Sunday 22 May 2016


Week 3 -  Reading Goals

IALT: develop my reading comprehension skills

Recently I took an asTTle reading test. I read a number of texts and answered a range of questions to check my understanding and comprehension. The aim is to take a test at a level where I will make some errors so that I can identify what I need to work on to be a more successful reader.

I have looked at the results of my test and identified 3 goals for this term.

My reading goals are:

[1] Consistently read to understand the meaning of a text
[2] Make a conclusion or an assumption
[3] Know what different words mean

# 1 and 2 are about understanding the text, especially by thinking about the text more ‘deeply’.

# 3 is about developing my vocabulary and being able to use the information around a difficult word to make sense of it.

You can help me with [1] and [2] by asking me about the book I am reading at home;
  • about the characters, setting, plot and resolution (fiction)
  • Get me to explain why I believe the characters have acted in certain ways and how this influences the plot and outcome of the story
  • Ask me to make a conclusion about different aspects of the story and encourage me to make assumptions about characters, events, moods and what might have happened in the text if the character [s] acted, behaved, made different choices.

You can help me with [3] by;

  • encouraging me to explain in my own words what I think a word means
  • helping me to identify parts of a word that might help explain its meaning (e.g., in submarine the ‘sub’ means under so that will help with making an educated guess about the meaning of the word
  • encourage me to come up with words that have a similar meaning, or look in a thesaurus for words with similar (synonyms) and opposite meanings (antonyms).
WHAT?
This week I am reflecting on one of my writing goals

IALT: Improve my writing by learning how to:

* use a variety of sentence starters

This week I have been focusing on how to write a drop-in clause

SO WHAT?
Here is an example of a drop-in clause

Mr Forman is our teacher.
He loves his red car.
Mr Forman, who is our teacher, loves his red car.

Mr Forman is the subject of the sentence.
We change ‘He’ to ‘who’
We place commas around the clause we ‘drop-in’

MY EXAMPLES:
Here are two examples of a drop-in clause that I have created.
[1] Maxim, who likes to play soccer, is awesome.
[2] The dinosaur , who was singing Barbie Girl , was chasing the boy.

NOW WHAT?
I rate my understanding level at 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
My confidence level with using these types of sentences independently in my writing is
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Monday 9 May 2016

   My writing goals for term 2

IALT: Improve my writing by learning how to ;

* organise my writing into paragraphs 
*use a variety of sentence starters  
*use the correct language feathers of a narrative dialogue 

Use a variety of sentence starters 
To help me with this goal I am using a 'Sentence Starter Menu '