Inquiry Focus: End of Term 3

During the term we have been learning about retelling the story in our own words focussing on the beginning, middle and end of the story. This video clip shows what we have been doing thus far.
 
Inquiry-Reading Term 3 from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

Reading

Inquiry Focus Term 2 July from Team 1 PES on Vimeo.

Inquiry Focus Update - Term 2

My inquiry was looking at Reading and helping children learn and spell high frequency words fast and fluency. The Explain Everything Spelling Test activity presented in my earlier blog post is used by a group of children almost everyday. The children are showing growth in confidence, they know how to spell some words fast and accurately and at the same time they know that they can search for the word on the alphabet card or ask for assistance from their peers or the teacher. They are aware of which words they know and what word to learn next.  They starting to notice shape of letters and use their letter sound knowledge to write words.
It is a difficult concept  for our little ones but they just need to keep revisiting and continue practicing until they know it and can make connections when reading these words in different contexts.

To aide this process I have started doing spelling tests. They have been successful and I have a group children who just love the competition and the rewards. They are making pleasing progress and I now I am adding words that they will need in their writing and come across in their reading. For my priority learners we have been introducing one new word per week.

"Slow and steady wins the race."

In conclusion I will continue with what I am doing and create more activities on Explain Everything to help my children move forward.

Spelling Test on Explain Everything.

Inquiry Term 2

Read read, read!

My inquiry focus for 2016 is:

Reading

Learning how to read requires several complex accomplishments. Children face many challenges as they learn how sounds are connected to print, as they develop fluency, and as they learn to construct meaning from print.

 We know from research that reading is a language-based activity. Reading does not develop naturally, and for many children, specific decoding, word recognition, and reading comprehension skills must be taught directly and systematically. We have also learned that children benefit significantly from being read to.

For my inquiry I will be focusing on a group of children reading PM books at Red, Level 3. These children are also my priority learners. I will be looking at the development of reading comprehension skills, the development of phoneme awareness, phonics, word recognition, reading fluency and getting them to read more frequently.