Day 5 - Homework

I really liked Literacy Planet that we were shown during our last session.

I have been looking for something like this for my class for a while. This has been added to my reading task board for students to do during our reading time. My class are loving it and really engaged. They show each other the progress they have made and are really excited to use it. 

I have always tried to link my reading and writing times together so my class can make the connection between them. We do the code spelling programme and I have found over the last 3 weeks that this is a great way to transition from reading into writing. 

I didn't get a chance to try the great beginnings lesson but I did use aspects of this into our poetry writing that we have been doing. I was really impressed with what my students did and one of my target writers was able to write his ideas for his poem on his own and he loved it!

Day 6 - all things Vocab!

 I have been really excited for this session because I love teaching students about vocabulary. 

I thought the word knowledge builder would be a great resource to use with my class to check in. This is something I do at the beginning of lessons but I don't have it recorded anywhere and I don't always check in at the end to see if students have a better understanding. I think it would be really great to see how this is added to over the term.  I also really like the traffic light idea for some of my other reading groups this would be a more achievable way for them to use it. 

Discussing word consciousness really made me think about the students in my class that regularly show me that they have an awareness and interest for words and also those that don't and what I could do to help my students that don't. I am going to make that during guided sessions/shared reading that I take the time to stop and focus on different words and set challenges for my  students.   

My favourite part of todays session was the buddy activities that we got to do. I liked the word associations and which would you activity because this something my class would love to do. It would start a lot of great discussions between my students. I have planned one for one of my reading groups to do next term and I am really excited to see how this goes. I also think I will be able to use this with the shared reading texts we use as well. I liked that with the which would you activity it asked to say why you chose it and this is great because it takes it the next step and makes you really think about your choice. 

Overall it was a great session on vocab! I can't wait to use these activities in my class. I also want to make it very explicit in my timetable about what is happening during my literacy time. Rather than just writing reading and writing so I can see how much time I am given to different aspects of my literacy programme.  

Day 5 - Planning a reading programme

Day 5 - Planning a reading programme

Wow when you break down a reading programme there is so many great things in it. 

A few things that really stood out to me are:

Timetabling- 

This is not only about timetabling when we do reading during the week but also timetabling when we see our students, when we give feedback and our overall literacy programme.

Apps for reading:

Literacy planet - setup with my class. We have never used this in my class and when I had a play around it I think my kids will really like it. 

Epic - assign texts to students. I already use epic but I will be assigning texts to students that link with other things we are doing across the curriculum. 

Linking reading to writing: 

I am going to try this activity with my whole class this week and see what my class comes up with- I will also model and ask my teacher aid to as well so they can see what we come up with as well. 

I have never tried this before but I know my students will like it. I really like that they will have an example of how another author has written and the prompting questions are really easy to understand and follow along with. 

Reading across the curriculum:

This something that we try to implement across our school already so it was great to have tome to think about where we make connections and whether we need to try and it across other areas more. I find it easy to link reading and writing with my class and with our inquiry as well. In maths we use a problem solving approach so students have to use their reading skills to unpack what the questions are asking and also what the words mean in the questions. 

Over the next 3 weeks one of my main goals is to try the reading to write activity that we did and get some of the students to record what they came up with.