Class OnAir Hui

Today we had our first Class OnAir hui at school. This was a great chance to connect with everyone doing Class OnAir this year as well as look at examples of lessons and have some PD on reading and what we can show in our episodes going forwards. 

The reading PD with Georgie was really helpful not only with what they are looking for in our episodes but also with my CoL inquiry for this year. The linking of reading and writing is really key and it gave me some really great insight and ideas onto how I could do this in the classroom. It gave us the chance to be the students for a little while and be challenged to come up with phases and ideas that we ask students to do regularly. 

Last year I tried to incorporate reading and writing a little bit more but in reflection with was with a narrow lens. From todays session I can see how I can link reading and writing in many more whys that I am already doing. I know it may seem obvious but in the business of everything going on it is sometimes easy to make these subjects seperate and just focus on some of the key things that need to be worked on rather than the bigger picture and showing the students examples even while we are reading. 

I really got a lot out of todays session and this has left me thinking about some other things that I would like to try and implement in the classroom thinking ahead to term 2. Looking at some examples of Class OnAir episodes was also extremely helpful. Again I was just so focused on my own episodes and trying to get these finished that it is so easy to miss out on other gems that my colleagues have created. So this was a great opportunity to watch others teaching, see some great examples of lessons and teaching as well as technical things that I could use and incorporate in my own Class OnAir episodes. 

I think that having days like today not only help to keep us on track and show us where we need to go but it also makes me feel refreshed with some new ideas and excited for where I can go next with my Class OnAir episodes as well as my CoL inquiry. 

What is my hypothesis?

As I have been reflecting over the holidays and during my planning for learning for term 2 I have been thinking about some of the reasons as to why my learners are still reading between 7.5 and 8.5 years in year 5. I have some hunches as to why this might be which has given me a clearer idea of my hypothesis. Below I will discuss some of the key hunches/hypothesis that I have been contemplating. 

Confidence
Students confidence in reading is something that immediately stood out with these learners. I have wondered if this has to do with mask wearing and being able to hear and understand the children but this term with masks off the lack of confidence is still evident in reading. It it the confidence of being able to share their reading with others as well as answering questions. What I have noticed is many of my students will answer a question but they are not confident in their answers. They will answer the questions but will show a real hesitation in sharing the answers along with hesitation that they might be wrong.

Missing School
A big part of term 1 was lots of absences across these learners due to being sick or isolating. I think that this has had a large impact on my students as trying to come back to norms and routines after an extended period of time can be a challenge. Not only with student wellbeing but also the social aspect as well. I find that many of my students in my target group will either be away for the beginning of the week and our first reading or will be away at the end of the week and miss the follow up text that goes along with the topic. So this also could be a reason for these students reading at this age. 

Inferencing gaps
When I has interviewing for my CoL position last year one of the key things that I discussed as my hunch was the gaps in being able to inference. I have noticed with my target group that they are able to use the text to answer literal comprehension questions but struggle to read between the lines and answer questions that are not directly stated in the text. This is an area that I will focus on with this target group moving forward. 

Learning to read change to reading to learn
The biggest change with this group of learners is moving from learning to read to using reading to learn. The questions they are needing to answer are focused more on applied knowledge, inferring and vocabulary related questions. 

These are some of the wonderings I have had throughout looking at my inquiry so far and are some areas that I will continue to look into along with looking at further readings related to some of these hypothesis.