New Term = New Books!

Back to school today for the last 10 weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing my students and teaching them again, not so much to the increasingly dictatorial commands coming down from the government/department.

Once again, I've spent entirely too much money on buying books for the classroom (I get to read them first though!). New books for this term include:

Graphic Novels: Amulet 2; Kat and Mouse 1 and Agent Boo

Books
-Mac Slater: Cool Hunter - The Rules of Cool by Tristan Bancks
-Story Time - Edward Bloor
-Books 2,3 and 4 in the Samurai Kids series by Sandy Fussell (I already have the first one in the classroom and it's popular, so I grabbed these three when I found them)
-Ida B and her plans to Maximise Fun, Avoid Disaster and (possibly) Save the World by Katherine Hannigan
-Someday Angeline by Louis Sachar
-Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson

I've also got the sequel to Peter and the Starcatchers, but the kids can't have it until I've finished it. And I'm keeping Operation Yes by Sara Lewis Holmes (which I LOVED) to read to the class together.

Well that's enough to get me excited to go back!

At the end of the term - Reader's Workshop

I had many big ideas for this term, with Reader's Workshop right up the top. At the end of the term I can confidently say it has been a roaring success for 26 of 27 students. They are reading more books, reading more challenging books, reading more widely and talking about more books. They are entering the reading zone with more ease and they meet me at the door every morning, excited to share what they have read the night before.

The big turning point? When we began reading more and writing less. I talk to every student about what they're reading every day, and they write to me every two weeks, but most of the time is for reading.

Improvements for next term: round robin discussions about general topics of character, setting, imagery, description, symbolism etc. Better record keeping for the students. Well planned mini lessons (I've got some ideas for this). Getting that last student interested. And more and more and more books!

Part of a Team

Yesterday we had parent-teacher interviews. At our school, we have one day of these a semester, beginning at 2pm and going through until 8pm with a break for lunch. Each parent who wants to come gets 15 minutes. How busy you are depends on your students, their ages and their parents, and I was pretty busy yesterday.

My thoughts upon finishing was how positive the whole afternoon had been. Two years ago at my first interviews, I was terrified. I was sure that the parents were going to tear me to pieces. Now, I've been fortunate enough to know some of these parents for a couple of years, as well as being more confident in my abilities and the results I get. So there was no fear going into this lot of interviews, and I was really pleased with how these conversations went. Some things that struck me:

• I'm getting better at really talking about the students. Because they're well behaved and high achieving, I used to struggle to know what to say and my interviews were about two seconds long. Now I realised I was talking for longer, the parents were talking for longer and I even went over slightly on a couple of interviews
• Reading was a massive topic. We talked about the books they were reading at school, the kind of books they liked, how to find books at their level, book recommendations, books they read at home, how much they read at home, where they read at home, and good websites to find more books. Parents were telling me that they were thrilled with how reading is encouraged, how pleased the kids were that I've allowed them to take books home and one (whose daughter I had last year) thanked me for the book recommendations I made last year.
• Little things I'd picked up at school had also been picked up at home. Makes it easier for us to come up with a plan to deal with it - we really are working as a team now
  
• I have two gifted profiles to put together for new students. Excellent!

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Photo:Book Accident by Photos8.com

Reader's Workshop: Further Reflection

So, we've had seven weeks of reader's workshop. During this time I have:

• Set up a regular routine for silent reading
• Bought a number of new books and graphic novels for the class
• Established a routine of collecting and writing in the student books
• Read more and more about reader's workshop and how it works in different classrooms around the world. (Check out this post at The Reading Zone)
  

Yesterday I asked the students to reflect on Reader's Workshop and how it was working for them. I gave them an index card and asked them to tell me what they liked and disliked, what they thought was vital and how reader's workshop could be improved. I requested they put no names on their card, that they didn't tell me what they were writing, and I asked another student to collect them so there would be total anonymity and they could be really honest.

The results were very interesting. Almost all of the students said that they liked the reading and having time to read. A few mentioned that they enjoyed having the choice of what to read and where they got to read (we've got a nice outside area they can read it). Surprising to me was how many of them enjoyed the small group lessons we have been doing during this time.

What didn't they like? Well they didn't like responding everyday. And honestly, when I tried to do it, neither did I. They felt that it took time out from their reading, and thus their enjoyment. They also disliked that I had set four books for them to try to read by the end of the term - again I understand that this takes away from their choice.

What was vital? Books, funnily enough. Also bookmarks :) Students also said book talks (and we've had a couple of really exciting book talks so far) and group discussion.

How to improve? More time for reading, less time for writing. Being able to take books home. Being able to write about books when they finish them. And one bright spark asked for more cushions :)

So, we're going to work on this. My aim is to introduce proper mini lessons at the beginning of the lesson. We'll also do more reading, and the students will respond in letter form every two weeks. The students will be able to take books home and we'll have a simple sign out/sign in system (this is particularly vital for one or two students who don't have access to books at home). We'll continue to do group work, but probably less often.

I'll keep you updated on how it goes

Children's Book Week Recommendations: A Wrap Up

Here are the five books I recommended over the last week:

Juggling with Mandarins by V.M. Jones
Mahtab's Story by Libby Gleeson
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
CHERUB series by Robert Muchamore
Mail Order Ninja by Joshua Elder

I'm also going to add a special teachers book which arrived from Amazon.com on Friday and I devoured yesterday. The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers by Nancie Atwell was a short, easy read which let me know what elements of Reader's Workshop I was getting right and where I might be able to make improvements. It also includes notes to the children and to the parents which would be invaluable in setting up Reader's Workshop next year.

Even before I read this book, I was intending to review Reader's Workshop with the children tomorrow. I think this book will be invaluable in providing alternative ways of 'doing stuff'.

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Children's Book Week: Day Five: Mail Order Ninja

Check out Day Four: CHERUB Series

So, Book Week has wrapped up at our school, although my class doesn't do our craft activity until Monday. And that brings me to the fifth book of the week, which is actually a graphic novel. This book isn't an assigned reading, nor is it a book I'm reading to the students. Rather it's one that's being passed around and adored as soon as it's read.

Mail Order Ninja by Joshua Elder is one of my growing collection of graphic novels. It tells the story of Timmy, the graphic novel (not comics) obsessed boy who detests bullies, 'trust-fund queens' and his bratty sister. When he finds an advertisement for a Mail Order Ninja, he has to get it. The ninja then helps him clean out the bad elements of the school.

The first one has been in my class for a couple of months now, and I just received the second one from Amazon.com. What I love about this series is the way it's drawn, there's an awful lot of information for the students to gain from it and it's a very smart book. There's also a lot of sly humour that adults would appreciate.

I highly recommend this graphic novel, especially if you're putting together a collection for a classroom.

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Children's Book Week: Day Four: CHERUB

Check out Day Three: Artemis Fowl

Day four is slightly late due to a little 9 and a half hour sleep :) But after a highly successful Book Day (with lots of brilliant costumes) I'm going to talk about one of the most successful series of books in my classrooms.

The CHERUB series by Robert Muchamore is a British series based around spies, who also happen to be children. The main character, James Adams (formally James Choke) is a gifted 12 year old, particularly in maths, but is always in trouble. When his mother dies, he is put in a home and steadily moves towards the criminal element. Until one morning when he wakes up in the nicest school campus he has ever seen.

There is a wide cast of characters in CHERUB, including some strong female characters and characters from diverse backgrounds. The books deal with missions ranging from environmental terrorism to unsolved deaths to gang setups. The books do grow in maturity with the ages of the characters, so some of the later ones may not be appropriate for younger children. (I have the first couple in my room, but the later ones are usually bought by parents who also read them :) They are universally popular)

What I have found with these books is that they get reluctant male readers to read - or devour. When I began reading the first one to the Year 7s I had last year a lot of them got their hands on their own copy to read themselves. I recommend these to 12 years and older, though some more mature 10 and 11 year olds could probably handle them too.

