Tag: #edread

#edread – Ideas & Values

edread wordle

While resources, websites and apps are helpful tools I am firmly of the belief that it is the attitude and values that you take into the classroom with you that will have the greatest impact on whether you can engage your students in reading.

Here is a compendium of ideas and values shared by the wonderful members of my Twitter PLN that you can use to help your students engage in reading:

  • “Set kids free to read”
  • “Recognise everything that they read” – e.g. Science text book, comics, the web
  • “Make sure kids are aware of all the things they read”
  • “Read in front of your students”
  • “Read to your students”
  • “Read the books you love”
  • “Use graphic novels”
  • “Use e-books”
  • “Take them to the library”
  • “Take them to the library regularly”
  • “Talk about books in class”
  • “Get students to review and recommend books”
  • “Drop everything and read”
  • “Make time to read”
  • “Let them read what they want”
  • “Let them sit on the floor and read”
  • “Keep spare books in your room – let the students read/borrow them”
  • “Encourage them to read about what they are interested in”
  • “Show them different ways of picking books”
  • “Say its okay if they don’t want to read today – let them research instead – its a type of reading too!”
  • “Create a culture of reading”
  • “Make sure they can access non-fiction texts”
  • “Encourage students to read aloud”
  • “Encourage them to read in groups”
  • “Don’t forget films!”
  • “Create book displays”
  • “Get authors in school”
  • “Get students to keep reading journals”
  • “For some reading needs to be challenging”
  • “Expose them to a wide variety of texts”
  • “Ask students to buy/download books – ownership helps them value it”
  • “Encourage them to explore reading”
  • “Be enthusiastic”
  • “Don’t be a reading snob”
  • “Any text will do! As long as they are reading”
  • “Read well – make books come to life”

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the #edread discussion.  I’m not going to post on this topic for a while but I will add resources to the main #edread page as they are shared on Twitter.

Remember you can see all of the tweets here and all of the resources that have been shared here.

Image created using Wordle.

#edread or “e-dread”?

edread

Maybe the key to getting a good discussion going on Twitter is picking the right hash tag? Perhaps others are misreading #edread as “e-dread” as Steve Gillott (@stevegillott) so comically put it.  #e-dread could be used as a hash tag to describe a student’s feelings about reading or even some teachers’ feelings about teaching! Whether the hash tag is clear or not, there has been more activity this week with some great ideas and resources shared.

Remember you can read all the tweets here and any and all resources, websites etc that have been shared have been compiled here.  Thanks to everyone that has contributed so far, please keep the tweets coming!

This weeks tweets:

#edread – An Update! (Spring Is In The Air)

blossom

The #edread discussion continues to blossom and has now (through some pro-activity) begun to bear fruit in school.  Not being one to wait for the discussion to have fully formed, I began sharing links and ideas that had been tweeted with my colleagues straight away.  I also shared a reading lesson that I had completed spontaneously the other week (read the blog post about it here).  Three other teacher followed my lead and did a similar lesson with their classes!

The outcome of the e-mails, sharing of links and ideas, and my constant chatter about reading resulted in a meeting between our Learning Research Centre manager (Andrea), a colleague (Jo) who has responsibility within English for Years 7 and 8 and I.  The purpose? To evaluate and improve the KS3 reading program and to look into ideas that can raise the profile of reading amongst KS4 students.

I came away from the meting truly inspired – both by the range of ideas that came out of it but also by the fact that a key component in this discussion had been the resources and ideas that had been shared by my Twitter PLN.  Crowdsourcing really is one of the most effective techniques to aid learning – Twitter simply makes it better by broadening the field.

From the meeting we have agreed to look in to / develop the following ideas:

For the last few years, at KS3, each class has had a weekly reading lesson. This year we introduced “shared reading” however I don’t feel that it was fully thought through.  The main problem being that the books we have to use have been around for some time and are not very appealing to our students.  Solution?  Andrea and Jo are going to research and compile a list of books that we could purchase (probably 6 copies of each) to use in reading lessons.  These are going to be new books, for different ability levels, by authors that are popular amongst 11-14 year olds; including graphic novels, comics, short stories, non-fiction texts and much more.  We agreed that “shared reading” was a good idea but that it would work better if we had more appealing texts and we could break the classes up into a wider range of groups.  I am sure that if we focus on variety and give the students more choice the shared reading experience will be far more effective.

This led on to a discussion about bringing the students into the LRC for their reading lessons.  As I mentioned earlier a few teachers have already followed my lead with this idea.  The English department used to do this regularly but it seems to have stopped happening.  Andrea the LRC manager wants it to become a more regular event (not just for English either).  We agreed that perhaps there should be a rota and that the students could be given a break from their “shared reading” lessons every 4/5 weeks by being brought into the LRC to explore the environment and to read whatever they want for pure pleasure.

As the meeting progressed I raised the idea of students “reviewing and recommending” books.  I suggested that recommendations or new-arrivals could be displayed on the computer screens when students log-in.  We also discussed setting up a LRC Blog so that Andrea could communicate with students and parents about what is happening in the LRC each term.  Students could review and recommend books on it and special events could be promoted.  This could be supported by more traditional methods like a notice board with reviews of books or recommendation slips stuck inside books by students when they return them after reading.

At KS4 Andrea suggested that we look at creating “reading lists” from curriculum areas.  This may work for KS4 students – if they have a passion for a subject they may choose to read more about it.  Wider reading is something that many of my KS5 students struggle with so introducing it at KS4 in an optional capacity may go someway to not only improving reading participation at KS4 but in turn help set expectations over reading at KS5.

We also discussed “Book Swap” which has already begun with Years 7 and 8 but I feel should be a school wide scheme.  I believe that if this is done right it can significantly raise the profile of reading around the school.  I am planning to do a “book-drive” to get teachers, parents and students to donate books to get the “Book Swap” off on the right foot.  I also wish for the “Book Swap” events to be organised by KS4/5 students – this will hopefully generate more interest if it is being promoted by students rather than just teachers.

The final idea that we discussed was “Drop everything and read” – the idea being that the whole school, at a designated time each week, literally drops whatever they are doing and read for 20 minutes.  Now, logistically this is the most challenging idea and the obvious answer (at my school) would be for this to happen during one an extended Tutor period.  However, I think it would have a much bigger profile and a more significant effect if it happened during lesson time.  The kids would be made to sit up and think about reading if in the middle of their Technology lesson they had to down their tools and pick up a book.  I will need to get my Principal on board with this one!  If anyone has any ideas about how I might convince her and the rest of the school to giving this a go please comment, e-mail me or tweet me @jamesmichie.  I think this has huge potential but will take some serious willpower to get it off the ground!

The meeting was really productive and affirmed my decision to put reading at the front of my blogging / Twitter agenda.  Maybe it’s the time of year – it did feel like spring this week and I really feel that the #edread discussion is beginning to take bloom.

Student involvement:

I have also now decided that I do want to get the students involved in the discussion.  I particularly want to hear from KS4 students – those who do read and those who don’t.  I want to understand what reading means and represents to them?  Why some have continued reading for pleasure?  And why other have not?  I am trying to decide between using an open forum on the VLE, using the “choice” module  again on the VLE or using Survey Monkey. I have decided against using Twitter as it would be difficult to get a representative response due to the fact that I have limited control over who is on Twitter and who is not.  I will therefore use a method that all students can access.

The latest #edread tweets:

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the discussion so far.  Remember you can see a full archive of the tweets here and there is a dedicated page here.Image by kittykatfish on Flickr.

#edread – An Update! (1 Week & 3 Days Since The Discussion Began.)

cogsThis week I have learned that keeping a discussion going (even on Twitter) is not always easy, particularly when you are a busy teacher.  I must look into “automated reminders / retweeting” – I use “twitterfeed” to link my blog to Twitter.  There must be a service that could retweet an individual tweet each day to remind people in my PLN to contribute and to catch those people who perhaps missed the tweet the first time.  I tweet a lot so my tweets don’t hang around forever.  On the other hand I don’t want to send so many reminders that my entire PLN turn against me due to my incessant nagging!

