CoL Update (Term 3, Week 2)

Ryan - managing self
Kian - managing self
Paul - relating to others/participating and contributing.

All three students have been working very hard, especially in reading where they are in a group together reading (or listening to..) a chapter book.

On Friday Ryan came to the group for the first time all week, sat for about 30 minutes and even offered to read aloud to the group. This is amazing! This is the LONGEST he has sat in a reading group EVER. Add the fact that he was reading aloud for the others to listen to, and contributed to the discussion about what had happened is AWESOME.
After reading the group went away and had to draw an illustration about something that had happened, find 10 new words and write 3-5 sentences of a summary about what happened. All 3 students completed this task.

I have been reflecting on the type of work I give them, and wether that work actually offers them a chance at success or not. Sometimes, my high expectations might be too high and the task I want the students to complete is either too hard for them, too hard to do without teacher help, or I don't give them enough time to complete it.
I have also found that when I give them different tasks to complete (i.e. roles for literacy circles where one person is the illustrator and the other is word master), they really struggled to complete it. When I gave both students both tasks to do, they could do it.
So maybe it's not the task itself, but it's that they couldn't do it together.



Ryan has a lot going on for him at the moment at home and in other aspects of his life. I have noticed he has started making forts again. I don't usually growl him for doing this, as he is trying to protect himself from overstimulation or needs a bit of quiet time by himself.



Evidence of shift

This week I tested Kian and Paul's reading level using PM Benchmark. Kian passed level 12 and Paul passed level 21.

I know that Kian hates being tested and typically doesn't do well on tests. For guided reading, he is currently reading level 15-16, but only just got instructional on Level 12 on his tests. I will keep him reading levels 15-16 for guided reading because he is able to read them. 

Paul has made huge shifts to be instructional level 21 at this point in the year. He only started school 1 year ago, and started on Red (level 3).

For Kian I noticed that he often looks at the first letter or sound and guesses the word. Sometimes the word he guesses is close enough to the actual word that it might make sense, but often not.. I noticed that on line 12, he read the word 'ride' as 'run', kept reading, got to the end of the sentence, realised it didn't make sense and started the line again (and got 'ride' correct). This shows me he is trying to make sense and make meaning while reading, not just reading fast and incorrectly to 'get through it' and 'get it over with'. I hope this shows he is starting to enjoy reading.

A lot of the errors Paul makes are because he doesn't know the word in the first place. He still has come small errors with p/b sounds but has gotten so much better at sounding out words.

I notice with both of them that in long words (three or four syllables), they sound out words letter by letter. And because the words are so long, they forget what it started with by the time they get to the end of the word and have to start again or give up and ask me what the word is. 

I think we need to work on blends and chunking words into pieces, rather than sounding it out letter by letter.