There's also a prequel series The Henderson Boys which is set during World War 2 and is really good :)

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Children's Book Week: Day Three: Artemis Fowl

Check out Day Two: Mahtab's Story Here

And so we move on to day three, the halfway mark of children's book week. Today we're actually going back two years to a time when I taught contracts for terms rather than having my own class. At one point in time I had a non-gifted (but still some quite bright) class of grade 5s. Knowing I'd only have them for a term, I needed something which would grab them quickly and keep them going, but would be easy to complete in 10 weeks.

Enter Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. Artemis is a genius. A criminal mastermind. And a 12 year old boy. He wants gold, but not just any gold - he wants fairy gold. And he's willing to kidnap to get it. On the opposing side is Holly Short, pointy eared and occasionally neglectful of the more important things. Also, desperate to prove herself in the male-dominated LEP-recon world.

This really is a scream of a book - fantasy, action and comedy all poured into one. For reading outloud it's perfect, with plenty of opportunities for voices. I was also able to tell immediately at one point which children were really listening - they were the ones who knew there was a rip-snorter of a fart joke coming.

I've had a few kids really get into reading through these series of books and others simply devour them. Well worth a read, but even better to read out loud.

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Children's Book Week: Day Two: Mahtab's Story

Check out Day One: Juggling With Mandarins here!

Onto Day 2 of Children's book week, with a book we're studying now. At the moment we're focusing on Theme, Genre, Audience and Purpose. The students are all required to read four books that cover themes such as family, children on their own, survival, conflict, bravery etc. One of these books is Mahtab's Story by Libby Gleeson.

Mahtab is a young girl in Afghanistan, before September 11th. She's terrified of the Taliban, the men in black, who rule over the streets. She's not allowed to go to school, she's not even allowed to leave her home. After the death of her grandfather, her father begins to make plans for their departure to a country he's heard of - a place called Australia.

There is some beautiful writing in the beginning - some of the most descriptive writing I've read in a children's book, which just sort of picks you up and carries you along. The setting of the story is quite universal, there are refugees all over the world. However, there are some parts which really sit within an Australian context, with recent debates over 'boat people'.

The ending seemed a little rushed to me, which was an opinion shared with the students. I think we all wanted to know more about Mahtab's settlement into an obviously strange country. However these discussions about what makes a good story or a good ending are just as important.

This is another book I'd recommend, particularly if you are doing any work on Afghanistan or on refugees.

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Children's Book Week: Day One: Juggling With Mandarins

So this week, as many of you in the Northern Hemisphere are heading back to school, is Australian Children's Book Week. To celebrate this, I'm going to point out some of the books I've read to and shared with my students over the last couple of years.

Today's book, Juggling With Mandarins by V.M. Jones is one I read to my Grade Sevens last year. It is a New Zealand story about Pip, the 14 year old who's good at English and bad at soccer. Sadly, it's soccer his gruff father cares about, and soccer where his older brother Nick excels.

While Pip deals with the expectations and often irrational behaviour of his father, he's also also handling his growing feelings for the girl next door. Then he discovers the new sports centre, the Igloo, and its special climbing gym.

This was a great book to read with 12 and 13 year old students who are dealing with the experiences of finding themselves and defining themselves as separate from their parents. We did some work in class with it - mostly vocabulary and writing - but most of the time we just enjoyed it. If you can get your hands on it, I'd thouroughly recommend it for whole class and small group work.

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Reading, reading programs and standardised testing

I was going to begin this post all angry, because I really was, but then I decided to have a coffee and a chat with my ever-patient husband (who is currently painting the back deck - looks relaxing . . .).

It started when I read this - Venting about the Fate of Reading and Reading Teachers at Musings of a Book Addict. I couldn't really believe what I was reading for most of the post, but this really got to me:

If they finish a lesson early they may read one of the following books from the program's library: The Tiger Rising, Johny Hangtime, Bird, The Boy Who Saved Baseball, Night of the Twisters, Every Living Thing, Locomotion, Granny Torrelli Makes Soup.
Only these 8 books - OR -They may read either the Kids Discover Magazine, Cobblestone Muse, Faces or Odyssey Magazine or Footsteps.

