Reading Survey Results and Introducing the Ground Rules for Talk

Reading Survey Results

I completed the reading survey with my class and was pleased to see that the majority of my students believe that their whanau and myself think they are good readers. I believe that self-efficacy is one of the biggest barriers to learning so I was pleased to see these results. 

I also found the 'types of books I like to read' section useful for informing me about the types of texts that will hopefully engage and motivate my students to read. I had three of my reading groups complete the 'Reading for Enjoyment' slide deck and this generated some good conversation. 

I was not surprised with the results about having a public libracy card and borrowing books from a library. Unfortunately we do not have a school library anymore and we struggle with whanau support. However we have just signed up again for a delivery from The National Library.

The results about whether or not my students like to receive books as presents did not come as a surprise either. I think in this day and age with all the technology available unfortunatley many children don't see books as that appealing to receive as a gift. I hope to start changing that viewpoint by modelling my enjoyment for reading. We have set a school wide challenge for teachers to read to our students three times a day. We are onto our second Roald Dahl novel and my students actually moan each time I have to stop reading. They are aware that it is a challenge the teachers have set themselves and they enjoy keeping track of my progress and adding the stickers to my sticker chart.

Ground Rules for Talk

I have introduced the 'Ground Rules for Talk' with three of my reading groups and we worked our way through the provided slide deck. We have used the group reflection sheet a couple of times after our reading sessions and I think if we do this regularly my students will get more accurate at reflecting on how their group is going during discussion times. I think at this stage they are over rating themselves and not truly paying attention to how all members of the group did or did not participate. I have also noticed that I need to step away from the group during discussion for them to start to take ownership of the discussion. When I sit in on the discussion the whole time they constantly look to me to lead the conversation. A positive I have noticed is that some of my students have started to transfer these rules to other curriculum areas. We were having a discussion the other day about the success criteria during a writing activity and one boy mentioned that we weren't following the ground rules for talk.