Over the past few years, professional enquiry has been a big part of our journey, improving teaching and learning as well as upskilling our teachers.
In the autumn term, we developed the enquiry question: To what extent can a combination of ‘Reading Power’ Strategies and high quality fiction improve pupils reading skills in progression step three?
Rationale
We developed this question through reflection on our own teaching and learning and the knowledge and understanding of the school. We recognised that when pupils begin in progression step one, we have a clear focus on phonics. As they progress into progression step two, we continue to focus on the mechanics of reading, developing learners’ fluency. As a result of this focus, pupil arrive in progression step three with the ability to read with good fluency, yet from this point on, our provision and focus on reading is less clear. In the past, as is the case in most schools, teachers develop a mixture of approaches depending upon their previous experience.
A wide research base has highlights the importance of reading. Reading can be used as a key indicator to predict everything from educational outcomes to future health. Post-covid 19 lockdowns, our data suggests that pupils have recovered lost progress in maths much more quickly than the progress lost in reading. As a result, we wanted to develop an enquiry focus which would help us to accelerate pupil progress.
Methodologies
Having identified our area of interest, we decided that we would begin to engage with reading around the subject to help us develop an enquiry question. By chance, we stumbled across the work of Adrienne Gear and her Research on Reading Powers. In her work, Gear explains how reading is about thinking about the text and this is something which we do not make clear to children. We know that the best teaching makes learning very explicit, yet when it comes to reading we have loosely define reading objectives. Gear identifies five ‘Reading Powers’ which learners need to develop in order to understand challenging texts, reflecting on plot and character development. Gear describes each power in detail and provides suggestions around the pedagogy which can be used to introduce them to children. Gear also provides advice on how the reading powers can be introduced and built upon.
As well as being struck by the suggestions in Gear’s work, we also read a broad range of research which highlights the importance of pupils reading high quality fiction. Screen culture and distractions have meant that children are less likely to read high quality extended fiction as there are so many other activities which take them away from this. In schools, there has also been a trend towards using short samples of texts for reading sessions and then moving away from the text.
We reflected upon the current research, the pedagogical strategies deployed in our school and information on how pupils are less likely to read extended fiction. We decided that we would introduce a thirty minute a day reading session, where pupils would read high quality fiction, focusing on one of the reading powers each day. In order to facilitate this, we made a plan to share our approach with support staff so that pupils would have an adult facilitating learning on three out of four days teaching.
Momentum Our first area of learning has been around momentum. It is incredibly important to build momentum with reading pupils especially if you are going to begin to make meaningful progress and close the gap. Our school curriculum is very crowded and during our weekly reflection meetings, staff often noted on sessions which have been missed due to other interruptions. I think that it is incredibly important that we make time in our curriculum to dedicate to reading. As a group, we reflected on how the frequency of our disruptions can inhibit pupil progress. Our focus as an enquiry helped us to recognise this. Reading Power Discussions As soon as we started to introduce the reading powers, it was clear that in certain areas the direct instructions which pupils had received had been incredibly brief. For example, when understanding a text, very few pupils were able to make connections to other texts, T.V. Shows and other media. Modelling this process demonstrated how we were able to enhance pupils’ ability to understand text. When reading a book called Kensukes’ Kingdom, we were struck by the fact that so many pupils were unable to follow the narrative. Yet, when we focused on connecting the story to other information, many were able to improve their understanding. We need to focus on the specifics Throughout the enquiry period we continued our work on direct reading instruction. Research shows that as well as developing pupils ‘thinks skills’ and making this explicit, we also need to focus on specific aspects of reading. One such area is vocabulary. Research shows that you need to plan a progression in vocabulary to broadened and enhance learner’s skills. As far as I know, this isn’t something which any schools have put in place. Vocabulary Our development of this project has coincided with work which we have completed on metacognition. During our reading enquiry, we noticed the deficit in our pupil’s vocabulary. As a result, we decided to introduce something called the Leitner System. All classes have introduced the system for pupils’ vocabulary. We have also explained the approach to parents. See a video of me using the system here:
Upskilling Staff One of the major benefits to our enquiry work has been the way that we have enhanced the knowledge and skills of our support staff by providing additional training. Support staff are incredibly important in our schools and they often teach groups of pupils. This is the case during reading activities, yet we never provide support staff with any additional training. Often, they run sessions in a similar way to the sessions which they experienced in school. Through our enquiry work, we were able to offer training for all of our support staff. They were also able to observed sessions where teachers were using the reading powers as part of guided sessions. As a result of these sessions, staff also began engaging with discussions about reading instructions and reading sessions which led to a much greater focus on the quality of activities that we were able to offer. Focus on Quality Text – Specifically Vocabulary As teacher, we sat with pupils in order to gain their opinion on the titles that they would like to purchase and use in sessions. The pupils were had a very poor knowledge of classic fiction and quality texts. Their response since reading the texts has been extremely positive. Pupils love the texts and quality fiction such as Charlotte’s Web has been brought to life around the school. Introduction of Testing In order to measure the impact of the project, we decided to introduce a standardised test which would allow us to analyse the progress of pupils. We purchased a paper based test called PIRA. However, like nearly all tests which provide a SAS, the test is designed for English schools and SAS is generally set at a more challenging level then schools in Wales are used to.
The information which the tests provide has been extremely useful and the data has allowed us to measure the progress of our learners. However, the difficulty of the tests have raised difficult questions about how we ensure our youngest learners are making excellent progress.
Group Guided Reading One issue with group guided readings is the number of adults required. Staff sickness, exasperated by the covid-19 pandemic has meant that we had a lot of disruption. I understand that this is one of the reasons as to which numerous schools have moved towards whole class reading. Time Our biggest challenge, from the outset, has been time. Curriculum for Wales has seen us introduce numerous initiatives as a school, such as French and outdoor learning. Everything makes time, and not matter how strong your cross curricular links are, with the best will in the World, it is impossible to do everything. When time is squeezed, people often end up dropping reading sessions. Too many stories?
Another questions which we have grappled with (and failed to answer) is the number of stories. As a class, we often have a class story; guided reading text and a home reader. Are we challenging pupils to keep a hold of too many narratives? We have reflected upon this questions and debated it numerous times during NPEP sessions and we have failed to agree upon an answer. We have also spent some time looking for research on the question and we have failed to find anything meaningful.
High Quality Texts The introduce of high quality children’s texts has been extremely popular. Pupil voice and discussions during sessions has shown that pupils have thoroughly enjoyed the texts and the complexities of the narratives on offer. One such example is when pupils have read Framed by Frank Cortrell Boyce. The books explores a range of complex themes, such as parental separation and community. The depth of understanding which pupils gained during the discussions highlights that reading also links to so many other areas of curriculum. Most notably personal and social development as well as empathy. Enquire This Year We are planning on sustaining the culture of enquiry this year by continuing to engage with the National Professional Enquiry Project.
We have evaluated the impact of our enquiry in a number of different ways. Pupil Voice We used Microsoft forms to gather pupil opinions. Pupil voice highlighted a number of different things: - 78% of pupils enjoy group guided reading sessions. - 87% liked using the Reading Power Resources. - 74% felt that their reading had improved. PIRA Data We use a system of measuring pupils progress called PIRA. We discovered that: - Older pupil (P.S.3) score more strongly on the assessments. - Across the school, vocabulary was an area of weakness. - Younger pupils found answering comprehension questions difficult. - A significant minority of pupils had reading ages below their chronological age.
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