1. Our Reading Journey so far …

2. The Beginning of Our Journey …
Our journey began after we had discussions
about our NAPLAN results and Australian
wide results that revealed students
struggling in the area of reading non-fiction
texts.

3. The Big 6 – Comprehension
We have been working on the Big 6
The culminating goal of reading is to comprehend
Students need to have an adequate understanding of the vocabulary in the text
Relevant background knowledge
Semantic and syntactic structures
Verbal reasoning
Engagement with text at a deep level
Need to be explicitly taught

4. Stephen Graham
We have been also using Stephen Graham’s work in comprehension
Hand out comprehension stories

5. Literacy Secretariat Reading for enjoyment in the curriculum
One of the three organising strands in the Australian
Literature includes a broad range of texts such as novels,
poetry, short stories, plays, fiction including picture books,
multimodal texts such as films and a variety of non-fiction.
The Literature strand emphasises an enjoyment in how
access a broad range of literary texts and develop an
informed appreciation of literature
develop English skills for lifelong enjoyment and
learning.
A balanced, integrated, systematic and explicit literacy
program will be enhanced by an emphasis on encouraging
reading for enjoyment that overarches all aspects of
literacy. This includes speaking and listening, reading and
viewing, writing and representing and multimodal skills.
Reading for pleasure and understanding need to be a
valued part of every curriculum area.

6. Limestone Coast Positional Paper
The regions NAPLAN analysis indicated a pattern of inconsistent results:
Year 3, 5 and 7 results have been consistently below national and state average
Points for McDonald Park School
All students are reading at their chronological age
Challenge schools to review the effectiveness of current intervention strategies

7. Regional Reading Track
STUDENT READING TRACKER
Name:
School:
Teacher’s Name
Year Level
C.A
Reading Recovery Levels
Rec
(4 terms) 1 2 3 4 5 6
Students can be extended up to Level 10
(6 terms) 7 8 9 10
Students can be extended up to Level 14
Year 1 11 12 13 14 15 16
Students can be extended up to Level 20
Year 2 17 18 19 20
Students can be extended up to Level 26
Year 3 21 22 23 24
Students can be extended through a variety of texts
Year 4 25 26
Year 5 27 28
Year 6 29 30
Year 7
Year 8
Year 9
****Guidelines Once you get to the end of your band do not move students beyond recommended level, rather extend students with alternative age appropriate reading materials including a range of levelled texts;

8. Literacy Committee
With all this knowledge and the Regional Office encouraging us to challenge current practices we began discussing …
Our reading track
Lexiles and the Lexile System
Readers
Non-fiction
Intervention and pedagogy around reading

9. Student Reading Tracker
McDonald Park School STUDENT READING LEVEL AND READING AGE TRACK AND SPELLING DATA Student Name……………..……….………………. 
Year
Level
Teacher’s
Name
Levels and Reading Ages
Spelling
(Westwood)
Chron.
Age
Raw
Score
Rec
4 Term 1 2 3 4 5
Reading Age
5 +
6 Term 6 7 8 9 10
6.5
Yr 1 11 12 13 14 15 16
7.0
Yr 2 17 18 19 20 2a 2b
7.5
8.0
Yr 3 21 22 23 24
Lexile 300’s 3a 3b 3c
8.5
9.0
Yr 4 25 26
Lexile 400’s 4a 4b 4c
9.5
10.0
Yr 5 27 28
Lexile 500’s 5a 5b 5c
10.5
11.0
Yr 6 29 30
Lexile 600’s 6a 6b 6c
11.5
12.0
Yr 7
Lexile 700’s 7a 7b
Lexile 800’s
Lexile 900’s
Lexile 1000’s +

10. Readers … We needed to upgrade our readers and add non-fiction texts.
We needed to use the reading track to support students
We needed to discontinue the use of lexile levels to support students with reading
Take home reader process
After discussion, we decided how many reader boxes were needed per Reading Recovery Level and how many readers were to be in each box
We looked at how many reader boxes we currently had per level and how many books were in each box. From this we knew how many reader were needed to top up the boxes
Literacy Committee were responsible for researching quality readers that focussed on non-fiction
Orders were made from the following publishers
Pearson, Oxford, Nelson, Blake, Macmillan, Era Publications, Scholastic, Iverson Publishing,
Lion crest
We focussed on ordering predominately non- fiction readers but after culling many of our older, damaged readers from the existing boxes also needed to order more fiction readers as well
As orders arrived, we sorted them into levels from1 – 30 and stored them in boxes

11. Parent Involvement
Staff and parents were given a time line for the term as to when readers would not be available
Once all the reader orders had arrived, we invited family members to a Busy Bee to assist us in beginning this process.
We put our existing reader boxes around the Resource Centre grouped in their levels.
Parents, grandparents and library staff sorted through reader boxes, calculated, and recorded how many fiction and non-fiction readers were currently in each box. Very old and damaged readers were removed in this process.
New readers were added to complete the box. We checked that each box had a mix of old and new readers and a mix of publishers
We aimed for a mix of approximately 6 non- fiction and 9 fiction readers in each box

13. Busy Bees Once the boxes were filled, we began a “production line”.
Parent helpers/library staff catalogued the contents of readers boxes into our Bookmark system
A new contents list was made for the side of each box
New labels were made for individual readers to identify which box they belonged to
Readers were covered, mainly by parents/grandparents in the school community
Readers were stamped with the school stamp and the boxes were given a final check
Ready for borrowing!

14. A Cross Road in the Journey
We had a whole school focus on non-fiction texts while the readers were unavailable
We made up home task cards that were sent home with non-fiction books, magazines etc
One class sent them home as special books with a magnifying glass to motivate students
We then made up home task cards for picture books using print knowledge concepts

15. An exciting route in the Journey
We had spoken about making sure texts are appropriate for students reading ages and that we
needed to know how to do this ?? We found out that you can work out a texts readability.
Using the Readability option in Tools (Microsoft Word), we were able to use a variety of non-fiction books and popular reading materials in reader boxes as well (e.g. Bindi, Space Scout, Zac Power, Billie B Brown and many more).
How to set up:
Click on Tools
Clicks on Options
Click on Spelling and Grammar
Tick the “Show readability statistics”
Click OK
Screen closes
After typing approximately 300 words do a spell check. Once the spell check is complete, a Flesch-Kincaid readability score is shown at the bottom of the spell check (looks like this - Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 2.6)
We matched this score to the Flesch-Kincaid score sheet which gave the book a Reading Level.
This enabled us to broaden the range and genre of reading materials in take home reader boxes.
At the end of this process, there were still some reader boxes that were short of readers.
We did a final check of how much fiction and non-fiction readers were need to complete these boxes and placed a final order.

16. Feedback
Feedback from students, parents and teachers has been very extremely positive. Students are very excited about the range and genre of books they are taking home. The new readers contain up to date information and are relevant and appealing to students of today. Students eagerly discuss reader titles, content and the reader level they are reading!
Parents have commented on how much they too are enjoying the new readers at home.

17. New Routes on The Journey
Our next step is to create Extension Boxes to cater for students who have reached the recommended RRL for their Year Level. We have begun with a Maths focus and have purchased books to suit reading ages (picture books with a Maths focus and Usborne “1001 things to spot” and “Puzzle” books for example). We aim to add books from a wide range of genres (poetry, science, recipes, magazines, local tourist information, jokes, comics and so on).
We will also select books from catalogues that are aimed at reading ages rather than RRL.
The extension books are stored in boxes from Elizabeth Richards and are borrowed out to the class teacher.