And then there was this:

On day 5 and 10 if they finish their computerized lesson they are to go to the online book cart (part of the program) and pick one of their selections and read it and test on it and then go to their online books (part of the program) and read a passage and test on it.

If at anytime they finish all of the above the only other approved book is their required novel from their Language Arts class. Due to our curriculum, all 6th graders in the county read the same novels, at the same time and follow the exact curriculum at the same time. The same goes for the 7th and 8th graders. As of this year they have implemented the core curriculum for high school and I believe elementary. That way if a kids transfers schools in the district everyone is at the same place at the same time. What? You are asking what about the child that can't keep up and never gets that book read? We are told they need to learn the skills to keep up. If they are ESE or ESL there are built in modifications that the entire district is supposed to follow.

All pleasure reading is to be done at home.

WHAT!?!

At first, my knee-jerk reaction (after the spluttering) was to say 'this could never happen here in Australia.' But then I thought a little more. The program described is a response to the state reading test. And more and more we have a government and media led movement toward teaching for and from the NAPLAN test. For example, last Saturday we were encouraged by the lone state-wide newspaper to compare school data when they published school-by-school NAPLAN results (from 2008, a little detail that was mostly glossed over). In my school we are currently required to prepare our Year 2, 4 and 6 students for next years test. District offices are putting pressure onto Principals to show rapid improvements. And Queensland has pretty much had a year long beat up of its teachers, schools and students because we came second last in the testing in 2008. (of only 7 states and territories).

With all the pressure being put on schools to produce good results, and all the people out there realising there's a good buck to be made from NAPLAN (NAPLAN-style support books, expensive 'readers' sets promising better results, NAPLAN-style tests, and even a company taking advantage of swine flu to flog their NAPLAN products), surely it's only a matter of time before Principals take these programs up as a way of achieving better results, insisting that their teachers enforce these programs, no matter what. Particularly if Queensland does poorly again this year (not terribly unlikely, we've got another cohort of children here used to the Qld tests, rather than the NSW/VIC style tests used in NAPLAN).

So I was quite angry. But now I'm just determined. I'm determined to make sure this doesn't happen. I'm determined to make sure that our Principal and our HOC give us teachers the information that we need. I'm determined to find good, tested methods of improving students learning. I'm determined to make the classroom a place which is not dominated by one test. And I'm determined to speak out more, and to stop keeping quiet because it's the easiest thing to do.

The Arrival: Shaun Tan

Since the beginning of the term, my students and I have been exploring The Arrival by Australian artist/writer Shaun Tan. The Arrival is an entirely wordless picture book/graphic novel which follows the story of a man who leaves his homeland and emigrates to a strange but beautiful new world. Here he struggles at time with the new experiences, but is helped by a number of people with similar experiences.

This is a truly beautiful book, with carefully drawn illustrations. There are six chapters, and we have taken on a chapter a week with four small groups (we'll put 5 and 6 together). Each group takes time to go through the chapter, talking about the story as it develops and examining some of the visual symbols within the chapter. Students write on post-it notes whenever they find something they want to comment on, and it gets stuck into the book. Later it's put into the students' notebooks and they write further comments.

Sometimes the students have needed more preparation - before chapter 2, in which the main character comes to the new world, we read about migrant experiences with Ellis Island, particularly inspection procedures. This made it easier to understand the sequence when the character is examined and 'labelled'.

The students have surprised me at times with their understanding of some quite complex images, being able to explain them in ways I had never thought. There's a lot of sharing with the book - although we're working in different groups, each group reaches the same point by the end of the week, so they are able to discuss it with other people in the class. There's also comparisons with other books such as The Golden Compass, so that leads to further reading. I think I'll make some recommendations about books which feature moving to different places next for students who are interesting in reading more about the topic.

