Qu 3: Building an accurate profile of students' learning - tools, measures and approaches...

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

Motivation is intrinsically related to engagement so learner engagement is vital if I am to establish a culture in my class where my learners are motivated to read for enjoyment and understand the benefits that reading outside of the classroom will bring them. My challenge now is to find out why the links in the chain appear to be broken again. To do this I will be looking at shift or change in:

• Disposition
• Data
• Reading mileage
• Student voice
• Vocabulary changes in personal writing

The tools/measures/approaches:

Planning changes:

• My initial approach will be to actively plan time in class for reading for enjoyment and the avenues of possible discussions this opens. This will help me to see where connections to the value of reading for enjoyment are being made. I realise if I want to encourage an intrinsically motivated habit I need to provide opportunities that allow my students to see the benefits that reading for enjoyment can bring.

Student Voice:

• Gathering student voice is a vital part of teaching. It gives us a clear picture of where our students are at, what they're thinking and what we need to do to allow of learners to make their individual connections to the learning. Naomi's reading for enjoyment survey is how I will measure progress and will be completed at the end of each term, allowing me to measure both the small and big changes.

PAT/Probe/e-asTTLE Assessments:

• Analysing these results gives me a clear picture of what my students can do and where our knowledge gaps are. I will use these results to inform my planning and identify shifts in achievement.

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Learning Conversations:

• Learning conversations are a huge part of our learning time as it provides authentic opportunities for new ideas to be used in context. Sharing books that you have read allows you to tell someone why you found the story/content interesting. Being able to talk about a book in detail strengthens your connections to the text. After completing the baseline survey I was explaining that a part of our reading challenge will be to recommend the book to someone else when one of my students suggested we do more than that by identifying the person we think might also like to read the text and selling the text to them... Her idea was to make this a part of our library time and call it 'book chains'.  
• To do this effectively I will need to create speaking frames to scaffold those who need a bit more support to do this effectively.

Introduce a class Reading Challenge:

• LS2 Reading Challenge - This has been created to encourage my learners to read a wide variety of genres. I know that if this is to be successful I need to walk the walk and talk the talk. Going forward I want my learners to see me as a reader too, so I will be actively participating, cheerleading and motivating my learners in both this challenge and the book chains we will be introducing.  
• I will write a more detailed post about this idea once it has been introduced.

My next steps:

• Explore success in other schools/ clusters 

• Panmure Bridge School - What's happening already in our own backyard?

• Professional Readings

• Connect with public librarians 

• Connect with whanau to foster support for reading for enjoyment at home

• Use role models/student leaders to promote reading for enjoyment 

• Explore creative and fun ways we can grow our reading culture at PBS

• Make reading for enjoyment visible in our class