Mid Year Reflection

My Vosaic report gave me some solid insights into my small group reading instruction. It highlighted my strengths in creating a supportive and engaging space for comprehension, which is something I work hard at. It also clearly pointed out where I can improve my explicit instruction, especially when it comes to helping my students make meaning from text in a more structured way.

I can see from the report that I have strengths in leading discussions about the content of a story. My next big step is to make the strategies for understanding that content much more visible for the students. This is where BSLA and its focus on structured teaching comes in.

The report shows me that while I am asking good follow-up questions, I need to challenge myself to make them even deeper. I am aiming for more inferential thinking from my students so this will be my next step.

Manaiakalani Cluster Teacher Only Day - Hanga | Create

The creation process requires students to actively manipulate information rather than passively receive it. This involves:

• Decomposing complex ideas into component parts

• Reorganising information in new ways

• Making explicit decisions about what to include or exclude

• Testing their understanding by attempting to explain or represent it

Today we were set the challenge to create and share using 21st Century skills and to think what current and future technologies we might utilise to empower our students creativity.

2025 Inquiry

As a school we began the year with new learning using the structured Maths approach. We would be using the Numicon resource and programme with our Year 1s to 3s. This was our team intended inquiry but beginning our teaching using the Numicon resource was delayed due to a delay in receiving our equipment and we felt we needed time to get to know the new resource.

As a team we decided to look at the comprehension aspect of our literacy programme, using the BSLA teaching tool with our classes as we were all trained the previous year.

BSLA provides a clear scope and sequence for teaching phonological awareness, phonics and high frequency words. We follow and use this systematically with our small groups to ensure a strong foundation. As part of this programme we also have a strong "reading to" programme. Reading aloud to akonga and engaging in rich and complex texts builds vocabulary and listening comprehension which is the precursor to reading comprehension.

However we felt that while there is a strong focus on the decoding of texts with the Phonics Plus texts that once the students move on to the Ready to Read texts there would be quite a shift in terms of story and theme and perhaps the children would not have the skills required for these texts.  

Talking to my team, we felt that while we would be limited by time constraints, that incorporating a more intentional comprehension focus to our small reading group sessions would be the goal for our inquiry. 

The groups of children I have decided to focus on have good sound to letter knowledge and are able to blend simple 2 and three letter words. They do however lack fluency and spend a lot of time decoding words. This means that they are working just below where they should be on the BSLA programme. 

I will be recording the discussion part of my reading lesson using Vosaic. I will have a focus on comprehension and be reflecting on the effectiveness of my questioning, observing my interactions with my students as they answer literal and inferential comprehension questions about a text.