Update 1 – January

Within professional dialogue/ staff meetings it has become apparent within my setting, practitioners have very different attitudes towards reading in school. Currently there are no opportunities for all the children to read together as a class i.e. a class novel or ERIC time and there are rarely opportunities for children to read together as a reading group due to variety of levels and children from different schools being on different reading schemes, etc. My thinking was towards developing some kind of intervention or developing my reading area/base library. However my base is currently closed and it looks doubtful that it will reopen before Easter. Instead I am hoping to focus instead on exploring my colleagues’ reading attitudes with a view to developing the reading area further during next session. By interviewing colleagues I may be able to explore why we haven’t previously implemented improvements to reading area or implemented story time (at an appropriate level) and this will in turn inform future improvement. As colleagues range in experience (several are secondary based originally and several are primary based) I think there is scope for exploring whether qualifications/experiences will make a different to a teacher’s enthusiasm for promoting reading.

I had been able to chat with Stephanie about this and think I know where I am going next.

10 thoughts on “Update 1 – January”

  1. Hello Heather – I hope that you are well. You have it sorted! This looks like a great idea investigating previous interventions or lack of. Have you thought how you might gather this information?

    Take care
    LA

    1. I have been doing a bit of reading surrounding research methods and have half settled in doing a semi-structured interview where I can lead the interview but also respond to the answer given. I think that will be a rich source of information.

      I am aware that this is creating extra work for me (and colleagues) but I think with reading attainment featuring on our SIP that this is justified.

  2. This sounds like a great starting point under the current circumstances, Heather, and I’m glad you got to talk it through at the Forth Valley recall session. Since you work with pupils from different schools, it sounds as if a cohesive approach to reading (and perhaps reading for enjoyment in particular?) will be incredibly worthwhile to explore. I look forward to following how it goes!

    1. Thanks Emma. I’m considering what questions I would like to ask exactly and how long I should aim for my interviews to last and indeed how many people I should aim to speak to. Obviously I will be limited as part of a very small team.

  3. All of this sounds good Heather. It will be interesting to see whether or not prior experience has an impact on how teachers promote reading. Looking forward to seeing your findings.

    1. That was exactly what I was thinking. There is a really interesting mix of experiences within my team – one has spent a lot of her career within a learning centre and several are secondary trained so I think that will have a big impact on what they might use in their practice.

  4. Hello Heather, I hope that you are well and managing to find some time for yourself. How is your thinking around your enquiry at the moment? On return to school do you feel that you are happy to continue with your new focus? If I can be of any help please let me know.

    LA

    1. Yes things are ticking away nicely for me. Time for myself, haha not really. I was at the training from Barnardos on Wednesday night and quite a few people got to meet my children via the laptop camera. Not much to be done though at the moment 🤷‍♀️.

  5. Well done for managing to redirect your enquiry Heather. I am also focusing on reading engagement but am lucky that I have been able to follow this through using Teams. I will be glad to get back to school next week to see properly whether the active reading activities that I have been setting have increased engagement or not. Good luck with the next stage of your enquiry!

    1. Thanks Kirsty. I’m really looking forward to reaching out to colleagues and getting their thoughts and strategies. Think it will make all of us think a bit more about what we are doing and why which is of course incredibly important especially when considering reading which I feel is a gateway to learning.

      I’m looking forward to seeing what you end up with too.

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