RPI - Day 8 Creating to Engage, Learn and Share

 

I consider myself an experienced teacher who tries to keep up with all the changes in pedagogy, my subject areas and also technology.  But wow! Today has pushed me further out of my comfort zone.  I am pretty good with creative ideas and choice, collaboration,... but at the same time I know I struggle every time I try to engage the filming / movies / animation or audio tools.  Even if I have used them before, I find the student devices of different years have different accessibilities, and even our own tools vary depending on our tech support.  So this left brain image is me and my frustration aspects with tech, wifi and feeling like I have to trouble shoot more than enjoy the kids creating.  And yet I know and understand the power of creation and creative ways to respond to text. 

Here is my simple response to text adapted from another teacher Becks in the Manaiakalani group that I addapted for next week response to text for chapter 3 of The Outsiders.

I also enjoyed my one-shot book trailer film .... and when I can find where it has gone/saved... I will try to post here again.  Short post today but I have heaps of notes and ideas moving forward - thank you Kiri, Donna, and special guest, Fiona.  I am looking forward more and more to planning and shifiting more of what I have learned on a regular basis (more cohesive planning next year to apply many of these tips, tricks and ideas). 

Lucky Day!  I found my One Shot Video!

Teen Ink Review

Cue For Treason - Wikipedia 

RPI Day 5 Planning our Program

I have been looking forward to today's discussions on pulling our program together as I have found with so many changes and adaptations this year, I feel like some of my routine practices have eluded me and after last time's discussion on the  Reader Apprenticeship model I am really keen to see how I can implement it well in my junior secondary setting.  I have been totally successful with getting my students independent enough at times to engage regularly enough in a guided reading program and I really want to be able to do this by next year.  

Then there are the,,,,, "but...but .... buts" in my head.  Our kura is undergoing some interesting new changes that are still being worked out and wanting to get my head around the Reading Apprenticeship model in secondary was seeming a bit daunting with all the rest of the curriculum, timetable, staffing and sometimes resource challenges.  Thankfully Kiri helped make it seem accessible today with these key slides:

This first one - gave me some cool ideas as to how to improve some things further and perhaps teach students how to use calendar for themselves if I use it to show planning.  More than that, this slide reminded me that my Reading Apprenticeship program does not need to look exactly like the primary Guided Reading Program, which I found tough to keep going as it is so fast for squirmy little ones who really want your attention.  (Hats off to those primary  teachers all the time for their reading/writing/maths rotations - they are pros!) But first I amy need to book a session with Kerry from Manaiakalani to do so.  (Thankful too that both Kiri and Kerry are coming to Ōtaki College next week for a staff PLD session and I can touch base then). 

This guideline slide by Kiri - is a lifesaver for me!  It has taken a bit of pressure off to help me think about how I may make this manageable as I only see my students about 7 times a week for both English and Social Sciences (in Humanities).  Often I teach the content/skills integrated but sometimes it feels more like it is integrated literacy in Social Sciences and not as much English/literary skill building as I would like in groups.  This slide makes me think, I can arrange to see most groups twicea a week and perhaps 1 group three times a week.

Program design - supports for independent learning:  

Discussions around building and designing our program then led naturally to different resources - apps in this case.  I am keen to explore Readworks as I think it has some features that might be more useful for Humanities 9.  Watch this space for further developments.  I hope our departments or even kura might engage in conversations around which apps/tools we might use to help:

a) narrow costs for departments

b) lesson the variety to be more purposeful selection and targetted for student use

to support staff (students and whanau) who get overwhelmed and confused about different apps and programs being used in different departments.

Lastly - I have known that I let my mahi trackers go a bit this year.  Time to get them back on board and may try a new one as I fumbled and mucked up so much last year trying to zhuzh them up too much last year.

I am looking forward to having a play with my overall program design this next few weeks to see if I can get it tightened up.

PS  The strategies were great reminders today - and I was glad to see I was familiar with most of them. 

