Describe and explain the changes/tweaks you have made in your practice along the way...

As I have previously stated, motivation is intrinsically related to engagement. If my inquiry this year was to make an impact on my learners achievement, I needed to find engaging and purposeful ways for my learners to embrace the challenges that come from being introduced to a wide variety of new vocabulary. At the start of the year I felt that the hurdles in front of us were connected to spelling and my learner's connections to rules of spelling. Time point one spelling and writing assessments showed a huge disconnect between how words sounded and what my learners appeared to hear. 

I began by capturing my learner's attitudes towards spelling through the e-asTTle self reflection analysis and through a survey that helped me get to know my learners as spellers. There were definitely some eye opening results with the fact spelling was seen as important but this group of students did not see themselves as being good at spelling with the majority choosing to use an easier word when the one they wanted was not one they could spell. Traditional spelling activities were suggested as ways of strengthening our connections to the conventions of spelling but I was excited by this. I remember as a child learning my words, getting them all correct in the weekly test then never thinking about them again. I didn't see the purpose of the test then and I couldn't see it now. I do remember the students who rarely found success in this activity spending many Fridays in the sickbay. I did not want that pattern to develop so I knew what ever we did it had to be fun, purposeful and achievable. This where, following an online PD session with Louise Dempsey that I blogged about previously, our journey into the world of affixes began.

What I noticed here was that once the knowledge of simple rules and/or conventions of spelling, (eg: dropping the 'e' off a base word before adding the suffix 'ing') was in place the challenge element was lost. My learner's enjoyed the activities but I noticed the time taken to complete them became shorter, and the reliance on the dictionaries to create new words from a base or root word was becoming less and less. Therefore it was time to make some changes to keep the learning and motivation going. 

Change came after a meeting with Dr Jacinta Oldehaver. I explained my dilemma and asked if there were any readings she knew of that might support my word consciousness journey. Jacinta shared a reading with me about the word gifting experiences of Sylvia Ashton-Warner. I was about to begin a new T shaped literacy focus and needed to find a way to help my learners connect with the sophisticated vocabulary associated with the unit that they needed to be able to use and apply in context and independently. This post will explain what we did. In a nutshell, what began as a focus on spelling conventions and rules quickly morphed into an inquiry into word consciousness which involved my learners 'being aware of new words, their meanings, and how these words are used. Students who are conscious of the words they are meeting are motivated to learn them and use them. 

Student responses to the texts reflected an accurate use of words most had not heard of before, being used both in extended discussions and in the justifications of their thinking. A definite win here! My learners thrive on challenge so as explained in the link to the post above, I added the challenge of each person being required to use their word twice each reading lesson. I noticed that both of my groups had created a tally sheet so the score was kept. I view that as intrinsic motivation at its best! 

The fear of spelling a word wrong or choosing a simpler word seemed to have been left behind as the desire to use the words was more powerful. I was able to quickly correct spelling errors with a hotspot style workshop that used the conventions of spelling as a reference point. To consolidate that part we used the dictionaries (our version of 'paper google'), to find other words that followed these conventions so that we could make the all important visual and auditory connections needed. The learning became about the words and not the hurdles of the order the letters are written, that prevent them from being used. My part in this was to model the use of these new words we were meeting across the curriculum. The more I did it the more my students did it. The key learning here as their teacher is, if I want something to happen I need to walk the walk, talk the talk and continually drive the challenge outside of the context in which the words were actually met. You can not simply introduce something and leave it there. New learning must be revisited and used if it is to become internalised knowledge. 

The graphic below is something I found after I had been on my inquiry journey. This reaffirms the direction I took to shift student achievement and change my practice was the right one. The reading component in the graphic below aligns with the T shaped literacy units of Great Beginnings, Representation and Genre that I have been doing as part of a research initiative lead by the University of Auckland.

Graphic retrieved from here

Being confident to use and apply more sophisticated vocabulary in context accurately was a huge step towards changing mindsets. I know this helped us make shifts in literacy in the classroom this year and am looking forward to seeing if there has been a change in the types of words used in our time point two writing assessments. By strengthening students connections to vocabulary and the spelling conventions that accompany these new words, I hoped to see a change in attitude towards word choice which would be transferred to personal writing, higher levels of self efficacy and an overall shift in achievement so that a higher number of our learners are achieving at or above the expected norms in literacy. The most noticeable change has been the change in the mindsets of both myself and my students. 

Restating my inquiry question and chain of events...

This year I want to find out if a focus on spelling conventions foster an environment where word consciousness strengthens connections to the learning? Creating a causal chain helps me stay focused on the purpose of my teacher inquiry. We all know how easy to fall down many rabbit holes along the way so having a causal chain to look back on helps to keep me on track and visualise the end point. My initial post to introduce my causal chain is here.