I highly recommend this book for a higher elementary/middle school group, particularly if you are doing work on immigration, new experiences or symbolism - I have loved watching the students become entranced by this amazing world..
Images from Shaun Tan's Website
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Reader's Workshop: Part Three - How is it working

Read about the previous posts on Reader's Workshop here and here:

I know it's too early to make a full reflection on the Reader's Workshop (after three weeks), but there have been some early indications of success:

• There is an increased interest in books in the classroom. New books do not stay on the shelves for long, but are quickly passed from hand to hand. There's also talk about books and reading and lots of sharing of information.
• The students are thinking more about characters, the scenes, the symbols in books
• I'm hearing them read from books that interest them. One student read to me from a book which we both knew was below his ability as a reader. I listened to him, discussed how he was having no problems with it and asked him to read to me again when he'd finished the book - he got to finish a book he was interested in and we had a discussion about reading, and what he might be interested in next.
• The students are writing about books more coherently than ever before. One student was reading 'A Wrinkle in Time' and wrote me a letter about it. I wrote back to her about Meg and she noted:
  
  "I think she would make a bit of a dull friend, if you asked her something she would be thinking about something else"
  
  This was something I'd never considered, but the student made me approach the character from a different perspective. As a class they're making me do this an awful lot.

It hasn't been all peaches. I've had to revisit how to respond a few times to make sure all the students were clear on it, and I need to continue to have a clear focus of the week (this week is perspective), but so far it's working nicely and I'm really enjoying it. After all - we've created a reading community, how can you go wrong?

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Image from Public Domain Photos

Reader's Workshop: Part 2 - Introducing the ideas

It's all about reading - more

All the students in my class a capable readers and most of them enjoy reading. Therefore, when I introduced Reader's Workshop by mentioning they would be reading MORE, they were generally happy with the idea. Those that aren't enthusiastic readers did like the fact they could choose their own books, as well as the new graphic novels I had puchased (more on that later).

Each lesson involves silent reading. The students can read anything, anywhere. This means I generally have students lying on cushions on the floor, curled up in corners, sprawled across desks, grabbing my comfy chair, as well as taking advantage of the blue skies and sunshine of winter in Queensland. (Generally when all the kids are outside is when the Principal or Deputy will come along. The deputy was great, though and saw it as an opportunity to talk about the book (Inkheart) he was reading. )


Read and Respond

After silent reading most of the students go on to read and respond. Students keep reading, but may pause to write what they are reading, a line they really like, or some information about a character. There are question prompts in the front of their notebooks, as well as a weekly question and some additional questions (downloaded from Adrian Bruce's website) for students who are having a little trouble. Students aren't expected to write lots, though some do, but are expected to write a little each day.

Additionally, students are sometimes asked to write a letter to me. I then read them and respond with my own letter, asking questions, making recommendations and generally having an ongoing conversation about reading and books.


Explicit teaching and conferences

On some days, before silent reading we'll have a mini-lesson focusing on a particular skill or aspect. These are short and pretty much serve as reminders, or options for the students to use.

While most of the class is read-and-responding, I'll work with a small group on a particular book or skill. At the moment we're 'reading' the amazing Shaun Tan book, The Arrival, which contains no recognisable words at all. Student make notes on post-its as we go through it, and then write up their thoughts about the chapter afterwards. Lots of skills are discussed here, and it's more focused on the group needs.

While the small group are writing I move around the class doing individual conferences. I listen to the students read, talk to them about what they're reading and look at their work. I also collect five books a day to read and write in - which is managable and lets me get through the whole class in an average week. This way I know where the students are at and I'm able to guide them to do more.

It's only been three weeks, and I haven't dumped this all at once, but introduced bits at a time. Already, there are improvements in their work, but I've also made some adjustments.

Next post: how it's all worked

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Image from Public Domain Photos

Introducing Reader's Workshop: Part One - the Set Up

So, with the beginning of our new school term, just three weeks ago, I introduced a Reader's workshop into the classroom. This is a new thing to me, and a new thing in our school. Luckily, I had time to think about how it would work, and was able to set things up accordingly.