RPI Day 4: Reading Apprenticeships and Guided Reading

 

*First image - Student Voice about what we are doing with teaching the reading strategies and why...

*Quote - more the "Teacher reminder" - To make everything visible! 

It has been a while so a quick review of what I have been learning:

• to become more student - centred and intentional with our text selection (based on initial data collection - RPI days 1-2)
• Reminders to including all 6 kinds of reading in your program and instruction:

From the Manaiakalani RPI slide introduction 

•  varied ways to approach groups (RPI day 3) dependent on individual learner / class dynamic needs (social-emotional) as well as academic (CL level), and Curricular goals or learning intentions (skill building, content, strategies)

Today was a good day for me to wrap my head around my own background literacy models and the ones used more commonly in NZ at primary, Guided Reading, through to transitioning at junior secondary with a Reader Apprenticeship model.  The aim is to make sure the reading skills, strategies and metacognition skills are clear to students as they build their skills with increasingly varied and complex text types across the curriculum.  I struggled to manage Guided Reading Groups - planning for 5 groups a week in primary.  I have also struggled at secondary to use guided reading groups.  Largely due to challenges with class dynamics and high needs, so I had been looking forward to this session to discuss ways to make this more manageable. 

After discussions today and examples, I am thinking this year, while I am working through the RPI training, I will be implementing bits and pieces as I learn.  I hope next year to be able to have a more consistent and cohesive plan.  I am looking forward to checking out the digital teacher modeling book.  I still like the old scrapbook models too - but in this post-covid world with our attendance so up and down, I also see the value in making it all visible online.  My worry is that it does require a lot of time to set up and maintain things like the Teacher workbook, modeling books, Hapara workspaces/or Class sites, etc. That is a lot of digital time teachers need above and beyond the in-class instruction time.  I will be looking to streamline (pick and choose) the aspects that will work best for me next year.  Additionally, there are times when we need students to be offline.  Balance will always be a struggle. 

Guided ---> Apprenticeship Reading

These 2 slides from the above link were really helpful for me to see the difference between guided reading in primary and what is the Apprenticeship model.

 

I also really appreciated the acknowledgment (backed by the research) that reinforces more than one way to approach your Reading Apprenticeship - structured reading planning. 

Question: Listening to the news yesterday, I am wondering what is meant by "structured literacy" in secondary?  Is this a particular model chosen as "best practice" or multiple models to draw from?

Other key points that are take-aways that I hope to share with students in the next few weeks are: 

RPI Day 3: Text Selections and Strategies

Reflecting on Being Explicit and Open with Students in Class:

                                                         

Why don't we share more with students?
I call it the "Secret Teacher Talk or Code for Learning" and some kids like this and understand their learning better - they buy in more.  I think they like to know/understand that teachers are making deliberate and thoughtful choices for them as a class/personally.

Some students always ask questions about the why,  what we are learning, and how.  This is not always a distractor for kids :)  I think it can also show their active engagement in trying to understand their learning.  

RPI Day 3:  Text Selection Day - 

I doubt many non-teachers understand all the decisions teachers make in their planning - before, during/with students, and in reflecting and refining for next time.  I am going to share my thinking  around 1 course / class. Imagine with all our courses ... or do I overhink?

I really enjoyed today's varied discussions, practical strategies, tools and tips to help tighten up my own pedagogical practice in my classes.  I am finding that I am already doing many of the things suggested with varying degress of success and/or attention on focused literacy building skills and content. I am pretty sure this will be the case for most teachers. 

Inviting you into my head... My own practice: (be kind - it is also the talk in my head and how I process when I am planning anew)

I noticed  I seem to be "extra conscious and intentional "with my senior yr 11 English planning this year. (This is not to say my Humanities 9 program is not getting similar attention and focus - but today I will refer more to my senior course). 

