Learning in the Community

Introduction: 

Learning Communities link to the idea of Learning Theories. Learning theorist will group together with people who believe in the same learning values. For example, theorist who believe that children construct their own learning will work together as a community with other theorist who share the same thought. This creates the learning community of Constructivism.

Writing in Communities of practice, a brief introduction, Etienne and Wenger-Trayner (2015, pg. 1-8) define communities of practice as people who collectively work and learn together in a shared domain of human endeavour. Activities that may be carried out within a community of practice are:

·         Problem solving

·         Finding out new information

·         Seeking experience from  other members

·         Coordination and Synergy

·         Building an argument

·         Growing confidence

·         Discussing developments

·         Documenting projects

·         Mapping knowledge and identify gaps

Etienne and Wenger-Trayner (2015, pg. 2) explained that communities and communities of practice have 3 different characteristics.

1.       The domain: In order for it to be a community of practice there has to be a shared domain and commitment to the learning outcome. This domain does not have to be expertise but willingness to learn and share the values of the community is essential.

2.       The community: The community must build relationships between the members so that learning and interaction can take place. This does not have to be a daily occurrence.

3.       The practice- The practice must show development and that learning has occurred.

The Different Communities of Learning

How to Work in a Group Effectively

One of the most important parts of this module is the need to work within a group effectively. It is vital to the success of any project that we do and due to this we decided to create a checklist with the main criteria for successful group work. We will then use this checklist at the end of the project as a starting point for our evaluation. 

The Importance of Effective communication:

The ability to communicate effectively is a vital life skill and one that will help us hugely in this module, both to help us find a project and throughout the project. There are many different types of communication, but we are going to focus on interpersonal communication and written communication (Skills you need, 2017).

Written communication is used when communicating through any sort of writing whether it is a text a letter or an email. In order to convey our message with clarity and ease we must have good writing skills. Grammar, spelling and communication are vital to the presentation of any emails that we send as this will give the reader an opinion of us before we have even met them. If we use bad punctuation spelling and grammar, we will give a negative impression of ourselves and make it less likely for us to get the point across properly (Skill you need, 2017). To write an effective email we must ensure that we have thought about the intended audience and what the main point that we want to portray is. We must also think about these skills when discussing the project in the group chat to ensure that no one is confused, and it is clear what is expected from everyone.

Interpersonal communication is being engaged in face -to- face communication with one or more people. It is not just about what is said, it is about the non-verbal cues that we give to the receiver. Interpersonal communication is always a two-way process with people both sending and receiving messages. The person listening will be sending back signals to the person talking such as head nods and smiles as this will allow to speaker to know that the listener is understanding what is being said or if they are not understanding (Skills you need, 2017). We must make sure that when we are meeting up to discuss the project face to face we are using interpersonal communication effectively as this will help us complete the project more efficiently. We will also need to use effective interpersonal communication when talking to the setting that we end up doing our project in. We will need to show interest and be responsive when being spoken to and to make sure that the setting knows exactly what we are there to do.

BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION:

There are many barriers to communication that can prevent people from communicating effectively. Being aware of these barriers will help us overcome them and mean that we can communicate efficiently.

-          The use of jargon – using complicated and unfamiliar term when communicating will lead to both parties becoming confused.

-          Emotional barriers and taboos can lead to a person being offended

-          Lack of attention from either party will mean that there will be confusion over what is being said.

-          Differences in viewpoints and viewpoints

-          Language differences.

-          Expectations and prejudices may lead to false assumptions or stereotyping.

-          Cultural differences.
(Skills you need, 2017)

Emails To and From St Mary's Catholic School

Click To Enlarge

Deciding Our Project

Tuesday 19^th September 2017:

After the introductory seminar of learning within the community we met together to speak about our initial ideas and interests of where our project could be. As a group we are all aiming to be future primary school teachers, therefore it was important to us that we picked a project that had an educational goal which worked with primary school children. We each individually emailed separate settings so that we could pick the most suitable project.

After hearing back from all of the settings we decided that St Mary’s Catholic school would be where we volunteered and carried out the project of organising the library and raising boy’s achievement in reading. We felt this project had the best educational outcome and would help develop our knowledge to prepare us for future teaching. The gender gap of reading and writing is a current issue within education and needs to be tackled. It has great relevance for future teacher’s and we were excited at the prospect of being part of closing that gap and raising achievement for male pupil at St Mary’s.

Once we confirmed the volunteering with Assistant Head teacher Isaac Haskell we planned to meet on the 16^th October to clarify and organise the project. Prior to the meeting we planned to meet and discuss our initial ideas and prepare for the meeting. 

