RPI 7: Agenda - Thinking (7-10) (Cohort 3, 2024)

Our RPI took an in depth look at ‘thinking’ today. I took away lots from the discussion of introducing higher order thinking, realising the importance of learners accessing deeper meanings in the texts we read. Creating opportunities for building learners' awareness of thinking - to go beyond the surface level and delve into the meanings or themes the author may be conveying. Therefore, interpreting the text on a deeper level for the learner. I had myself thinking about the opportunities I am offering currently to learners and how I can use the resources and specific mahi templates to create and or introduce to learners about this higher order thinking. The table below highlights how we can move away from the literal level, and into the other levels. The 'thinking' that is involved around these levels above, interpretative meaning they need to recognise when to read between the lines and work out the meaning. Where the evaluative stage takes this thinking even further and possibly connects them to their background knowledge to make certain judgements about the intended meanings. These are the main points I have taken away from this RPI session and am now excited to try a few different ways of implementing with learners.

RPI 4: Guided Reading (and Comprehension) (Cohort 4)

 Today I had the pleasure of meeting with Kiri Kirkpatrick, who took me through a catch up of this RPI day 4 as I was not able to make it. It was a treat to have just us two working through this as I got to really have deep and meaningful conversations with Kiri on my own. I feel like each time we meet for RPI its my favourite lesson, and this class was no different! The steps below gave me a clear guideline to work with when thinking about the guided reading process. We also discussed two processes and I found that I utilise both of these approaches in our programme, focussing on the authors purpose and focussing on the teaching purpose, there are times when the can be both used. 

The section and talk about comprehension was very valuable to me as I feel this can sometimes be difficult for me, so the teaching points about comprehension gave me some good ideas and made me realise it doesn't have to be difficult just meaningful. Another gem I took away was the way we observe learners to support fluent, phrased and expressive reading - how can we help them? I found the fluency scale helpful for this and will be something I utilise in my classroom. Very grateful to Kiri and Naomi for coming through to run this session for me.