The first three days of our non-contact
time I attended The NZ Literacy Association Conference here in Christchurch. It
was a pretty full-on three days with a lot of workshops and speakers. The MC was Kathleen from the Court Jesters and
she was fantastic. I took a heap of notes and here is a summary of the three
days.
Day
one
It Started with Dame Wendy Pye. She started
Sunshine Books in 1985 after meeting a group of adolescent boys who couldn’t
read. She discussed how to thread STEAM through books. Apparently, NZ is the
best in the world at teaching critical thinking and STEAM is a great approach
to teaching this.
Workshop
1 Making the most of independent reading time with Sheena Cameron and Druinie
Perea
The benefits of DARE or SQUIRT etc. include
·
Exposure to a wide vocab
·
Build general knowledge
·
Become familiar with different
types of text
·
Develop a love of reading
It was suggested that during this silent
reading time the teacher would be best to work with struggling readers rather
than silent read. However, at a different workshop, it was suggested that
sometimes it is appropriate for the teacher to silent read during silent
reading.
Students need to support to select and read
appropriate reading material and we need to ensure we know our students to
match them with a book, which will interest them.
We need to provide time to students to talk
and share their books with each other at the end of a reading session.
Suggested doing a reading challenge for
students to have a goal to work towards and the teacher also has a reading
challenge too.
How to monitor reading: -
·
Start small to build up stamina
and celebrate their growth. She suggested having a quiet activity for those
students struggling with their stamina so others can continue reading.
Really important that we talk about
ourselves as readers, talk about what we like reading and model this.
I couldn’t help myself and had to buy her
latest book – got it signed too!
Workshop
2 Let’s gets them reading! Building a school-wide community of readers.
“Readers are made by Readers.”
Aidan Chambers
This workshop lead by the National Library
looked at six key factors that contribute to building a school-wide culture of
reading for pleasure.
·
Know yourself as a reader –know
your own reading personality.
·
Read children’s and young adult
books – have a good knowledge of books so you can recommend the ‘right’ book
for the reader.
·
Know your readers
·
Provide a reader-friendly
environment
·
Actively promote, use and talk
about books (everywhere) – reading incentives…
·
Create school-wide and
community reading initiatives – use the wider community was reading role
models.
Loved the workshop and left feeling really
inspired.
Speaker
Dr. Steven Layne – the benefits of reading aloud
WOW! This man is amazing. He started by telling us
a story. He was the most amazing
storyteller I have ever heard and he did move me to shed a tear or two!
He has written a lot of books and I will be
reading two of his best selling books – Igniting a Passion for Reading and In
Defense of Read-Aloud.
We need to give students the pleasure of a
story without the expectations to do anything other than enjoy the text. This
helps foster positive attitudes towards books.
The benefits include: -
·
Listening skills are improved
·
Lifelong readers maybe
developed
·
Reading maturity develops
·
Exposure to a variety of texts
·
Cultural sensitivity is
increased
Steven talked about how to establish a
successful read-aloud and build the anticipation before reading the book.
I could have listened to Steven for hours
and hours and he certainly deserved the standing ovation at the end of his
talk.
He finished his session with this poem he wrote.
Tuesday
Day 2 Speaker ‘Dr Viv Aitken – ‘Mantle of the Expert’
‘Mantle of the Expert’ where learning takes
place across the curriculum through a combination of inquiry, drama and
powerful positioning.
“Dramatic inquiry – real learning in
imagined worlds.”
This isn’t school productions or journal
plays. This is the sort of thing children do when they play. It’s about
fostering duality between real worlds and imagined worlds.
1.
Child Structured socio dramatic
play – PBL. Children learn to take on different roles and learn the difference
between an emotion and an action. Children also discover that others have
different things going on.
Then moves to…
2.
Drama for learning and process.
The teacher can open up drama in the imagined world. For example using a big
book character – such as the monster in Monster’s Lunchbox.
Then …
3.
Mantle of the Expert – as in
cloak, an expert.
Ask students to
take on a role – important task. For example year 5 students studying local
history become property developers. They look at street sign names and use drama
to explore what happens when locals oppose the names.
For a child, the real world can be limiting.
Whereas in the imagined world there aren’t any limitations.
A lot of thought provoking information in
her talk and there is more on her website to look at.
Workshop
3 This Room is Full of Stories with Renata Hopkins
Renata has written for film, television, and
theatre and has won awards.
She talked about how we need to empower
children to tell their own stories. We need to tell them they are already the
masters of this. They are already storytellers.
Renata then shared a story, which we could all relate to and could then
tell our own stories. This was a great reminder that every child has a vomit
story to tell!
She had the idea of a story sack with
various items in it, which could be used to start stories with.
This workshop really made me realise how
‘simple’ things can make great stories and I reflected on the great writing I
could have got from ‘my boys’ with losing their baby teeth in the last week of
term…
Workshop
4 Readers as Superheroes: Showing Young Readers that Reading and Writing are
Superpowers They Want to Have. Melinda
Szymanik
“The more you read the stronger your
superpowers.”
It was a total coincidence that I bought a
book the previous day by this author. What a talent.
Melinda started by reading us a story (The
Were-Nana). It wasn’t a book I would
have picked up, but I need to buy a copy now. It demonstrated the power of
words and she shared how this story could be used to create some great writing.
She also discussed how important it is for
teachers to be positive role models. She talked about the reading muscle – it
takes training to be a superhero.
Writing is a superpower – it’s your power
to write the story.
Speaker
– Mary Chamberlain – a director of Evaluation Associates and a consultant.
Mary discussed the current curriculum and
the need for it to be updated.
Wednesday
Murray Gadd – Writing
I was pretty excited about Murray’s talk
because I wasn’t at Gilberthorpe when all the PD was done. He was great and I
can understand why he is so popular! He has created his own website which
should be up and running this week.
Workshop
5 Using Books to Spark Rich Conversations – National Library Services
“Reading
for pleasure has been revealed as the most important indicator of the future
success of a child.”
National Literacy Trust 2011
“A
school staffed by people who enjoy books and enjoy talking to children about
what they read is likely to be very successful in helping children to become
readers.”
Aidan Chambers
We were shown a couple of great resources,
which are on the National Libraries Website
The
Book and Beyond: An educator’s guide contains a
collection of powerful, relevant, and critical prompts for approaching books
and book chats, helping teachers and librarians:
There is also a guide for students at a higher level to use as a prompt
for critical thinking and to promote rich discussions about a text.
We were given a pile of books to have a go with the template ourselves –
but we all just read and talked about the books!
Speaker – Marcus
Akuhata-Brown
I couldn’t possibly do justice to Marcus’ story by trying to retell the
main points. His story is amazing and he is an inspirational speaker. Basically
we need to shift out of our comfort zone!
The conference was a
credit to the Canterbury Literacy Association and I can only imagine the time
and work that went into the conference. I can’t remember stories being a big
part of my school days – doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. However, my dad was a
great reader and he was my role model. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we always
went to the library and I can’t recall a time when dad didn’t have a book to
read. I drove home on Wednesday inspired
to help others discover the world of books.
