 When I first got this position, I remember saying to my husband, oh, what if no one wants to work with me? What will I do? And then when I got the phone call and they asked if I wanted to be a reading advocate and I heard Faye's name and Maureen and a focus on reading, I was like, I didn't have to think about it for a second. And so what I did is I made a commitment to do projects in the two schools that we were working with. And it started with collecting the baseline data. And so we used the early primary reading assessment, which I like to refer to as baby dart. And we collected data on the classes that I was working with. So term one was just really sort of fact finding and getting to know the classes that I'd be working with and thinking about what do the kids know and what are their strengths and then what areas need further development? What will we work on? And then how will we support this development? What will we do and what will our project look like? So that was sort of the first steps. So then we coded on the performance standard the results of the reading assessment and we sat down together to develop an inquiry question. The inquiry question was a bit of a stumbling block with us this year. It was challenging for teachers. They needed that gradual release of responsibility to work through what was the niggle, what was the thing they were wondering about and how to develop that into a question. And so we worked together on that. And once we had the inquiry question, we made a plan. So what would my support look like? How would we work together? And how would we meet the needs of the children? And when we sat down to make our plan, it was the classroom teacher with the resource teacher and myself so that we could work together. We were all on the same page. And so what I did is I spent a term in each classroom. So term one was just the fact finding. And then term two, I went in weekly into the classes. Generally, it was about a double block for each class. So here were the inquiry questions that we came up with. So the first one was, how does the implementation of literacy centers that focus on reading rather than isolated skills change engagement and motivation of students and will they become more skilled readers? And so this was that whole idea that Facebook about yesterday is like 30 minutes of eyes on print. And this is not 30 minutes of eyes on print on a worksheet, but this is like, these are texts, books they wanna read, poems, all kinds of different things to read. And then in the other classroom, we decided how does implementation of guided reading or small group reading instruction with my support teacher further our students' reading development. And this was a classroom that wanted to try the pull in model and not the pull out model. And so they were focused on doing some either guided reading or small group instruction together side by side. Now the pictures make it look like sunshine and rainbows, but I'm here to tell you it was actually a very challenging time. And Faye can attest to a few emails where I was talking about knitting needles and we weren't knitting a sweater together. So there was negativity and there was shaming and kids and the kids can't do this and they can't read and they don't read at home and there's no support. And lots of my suggestions were met with, this is not gonna work. And at the end of a session when we talked about what worked, I had to really say, let's just start with one thing that worked well. Cause it was like, well, the kids weren't really reading. The books were too hard. And it just got to the point where I actually wanted another project to work on. Really I did. But I did persevere. And this was one of these ones where we noticed after we did the assessments is like these kids did not see themselves as readers. And so when they picked up a book and it was too hard or there's words they didn't know, they just said, I can't read this. They didn't think to read the picture and they didn't see reading as something that you enjoy. And so I said, you know what? I need to come in and we need to work together and we just need to have some fun with reading. So this was one of the very first times I went in and I just grabbed some old favorites, like some poems that were gonna be familiar. Like Mary had a little lamb and those kinds of things. And we just divided the kids into groups, just heterogeneous and we had four teachers in the room. So it was a party. And they just went with that teacher and we just modeled having fun with reading. And we ended the session with everyone presenting to the rest of the group and claps and compliments and that kind of thing. And so this was one of the pictures. And we started collecting a list. What do good readers do? And as you can see at the top, it's quite mechanical like we sound out words and we do all these things. And I finally said, you know what good readers do? Is they read books together. And I talked about my kids and the things that we love to read together. And so they could start to see that it's not just for school that we learn to read and it's a tough slog and it's no fun, but it's to have fun together and to really enjoy it and want to read. And so we kept this list and when I went back weekly we would add to this list so we could really develop a repertoire. And then after one of the lessons, I just gave this out and I said, can you either draw or write something that you did today that you know good readers do? I love this one. I show it at all my workshops. But it says, good readers is they practice the words and some good readers, they already know the words and some good readers don't know the words so they look at the picture. So he was developing that. It wasn't just about sounding out. It was about making meaning. And for me, this was like, okay, we're getting places. We really are. This was one of the, Faye talked about it yesterday is like we wanted to do small group instruction so the kids needed to be doing something. And I said, well, let's get the kids reading. They're just gonna read? Yeah, they're just gonna read. What about afterwards answering questions, a worksheet, a filling something out, drawing a picture? No, no, let's just get them to read. I'm like, do you really want to mark all that? No, yeah, me neither. So let's just get them to read. So this was one, this is like, these were poems they'd already learned in the class so they're very familiar and so everyone can be successful and the idea was they were cut into strips and they just had to put them back together in order and then they got a special pointer and as Faye said yesterday, the pointer is everything and they got to point to the mat with the pointer and reread and so they're building fluency. They're having fun and doing all those things. So these are the kinds of centers they did so that we could conference with kids and read with small groups. And this is rock star readings. So if you go to the dollar store and get your microphones and get some music books, some song books, this one gets a little noisy so if we say pull out into the hall, it's because of this one. And just again, that idea, having fun, building fluency, looking at the words, reading the pictures. And then what we did is that we did a guided reading group. So this is a little guided reading lesson on the ground. Got a couple boys, you can see they're tracking along and they're reading and so now they're getting that explicit small group reading instruction that we really want to get to and we're meeting their needs on whatever they're working on. These two boys were working on just building up a little bit more of a sight word vocabulary and so at the end of the lesson, what we did is we took a page and we cut it up and they had to reassemble it into sentences and then they had to point and reread and they reread it to a friend and they reread it to me and so again, just building up that fluency and really pointing and having it look at the words. And I guess the one thing I wanted to say is that the teacher that I worked with when I wanted to quit and use knitting needles and then at the end, she said, I've been teaching for 20 years and I think I need to change my practice. What I'm doing is not working and so we're gonna work together again this year and just go deeper and it was like a huge, it was a shift really. It was a shift from I can do this. She is an absolutely caring teacher. She cared about her kids but I think she just felt frustrated that things weren't working and then she whispered to me and they told me to put my kids on Lexia but I don't think it really works so I'm not doing it. And I said, well that's okay, that's okay. Anyways, that's, I just wanted to let you know one of the ways that we really collaborated and I guess the other piece is I really only went in once a week but because the resource teacher was there when I was in and saw how we modeled the lessons, when I wasn't there, they continued on and then once I didn't go in in term three they could just check in with me and so I was building capacity within that school and so it can continue on in the years to come.