Teaching as Inquiry 2019

Click here to see how I align my inquiry with the Manaiakalani framework.

“Recognising and spreading sophisticated pedagogical practice across our community so that students learn in better and more powerful ways...”The Manaiakalani Community of Learning is working together on this task using the expertise existing in of our community of learning. In 2018 for my inquiry I selected the following CoL achievement challenge that I will be looking at through a 'Language in Abundance' lens: 

#4. Increase the achievement of Years 1-10 learners, with a focus on Years 7-10, in reading, writing and maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets.       

Labels:

LEvidence, LScan, LTrend, LHypothesise, LResearch, LReflect,

CPlan, CTry, CInnovate, CImplement, CReflect,

SPublish, SCoteach, SModel, SGuide, SFback, SReflect

WFRC #1/2: Introducing my 2019 Inquiry...

Our Manaiakalani Community of Learning (COL) is part of the agency for change that is necessary for our tamariki to succeed. Manaiakalani’s evidence helps bring about teacher practice changes through inquiry. Across our cluster our NE enter school well below norm due to their limited language acquisition. As they progress through the learning levels the gap gets wider. The team from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre (WFRC) will be working with the Manaiakalani cluster again using meta analysis to identify what’s working and sharing what these teachers are doing.

As a Year 7/8 teacher I see how real the ongoing struggle is for our learners who do not have the language acquisition and literacy skills needed to make sense of learning at our level. Recent assessment data has showed that my target group were not able to unpack what the questions were asking them to do. Looking back at trends in their historical data (from Year 5), the picture is no different. These disconnects result in wider gaps in learning that are becoming harder and harder to fill.

With this in mind this year I will be inquiring into whether increased emphasis on reading comprehension instruction can lead to better subject achievement in reading, maths and writing. I have selected this focus as all of my target group have had Reading Recovery, Rainbow Reading and STEPS interventions. 5/9 students have had ESOL funding. 2/9 have had Teacher Aide support each year. Self efficacy is something I will continue to grow as each of these students are aware they find learning a challenge, something that has become more evident as the gap between their achievement levels and the achievement levels of their peers widens.

My hunch is that some issues with my students’ math achievement are related to issues they have with reading instructions and tasks. I noticed during our 1:1 running record assessment time that 9/9 students were able to recall a lot of literal information. Most reverted to tapping into prior knowledge when asked questions they were not able to recall. Despite being reminded gently at the start of the assessment to refer back to the text as the words hold the information, only 3/9 were able to do this. These students read the text in entirety from the top down each time. This highlighted to me that skimming and scanning are additional skills that need to be developed.

I am currently analysing my data more thoroughly and will update my blog with this information when this is complete.

Up-skilling and Empowering...

During this week's art lesson I noticed that a large number of my students did not appear to know how to blend colours. Wanting to make sure I taught these skills effectively and properly I reached out to Karen Ferguson for some guidance. I recalled her blogpost about her media experiments, the exact support I was after. What I wasn't aware of was that my class who are currently in Karen's tech group had asked to learn the exact same skills. As always Karen was more than happy to help out. So armed with my notebook I seized the opportunity for my own PD (I was focusing on Karen's language of instruction) and joined in with the learning. 

The students were so focused and extremely proud of the pictures they produced. From my perspective I now had a group of experts so I capitalised on this opportunity and asked them to share their learning. The success these students had experienced in their learning this morning empowered them to confidently support their peers to master the same skills. 

Each of these students rose to the challenge of being the teacher. I noticed that my 'experts' were modelling what they wanted their group to replicate, they were using the content language accurately and their instructions were clear and concise as you can see in the picture below.