Column 4 of the table above shows the academic progress in years that each child has made per year - on average. - (assuming an initial age of 5yrs upon starting school) Some of the children had been at school 2 years and others 3 years.
The final column shows the shift in 2019 compared to previous years.
Student 2
This child started year 3 with an instructional reading age of 5.9years. He had spent 2 years at school and had made roughly 11months of reading progress in that time - or 5.5months per year.
In 2019, this student made remarkable progress, and by November was reading at an instructional age of 10.5yrs. That is nearly 5years of progress or 10x the progress of the previous 2 years.
Student 6
Student 6 maintained the same level of progress as he had in his previous 2 years at school - roughly 4months of progress per year. During 2019 it has become clear that he has a literacy processing issue. This will endeavour to be addressed further in 2020.
Students 14 and 16
These two boys were in their second year of being in my literacy class. 2018 had not been too successful for these boys as I had failed to discover what they needed to progress.
Student 14 has been identified as high learning needs in 2019. He made twice the progress in 2019 that he was able to make in his previous 3 years at school -including 2018 in my class. The changes that I made to our reading program have really helped this boy connect further with letter sounds, blends and retention of sight words.
Student 16 has been identified as high learning needs in 2019. He has learnt to read this year. The changes that I made to his program - and the other boys at Levels 1-3 have made a huge difference to their decoding ability and overall number of sight words.
Not all of my class has been tested, but I am pleased with the overall results of the running records. Not every child has quite made the goal that I set for them at the start of the year, but nearly every student has made pleasing progress with regards to their own development.
The changes that I made to my reading program involved redesigning all of my follow up activities for every text that we read. Every child reading green or below read everyday - 4 texts per week. Each week we focused on sight words in the text in follow ups and in spelling and handwriting. I incorporated the decoding prompts of Gwenneth Phillips as well as phonics from Agility with Sound. Intensive group guided lessons coupled with follow up activities focused on words, word patterns and spelling conventions - have meant that the boys are more aware of the need to and have the confidence to self correct, have more sight words and a wider and stronger set of decoding skills.
None of this is rocket science or anything new, for me it was the deliberate choice of knowing that I had to give my all to help these boys have success and to see themselves as readers.
The year 3s I have continuing into year 4 for 2020 will continue to build on what we have achieved in 2019 and I have secretly high hopes for their ongoing success.
