A Look at Learning

What a fantastic effort this week with our ZOOM check ins and online work!  It is great to see you all each morning and your Book Week costumes were incredible!

Reading remains our focus this term. The school has available a number of platforms to engage students in their reading whilst at home learning. 

PM eCollection is available to all students and contains levelled PM Readers online.

We have SORA, an online library, with a wide range of books that students can borrow, and Sunshine Online for our K-2 students.

Creating Balanced Readers

Here are a few more tips to help students practise and consolidate their reading:

• Look at the cover and, reading the title and discussing the type of text and its form, for example a letter, or journal…
• Having a go at self-correcting a word or sentence.
• Reading sentences with fluency - like when we talk, pausing at full stops and commas and using other punctuation.
• Breaking down words into syllables to help say them.
• Breaking down longer sentences by finding the conjunctions to help understand each part.
• Checking the story makes sense as they read.
• Reading any maps, charts, timelines, photographs, illustrations, the contents page, captions, labels, diagrams, index and glossary to help make sense of the text.
• Summing up the main ideas of the text.
• Using clues from the story or information to help understand any ‘hidden’ meaning.
• Taking time to read the whole book.
• Talk about the author's point of view or how they have written the text.
• Give an opinion about the characters, topic or whole text.

What is self-correcting? When a reader notices their error as they are reading a text and corrects themselves. 

What is hidden meaning? Hidden meaning is when the reader finds alternative meanings of specific words or parts of the text. Readers find hidden meanings by combining ideas from different parts of the text or using visual information to help make sense of the text.

What is a conjunction? Conjunctions are words that join words, phrases or clauses together for example: and, but, or, so. Sometimes these are placed at the beginning of a sentence for example: when, because, whilst. 

What is Punctuation? Punctuation is used to make meaning clearer by breaking sentences into logical parts and to show expression and speech. These include: commas, full stops, capital letters, speech marks, exclamation marks.

What is OPINION? Opinion is a personal comment or thoughts to evaluate the events from the text.

What is POINT OF VIEW? Point of view is the viewpoint of an author, audience or characters in a text.