My students in DVC / Graphics choose my subject as they think they are going to draw and make things for the whole year. It is a bit of a shock to them when they discover the amount of reading and writing that is involved.
The aspect of student learning my inquiry focused on this year was reading for understanding in the research tasks that they have to do to support their projects.
I identified this as my focus when I noticed that the resources and links that I was supplying for my students were not being used in much depth. There was a lot of copy and paste going on from the internet.
To build a rich picture of my students’ learning I used the PAT tests that my Year 11 students did at the end of Year 10. I also used student voice where I asked them what their thoughts were about reading. They felt quite negatively about it.
There were a lot of changes that I made to my own teaching. I had to learn how to chunk a piece of reading and use information transfer. I pulled the reading from the original source and used targeted questions that focussed the students on what they were needing to find out. I had to be able to give time during lessons specifically for reading activities that were planned and supported.
The expertise that helped me decide what changes to make was mainly the Tamaki College literacy specialist, Marc Milford. I worked closely with him to plan structured reading activities for my Year 9 food tech class which I tried out and assessed how they had gone. I then made changes with Marc’s help and used these resources with my Year 11 inquiry group.
Readings that have helped me this year are The Reading Book by Louise Dempsey and Sheena Cameron and various online texts about cross curricular literacy.
All of this helped me to realise that reading with students was not something for me to be scared of but it was something that I could learn how to structure in order to help them.
The hardest thing for me to change was my own mindset on reading with students in class. I have realised that it can be done as an activity within a design project. We can work on it all together and support each other with it.
Overall I would rate the changes in student learning as good. They made good progress over the period of time we worked on this intervention. Their written answers from their reading had a lot more depth and understanding shown. This came through when they were writing their material analysis for their design development work. What I was happiest about was their confidence level with the reading we were doing. They were feeling a lot more confident which is always good to hear when you have put measures in place to help them.
The most important learning I made about reading for research was to make it relevant to what their project work is about so they can see the point of what we are reading. Taking the reading away from the original source on the internet helped with focus and targeted questions for the content helped them to see the point.
The most important learning I made about inquiry was trialling and changing as you go and getting feedback that guides the changes.
Some learnings that would be relevant to other teachers are to do things that are outside of your comfort zone.
