Friday, February 16, 2024

RPI - Day 1: Reading is Core

I felt that today was a great introduction to the RPI. It helped to bring our students as readers to the front of our minds and gain a deep understanding of what skills our readers need to be successful readers.


I enjoyed having a bit of a reflection of myself as a reader and thought it was good to reflect on my own reading practices (my reading for enjoyment tends to stop when the term starts). It also makes me think back to our getting-to-know-you bingo at the beginning of the year and how many students couldn't say they had read a book over the holidays. When I said I had read 4 books many were amazed which has made me think about the power of us as role models for reading and the time we put into reading, especially in front of our students. Time for quiet/independent reading for the students is often a time for me to see a group or follow up on a problem but it would probably be more beneficial for me to model that enjoyment of reading. There is also so much more that could be done to follow up from this time to promote excitement around books, e. g. more sharing and celebration.

I enjoyed Richard's reminder about reading across the curriculum and the examples he gave to include fiction and non-fiction topics e.g. reading about sharks you can read non-fiction texts, stories, myths and legends, watching videos, new articles, etc. It is important to be intentional with our planning to incorporate a variety of texts.

I look forward to diving deeper into the aspect of the reading pillars of practice. We have looked at the High Leverage Practices over the years but I think having an active focus, homework, and opportunities for reflection with others and accountability will help to embed these into my practice as often these aspects drop off when we are not consciously focusing on them.

I am looking forward to doing the survey with my learners to find out more about their reading habits, thoughts, and feelings about reading to get a baseline. I also think that the reading challenge resource will really engage my learners, so I will be giving that a go. I think I will also take back the reading about the reading about motivation to my team as we have a lot of readers in our hub who don't have a lot of reading motivation.

I am really looking forward to learning more about the task board and modeling book

It's hard to believe that we have completed all 9 sessions of RPI. We have covered so much in that time and there has been so much learn...