I have also learned that there are not that many English teachers in my Twitter PLN.  This is perhaps because I spend a lot of time connecting with people whose primary interest is #edtech – which is my primary interest as well.  I used “wefollow” to find and add some more English teachers to my PLN.

After the great start made last week when I initially posted about the #edread project’s progress I have already shared some of the ideas and resources with my colleagues.  This week will be no different as several people have shared some interesting websites and resources since last Sunday.  Please read through the tweets below and click on the links.

Don’t forget that there is a full archive of #edread tweets here.  And there is a dedicated page here.

I think that I should get students involved in this discussion.  I have used Twitter in the classroom and know that it works.  Should I give them the hash tag and ask them to tweet? What are the implications?  Or should I use a different methodology – in class survey, through our school VLE or Survey Monkey?  Any thoughts or ideas about this would be  welcomed.  I believe that they are the most important voice in this discussion so they should be included!

Tweets since my last update:

I hope that if you are reading this you are finding it useful?  If you have not contributed yet please join the discussion and share your ideas via Twitter using the hash tag #edread.

Image courtesy of Jim Sneddon on Flickr.

 

What I Did With My Year 8s Yesterday…

love to read

…below is an e-mail I sent to the rest of the English department yesterday.  Having started #edread a little over a week ago and being a little tired after BBC School Report the day before I arrived in school on Friday morning caught between wanting to engage with my Year 8 class (my only KS3 lesson of the week) but also uninspired by the thought of either a grammar lesson or making them sit at desks and read within the confines of my classroom.

Instead of allowing either of these scenarios to be the start to my Year 8s’ Friday or mine for that matter I took them to the Learning Resource Centre (LRC) for their lesson – this is the grand title that is given to our school library.  I wanted to go and make use of it, I wanted to free them of the classroom and I wanted to focus them on reading for pleasure rather than reading the book they had been assigned.

Several of my colleagues replied to the e-mail offering positive feedback and saying that they were going to do something similar.  On reading through those comments this morning as I caught up with e-mail it dawned on me that here-in lied a blog post.  So here is the e-mail that I sent yesterday:

What I did with my Year 8s today…

…being up to date with Grammar lessons and my students being well on track with their class readers I did something different today.  When I taught a lot of KS3 I would regularly take my students to the LRC. So, that is what I did.

I talked to them about the fact that I had concerns about the amount of words my top set knew and understood and that I felt it was because 1. Some of them don’t read and 2. Some of them read the same thing all of the time – level of ability or genre.

I challenged my Y8 class to go out into the LRC and find something to read that they would not normally pick up and gave them 20 minutes to read.  I let them sit wherever and however they wanted – leaning against the book case, on the floor, in a comfy chair or at the table as I explained that I don’t sit and read at a desk but sit on my couch or read when I go to bed.  They were wonderful – absolutely silent as they read.  I think Emma (a cover supervisor & ex-student) who was in covering for Andrea (our wonderful LRC Manager) was in shock when she saw how perfectly they read and behaved!

I then did a short activity with them to get them thinking about what they had read – I asked them to answer openly and honestly the following questions:

  1. What is the name of the book you read?
  2. What genre is it – if you can’t put one word on it just describe it.
  3. Why would you not have normally picked up that sort of book?
  4. Did you / Did you not enjoy it?  Why?
  5. Even if you didn’t enjoy who would you recommend this book to – is there anyone in the class who you think would enjoy it.

I finished the lesson discussing “what” and “how” they read with them and challenged them to read one new text a week – be it a paragraph or two from a newspaper; to watch a documentary instead of EastEnders; to download a book to their iPod touch or iPhone – whatever works for them but to think about reading and to do it to enjoy it.

Just thought I would pass this on.  The LRC is a wonderful resource and space and we should (I feel) make more use of it.

Any thoughts, comments or ideas please pass them on.

Regards

James.

Image courtesy of Carlos Porto on Flickr.