My ideas originally came from the website of third grade teacher, Beth Newingham. Although I had read about the ideas before, I had been lost at how to make it work. Beth demonstrated how it worked in her room, allowing me to see how it might work in my room.

The first step was organising the books. When I started in my own classroom, 2 and a half years ago, I had half a trolley of books. Now I have several bookshelves full. To organise them I purchased a tonne of cheap plastic, rectangular containers (sturdy enough to hold books of course) from local discount stores. I sat down and surveyed the books I had, dividing them into some basic groups. Each book was then labelled with a sticker reminding students what group it was from, and each container was labelled with a laminated tag.

The groups ranged from the basic (realistic fiction, fantasy, historical) to the more 'Mrs D' specific (CHERUB books, ballet books), but most importantly, in their containers the books now faced outwards, allowing students to see what we actually had. This meant new reading material to a lot of the students, and a lot more of the books were actually being read.

The next step took place over the two week break and involved the muscles of Mr D. I've never liked the set up of my crowded room, and I was determined to do something about it. My biggest move was shifting my desk to a spot where I use it more and it takes up less space. I now have a cleaner desk and more space in the room. We then moved the dividers (head height) most of the way across the room (I share a demountable teaching space complete with asbestos walls) to block out some of the noise and lined up the bookshelves so there was more of a book corner, with a large seating space in front of it. I then swapped a couple of tables which were being used for computers with desks, which also opened up more room. Suddenly I had more space - and I was happier with it.

Outside of school I did up a simple notebook for each child (stickytaped a picture on front and some info on the inside) and stuck it in a large plastic lunch bag (a baggie?) with a pencil and some post it notes. These went into some cardboard magazine holders (one between two students) which I had painted brightly. Each holder had a laminated tag with students names on them and became a place for their books and reading workshop materials.

Now we were ready for school to begin.

Next post - introducing the reader's workshop to the students.

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Image from Public Domain Photos

Cough, splutter

Just as I want to write more, I get a dull cold (no swine flu, though it's in our school now) which leaves me sleepy and dopey (and sneezy) in my non-working time. Hopefully the weekend will be kind and I'll be back with a vengence. Mostly because I want to talk about our reader's workshop and our amazing experiences with the graphic novel The Arrival.

A good return

So, back to school today. I spent some time on the holidays rearranging my classroom, so it was cool to watch the kids reactions when they came in the door. General consensus is that they love the extra space, and the library is definately easier to use.

Overall, it was a great return to the classroom. Quite a few students mentioned that the day just flew by, and they weren't kidding. There were lots of outside lessons - phys ed, Chinese, religious ed- today, but the other lessons worked well too.

For maths, we're beginning a bit of investigating maths related to our bodies. Today we were revising measurement and changing millimetres into centimetres and metres (thank goodness we don't have to work with inches and feet in Australia :) ). The students worked in pairs to measure their height, arm length, leg length, hand span and foot length in centimetres. After they recorded them in a table, they then worked out the millimetres and metres. Then they used this to make their own word problems. What impressed me was the way some of the students worked to create multi-step problems without any prompting.

Then this afternoon we began our Reader's Workshop. The students like the ideas, but I need to work a little on the read and respond part - maybe some more guidance through small group lessons and one on one conferences. The small group I worked with today were marvellous with The Arrival, they were really beginning to tell the story. I tried to use questioning which would allow them to unravel the story, rather than telling them 'you're right' or 'you're wrong'. At first they thought the man was just going to work, then on a business trip and then they realised he was going away for much longer. Then the group worked on some questions, wrote a little, and used complex instructions to make paper cranes (I had different instructions when I learned, and I wasn't as impressed with some of these. I'll keep looking for better ones).

Before we knew it, 3pm was around and it was time to go home. Good day though.