Project Plan

Throughout the project we used this project plan to keep on top of what needed doing and manage the project. We would highlight it once completed and alert each other in the group chat when it had been done. We found this easier to follow than using the Gantt diagram.

Network diagram of our project

A Critical Path of Our Project

Preparing to Meet With St Mary's Catholic School

Once we had a date to meet with St Mary's Catholic School we needed to prepare for the meeting with research and ideas that we could use to help the school.

The main focus that St Mary's set out for us was to help with their goal to achieve higher reading levels in boys. We realised that we needed to do research on this topic to familairise ourselves with the topic.


We found out that low reading attainment in boys throughout school is a national epidemic and one that has been occurring for a long time. It is also known as the 'gender gap'.  A report by Save the Children in 2016 found that the gender gap has only been reduced by one percent in ten years. A report by the DFE, also in 2016, found that in Key Stage one boys were being out performed in all areas and in Key Stage two they were being out performed in all areas apart from maths. Gary Wilson is a key note speaker and has many books published surrounding the issue has said that it has been an issue since at least 1993. He theorizes that the root of the issue could be that we are forcing boys to start reading and writing too early. He explains that in Scandinavia children do not start formal education until the age of seven, and boys and girls perform roughly the same throughout school. However he does also suggest this could be down to the quality of the teaching and the curriculum.

After finding out this information, we also researched ways that teachers are tackling the problem. One of the main ways was to find out the books and genres that boys really engage with and include them in the design and the stocking of the library. We are going to ask Issac Haskell if we can give the students, boys and girls, a questionnaire to find out about their reading habits and what genre of books they enjoy reading. This will give us a better understanding of the needs of the school. 

We also thought of some activities that we could do with the children: 

• Sports Reports - reports about a local football match that had recently happened, maybe the child had played in it. Other children could then read this, quite like a school paper. 
• Role Models - a KS1 student is paired with a KS2 student. The KS1 child will read stories that the KS2 student will write especially for them, after asking them what type of stories interest them the most. This will encourage reading from a young age and the use of the older child being a role model will be good as it will mean that the younger children will see it as 'cool' to read (Wilson, 2002). 

Need Analysis of St Mary's Catholic School

The needs of St. Marys Catholic School stated by Assistant head teacher Isaac in his email, are to help raise the achievement in boys reading and selected groups. When we have our meeting with Isaac we will tell him the ideas we have to help them meet their needs.

We will discuss with Isaac that the use of displays is highly appealing to younger children and that it may attract a lot more of an audience including new children to the library. The need to have a display board is to engage children in the reading and to take action and further their reading for home time. Along with the display we have found a need to attract more children to the library would be if the display is interactive, we have began thinking about ideas and one we have found would be interesting is a ‘topics’ section. The children would get a topic each month such as December and for that month they would have to recommend a book they have read that is to do with Christmas. They would get to write this on the display board it will become more interactive and appealing to the children meeting their needs to read more as it will encourage them to read more so they are able to put up their book on the display.

As a group we decided that in creating a library corner it will benefit the children in terms that they take charge in their learning by sitting on the chair or bean bag and initiate a guided reading session where the children ask about what the other children are reading.  Every library slot the children have the teacher would get to choose a child they would make the ‘teacher’, this will help in getting the children to explain reasons as to why something is happening in the book they are reading and what they think will happen next. They will only get to read a section of each book as they will all be reading different books however, they are able to listen and observe the other children and potentially gain ideas as to what to read next.

The need is to raise achievement, our research shows us that peer reading would benefit children in seeing reading other key stages have completed and get feedback on what they have wrote. This is beneficial as it will help with children’s confidence and writing as well as reading skills. Therefore, we need to implement it to meet the children’s need.

Overall, to meet St. Marys need of raising achievements in boys and selected groups we will plan to meet what the children think will encourage them to read more. When we meet the children, it will be discussed what we plan on doing and from their reactions it will indicate to us whether they the ideas are helpful or not. 

Meeting with St Mary's Catholic School (16/10/17)

Monday 16^th October:

On Monday 16^th October we met with Isaac Haskell who is the Assistant Head of St Mary’s Catholic school. Isaac is who we had initial contact with and gave us the project title of supporting the library and helping to raise the achievement of boys in reading.

We had a tour of the school which lead us to the Key Stage Two library. Isaac explained to us that the library is a new set up and the individual classes no longer have their own individual book cases. The school changed this as classes were hugging certain books and the books were not being shared equally across the year group. The library’s new aim is to make the library a place that pupils can go to at the beginning of the day, break time, lunch time and the end of the day. Isaac also explained that throughout the week each class gets a half an hour schedule lot to come to the library, swap books and read.

