Richard Wilson

In Pinkie we have a working group looking at all aspects of reading and trying to come up with ways of improving reading skills across the whole school. I have just received an inspection copy of a resource called Read Write Inc that re-introduces the pupils to synthetic phonics, which are widely recognised as being a crucial component of learning how to read. The link takes you to the 5-14 Special Focus page on LT Scotland website. If you haven’t been there before it is well worth a look. Part of the discussion we started was to look at current school resources and to try to enhance our provision by making better use of existing materials and re-discovering ways of teaching reading better and improving our level of pace. The catch 22 situation here is neatly summed up by a quote from William Glasser, “The faster you go, the more students you leave behind. It doesn’t matter how much or how fast you teach. The true measure is how much students have learned. “

Read write inc. stresses the importance of partner work to improve learning, very much formative assessment techiques, the emphasis being:

We Learn: (William Glasser)

• 10% of what we read
• 20% of what we see
• 30% of what we hear
• 50% of what we see and hear
• 70% of what we discuss with another person
• 85% of what we experience personally
• 95% of what we teach

By working together, pupils are taught to teach and support each other to read, comprehend, spell and write their own compositions which will then be able to be published on our collaborative writing wiki.

If we adopt this system I will keep a log of its use and how it impacts on our reading here.

Ending with another Glasser quote, “Effective teaching may be the hardest job there is”.

Says it all.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS