Results are in...

So what effect did teaching reading through multimodal texts have? Check it out:

My biggest wondering is: how much did using multimodal texts actually influence the data? 

I used a multi-pronged strategy which included building relationships at home, increasing 1:1 reading time through TA and parent help, using our school librarian to 'advertise' books to the learners, regularly visiting the school library, using the pizza challenge competition to increase home reading, having the children create multimodal responses to texts in meaningful ways, as well as crafting specific lessons using multimodal texts aimed to maximise engagement and extended discussion.

I am left wondering how much of an influence multimodal texts had, amongst all this! I suspect it had a big influence in engaging the learners and helping them make connections and use specific strategies for inferencing and supporting their ideas.

Another wondering I have is how could I have pushed those learners who were below standard to achieve at standard? Despite all the methods used above, 2 learners stayed below standard (although they did make 12 months progress) and one learner is still well below standard. These children all have processing difficulties. How might I have tailored the learning to get greater shift here?

Overall, I am pleased with the journey the learners and I have taken. It is gratifying to see reading progress being made, and even more so to see these learners now wanting to read for pleasure,  knowing what books spin their wheels and being intrinsically motivated to read more. Ka mau te wehi!

Creating a multimodal lesson to enable making connections

This week I am trying to push these learners further into making meaning. 

My recent gap analysis of my focus group learners showed we need to work on comparing and connecting. I did this using Schooltalk.

I have crafted a workshop using 4 different texts, one of which is a chapter book. Children will explain the connections they make using the digital tool Coggle.

Next Steps: Inspiration from the Manaiakalani CoL

One of my colleagues in Manaiakalani is Angela Moala, a Year 4 teacher at Point England School. She is putting together a multimodal text database as part of her MIT-Spark Innovation, and this is a tremendously valuable resource for multimodal texts. The link to the doc is accessible to Manaiakalani CoL and outreach schools.

As we are doing similar inquiries, it has been great to compare Angela's journey with mine. Reflecting on this, a next step for me is to make sure I systematically include tension/challenge texts and student selected texts as part of the children's reading journey in the lesson progression.

Graphic courtesy of Dr. Rebecca Jesson, Auckland University.

Science a Winner

For the last 2 weeks, I have been taking a different tack, using shorter texts which interlink. The strong science component has really hooked the boys in as there is a chance to do practical work as well. 
We have been making connections across texts, and discussing different text types.

Lesson example: making connections across texts.

This has proved for some rich discussion paired with the multimodal media. Overall, the boys enjoyed this more than the longer chapter book we used (even though that was about pirates and rats!).

Multi modal texts - lesson example

This term we have been delving deeper using multimodal texts by doing lessons like this. It involves reading a text, watching a short video and navigating a webpage. 

Alongside this is teaching deeper concepts, such as this one about making connections. It is a lot of content to get through for the group of learners I am teaching, especially due to their need to be refocussed often in the lesson. 

Last week we thought about skimming and scanning and it was great to see the learners using this strategy in their latest reading test to answer comprehension questions. My hope is that they can remember these strategies throughout the year and beyond in order to make them better readers.