My inquiry this year has had many twists and turns. Achieving accelerated shift in Literacy was identified as being one of the most important issues facing our Y4 - 8 team, this year, when the time point one data was analysed. What began as an inquiry into how learning gained from professional development was helping to strengthen teacher practice and student achievement in literacy, completely morphed into the one you can see on the screen behind me. Why? Because it simply wasn't working.
The effect of staff changes on PLD is something I hadn't initially taken into consideration and I found myself going round in circles. I began my journey by trying to ensure we were all on the same page. I knew consistency and a shared language of instruction would help our students to make the connections they need to be able to access their learning with confidence and understanding.
This wasn’t about disregarding what my team brought to the table, but rather about aligning our thinking. However, as we were all coming from such different places, both literally and in knowledge gained from recent PLD, I hit a wall I couldn’t get over.
Midway through the year I spoke to Naomi Rosedale to get her advice on why this wasn’t coming together for me. To be honest, by this time I had pretty much lost interest as I was going round in circles. It’s amazing the power one conversation can have. I left totally reinspired with a completely new inquiry focus and my new best friend, the Manaiakalani Reading Pillars of Practice sitting comfortably in my Google drive. Aligning what I was looking for with the Pillars of Practice was the lightbulb moment I needed. In Term 3 I used the pillars to look closely at what and how we, that is my team and I, were actually teaching the tamariki in front of us, in our reading lessons. Time point one data analysis helped me gauge whether or not the learning planned met the learning needs. To allow for consistency, I took the stance that if it wasn't in the planning it wasn't happening. The follow up discussions were both rich and gave all of us the clarity we needed to help us move forward in our quests to meet the learning needs of our individual classes. This process was repeated in Term 4 and Time point 2 data analysed alongside it. What I noticed was with a shared understanding and stronger knowledge of why we need to make changes, changes had been made. These findings and the student shift we are celebrating are all explained in detail on my blog. Changing my inquiry focus has allowed me to introduce change in a manageable and achievable way. Mindsets where planning is concerned, have moved from compliance to purpose, something I struggled to initially get buy in from. I feel that looking closely at my own planning put us all on an even playing field. Having a framework allowed us to all learn together but at our own pace. The big message I want to share here is that change is good, it should be embraced and we should not be afraid to walk in a different direction if what we have tried is not working.
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