Focus: With my Inquiry this year, I wish to focus primarily on my bottom reading groups. I want to improve the reading level for my students who are currently sitting at Red Level 5 & yellow Level 6 which is (well below their reading age) and raise their level of achievement.
My hunch is that my learners need strategies to assist them in decoding. Decoding is the key skill in learning to read and it will help my students apply letter sound relationships and to correctly pronounce the written word in their text.
I realise as a beginning teacher that one of the strategies that my year 2 learners have is to look at me for some sort of support. Of course help is the first thing you want to give them, as I hate to see any of them struggle, but is this the right thing to do? Will it help them?
The beauty of every child having these skills is that the power will lie with them and they will require less support from the teacher. After all is this not our ultimate aim in all subjects, for our learners to become a better version of themselves as opposed to when they first walked through those school gates to begin their schooling career?
Plan: Before I can implement any reading strategy I need to test my students to see where their knowledge gaps lie. this can be done with "running records". In the running records I've done so far I noticed that they were still looking to me for answers to unknown words. In doing this I have decided to follow Gwyneth Phillips prompts and in applying her techniques into my teaching practice it will in turn allow me to equip my learners with the necessary skills to achieve success and advance higher with their reading abilities.
