So, it has been a semi successful, busy and challenging term for me. After doing running records and writing reports, I am happy with how most of the class are tracking. There are definitely still some challenges and gaps for me to address in the second half of this year however. As a point of comparison to term 1, I have looked through the task completion and blogging efforts of my priority learners in Term 2:
I am not yet getting that higher level thinking that I am hoping for in their independent tasks. More concerningly however, I seem to have children who have not uploaded or blogged the majority of their work from the term? This could be mistakes in their filing but perhaps also regular absences on Fridays when we focus on completing our work properly. I feel like task completion on the whole has improved but it is not translating into saved work in their Drives and quality is yet to follow suit. I think having my Reading class not be comprised entirely of my home class is playing a part. I am unable to invest the time into finishing their tasks off at the end of the week that I give to my own class, and their home teacher is less aware of the expectations I have on them. If I spend more of my teaching time on this however, I quickly run out of teaching time to spend on my six reading groups. It's a hard balance to strike.
From my Running Record assessments, comprehension seems to be very hit and miss with most of my priority learners. I think there is a lot to be said for the context of the book they are reading and how familiar they already are with the vocabulary and prior knowledge understanding required for the text. There is also very much a reluctance to talk and discuss the text from some, as well as some surprising knowledge gaps - such as reading to the end of a sentence, using punctuation appropriately.
My big idea of assessing vocabulary output in their independent tasks has fallen short. The final week of term seems to have greatly reduced attendance - especially come the end of the week, so I think next term, instead of assessing the children in weeks 5 and 10, I'll try weeks 4 and 9. Attendance in general has been challenging for me. In a term of regular illnesses, it's not only the significant absences from school of the children in my class but my own absences while looking after my young family that are affecting my ability to see through my best laid plans. Here's hoping next term is kinder!