Next we met in Isaac’s office to discuss his and our own potential ideas. It was made clear that we should follow the idea we are most passionate about as the passion and value will project through when working and create a better outcome. Isaac was impressed by our ideas to create a reading corner and enter a competition. He asked is we could work on creating a display to make the library more aesthetically pleasing but also help in gaining the interest of boys to read.

To organise the project we had to determine the date we would be able to volunteer. Using our diaries and the school’s timetable/diary we sorted out the following dates:

Tuesday 7^th November 9-12pm

Tuesday 14^th November 9-12pm

Wednesday 22^nd November 9-12pm

Monday 27^th November 9-12pm

Tuesday 28^th November 9-12pm

We were made aware that in every session there would be two half an hour reading slots when classes would come in and explore the library and have an opportunity to read. During this time we would be available to help support the children find books or participate in guided reading. This was then noted to be incorporate in our session plans.

Value and Relevance of the Project

Writing in ‘Reading: the next steps’, Nick Gibb (2015) argued that reading is a fundamental part of achieving good qualifications and succeeding at school. Reading is a major part of a child’s school experience as it is heavily included in the curriculum and essential part to all subjects (GOV, 2014).

Through the emails and meetings we had with Isaac Haskell it was clear to see that the library was important in supporting reading at St Mary’s Catholic School. They value the Key Stage Two (KS2) at St Mary’s as they schedule half an hour each week, make it available during break time and encourage the children to go before and after school. Each class teacher would pick children who have behaved that morning to go to the library that break time, this showed us that the visiting the library was seen as a reward. It was therefore, a priority for us to create a display and continue to maintain an environment that the pupils’ would enjoy.

Part of the project is raising the achievement of boys in reading. Our mission was to improve the library and encourage the interest of male pupils’ in the hope that their improved interest in the library would aid and support the development of their reading. The deputy head explained to us that it was clear using their formative assessment that girls were achieving better than boys in literacy and reading. To improve their standards and male pupils’ achievement in reading was of great relevance for St Mary’s Catholic School.

Moss and Washbrook (2016 p.4) highlighted that the gender gap of boys and girls and reading is a national problem. They argue that the way to close the gap is ‘high quality preschool provision and high quality home learning’ can reduce the risk of boys achieving below the expected standard for both language and literacy. However, within our project we could not use these approaches as we only had access to the school environment.

In 2016 Save the Children produced a document ‘The Lost Boys Report’ which explains the current gender gap, what was causing it and what could be done to narrow and hopefully remove the current gap. There report supported Moss and Washbrook’s research of addressing the gap within the early years setting and the family and community settings. They believe that improving the qualification of professionals will improve the standards of early year’s childcare and quality in preventing boys not being interesting in reading and raise their achievement. This report helped us in understanding the issue and relevance of the gender gap within education today however, it did not address what can be done in primary schools.

Gary Wilson (2016) stated that a strategy that school could use is partnership reading. His theory is that partnership reading of older male pupils and younger male pupils improve achievement and helps in closing the gender gap. The strategy provides boys with a focus to their reading and motivates them to read as they have the opportunity to lead. The project main objective is that the older boys are challenging the existing stereotypes that ‘boys can’t read’ or ‘reading isn’t cool’ as they look up to older children naturally and therefore, their reading partner is a great role model for them to then be encouraged to read.

Based on this research we aim to incorporate peer reading into our sessions. One session we will write or select stories with a KS2 class that they can then in the second session read to their partner.

Guided Reading

A guide to guided reading:

Guided reading is where a small group of children with the same ability level are given the same book to read. The teacher and the children read through the book as a group and after each page is read the teacher will begin asking questions.

Five-part lesson:
· Book introduction
· Strategy check
· Independent reading
· Returning to the text
· Responding to the text

For children to be effective readers they must be able to read at three levels:
· Read the lines
· Read between the lines
· Read beyond the lines

The first level ‘read the lines’ is where the children are able to answer the simple questions to do with their reading such as, Who? Where? What? When? How?

The second level is ‘reading between the lines’ which is where the children have to further their finding in the text to search for clues to answer the questions being asked. An example of a question on this level is ‘what is the author trying to say?’.

The last level to be an effective reader is ‘reading beyond the lines’. On this level the children have to think bigger and outside of the text to answer questions. The questions on this level can be more personal to the children such as, ‘what does this mean to me?’ (Resource, 2017)