Mid Year Reflection

During the holidays I looked at my data and regrouped my learners. What I have decided to do it make the groups smaller (6 max per group) which will allow everyone to be able to share during guided reading. This has also given me a chance to see if I can extend the learners with higher level texts as we progress through the term. 

After having conversations with colleagues in how to make it possible for students to share ideas with each other it was suggested to give the more reserved students a question that they know they are going to have to answer. So what I am going to do is create little cards for fiction and non fiction texts that have generic questions and give these to the students before the see me for guided reading. I will also get the students to read the text with the cards before they come and see me so that they have more time to think about what they will say. Hopefully this will help build confidence. 

Another thing that I want to bring in and focus on again is ground rules for talk and reintroduce the ideas of having everyone share. We will start this with basic conversation starters that are really easy things like what superhero would you be and things like that. 

I think the key thing I have taken away so far is the need to build confidence and I am going to try and do this in as many ways as I can. I will also be implementing key questions that focus on inferring, applied knowledge and vocabulary. 

Mid Year Data

I have just completed my running record and probe tests for the middle of the year and have analysed the data. I have created a graph to show the reading ages from the end of last year in comparison to the mid year testing reading ages. 

From the graph and looking at the data I can see that most of my students made at least 6 months to a year gain in reading age. There was a small number of students who had made no progress in their reading ages. From looking at this data and my reflections and anecdotal notes one thing I can draw from this is the students who are less likely to share their reading learning are the ones that showed no shift in mid year testing. 

One of the other things I have noticed is the jump from PM to Probe testing can have a bit of an impact on reading ages. When looking at a couple of my students and previous trends I can see that they may have been tested too high at one point and have needed to be tested back so look like they have't made shift in reading age but I can see improvements in reading groups. 

Key Takeaways
Inferring was an area where many students struggled. Applied knowledge was another key area that needed to be developed. Vocabulary and unpacking new words was also another area that I need to focus on. From the probe testing I have decided to make sure to include a range of the types of questions each so that students are exposed to these not just during testing. Decoding is really good its unpacking the text and understanding more complex ideas.