The NZ Literacy Association Conference September 29 - October 2 2019

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.

murraygadd.co.nz

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.