WFRC #14 Evaluating changes in teaching practice ...

The catalytic aspect of student learning my inquiry focused on this year was whether ‘increased emphasis on reading comprehension instruction could lead to better subject achievement in reading, writing and maths’. After talking to Fiona Grant at the start of Term 3, I realised that I had already narrowed this from 'increased emphasis on reading comprehension instruction' to 'increased emphasis on the reading comprehension strategy of inference'. We all need an overarching umbrella question to guide our inquiries whilst giving us room to veer off and explore, but I now realise I had an overarching marquee! My question was too broad and without refining would have meant valuable stones were left unturned.

I identified this as my focus when I noticed 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.

To build a rich picture of my students’ learning I used their historical data, their current data (PAT Reading and Maths, STAR, e-asTTle writing, Probe running record analysis, IKAN and GLoSS), student voice (T1, T2, T3) and my own in-class observations.

                                                  

The main patterns of student learning I identified in the profiling phase were that they struggled to read and interpret instructions and tasks, which meant that all testing situations were seen as being highly stressful experiences. My target students could not see that we could use the language and strategies we learn in reading, in maths. I needed them to understand that what we learn in one subject can be used to help us in another. The example I chose to explore further was the strategy of inference because the data that identified the gaps in comprehension across my focus group, reflected none of them were able to respond accurately to questions that were asking them to infer. In addition to this, my reading and conversations with colleagues identified that often it is the inferential component in a written maths question that causes the disconnects.

I have always sought and embraced feedback and suggestions from expert colleagues. so the profiling of my own teaching was done collaboratively with my critical friend, Donna Ryan who observed my practice across several different learning areas. Her observations showed that I had strengths in weaving learning from previous sessions into current lessons, co-constructing learning intentions and scaffold supports, teacher modelling of vocabulary and strategies, and questioning.

However I realised quite quickly that my students would likely make more progress if I asked them to remind me why we were doing the task we were doing. Putting the onus on the students to recap the purpose of the learning gave them an increased sense of ownership. Recording responses as they were offered allowed them to see immediate success and gave us a valuable resource to take further steps along our learning paradigm. I have always taken time to listen to and implement student feedback but this time I identified the person/people responsible for the ideas. Doing this again personalised the changes made and showed that I valued their thinking.

The changes I made in my teaching were that I consciously used think alouds to model explicit use of content language and/or the strategy I was teaching in all subject areas. For example, when introducing new words we unpacked the meaning then I used a variety of synonyms to show these words meant the same as known words. An example of this is the way the word multiply is broken down as times tables or groups of. Doing this each time I use the word allows a wider number of students to make the connections they need, to make sense of the learning.

                                                 

I purposely planned activities that encouraged my learners to use the vocabulary in partner, group and class discussions, and set follow up tasks that gave my learners opportunities to use and apply the vocabulary and strategies in context. To support this I provide co-constructed written models at the start of each lesson so my learners are able to continue to make the visual connections to the learning they need in order to find success. By generating these ourselves and not using pre-made versions, I found that my students saw recalling strategy steps and written structures as a natural part of the lesson. 

I took time to notice the types of questions my learners responded to and tried hard to adapt the type of question I asked to suit the purpose and the learner. What I mean by that was sometimes I had to scaffold the questions by really unpacking the language I used, and asking literal questions that I knew my learners could respond to. Other times my questioning was much more open ended for those who were able to respond to a challenge without feeling insecure. Ensuring my learners could find success was the catalyst behind this thinking. My target students preferred to respond to literal questions as they felt safe sharing information they could see. In comparison my more able students tended not to respond to these questions, preferring instead to offer their informed opinions. Over time I have been able to merge this gap by using question stems to support those who struggle with knowing how to word their responses. 

To grow my own knowledge I sought advice from colleagues who have expertise in teaching Maths. Donna Yates (Te Hiku Cluster outreach facilitator) shared an article with me and some great ideas to help learners access a wider variety of Maths language. Sheree Hodge (Ranui School In-school Maths CoL teacher) helped me strengthen my own connections to inference. The professional readings I used are listed in these blog posts - Link 1. Link 2.

Overall I would rate the changes in student learning as a success. The evidence for my rating is that despite the results achieved in the online testing, the results achieved in the GLoSS, IKAN and Probe assessments showed my learners have made progress. This aligns with what I have seen in the classroom. My target students, like their peers have become more confident when faced with new learning, are actively involved in discussions and try hard to apply strategies at their level when working independently on follow up tasks. The latter being something that was not happening at the start of the year, with my target students relying on the learned behaviour of waiting for help from their peers or from me. This is a huge change. They are no longer the students who sit quietly watching the learning happening around them as they adopt every known strategy to avoid having to answer a question or give an opinion. A lot of positive reinforcement and gentle nudging has helped them start trying to swim through the sea of learning by using and applying the strokes of their own knowledge.

The most important learning I made about whether an increased emphasis on the strategy of inference could lead to better subject achievement in reading, writing and maths, was that whilst standardised testing data is an important measure of achievement, it is most definitely not the only measure that should be observed. The external factors that our students come to school with are real. Our tamariki can not be expected to automatically disassociate from a highly stressful situation outside of school because I am asking them to in many cases, undertake the highly stressful situation of sitting a test. I am proud of the effort they put into their learning this year, even though some results do not align with the work that happened daily in our classroom.

The most important learning I made about inquiry was that change is paramount to success. If strong connections to learning are to be made as teachers we need to make the learning accessible for all students. We need to be empathetic and supportive as we push our learners out of their comfort zones. Our learners in return, need to take risks and embrace change; and where possible commit to continuous patterns of attendance to avoid the disconnects in learning that erratic absences cause. 

Some learnings that would be relevant to other teachers are that it is important to remember the external factors out of our control, should not affect the factors we can control.

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