Reason for my greater attention at the moment to my yr 11 English course:

• new standards and curriculum
• department decision to create different courses for greater student choice and engagment based on different themes / contexts
• building and sharing ideas together within the department has helped with text selection and being more mindful of choosing texts for varied voices
• students selected this course and I want to engage them, their input on choices (which occurred regularly) throughout as we discussed what was working, what they needed help with and text types / options to meet student needs

My theme for the first standard was Language of Colonization: How it Happened Around the World

My personal why for offering this course/ theme:  I  noticed the last few years in NZ that our students have a general understanding of colonization, what it was and some effects related to NZ and Māori culture.  But, at the same time, students had gaps in their knowledge and understanding for how, where and how it began in the late Industrial Revolution days to the Age of Imperialism and Manifest Destiny spreading around the globe with the Age of Exploration.  Some students were aware that colonization did not just "happen' in NZ but most did not have an understanding of it being a global (western) movement.  My hope is that gaining a greater understanding of the background to colonization will provide, "windows and sliding doors, as well as mirrors"  for students, NZ and global communities still grappling with the effects of Colonization. (My small attempts to help heal a global "ill - and yeah, I know it sounds like a big ask.  But you need to start somewhere.)

Yay - they liked it!  They picked the course!

I was excited when students chose this course and wanted to do well by them and the theme which is a fairly complex topic for students and may be confronting at times too. After a couple weeks unpacking history of what colonization is - we switched to literature and other texts as a reflection of the social context and how people respond and react to history (life). 

My goal/focus - look at how both Colonizers used language - word choice, text type and intention of the authors/speakers, looking for patterns.  And also - language of the effects of Colonization - how did and do people still respond to these effects. I hoped this would help students in my class better understand perspectives of different times, places and relationships. 

With these goals in mind, and the new L1 standard which is about how the language is affected by the context of its use (both social context - colonization, and text type context - poetry, story, essay, speech), I planned early and with colleagues at school, and from my home country of Canada, the school librarian (huge help!) and even leveraging and mining the hive minds of Facebook Group NZ English teachers.  I gathered more resources than I used and hope to refine and teach this course again in the future.  As with any time you teach a new course - it gets more refined each year and grows as you and the students work together. 

1. I wanted to choose both literature and perhaps other kinds of information from the past as well as the present.  
2. Text voices from around the world - discussion of different colonizers too (French, Spanish, German, Italian, British, American, NZ and Samoa) 
3. Varied text types to expose students to language features used for different intentions
4. Varied voices - genders 

Texts we studied and some were used for assessment included:

• Kupu Rere Ke by Alice Te Punga Somerville  (Hook - local writer, modern poet, relatable to students)
• White Man's Burden - Rudyard Kipling (poem from the age of Imperial India - intent to encourage Americans to persist with Colonization of Phillipines)
• "Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America" - Benjamin Franklin essay with irony being that the comments are moslty "pointed" towards implying the "British are the savages and the Indians the civilized peoples"
• Epic movie -Ghandi
• Ted Talks - Niki Sanchez "Decolonization is for Everyone," and Len Pierre - Decolonizing Substance Use and Addiction"
• Martin Luther King's Speech - "I have a Dream"
• modern local Pasifika / NZ poems:  
• Dark vs the Light
• The Past is the Past
• Dawn Raids Apology
• short story - "Have I got a deal for you!"  

Sharing these goals and intentions with students - helped with some students, but not all.  I think this is because students are not used to this.  I used to do this more earlier in my practice, and when this was regular enough, I would be able to ask students how our texts or tasks or skills connected to our goals and intentions.  Students eventually "buy - in" and then even challenge you, and offer their own text choices.  Some students this year offered great ideas for this course, had great questions and perspectives, even stories to share and make connections with our texts.  I was lucky to have a recent NZ migrant from South Africa, NZ Māori, Pasifika, Pakeha voices, as well as American and myself,  Canadian voices.

This planning and text selection process was important for me and my students, especially given the complex topic, and the fact students were interested and chose this course. These choices were made based on:  curriculum (Assessment standard / task at the end), student interest and flexibility and choice for students along the way (short/long, visual, audio, written).

