RFE Holiday Challenge...

At the end of last term I challenged our student leadership team to create and manage a holiday reading challenge. The students who accepted the challenge are all working towards a CARE badge, an initiative where our Year 7 and 8 students use our school CARE values of confidence, attitude, respect and excellence to strengthen their leadership skills. 

Our RFE challenge is running on a similar format to the Summer Learning Journey and is 100% student led. Creating this challenge has created another opportunity for the LS2 students to read for enjoyment. What has been exciting to watch is who has participated and what they have posted on their blogs, even more amazing was the interaction that took place in the blog comments! 38% of our class took part in this challenge which may look like a low number, but in my mind that's 38% of our class that I know of who made time to read for enjoyment over the holiday break. I love the fact this student created, student led and student managed challenge was a success! 

This time I did not comment on any blogs as it wasn't about my input. I wanted to see if we had genuine buy in for RFE instead of 'I'd better do this as Mrs Anderson is checking our work'. If we run this again I would encourage the leaders to send out daily whole class motivational emails to inspire more people to join in and to maintain the momentum. Capturing student voice when we get back to school will give us some real and honest feedback that we can use to strengthen this idea going forward.

I would like to say a huge thank you to our awesome student leaders who created and ran this challenge without any teacher intervention, and to our awesome students who kept their learning going by reading for enjoyment and completing the follow up tasks.

Have a look at Chisa, Farzana and Fotu's blog posts to see this challenge from the student's perspective. 

Causal Chain... A tool for planning and reflecting...

This year I want to find out if a focus on Reading for Enjoyment increase student self efficacy and capability in Reading? Creating a causal chain helps you to stay focused on the purpose of your teacher inquiry. It is so easy to fall down many rabbit holes along the way so having a causal chain to look back on helps to keep you on track. My biggest takeaway from looking at a variety of readings is if we are to develop reading for pleasure habits in students we need a collective and collaborative approach that allows our tamariki to see role models at school and at home who value reading. 

Looking back at my causal chain I realise my students are seen as readers through our Leaders in the Library initiative, through sharing reading tips at our school assemblies and by actively reading for enjoyment in the classroom. It is important that my learners see themselves as readers too so I have made a point of capturing all of this in photos which are clearly displayed in our classroom. However when I look back at my causal chain I can see that because I'm always taking photos I have not been allowing my learners to consistently see me as a reader. As we approach Term 3 I know exactly what my goal is... make sure my learners see me as a reader too.

Link to causal chain

Toolkit: “I only read if I have to": How to change mindsets inside and outside school."

Last term Dr Naomi Rosedale invited me to join her in presenting a toolkit about the benefits of Reading for Pleasure and why it is so important to change mindsets inside and outside school. 

The link to our screen recording is here

Professional Readings...

Reading for Pleasure — A Door to Success...

Link to original text

'Aside from the sheer joy of exercising the imagination, research shows reading for pleasure improves literacy, social skills, health, and learning outcomes.' The National Library Trust (UK), defines reading for pleasure as 'Reading we do of our own free will, anticipating the satisfaction we will get from the act of reading.' There are a number of benefits of RFE that are identified by the National Library article, Reading for pleasure — a door to success, but I would like to highlight the fact that RFE helps to develop positive attitudes towards reading and increases self efficacy, which as we know breeds success in reading and across a wider range of learning areas. If you feel you're good at something you’re more prepared to engage.

• Opportunity for choice = motivation
• Frequency, duration and increases reading mileage
• Stimulates imagination
• Academic success 
• Engagement
• Stronger social and oral skills
• Positive reading attitudes
• Self-confidence as a reader

The students we teach now 'will need literacy to feed their imaginations, so they can create the world of the future.'

Why is reading for pleasure important?

Link to original article

Books and reading transform lives and enrich our communities. Research cited in this article also shows that reading for pleasure at school is strongly influenced by relationships between teachers and children, and children and families. Parents are influential in developing early reading for enjoyment, and if books are valued from a young age, this is likely to continue. We need to take a collective and collaborative approach across school and community. Exposure to a wide vocabulary helps children absorb and connect to information across the curriculum. 

The Benefits of Reading for Pleasure

Link to original text

'When a reader is lost in a book... it develops the capacity to engage... visualise meanings, relate to characters, and participate in making meaning.... it develops the capacity to experience the world from other perspectives' 

One idea I took from this article that will help me promote RFE is to be seen as a fellow reader by my students. The idea shared here was to put up a sign eg: “Mrs A is reading _____.” The article suggested I share not only texts I choose to read for pleasure but also suggests I share that I am reading the texts my students like to read to help to foster informal opportunities for us to talk about a wider variety texts. My biggest takeaway from these readings is if we are to develop reading for pleasure habits in students we need a collective and collaborative approach that allows our tamariki to see role models at school and at home who value reading.