Things to Improve: Reading Comprehension

At the moment, I'm taking a bit of time to reflect on where I want to improve and what I'm doing well. You can find the master list of reflections here.


Teaching Reading Comprehension

The majority of my class are very good readers. That is, they can read - aloud - just about any piece of text you put before them. But, I always wonder, how much are they really understanding? And how much more could they be getting from the text?

This is where I'm very much like the students I teach. I was reading novels at age 5, adult books at age 9. I could handle almost every piece of text put before me, although - admittedly - I made a few clangers in pronunciation. But a lot of the time I just let the words fall over me, without really engaging in it. I'm sure there are many occasions I still do that. (Especially when reading some of the notices we get)

So, first, I suppose I really need to consider what we should be getting out of texts. It is important, of course, that students are able to read and use what they are reading. They should be able to identify the audience and the purpose of different texts. But what comes next? Should we take the critical literacy approach of asking what the author is really trying to say, even if the author does not realise they are really trying to say it? Or should we take a more methodical approach on how the author has used certain literary techniques to achieve particular effects? Or maybe a mixture of both? And how does this fit into the classroom as I currently have it.

Most importantly to me, in my reader friendly classroom is how do I teach this without removing the love of books and reading my students currently have? How do you protect pure enjoyment of a well written piece of writing without going into why it is so well written?

Where do I get my resources from? We have precious few resources aimed at the higher level, and even fewer ideas which don't rely on worksheets (my distaste of worksheets continues to flourish).

Is there a way to take a more investigatory approach to teaching reading? I know this approach has been a huge success in our maths lessons - how does it translate to reading?

Many many questions. I'm sure there will be much more to reflect on as I continue to walk this path.

How do you teach reading?


Image from Public Domain Images

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NAPLAN Day Two: Reading

I think I was justified in being a little scared of this one. The problem with comprehension tests is that the kid's natural over confidence always seems to kick in when it looks like the answers are 'right there' in the reading magazine.

The Year 5 questions were difficult - lots of inferential work. I noticed a lot of the cherubs had difficulties classifying different texts and their purposes, so that's something to keep working on after the testing.

I had to laugh though, two of the excerpts are from books I have in the classroom, and one of the Year 6s is currently devouring one of them.

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I don't know why reading comprehension terrifies me so much when I love reading as much as I do. All my students are readers - they really don't get much of a choice in my room! - but I'm going to have to keep working on the comprehension part of things. Yet another thing to add to me list of things to get better at . . .

Preparing for NAPLAN: The NAPLAN Game Show

NAPLAN (Australia's national testing for Year 3,5,7 and 9) begins on Tuesday, so I took advantage of a clear day yesterday to set up a game show in preparation. The class was broken into 2 teams, with equal numbers of 5s and 6s since the 6s had sport later in the afternoon. All activities corresponded with a section of the NAPLAN test.

Round One: Writing Ideas in 5 minutes. Each group was given the same writing stimulus and had to come up with as many story ideas as possible in 5 minutes. Points given for most ideas and most original ideas.

Round Two: Three parts to one story. There were 12 students in each team, so four of them wrote story beginnings, four wrote story middles and four wrote story endings. Then they had to put them together to make four different stories. They were only allowed 5 minutes to talk to each other before they started. Points for best story and funniest story.

Round Three: Spelling Relay. The NAPLAN spelling test requires students to find the mispelt word in a sentence and fix it. The relay had the students lining up in their teams running forward to one of the two easles and fixing the mispelt word, and running back to the next student. Points for fastest and for each correct word.

Round Four: Kung Fu Puncuation Kung-Fu Off: Students correct a poorly punctuated grammatically incorrect sentence by 'acting out' the sentence using Kung Fu Punctuation (must explain that some time). Points for correct corrections and for style.

Round Five: Team Maths Competition: Students work in a team to complete an old practice test. Points for fastest and for each correct problem.

Round Six: Comprehension Quiz Show: Students read a comprehension text and participate in a quiz show style event.


It was a fabulous day which really relaxed some of the students about taking this test next week and was just, down right fun.