It was good to have time to talk with some of my students' parents and whanau at Lamb & Calf yesterday.  I had a some chats about all sorts of things, but particularly about learning etc!  I find almost every parent wants to talk about how their child is doing and what they need next and how they can help at home.  It's awesome, and it doesn't matter when or where or how, because they are their child's key backers and we are lucky with our great parent support.

Today we started the Availll DVD Caption Reading programme.  The first DVD is HOOT, and all students, (half a class today!) made a really good start.  My target students actually coped very well, and are really keen and interested.  The reading and response activities are great because they are often competitive, and my kids say they really get what is going on in the movie much better when they read the caption, than if they just watch because then the plots sometimes just flows past them. 

It was really interesting when we finished the first session, because I asked the kids what we had been doing for the past 40 minutes, and they said watching a DVD and writing captions.  When I mentioned they had been reading with full concentration for more than 30 minutes they were really pleased with themselves and proud that they got at least 6 or 7 of the reading questions correct.  Buddy work help kept one target student up with the play.