There are a few reasons why I wanted to focus on reading this year. The first was that in the past, my inquiries have focussed on improving writing and from my inquiries I've found that part of the reason why kids are still struggling with writing is that they struggle with reading. Kids won't write a summary about an article if they don't understand what they've read.
Secondly, reading as a focus, has not been an aspect that I feel we have focussed on or addressed purposely in our department which I know should be happening. Although contexts are interesting and engaging, bringing reading to life for a struggling reading can sometimes be difficult particularly when there is a vast range of learning needs in the classroom. To be effective in our department, I know there needs to be a shift in how we use reading to accelerate learning.
Lastly, the Woolf Fisher Research team presented evidence that reading has made the least shift for our students- if anything it has gone backwards. I wanted to explore why our results were so poor and I wondered how much of these results were because of a lack of focus in the classroom. Over the next few weeks, I will be looking at gathering data and thinking about ways to tackle the challenge with the support of experts in literacy such as Dr Jannie Van Hees and Marc Milford, our literacy expert.
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