Inquiry Post #5- My Discovery/Exploration

Inquiry Post #5- My Discovery/Exploration

What are your key takeaways, learning and direction after all this exploration? What are the new avenues for development in your personal and professional practice? What are you going to take with you, moving forward from your own explorations and also from the explorations of others in this class?

Module 1- A Reading Environment

In module 1, I discussed the reading culture of my school and discovered that my school has a high English Language Learners (ELL) population, with little parental support. One of my key takeaways from this module was that if we wanted to increase parental support we needed to do so by attaching literacy with important school events. So, moving forward, we will continue to host literacy night, and Scholastic Book Fair with parent teacher interviews. There were many things that worked for me, that I would like to continue to implement. For instance, having my own classroom library, allowing for pre-reading of books to build student confidence, reading for leisure when free time permits, and creating separate reading spaces.

New avenues to take based on my research and to support my professional development in regard to creating a reading culture are the following.

·      Build a Classroom Library- Although I have one started my students have read most books, and I need to be more mindful of the selection of books for my ELL students (Whitehead, 2016).

·      Student Choice- The Fountas & Pinnell reading program we use has little student choice, I need to find a few books of the same reading level to provide student choice (Whitehead, 2016).

·      Read Aloud- Read classic fairy tales to develop vocab and cultural literacy (Whitehead, 2016).

·      Make literacy fun, and believe in the power of literacy (Whitehead, 2016).

·      As stated by the National Library of New Zealand, provide Principal’s book talks or reviews. I would also like to start sharing my own experience of reading, and having a summer reading program ready (n.d).

·      Have front entrance and corridor displays to promote literacy events, public library and new books (National Library of New Zealand, n.d).

·      Use assemblies to promote events and school library (National Library of New Zealand, n.d).

·      Incorporate technology through Biblionasium: explore books, take part in reading challenge, create reading log, and write book reviews (FTed Tech, n.d).

·      Include reading in schedule such as 15 minuets 3 times a week (National Library of New Zealand, n.d).

Module 2- Life Long Learners

In module 2, I discussed my professional development as a new Learning Support Teacher (LST). I have been learning about my role via professional workshops, district support (helping teachers), additional courses (level B class), and collaboration with other LST members. By interacting with other professionals, I learned that educators were sharing their learning via twitter, websites such as Pinterest, Facebook groups, and participatory professional development workshops. The workshops were effective and useful because it provided professionals a platform to get together and share what they had been working on (Hamilton, 2011). These workshops would discuss the challenges and outcomes of their projects and generate talk on the impact of student learning, provide tips for adapting projects, and ideas for future collaborative learning (Hamilton, 2011).

My future aspirations include the following.

·      I have created a twitter account, but would like to become a more active member, in regard to both twitting more, and exploring other’s tweets.

·      I would like to take part in a participatory professional development workshop.

·      I have been focusing on my role as an LST teacher, but I am near the end of my teacher librarianship diploma so I would like to engage in more workshops for that.

Module 3- Developing Professionals

As teacher librarians(TL) we understand the curriculum, and the needs and interest of the community (teachers, parents, students, admin). One way to share learning with other educators therefore is via curation of resources. Teacher librarians can act as the filters that make sense of the vast amount of information being produced (Valenza, 2012). As curators we have the opportunity to share valuable information, facilitate the discovery of the web content, promote print materials, and lastly, create strategies for building a reading culture (Valenza, 2012). Additionally, to support teachers, as the TL we have the ability to create text sets which is a collection of texts, both print and digital, grouped around a common element (Donham, 2013). The resources would provide multiple perspectives on an issue and unify a large idea that teachers wish to explore (Donham, 2013). My major take away in this was the discovery of text sets, and the understanding of how to create one.

For my own professional development, I would like to attempt to create a text set using the criterial provided by Donham. The criteria being, resources are qualitative, quantitative, and reader/text match.

Module 4- Libraries & Developing Countries

In this module I learned about Room to Read, and some of the great work that they do. I was impressed by their website and the number of projects they have undertaken. This non-profit organization has built bilingual libraries, schools, and computer labs in countries such as, India, Nepal, South Africa and Sri Lanka (Bernard, 2008). With this leadership under way other schools have followed suit and also started their own fundraising efforts, such as the Students Helping Students project. I was inspired by this organization, but one of my main take away was in regard to bilingual reading material. Room to Read to support books in their own mother tongue developed their own set of language books (Room to Read, n.d). They have developed 92 books in 13 languages (Room to Read, n.d). This was a major realization as it made me think about my students and their mother tongue. I have no books, but those in English, and so my goal for future professional development is to diversify my library with books of different mother tongues and also in regard to different cultures.

If you could pick just one topic from Phase 2 that resonated with you, which is it and why?

I have always wanted to go to a developing country and teach. The whole reason I became a teacher was because I wanted to make a difference in children’s lives, and help them to understand their own potential. Working in the Canadian education system, I sometimes feel as though we are so blessed to have such amazing teachers. Then I think, how unfair it is in other countries that some children are not afforded the same opportunity to go to school for one reason or another. Hearing about organizations like Room to Read, has reinstalled this desire to go abroad, volunteer my time, and teach just for the sake of teaching. I wish to further research about such organizations, so that one day I can go and fulfill my goal to educate in a 3^rd world country to the underprivileged population.

I learned and took away from Jennifer Anderson's post on Books with No Bounds. This seemed more local as it was based in Ontario and also is an organization I wish to further study. I also enjoyed reading about the Reconciliation Committee they have at her school, and wish to bring it up to my school.

Work Cited

Bernard, S. (2008, January 11). Room to Read: Building Libraries, Schools, and Computer Labs in Developing Countries. Retrieved February 21, 2019, from https://www.edutopia.org/global-education-libraries-developing-countries

Donham, J. (2013). Text sets, deep learning, and the Common Core. School Library Monthly 29(6): 5-7.

FTEd Tech (n.d). Digital Tools to Help Build a Culture of Readers. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from http://ftisedtech.blogspot.com/2018/08/digital-tools-to-help-build-culture-of.html.

Hamilton, B. J. (2011a). Creating conversations for learning: School libraries as sites of participatory culture. School Library Monthly 27(8): 41-43.

National Library of New Zealand. (n.d.). A school-wide reading culture. Retrieved January 30, 2019, from https://natlib.govt.nz/schools/reading-engagement/understanding-reading-engagement/a-school-wide-reading-culture.

Room to Read. (n.d.). Literacy Program. Retrieved February 23, 2019, from https://www.roomtoread.org/impact-reach/toward-systemic-change/literacy-program/?tab=how we work

Valenza, J. (2012). Curation. School Library Monthly. 29(1): 20-23

Whitehead, C. (2016, August 09). 10 Ways to Foster a Reading Culture in Your School. Retrieved January 31, 2019, from http://tnclassroomchronicles.org/10-ways-foster-reading-culture-school/.