TAI 2020 WFRC #3: Building an accurate profile of students' learning - tools, measures and approaches...

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

My challenge is to explore if strengthening connections to Smart Relationships will help my learners to understand and use content specific language and vocabulary in context. I feel that by doing this it will help my learners to make accelerated shifts across the board in reading, writing and maths. In all assessments our students are required to read and respond to questions. As with my previous inquiries I am very aware that it is often the content specific language along with the language of questioning that causes disconnects in learning. My idea this year is to use their blog posts and blog comments to help strengthen these connections.

Link to backwards map

The tools/measures/approaches:

Planning changes:

• My initial approach will be to actively plan time in class, (and now in our current distance learning situation), for students to comment on each others blogs and respond to comments on their own blogs. This will help me to see where connections to the learning content are strong and where gaps in knowledge are evident.
• Adapt lesson formats so that regardless of curriculum area we spend time thinking about how we can share our learning effectively on our blogs, and time thinking about giving and responding to blog comments that are linked to our learning. 

Instructional lessons:

• I need to create opportunities for my learners to focus, notice and use the words that help us make sense of the learning, and model this.
• Teach and model the Manaiakalani cybersmart lessons inside core subject areas to help my learners strengthen their understanding of the blogging process and understand how paying attention to the feedback received in blog comments can help them move their learning to the next level in context.
• Provide scaffold frameworks and rubrics to support this process that are used across the school. 

PAT/STAR/Probe/IKAN/GLoSS/e-asTTLE Assessments:

• Analysing these results gives me a clear picture of what my students can do and where our knowledge gaps are. I use these results to inform my planning and identify shifts in achievement.

Student Voice:

• Gathering student voice is a vital part of teaching. It gives us a clear picture of where our students are at, what they're thinking and what we need to do to allow of learners to make their individual connections to the learning.

Feedback:

• I need to fall back on the known by repurposing an idea I used in 2015 to help my learners understand what feedback looked like. This was done by sharing the story of Austin's Butterfly to help my learners see that by paying attention to the feedback given by his peers, Austin was able to make the changes he needed in his drawing to make it more scientifically accurate. By showing this clip again and unpacking the learning within, I hope to help my current students see the power giving and receiving feedback has in strengthening their connections to the learning.

Peer to peer talk:

• Peer to peer talk continues to be huge part of our learning time as it provides authentic opportunities for new words to be used in context. I can see that buddying my learners up they can talk through a blog post then collaboratively decide the appropriate feedback and feed forward through dialogic discussion before leaving their individual comments.
• This will also provide the opportunity for my learners to buddy up and talk through comments received before responding.
• To do this effectively I will need to create speaking frames.

Explore success in schools/ cluster initiatives:

• Panmure Bridge School 
• Manaiakalani and Outreach schools
• Manaiakalani Cybersmart resources
• Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu
• Wairakei School - Link here  
• MIT/COL inquiries