RPI Day 9: Sharing

Connecting
This is a part of the day that I really love being able to connect with what I have been doing in the classroom as well as hearing some thoughts and ideas from other colleagues who are part of RPI. This week Georgie gave us a would you rather link to check out which I'm really excited to try in the classroom as a warm-up activity or a way to facilitate extended discussions. Another thing I am excited to look into in more detail is my reader profile survey. I just had a thought that I would really like to look at my target group and see how much change there has been with their views on reading.

Manaiakalani: Sharing in reading
Sharing creates a connection, this really resonated with me from this session as it really shows the importance of sharing and giving the students that opportunity to share with each other and on their blogs. One thing I am keen to try in the classroom is creating a vlog style post where the students show a video of their learning and are able to be reflective on their learning. This is really powerful as it gives voice to the students and allows them to really share, I am thinking this could also be quite cool to do as a podcast where the students are able to share with each other and ask questions. 

Participating in a community of readers
Linking back to the why was really  important because it shows  where we are needing to make that shift in reading.  I would really like to set up text recommendations from the children to each other as part of our literacy rotation so that they're getting exposed to more text sets. One thing I'm really keen to check out is chapter chat. I think this will be a really cool way for me to be able to find new texts to share with the class as well as a way to find books that might be exciting and interesting that are relevant.  and another thing I really took away from this part of today was making sure that I'm planning for sharing I definitely need to update my classroom timetable to allow the opportunity  for learners to share their work on the blogs with each other with the class so that's definitely something that I will be working on in the next few weeks.

Visible reading and learning 

This was a really cool way to think about why students post on their blogs and it gives them a record of learning over time.  I think it just really reminded me of the importance of being able to share and also learners being able to share on their blogs and it's not just a blog post it's something that they can refer back to. I really liked this quote “When paired with affected instructional design, their review found that blogging can promote students' self-expression and create opportunities for higher order thinking.” It was also a really good reminder to have a blog checklist so that we are focusing on quality blog posts as well as giving me the opportunity to think about what I want the learners to blog on their blog each week.

Feedback and reflection
We looked at feedback and feed forward and the quality of feedback not the quantity. This also give me an opportunity to think about learner feedback I'm constantly giving feedback to my students on things that they are doing but I often forget about giving students the opportunity to give feedback to each other.  This is definitely something that I'm going to be adding into the classroom. Another thing that I'm excited to use is Google read and write to be able to give voice notes as feedback. Georgie also made a good point about having a writing doc for the term and being able to add new tasks each week so that feedback is still available for students so they can refer back to their writing the following week.

Collaboration and connectionI am definitely going to be adding a collaborative element into my response to text tasks where the students are able to collaborate with each other and be able to have those conversations as part of their follow-up task. Thinking ahead to next year I would like to have more opportunities for my students to read with other students within the school. Maybe set up a buddy reading system or give students the opportunity to read aloud in the library at lunchtimes. 

Whānau engagement 
This is definitely an area that I would like to work on in order to link school and home reading. I do send books home with some of my lower readers but I often forget about my high level readers and how I can make sure that they're reading at home as well and whānau are engaged with what they are reading. There were some really cool suggestions from this part of today that I'm excited to check out and use. 

Skill Builder
The skill builder today was looking at creating a kete of resources. This is something that we have as a team but it’s not currently viable. I am thinking that we spend one or two team meetings creating tasks that focus on specific skills where we have a bank of resources for ourselves  as well as our learners. 

I really enjoyed today's session looking at sharing as well as pulling the RPI together. I am very thankful to have been given the opportunity to participate in the reading practice incentive this year. I have learnt so much from all of the 9 days and I am excited to keep using this in the classroom. I am also really excited to share back with my team and think about how we can all use this going forward into next year. Huge thank you to Noami, Anna and Georgie for delivering the RPI to us over these 9 sessions, I have learnt so much! Special mention to Georgie who was my breakout group facilitator, the discussions and suggestions were really helpful, so thank you! Also massive thank you to my school leaders for allowing me this opportunity and my mentor Toni Nua who has given me some great insight and feedback onto my teaching practice in reading.