Semester 2 planning:  How timely for RPI day 3!

Unique situation - semester planning with students

Moving forward to new planning in progress with students.  New Achievement standard with a focus on "demonstrating understanding of specific aspects of a studied text."   For this standard, I wanted to push students towards an extended text (novel).  I asked students if they wished to continue with themes/texts that had a "historical or social context"  or literary focus,  continue with NZ / Pasifika or international settings/vocies, set in the "past, present-day/modern times, or futuristic/dystopian, accept a challenge with a Shakespearean play. And in true complex fashion - I recieved responses for all.  

The reason I wanted to offer choice for students in my class rather than pick for them, is because all the other yr 11 classes have the opportunity to switch "semester courses / topics and teachers" this year, except mine, because of a timetable clash.  I wanted to work with my students to still give them similar choice and voice. I am glad one of my strengths is flexibility!

Reflecting on RPI lessons, reminders, discussions.... my thinking and goals for semester 2 (same students but I know them better now). Time to make reading more active and fun!

 

* goal - to add more talk about literature - like literature circles / book clubs

   why?  - to build Tier I, II,III Vocabulary, understanding, community , questioning, close reading, responding as well as confidence with reading and sharing ideas with each other. 

* goal - to encourage reading of extended text (novel). 

   why? - so many do not read full novels any more! Lots of reasons for this, but I am hoping to encourage students completing them together in small groups. Also to support students with reading challenges - I chose these novels for different gender voices, vocabulary levels, topics, author/genre styles for writing.  These are also texts that we have with audio books (will put on hapara) and also films (visual).  The films will be another option for "studied text."  Films will be to compare, as well as a back-up for extended studied text for those who may not succeed reading their novels.

Novel choices: all offered (highlighted yellow ones are ones chosen to make groups - exception Shakespeare play - chosen but not enough to intro as a group)

• Shakespeare (interest in Greco/Roman history and lit) - Julius Caesar
• Modern:  The Hate U Give, Boys Don't Cry
• Dystopian / Classic:  Fahrenheit 451, Noughts and Crosses, 
• NZ:  Whale Rider
• Historical:  The Help, Cry Freedom, student request - All Quiet on the Western Front

How about that unifying theme? 

“Choices: Defining Moments and Crossroads in Our Lives”

Focus: "Character" - development, dilemmas and decisions, outcomes, personal response, and some creative writing too. Stay tuned... I may let you know how it goes, if interested.

Re-connecting to Day 3: Student data + all the above!

Aligning all the above choices with data of my students. I have not done this with the yr 11 group as specifically as I do not have their data in 1 place yet. I do plan to use the RPI Teacher workbook to help me out with my yr 9 texts and planning. Looking forward to delving into this deeper because this break out activity surprised me. Well done for the challenge!

Our challenge "class" to plan for today:

Whew! A very typical class in terms of needs, interests and dynamics, but today, for us it was also a challenging group to plan for - well done RPI Leaders!

What did we decide? We decided upon a mixture of grouping methods for explicit instruction/text choices - based on interest, Curriculum Level, skill (LI) focus for students. Sometimes mixed levels - to model and support and based on interest or LI focus.

EG. One student needed help with recall/summary and another with questioning. We decided a text based on interviews with one or both interests would be a good model and also allow both students the chance to develop the skills they needed. Sadly we ran out of time to select texts.

*Keep in mind - my very long reflection above (my brain dump) was not all in one sitting for sure. It developed before, during and after the course, and with input and discussions from my growing Personal Learning Network!

** Small apologies to my mentor - I do write a lot and will work on being more concise**

RPI Day 2: Reflections

This was a full-on day with a lot of new and newly refreshed reminders for teaching and learning literacy skills across the curriculum. We began with a discussion on the importance of Reading in general. I will need to take better notes to remember whose thoughts these are /were (apologies if I am using your words - please let me know to credit you appropriately).

