In Week 4 of Term 2, we asked teachers to complete a Reading Audit. They needed to record strategies they were currently using when reading to children, with children and by children. Also documented was when and how often they spent using these approaches with their students. Teachers were also asked to video themselves interviewing a student in their class about their attitudes towards reading, how they select books, strategies they use when they come to an unknown word or when they don’t understand what they have read, etc.These audits and interviews provided us with a “snapshot” of reading across the school and helped us to identify where the “gaps” in our learning were. This data will also be used to document the journey travelled with whole school change in reading and, hopefully, show us the deeper learning that will take place over the next 2-3 years.

At one of our staff meetings mid Term 2, we walked around to different classes that had started Classroom Libraries and the teachers of those classes talked about getting set up, choosing and sorting books into different genres, what was going well, issues arising, etc. This was a positive, motivating time as it helped those who had started their libraries to communicate their reflections of their journey and gain ideas from other teachers on ways of overcoming problems or  improving classroom practice. For example, two of our Year 4/5 teachers were talking about classifying genres and how, from this process, they noticed that the majority of students did not necessarily understand differences between science fiction and fantasy as well as mystery and adventure. This opened up discussion about how to explicitly teach and reinforce features of particular genres through questioning.

This sharing session also inspired those teachers who hadn’t started their Classroom Libraries to begin as soon as possible!