eventually write our own paragraph. This is something that I am very excited to try in my classroom. It also happens to be a part of our homework for our next RPI session, so I hope to reflect on how that goes before my next session. 

As always I have really enjoyed my RPI session today and have taken away some key things that I am really excited to explore and use in my classroom and literacy rotation. I love that with reading and writing there is always something new to explore which is why I think reading is such a passion subject of mine. I have lots of things to explore in the next few weeks and I can wait to see how they turn out and to share my findings on here, so watch this space!