"Once you become a reader - you are a reader for life from primary to secondary."

The Hook - sometimes it is the tech and graphics, sometimes it is the interaction with an outside authentic audience and sometimes it is the social part of reading, or the personal part of reading. 

I am curious about this. I think my own passion for reading was the personal aspect and the the curiosity of wanting to know more and do more. My earliest memories, after some phonics and old "Dick and Jane" word-levelled readers with my teacher, was reading aloud the signs as we drove places and wanting to know what they all said - store fronts, traffic, advertisements, it did not matter. I also knew that my mom was a reader. She read a lot of books all the time. Eventually, I loved the stories and different series of stories in our small school library, and local library - from the colorful and mischievous characters of Ramona the Pest , or Pippi Longstalking, eventually exhausting the mystery detective genres for kids like Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew and another I cannot recall. I also enjoyed the historical fiction or non-fiction including The Autobiogrphy of Anne Frank, the Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables series, as well as Louisa May Alcott's stories of Jo and her sisters. Eventually I also enjoyed the more "modern" tales of Judy Blume. Today, in our smaller groups discussing some of the data and genres of what students today are finding to be "great reads" here in New Zealand made me wonder if my students shared my love for variety in settings, characters, local and global, historical and modern. I am really looking forward to unpacking this further with my class and the RPI cohort. (Sneak Peak - My initial data collected from the students included big favourites in the genres of fantasy, horror, manga/graphic novels, some mythology and Harry Potter. )

Backmapping and Assessment with Naomi Rosedale

While I am familiar with back-mapping, I am glad we had the opportunity to have a closer look and sample a task from last year's new Literacy CAA exam - which students are meant to be ready for at some point in year 10, before heading off to senior assessment land. Having experienced this in a time-pressured setting as an adult, and one with more advanced skills than a year 10 student, I was surprised how many skills the student has to pull together to be successful on the Reading exam - reading 3 texts of different genres and purposes. While they are short texts it has made me realize the need to do even more close reading across the curriculum and use the common language triangle to explain or show the relationship between Text Type - Purpose - Audience. I will definitely be sharing my experience with my year 9 - 11 students. I think our Humanities department will have some good conversations as well.

I think this is on my mind as this is the assessment we have just worked through in my senior English Level 1 class.  My thinking is that if we introduce the ideas at year 10, some will remember a little and others may not, but it may be easier for students next year.  This is also an example of some of the cross-curricular literacy skills we are using every day, whether in Social Sciences, English classes, in discussing current events in general.  My hope is that the more often I do this, the greater chance my Social Sciences students will also improve their literacy skills. 

Task Boards and Ground Rules for Talk from RPI 1: 

 

Link to Class site Daily Planner

Image is also linked to the lesson I introduced the Ground Rules for Talk in my SOC 10 class this week.

It is interesting how soon we teachers can forget the lessons and reminders of our RPI day regarding Explicit Learning intentions.  It was a good refresher to remind myself, even an experienced teacher, to bring back the focus on the learning of skills or concepts, rather than the activity.  I noticed I had rushed the SOC 10 Task board and re-jigged it above to be a bit more specific to the Learning intentions.  It was close but I wanted to use a few more key vocabulary words with my year 10s to introduce the idea of Contexts being text types and also topics of study that we learn to develop our skills and understandings of concepts through.  

My starting point to the left for this week in HMT 9a.  and link here to my HMT Daily planner on my class site.

One thing you may notice on my daily planner is that my previous slides were not as crowded as this type of task board as I aimed to have 1-2 slides per class. While I do like the layout and simplicity of linking all things on a single slide in this taskboard format as it allows you to view the week at a glance, I am also conscious of a few practical issues to consider:

1. For a Dyslexia friendly classroom -the recommendation is that we keep things simpler with visuals, key words and bullet points.  Not fill up a whole slide to crowd it.  (this is also the reason if you look at my past slides - I also try to use a diffferent colour background for each week with Term (T) Wk and Day at the top of each slide.
2. TV placement for projecting means it is harder to view this one as it is more crowded. 

