Day 1

 What a first day!! Feeling a little overwhelmed but also excited about how I can become a more effective teacher of reading.  The pillars of learning is a great analogy and one that I can picture and hopefully remember in order to include these aspects into my teaching of reading. Although there is so much to include in our practice, the fact that we can teach across the curriculum makes it less daunting (just a wee bit!!)  It was great to see how the survey of reading was then part of a math programme - it just requires lots of smart thinking.  Seeing how others do this is encouraging and allows me to see it is possible.  


There is so much that I could take away from today but feel like I need to hear more before I run with it and it fails because I am doing too much without knowing what I am actually doing so will wait till we’ve had a couple more days before doing too much! At this stage, I need to have explicit, planned (for me) conversations with my learners to discover their attitudes about reading.  I also am going to continue with my read aloud as I really enjoy this and can see the benefits this brings with making reading exciting for the students and them being able to see my passion and excitement for reading.  


As I am in a shared teaching role, it is going to be awesome to discuss the task boards viewed today with my colleague.  I would also like to look at a reading survey for our learners which involves whanau participation.  I need to think about how we can do this as it is unusual to meet our parents face to face as most of our students are bus students.  It was also reassuring to see that many of the aspects covered today, I am in fact doing but often it is not planned based on the pillar model so I believe it could be much more succinct and effective.   I can’t wait for next time and in the meantime, look forward to having a play with task boards (the more basic one) and consciously include aspects meeting the pillar model for effective reading. 

Comments

  1. Kiri @ Manaiakalani20 February 2024 at 14:55

    Hi Cindy, Great to hear you enjoyed the first day and were able to see lots of your own practise reflected back at you. We also think teacher workload is a big problem with a crowded curriculum and you will find we talk quite a bit about how to 'read across the curriculum' to make sure we are working smarter not harder! I like your idea of taking your time to focus in on the small improvements that are going to best impact your students. I thin the task boards is a great place ton start! I always love seeing what other teachers do, you get so many great ideas this way, that's one of the amazing things about sharing in Manaiakalani. Nga mihi Kiri

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  2. Anna Carney26 February 2024 at 13:15

    Kia ora Cindy
    Thanks for posting your reflecting from Day 1.
    Yes, being about to read across the curriculum is a great way to make sure that we are covering everything and every subject that needs to be taught. Like you said, it just takes some thought.
    Reading aloud to our students is so powerful. We are reading a novel at the end of the day currently, but I need to get better at doing this consistently - as we know...the day gets busy but I need to make sure that this is a priority as they students do really enjoy it.
    I hope that you have been able to implementing the task boards.
    Ngā mihi
    Anna

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