What we did:

Over the last few months, Ms. Schwartz and Ms. Anderson surveyed students through walking interviews during recess and lunch time. We asked students the same four questions:

• What are you learning about reading?
• Why is what you are learning important?
• What is next for your learning?
• How do you know?

Many students were eager to share what they were learning about with their reading:

“Owls…how to find information about owls.” (Grade 1 student)

“Making connections…like you read about something in a book and it reminds you of something else in another book or something that happened in your life.” (Grade 2 student)

“A reading log and a novel study. We record our thinking about the novel in our reading log.” (Grade 4 student)

Some students were able to explain why their learning was important.

“To learn about reading and strategies of reading… like predicting so you can think about what will happen next.” (Grade 4 student)

“Helps us read and learn more vocabulary.” (Grade 4 student)

“It’s important to get to know other people and learn about their lives and experiences [response to why literature circles are important].” (Grade 7 student)

Students had a little more difficulty to describe what was next for their learning and how they knew. This shows us this is an area of opportunity for us.

“Read longer books because I read shorter books now and I want to read longer books.” (Grade 7 student)

“Making sentences with periods and other punctuation because I didn’t learn that before.” (Grade 2 student)

“Reading books by myself.” (Grade 1 student)

“Spelling because I don’t know how to do that yet!” (Grade 2)

“Doing more novel studies so I can read more.” (Grade 4 student)

Next steps:

• We hope to connect students more deeply to the why behind what we do at school. Students were able to share responses as to why what they were learning was important, but we hope to connect student learning more closely to the Big Ideas in the curriculum. Our next steps are to share some of data of student responses with staff at our next staff meeting and ask for ideas of how they make learning intentions and the Big Ideas more explicit.
• It was difficult for students to explain how they knew what was next for their learning. We plan to support opportunities for staff to provide descriptive feedback to students so they have a more specific understanding of what is next for their learning.