Community of Practice: Teaching Reading

Dear Parent/Guardian,

We are conducting an investigation at the school into how our students develop their reading, as part of a year-long professional learning program being conducted by the Victorian Association of Teachers of English (VATE), with the support of the Department of Education and Training (DET). A team of teachers of Years 7, 8 are involved in the project.

Your child is in one of the classes involved in the project, and we are seeking your permission for your child to participate in the focus group discussions.

The project, called a Community of Practice: Teaching Reading, aims to deepen Communicate and Relate teachers’ understandings of teaching practices that enhance students’ reading through action research in the classroom. Schools from across the state were invited to apply to be involved in the Community of Practice, and teacher teams from ten Victorian schools were chosen, including Beaumaris College. Teachers involved in the Community of Practice will conduct an inquiry in the context of their own classrooms; engage in face-to-face professional learning meetings during 2019 and share their new learning with others. Each team will be allocated a Critical Friend who will support the development of each project and be involved in the collection of data. The Critical friend that we will be working with is David Lee.

Small groups of students in a number of Communicate and Relate classes in Years 7 and 8 will be involved in focus group discussions with David, to determine their views and understandings about the reading process. Each discussion will take about 30 minutes and will be scheduled during the school day. We believe the discussions will be useful for students to help them become more aware of their own processes of reading. It will also help the school to identify difficulties students more generally experience in reading and for Communicate and Relate teachers to best support all students in their development as active, engaged readers. The findings will be shared with our Communicate and Relate teachers and with teachers in other schools through the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English. Records will not be available to general staff unless in specific incidences the student gives permission for their needs to be communicated either to parents or teachers.

All records of focus group discussions, student work and results will protect the anonymity of students. Students’ names will not be included in any publication of the findings of our investigation.

If you have any objection to your child’s participation in a focus group discussion with David, please contact me by Friday, May 3rd, 2019.

Yours sincerely,

Deb Kirk