“I like how Daniel was nice in the end.”
Matthew, age 8
“I love this book.”
Tanya, age 7
“I’ve never read such a fantastic book how enemies became friends.”
Anne, age 8
“It is funny. It has nice adjectives, and it is my religion and I love the story. It is the best.”
Hasad, age 8
“…this story inspires me to do better things for people.”
Abdul, age 9
Student reviews on Zanib Mian’s funny and thought-provoking story Planet Omar: Accidental Trouble Magnet. Names have been changed to protect student privacy.
I’ve been a classroom teacher since 2001. 2022 was my first opportunity to teach specialist lessons in the library, so I had a great deal to reflect upon. Instead of teaching the same 25 children all day, every day, I was teaching 250 children (aged 5 – 11) across three days, in half-hour blocks. I discovered that I love it. We are a small school, so I can still build relationships with every child I teach. This matters to me: it’s the ultimate reason why I love my job.
“Our children do not care how much we as educators know, until they know how much we care!” (p7 2021 Boland, et al.)
I also love that I get to repeat the same lesson more than once, refining and differentiating each time to suit the age group. Most importantly, I get to teach my favourite subject area, all day!
I found when I was teaching reading comprehension, the deepest reflections occurred around how I was going to differentiate across the wide age range and ability levels. I tend to make too much work for myself – my principal warned me early in the year that I would burn out if I continued with the detailed planning and tracking of individual student data that I had begun the year with.
By mid-year, when it was established that I would focus solely on reading comprehension, I had cut back on my planning significantly. I created a multi-age program for P-1, and a multi-age program for Years 2-4, then a sketchy program for Years 5-6 (since I only saw this smallest group for a total of 20 mins per week). Most of my efforts were focused on the P-4s. The programming was simple: I was to read aloud from a novel each week, explicitly teach reading comprehension strategies, and create opportunities for students to apply those strategies. I read Dragon Masters by Tracey West in term 3, then Planet Omar by Zanib Mian in term 4.
Sheena Cameron’s book “Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies” (2022) was the backbone of my program, and I chose to continue using this single resource for the entire six months. As outlined in Sheena Cameron’s website, the book is divided into one strategy per chapter. In every chapter there is:
- A research quote
- An explanation of the strategy
- How the strategy supports comprehension
- The language we use when using a strategy
- Guided and independent student activities that support the strategy
- Support materials, including strategy starter posters, photocopiable masters, student checklists, bookmarks and certificates.
Using this resource, I was able to plan weekly lessons that were engaging and relevant. I displayed the posters on our learning wall as the unit progressed, and the certificates to celebrate my ‘literacy stars’ each week. The photocopiable masters weren’t always directly used, I often took the ideas and created my own variations of them (250 photocopies every week was not sustainable on our school budget). Post-it notes and mini-whiteboards were popular choices. Occasionally I used the photocopiable masters because many of Sheena Cameron’s ideas make wonderful displays, and the children were always excited to come into the library and see their work on display for the whole school to see.
My take-aways from this experience?
- Planning does not have to be over-complicated, you just need to find the right, quality resource. In this case, Sheena Cameron’s book “Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies” ticked all the boxes for me.
- Preps require an entirely different program. Instead of reading a novel, preps enjoyed a picture book read aloud each week with Early Language & Literacy learning activities.
- Year ones and twos needed adjustments to the program but were still able to comprehend the same novel as the 3-4s. One particular class astounded me with their level of comprehension and higher-order thinking (credit due to their teacher and the oral language occurring in their classroom).
- The novel choice can be the make-or-break of a successful program. It MUST be relatable and entertaining.
At the end of the year, I invited students to give a star-rating and a written review to share on our school’s online library catalogue. When you have every single student, including the most challenging students, jumping eagerly on to the library catalogue to write about their favourite parts of the book, and you have students telling you that the book inspires them to “do better things for people” … you know you must have done something right!
Boland, S., Schiefelbein, T., Noel, K., Baggs, N. (2021) With Challenges Come Growth. Practical Literacy: The Early and Primary Years, 26(2), 6-8
Cameron, S. (2022) Teaching Reading Comprehension 2nd ed. Pearson
Mian, Z. (2019) Planet Omar: Accidental Trouble Magnet. Hodder Children’s Books
West, T. (2014) Dragon Masters: Rise of the Earth Dragon. Scholastic Inc.
From the TL's Desk 