Watch this space - I will keep up with this type of task board for another term and poll students to get further feedback. 

Assessment Data Tracker / Planner:  Introduced RPI day 2.  

This appears to be a massive endeavour and potentially a great help.  I need some more time to work through this and the possibilities for how it can me to target reading lessons more personally to individual students and groups. 

RPI: Catch Up - What Kind of Readers are We in Humanities 9A?

Never great to start a course with late homework, but it happens. (Apologies for some of the spacing issues .... It has been a while since I blogged too, and likely will be refreshing these skills as we go!

I have been looking forward to finally getting a chance to gather and analyse the data from my students to figure out the questions we were tasked in Week 1 of our RPI course. 

What Kind of Reader Are We? 

It has been great using and adapting the resources shared to use in my class, even the more "teacher talk" type ones like (click image below)....

Which led to impressive group and class discussion revealing my students actually do know a lot about reading already.  We were able to get to slide 5 and create our own list of characteristics of good readers.  Student Responses here - and no, I did not even change their phrasing!

  I was really proud of my highly dyslexic student who came up with the pithy statement, "you learn to read so that you can read to learn." Students know that he struggles a lot with writing and reading text, but orally, he does have a way with words and they thought that was a pretty cool way to say how "reading [was] core to learning." I also like to think of the last comment made regarding what good readers do and, "[Reading] with expression," might be connected to the time we spent this term playing with words, writing and reading poetry - through listening to songs and watching poetry reading tutorials, and other oral readings online. I am also pleased to see students included the reading to "practice" skills and "to enjoy." We had been spending a fair bit of time on different skills lately and I was a bit worried they might forget the enjoyment factor.

And then.... the Lurgies hit us hard staff and students! Classes decimated to less than half the size with repeated and various bugs. For 2 weeks we could not get back to regular class sizes until last week!

What did our Readers Survey say: 

The following results show students' perceptions with scores of 1-2 (Very Unlike and Unlike Me) and 3-4 (Like Me and Very Like Me)

It is interesting that in the first questions almost 2/3 of the class feel it is Very Unlike or Unlike them to read - whether for enjoyment or for school no matter what the text type. Yet, in the next question, almost half are reading currently for enjoyment. I have been observing some of my self-proclaimed "non-readers" this week in particular as we were finally gathering our last bits of data. Some of these students are ones who say they "struggle" and find reading hard, or it is just boring because they forget what they read and it takes them a long time. One student is highly dyslexic, one is using a blue vision guide to keep his eyes from jumping lines, a 3-4 more are ADD (so most of these self-proclaimed non-readers have learning challenges. However, I think (anecdotally) more than half of these particular "non-readers" have been "caught" (terrible word to use for reading) reading content in class that is related to our class lessons or off-topic. Four students, in particular, keep getting "distracted" and "going down the rabbit hole" Alice might say, as they start to research or look up other things online. Almost each time, these students started following a little White Rabbit with asking questions or wanting to find out a word, meaning, place or something else connected to the lesson or what they were reading. This made me wonder how much students self-reporting, and even teachers observing, underestimate how much "reading" students are engaged with. Evidence suggests reading mileage counts for a lot (with regards to skills, enjoyment and success - sorry no study to cite). I wonder if there is a way to track this in or out of classes to get more accurate data than self-reporting. Perhaps we need to redefine reading for the purposes of this data collection?

I am very interested to see what my students think of this data and more in our class discussions this week. Especially what they see as needs for our class to improve upon and how we may set goals. Watch this space. We are hoping to do this in class discussions this week. Today's lesson was a bit of a challenge - trying to model how to not only read a graph, but also create a generalization statement. Now in hindsight, I was trying to do a little too much, too fast, for year 9s. So I was not too successful today. Try again tomorrow with some adjusted planning.

