RPI Day 5

Another very full day, lots of information and ideas. It does feel like it is snowballing - getting bigger and bigger and I sometimes worry that as new things come up, other things slip back. 

The interesting idea today for me, was the pairing of Reading and Writing. It obviously makes sense, and as teachers we know that often children that read with confidence and fluency tend to usually write more freely.  

"Writing to Create Meaning:

Supports deeper reading comprehension through writing about reading:

• Summary

• Analysis

• Synthesis

• Evaluation

Supports the crafting of written texts and use of genre conventions encountered in reading:

• narrative

• poetic

• descriptive

• persuasive

• expository 

• argumentative"

By matching the reading with the writing, both should improve. Using the text children have read as a framework to build writing around - a place, a character, a situation. By showing children how an author tries to hook them in, they may find ways to hook readers into their own writing. Children start to look for those features, reading more deeply and thinking more about what they have read. Win/Win.

Another focus today was on the explicit teaching of Inference. I am going to start specifically planning for this: a description of it, model making inferences, provide scaffolds for the children to follow, get them to articulate what they are doing and then have them apply it to a text. The Inference Matrix provided clear progressions and some learning tools that can be used.

Things for me to try and implement after today: 

Look at my timetable 

- add in conferencing and have the sessions clear for children to follow independently.

- check over my independent activities ensuring they are purposeful, that they can be tracked.

Have a go at the Reading/Writing examples 

- writing a beginning that hooks readers in after showing children examples 

- extending that idea to a character. This would involve inferencing as often a character's personality is shown through their actions.

It will be interesting to see how it goes.

RPI Day 4

 A great session based around Guided Reading, that shows there is still a place for this in the reading programme, along with the 'new' Structured Literacy.

Seeing the steps for introducing a text has reminded me that this part of reading is important, but sometimes gets robbed, as time is short and there is a tendency to 'rush' into the reading because that is what they need to be doing. If this is done well then reading the text should be easier, and the activities that children do after will better reflect their knowledge and ideas.   

I found the tools available for observing readers useful, especially the Listening to Reading and the Fluency Rubric. Fluency has always been a major part of children's reading - without it, simply saying a word then another word then another, does nothing for their understanding of the text.

As always, organising and planning the follow-up activities is important. I once had a student who said to me, "I hate reading because we have to do so much writing." It has stuck with me and sometimes in my reading programmes in the past there were no follow-up activities after reading the text and discussing all the parts such as comprehension, inferring, points of view etc. Now we are lucky in that follow-up activities can take a multitude of forms. And being on the RPI we have been shown so many examples from other teachers willing to share what they do. Thanks to all of you.