Reading recovery observation with Siope

I observed Vanessa doing a reading recovery session with one of my students, Siope.  She got Siope to focus on how the letter sounds felt in his mouth.

She got Siope to hear the beginning and ending sounds in some words and Vanessa finished writing the words.  She then made a sentence strip of a sentence Siope had said "He is putting makeup on."  Siope put the sentence back in order.

She then got Siope to practise some high-frequency words: 'is' and 'am.'  She emphasised stretching the words to hear the sounds.

Then she got him to practice the word 'my' with magnetic letters and gave him some sentences with the word 'my' - 'My brother is called Saia.'  'My class is Room 6.'

Vanessa then got Siope to read "We Dress Up."  She reminded him to turn the pages the right way.  She made connections between the text and the pictures as Siope read.

She got Siope to find some words in the book that started with an S - "scarf" and "snake."

Takeaway:  I noticed the way Vanessa really got Siope to pay attention to the sounds in the high-frequency words he was learning, as well as just recognising the words.  I will use this strategy with Siope's reading group.  

4. Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice. 

i. identify professional learning goals in consultation with colleagues.

ii. participate responsively in professional learning opportunities within the learning community.

iii. initiate learning opportunities to advance personal professional knowledge and skills.  

Observation of reading recovery

I watched Hitha doing reading recovery with one of my children, Tui, reading at Level 7.  Tui started off by reading a familiar story called "The Leaf Boats."  Hitha got him to point to words with a chopstick as he read.  Hitha reminded him to pay attention to commas as he read.  She drew Tui's attention to words and punctuation he had missed.

Then Tui read another seen text - "Mother's Day" while Hitha did a running record.  She got Tui to choose a picture from the story to talk about.  Tui then wrote a story about the picture.  Hitha drew a sound box to help him with the word 'gave.'  She reminded him that the e on the end of gave was a 'magic letter.'

Hitha paid attention to Tui's letter formation too, when he tried to write 'breakfast' she noticed that he wrote his 'f' backwards.  She put a sticker over the f and got him to rewrite it.  She wrote his story on a strip of paper then cut it up and got Tui to put the words back in order.  She then focused on fluency, getting Tui to read it back "like a story."
Takeaway:  Watching this reading recovery session reminded me about using story strips for writing - this is an activity I haven't done in a while and would be good to use for my lower writing group. 

4. Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice. 

i. identify professional learning goals in consultation with colleagues.

ii. participate responsively in professional learning opportunities within the learning community.

iii. initiate learning opportunities to advance personal professional knowledge and skills.  

Observation 30/03/17 - Reading Recovery

Observation 30/03/17

Today I watched Hitha doing reading recovery with one of my lower students, Prinze, reading at Level 2.  

Prinze started off by reading a seen text - ‘My Little Cat’ while Hitha did a running record.  

She then got him to read a new text - ‘Big and Little’ - which contained that familiar word - little.  I noticed the way Hitha was careful to introduce new vocabulary like the word ‘foal.’

When Prinze came to a word he was unsure of, ‘kitten,’ Hitha covered up most of the word so Prinze could only see ‘it.’ She then added the ‘k’ sound.  I have been trying to do this more with my reading groups and have noticed children in the higher group pointing out words within words.  

Prinze then went to the whiteboard and sorted the magnetic letters for the letters he had been working on - g, o, a, b.  He read the letters and said their sounds - he got confused between the b and d so Hitha got him to practise writing upper-case and lower-case bs.

Prinze then made and broke the word ‘go’ and Hitha asked him how we could make that into the word ‘going.’ She got Prinze to write the word with the whiteboard marker and pointed out to me that Prinze has a habit of writing letters from bottom to top - this made me think I need to reinforce letter formation more in class - we do our ‘always start your letters from the top’ song but perhaps I need to make this clearer.  

They then went on to a familiar story - “My Little Cat” and Prinze chose a picture from the story to write about.  Hitha got him to say his sentence slowly before writing it - “My little cat is in the bag.” getting Prinze to hold the idea in his head for long enough to write it down.  When Prinze left too much space between words Hitha covered up his errors with stickers and got him to do it again.

Prinze practised the word ‘bag’ by putting the letters into a sound box and then had a quick practice of some high frequency words - ‘little’ ‘is’ ‘it’ ‘if.’

Hitha then introduced a new book - ‘The skier.’  She said ‘have you ever seen a movie where people go skiing?  Before you go skiing you need all your gear.”  This book had the word ‘going’ so linked back to the word Prinze had been practising.

Takeaway: I found it really helpful to watch the way Hitha introduced new texts and to hear what she had noticed about Prinze’s handwriting. The way she made connections between words that Prinze had been learning and his books was valuable and made me think about how I could make more links between the sight word songs that we do in class and the books the children read.    

Observation 8/3/17 - Reading Recovery

Today I watched Hitha doing reading recovery with one of my students, Tui, reading at level 7.  I found it really helpful to see the way she introduced a new book “Bingo’s Birthday” to him, just reading the part on each page where the character was talking, and talking about the picture.  She stopped Tui at the point where the girl was giving the dog a present and got him to predict what might be in the present then went back to the start and got him to read to check if his prediction was correct.  This established a purpose for reading - I reflected that I had been giving too much of the story away when introducing texts.

When Hitha got Tui to read a book he had previously read she got him to choose a picture to talk about - I thought this was a great oral language prompt.  Tui wrote down what was happening in the picture then Hitha turned this into a sentence strip - Munni has been recommending that I use these but I hadn’t seen them in action before so it was valuable to see. Tui reconstructed the sentence and Hitha gave it to him in an envelope to take home.  

Hitha also got Tui to sort magnetic letters on the whiteboard into groups of the same letter. I thought this would be a great activity for some of my children who are struggling with their letter recognition.  

Takeaway: Use magnetic letters as an activity to help with letter recognition.
Use cut up sentences as a way of helping with sentence structure.