Today - I tried to:

1. Review slides 1-4 we discussed and started well with in week 7. (Until all the Lurgies hit.) Some who were sick then, needed the quick review.
2. Introduce the Ground Rules for Talk - with the class doing a quick group chat and filling in the info for slide 3 on "Why these rules are important"
3. Model reading and creating general statements about what the data shows in slide 4 - sample from our class data.
4. Model with a second sample and set up for self/peer assessment tomorrow with the rest of our class data.

Needless to say, I need to remind myself, while I may be in a hurry to teach and practice these skills, the students are not ,and need more time - especially when introducing new contexts, new kinds of data reading, new skills,,,, Totally my fault that it did not succeed as well as I hoped considering we managed to get up to #3 and did not quite finish it.

Onward tomorrow, with a rejigged plan and hoping for more hands-on for students to talk while I circulate.

Some results I am hoping my students will be able to help set goals with are linked here -

Data Set 1:  HMT 9A:  RPI What Kind of Readers are We? Survey Results 

Data Set 2: Humanities 9A 2024 Term 2 Wks 6-8 Reading Habits and Behaviours

Thankfully it is a small class and the data set is easy to work out things like percentages with only 20 in the class.  However, it also means statistics are swayed a fair bit by the choice of a single student.  

Returning to my Professional Blog with the Manaiakalani Day 1 - Reading Practice Intensive Course

Apologies to my group for the delay.  I started this post and then “life happened” and did not get back to it in time to finish my thoughts as well as I had hoped.  

 Whew! Busy brain day today.  I love the challenge and the focus on reading skills particularly across the curriculum.  I am fortunate to have been trained in primary, and taught at both the primary and college level now in Canada and New Zealand.  Both have very similar literacy and English curricula as well as an emphaisis on competencies, which are based essesntially on the 21st century competencies (eg. creative and critical thinking, communication, managing self, ...) 

Today’s post is a bit more rambly (stream of consciousness) on things that have crossed my mind since the first RPI day. I should be able to focus my reflections more as move forward. 

Challenges I have been thinking about in recent years regarding the loss of overall engagement, efforts and building student skills towards ownership and independence with their learning. Anecdotally, I have observed tudent abilities to self-regulate or manage in class and group settings has declined significantly.  Of course this varies across class or community dynamics and other distractions / interruptions - especially post Covid.  From talking to my colleagues, back home in Canada last year, they have seen and experienced the same shift in student abilities to self- manage and engage in learning opportunities. This is one reason I was particularly interested in  the Reading Practice Intensive Course - to figure out things I am missing in my own practice to improve my practical pedagogy in the hopes of enabling greater success for my students. I am eager to improve upon increasing the wide-reading and reading mileage of students.  

I realise I miss having those informal conversations and sharing moments in class, and outside of class,  with students on a regular basis regarding their reading.  Recently it seems my conversations with students are more about why they are not reading, reading is boring, reading is hard, just don’t like reading, and specific reading skills they need to work on.  I am saddened so many students do not get the enjoyment out of reading that I always did when younger or say they do not read much out of school.  Toda’s conversations around sharing our reading, and also recommending titles to students reminded me how much I miss getting into thick juicy novels for my own escape rather than all the short varied texts I read daily.  This shift for me started after finishing my Masters at university while teaching - I put it down to reading fatigue at the time.  But it has been over 20 years now! Today,I wonder, if my own reading habits waning have been, or are, unconsciously affecting my pedagogy and practice.  I may be interested to see if I can improve upon this myself throughout the course.  I think I am making some progress as I have finished a short novel for fun and started another since our first day of RPI got me thinking.

On the more academic level,  I am glad we had some of the background and the research around reading with the data to look at and discuss.  I have found the amount of specific data and standardized data NZ collects to be a challenge philosophically for me as it was way more than I was used to collecting.  However, I have also gained an appreciation for how some of the data offers very specific details.  I am looking forward to the coming weeks.