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Reading for enjoyment - Learning with Jill Eggleton and Heather Haylock

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Reading for enjoyment - Learning with Jill Eggleton and Heather Haylock

Attending professional development with Jill Eggleton and Heather Haylock,  renowned experts in literacy education, can indeed be transformative for educators, especially in New Zealand. Here are some reasons why you might feel inspired to teach literacy after such an experience:

Deepened Understanding of Literacy Development: 
  • provide insights into the stages of literacy development, including phonemic awareness, vocabulary acquisition, comprehension strategies, and fluency development.
Effective Instructional Strategies: 
  • introduce innovative and research-based instructional strategies that engage students and foster a love for reading and writing. These strategies can range from interactive read-aloud techniques to guided reading practices tailored to individual student needs.
Emphasis on Cultural Relevance: 
  • In a diverse educational landscape like New Zealand, understanding the importance of culturally responsive literacy instruction is crucial. Professional development with Jill Eggleton may highlight the significance of selecting texts that reflect the cultural backgrounds and experiences of students, thus promoting inclusivity and equity in the classroom.
Regarding the impact of incorporating poetry into your practice can lead to several changes:
  • Language Enrichment: Teaching poetry allows students to explore the richness of language through rhythm, rhyme, imagery, and figurative language.
  • Critical Thinking and Analysis: Studying poetry encourages students to think critically and analytically.
  • Expressive Writing: Writing poetry offers students an outlet for self-expression and reflection. Through composing poems, students can articulate their thoughts, emotions, and experiences in creative and meaningful ways, promoting both literacy development and emotional intelligence.
  • Integration of Arts and Literacy: Poetry often integrates with other art forms such as music, visual arts, and drama. Teaching poetry provides opportunities for students to explore connections between language and other forms of expression.

 JillE Literacy | JillE Literacy

Here are some of my big take aways from the professional Development.

Discussion Points & Learning

“Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.” - Malala Yousafzai

How Heather Haylock's writing process is done:

  • Don't shy away from using big words
  • If they can say tyrannosaurus rex they can say anything, words like, curlicued, militant, billowing
  • Always within context and with illustrations to support understanding, helps to extend vocabulary, talking to kids, not rocket science, hypothesis, learning by osmosis
  • Sharing stories with children develop a sense of a story - beginning, middle and end
  • Hard to get through some children because they are just focussed on survival
  • Characters need to be interesting
  • Finding books that are good to read aloud
  • Sense of a story - a lot of kids come to school not having been exposed to books(CAP), where others arrive with well developed sense of story
  • Those without much exposure have hardly any soil to plant imagination
  • We need to develop the love of language and stories
  • One way to do it is read aloud
  • Characters with problems to solve
  • Characters kids can relate to, e.g. animals, nana
  • Relate to school ,family, sports or feelings

Developmental Priorities

Tips and tricks

  • Establish a routine read aloud time
  • Finding ‘reading snack’ slots in the school day
  • Reluctant readers - when they are read aloud to they become more involved and engaged
  • Read aloud in small groups

Jill Eggleton

Teaching matters and it matters everyday - teachers make more minute by minute decisions than brain surgeons. What could be more important than moulding children?

What is your BELIEF - Sound research and something felt deep in the soul, mostly coming from a heartfelt response.

Shared reading Large Poetry cards benefits:

  • Improves literacy skills
  • Enrich vocabulary - crucial
  • Familarised words
  • A child's vocabulary tells us how they will be at 11
  • Encourages thinking
  • Replicate the way we learn and think
  • Short pieces
  • Exposes to images
  • Boost fluency
  • Rhyming, musical and rhythm
  • Phonemic awareness
  • Builds listening skills
  • Helps train the memory
  • Memorising poems give your brain the power to enhance the power to retain

Next Steps & Commitments

Shared big books and Poetry - every week I will introduce a new shared poem(review the previous learned ones) and a shared big book. Students will be able to access the previous books and poems during morning exploration learning as well as during writing time.

Finding a good book

  • Picture books
  • Sophisticated picture books
  • Chapter books
  • Short stories
  • Biography collections
  • Seasonal books(ANZAC, Matariki,Easter)
  • Wordless picture books - if kids don’t know how to read - barrier, they can make up their own story
  • Fun ones
  • Rhyming ones - repeated refrains

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