Minutes of Meeting 2

Minutes Meeting 1

13.11.06 & 14.11.06 - Turkey

Present:

M’Barki Jamila - Turkey

Marta Sanchez - Spain

Monica Santos - Spain

Lianne Sheppard - Wales

Sian Hart - Wales

Aneta Rusek - Poland

Anna Piechaczek - Poland

Sue Love - England

Etta John - England

Sonia Tibbatts - England

Ali Ihsan Sarak - Turkey

Mehmet Bektas - Turkey

Asuman Ates - Turkey

Nuray Erol - Turkey

Zeki Demir - Turkey

Rita Gewesi - Hungary

Zsuzanna Kormoczi - Hungary

·       Meeting commenced at 11.50 a.m.

·       Introduction and welcome

·       Each school gave a brief description of their school: each school explained their location, pupil number, numbers of staff, how the school is organised, age range etc. Poland gave each school a copy of their presentation.

Lunch Break

·       Sonia thanked our Turkish hosts for providing the enjoyable lunch. She explained that the next session would start with a short explanation from each school outlining how they teach reading.

England

·       Changing approach to reading. Small children learn phonics with a Kinaesthetic approach – they use Jolly Phonics.

·       Reading is taught through the literacy hour. Shared reading and then work as a group.

·       In Early Years, emphasise on understanding of words and reading them aloud.

·       In the Juniors, the emphasis is on comprehension.

·       All children take home reading books every day. Parents record in book what has been read.

·       Whole class reading.

·       Assessment of reading – national tests every year, different tests every term, children have spelling/reading lists to learn and are then tested.

·       At least three times a year, children write a review on a book they have read. Copies of book reviews by children available for other schools.

·       Partner older children will younger children and read together once a week.

·       Have library and children choose book from library to read.

·       Encourage boys to read – each class has a special box with books specifically for boys.

·       Sonia will e-mail copies of “Supporting Success in Reading” which outlines what children need to be able to do each year.

Turkey

·       Copies to be e-mailed

Hungary

·       Start teaching reading at 6-7 years.

·       296 lessons in every year for Hungarian.

·       8 lessons per week – half are reading lessons and half writing lessons.

·       Teaching reading is divided into 3 parts (see booklet)

·       Children have opportunity to take books home every day.

Spain

·       Several ways of teaching reading in Spain.

·       Each teacher chooses the method that he/she thinks is best.

·       First method – old fashioned – build the syllable – look and say – look at picture and say the word. Look for a particular letter on a sheet of assorted letters and circle it. Colour in sections of pictures with that letter showing.

·       Newer method – show a picture with word on it. Recognise the letter that the word begins with. This is done at approx. 3 years of age. Kinaesthetic approach e.g. forming letters with fingers. Teacher writes phoneme on blackboard e.g. p - and writes words beginning with p and matches pictures.

·       Have pictures of letters – capital and lower case letters on the wall.

·       Each letter is given a character e.g. Mrs S.

·       Cut out letters with dots and arrows showing children how to write them.

·       Library in Spain has been developed – children use bookmarks, people come to school to read stories and a famous illustrator came to school.

·       Action plan for reading has been developed in school e.g. Nana family computer programme that says the word when you put the cursor on it.

·       Children are given a list of 6 words and have to construct a story that includes these words.

·       2^nd level primary – one child will begin a story and another will finish the story.

·       3^rd level – write their own complete stories.

·       Poetry workshops held in Nursery school.

·       Poetry set to music.

·       2^nd level primary – children create their own poetry – acrostic, shape poems.

Poland

·       Children start school at the age of 6 and teachers assume that they can’t read.

·       Strategies are outlined in copies of booklet (given to each school)

·       Books taken home every day.

·       Activities to encourage reading – competitions etc.

·       Book reviews and prepare drama scripts of story and act out

Meeting 2   14/11/06 9:00a.m

·       Sonia opened the meeting – she explained that this year we would look at how reading is taught in our schools.

·       Each school now has to decide on a different strategy to try out in their schools. E.g. Bristol will try theatre reading and assess it’s value.

·       Sonia suggested that each school should be given time to think of what they would like to do and then send an e-mail to her.

·       Strategy to be carried out with on or two groups or a whole class.

·       Difficult to evaluate and measure the progress made but this will be discussed in the next meeting.

·       Sonia invited partners opinion – are they happy with the plan? Does it need changing?

·       Spain suggested doing a travellers tale: Their children will begin a story, then they will take them to Hungary in January and they will write the next part of the story and so on.

·       Decided that each school will begin a story and then rotate to each school in turn.

Project Objectives

1^st aim: look at reading and improving reading.

2^nd aim: Increase children’s enjoyment of reading.

3^rd aim: Increase teachers’ knowledge and understanding.

4^th aim: Broaden range of teaching methods.

5^th aim: Evaluate effectiveness of different teaching methods and strategies.

6^th aim: Develop a range of resources to be used in reading (next year)

7^th aim: Address boys’ reluctance to read.

2^nd aim will be addressed by the travelling tale.

3^rd and 4^th aim: previous days meeting began to address this where we learnt about methods and strategies used in other schools.

All partners agreed that they were happy to keep plan as it is.

·       Sonia went on to say that we need to discuss and arrange the other meetings for this year. Between now and next meeting each group should evaluate the reading ability of the group/class that they will use for their action plan.

·       Turkey suggested that we should evaluate boys and girls separately. The method used to assess and evaluate is up to each school, and next time we will discuss the merits of the various methods used to assess and evaluate.

·       By next meeting each school should have begun their action plan and have done their initial reading assessment.

·       Also each school should have begun their travellers tale – 4 or 5 sentences with illustrations. Each school can write the story in their language as next school will be able to work out the story from the pictures, but it should be kept simple. If it can be translated separately by teachers and the translation included, this would be good. It should be handwritten.

·       As we are promoting the use of ICT, partner schools will e-mail each other. Discussed whether pupils should also e-mail each other. At the next meeting will discuss the possibility of videoing children and sending to other partners, also possibility of using video conferencing.

·       Turkey suggested transfer of letters and Christmas cards. Sonia will look into obtaining translation cards and circulate them.

·       Next meeting is planned for Hungary. Renewal dates for Hungary is 1^st of February so will need to arrange this meeting for January. Ali said that deadline will change this year to 1^st March. Main meeting arranged for 15^th January in Kaposva. Partners will meet in Budapest on Saturday and travel to Kaposva together on Sunday night. Stay one or two nights in Kaposva.

Spain – 2 persons

England – 2/3 persons

Turkey – possibly 4 persons

Poland – ¾ persons

Wales – 2/3 persons.

Sonia thanked Turkish hosts for a very enjoyable visit.

Meeting concluded 10:00 a.m