At the start of term 2 my role in our school changed dramatically. I went from being one of three deputy principals to being the only DP. This change aligned perfectly with the start of my ERO journey so as I'm sure everyone will appreciate, my focus and time was spent co-constructing our matrix evidence. I found I was spending less time in the classroom and more time meeting the commitments of my DP role. Fortunately our students weren't bounced from reliever to reliever as Dianne took on the leadership of our day to day teaching component and I tried as hard as I could to be both a teacher and a leader. I quickly realised that I needed to let go of many of the lessons I loved teaching. The only one I held steadfastly to was literacy. That part was non negotiable. I was one year and one term into my T shaped literacy journey and didn't want to let that go so I had to learn how to be present in both roles. The flip side of this was that although I was using my teaching time to work towards increasing my learner's confidence using more powerful vocabulary and exploring affixes in an attempt to strengthen phonological and spelling awareness I did not blog my journey formally. Instead I had a Google doc full of notes that I knew I would be able to transcribe at a later date.

I capitalised on the PD provided as part of the T shaped literacy initiative and attended a number of online PD sessions run by The Literacy Place. This helped me grow as a teacher who knew I needed to model what I wanted my students to replicate. Looking back at the 'intervention' box on my causal chain kept me on track. I ended up using this like a checklist which meant I had a plan and was able to stick to it to help me achieve the goals I set for myself. When looking through my student's eyes, the reading responses both oral and written, to questions and provocations provided by our T shaped units, has continued throughout the year to be our record of their shifts in the complexity of their vocabulary choices from experimental to mastery. 

Celebrating the win...

This week the words I heard in our class speech competition completely stopped me in my tracks. Standing in front of an audience of their peers was every member of my reading groups confidently used the vocabulary we have encountered, unpacked and explored throughout our Reading units this year in context. Gone were the usual go-to's and in their place was a plethora of sophisticated vocabulary. This is a win in every sense of the word! 

To give my last sentence some context, the previous week I had taught an explicit lesson on speech writing. This lesson contained exemplars at a variety of e-asTTle writing levels. That meant my learners were exposed to a healthy mix of simple and more powerful vocabulary. One of our challenges involved applying our knowledge language features to edit an exemplar and move it to the next level. This is where my students very sound understanding of the more powerful vocabulary needed came to the fore. This then lead to a rich discussion as each group discussed their vocabulary choices and explained why they had made these changes. We applied the same strategy to levelling up the structural features.

Unfortunately the next few days saw me off sick, which meant my learners were left to work independently on their own speeches. I did share explicit instructions via email but knew these students would be working without guided teacher support. The comments tool in Google docs definitely gets a shout out here. I shared my feedback and left them to it. Move forward to today. I saw and heard the outcome of explicit teaching, creative ways of helping my learners connect to new and powerful vocabulary and a year long focus on affixes in action. 

My next step is to record some of these speeches that will be uploaded here so that I have a permanent record of what success looks like.

Listening to my Learners...

Collecting student voice is one of the most powerful forms of feedback. As the strategy of word gifting was new for us I wanted to see if my thoughts aligned with the thoughts of my learners. To capture this I shared a Google form with the students in my reading groups. The slides reflect the responses.

The questions I asked were:

• What did you like about the vocabulary gifting in Reading?
• What might you do differently to get to know the new words in Reading?
• How did this help you in the Representation topic?

Implement and Try#2: Word Gifting...

I have been approaching my inquiry into word consciousness as a whole language focus and not simply looking for opportunities to strengthen spelling skills. This term I have actively planned for opportunities to adopt the word gifting strategy that Sylvia Ashton-Warner used to elicit key vocabulary. 

Making Reading Meaningful - Sylvia Ashton-Warner and the Language Experience Approach by Sherron Killingsworth Roberts points out that by embracing some of the guiding principles for practice of Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s work in developing the Language Experience Approach (LEA) we can strengthen the connections our tauira have to the more challenging topic based vocabulary needed to make sense of new learning. The principle that resonates most with me is to offer ongoing, authentic language and literacy experiences, including lots of opportunities to speak, listen, read, write, and think about their own and others’ words.

In my reading program this term I have been focusing on the concept of representation in texts. This unit was designed as part of the T-Shaped literacy PLD that I have been on with the University of Auckland for the past two years. In each unit there is a vocabulary component that we up until now have unpacked as a class. This time around I decided to make a few changes, with the most powerful change being to gift the content specific vocabulary to my learners. 

The first thing I did was to create a list of the words and their definitions. These were then cut up and placed face down in front of the groups. After everyone physically selected their card the next challenge was to find the their partner by matching the word to its meaning. We needed to establish ownership of these words so the challenge to use their specific words twice each reading lesson was laid down. To ensure this happened my learners were asked to bring their word to every time we had reading. These word cards were not pretty or laminated but became a part of every reading lesson as along with ownership came a sense of responsibility.

No one immediately connects to a word so each pair was given the challenge of introducing their word to us. The details of the challenge are on the slide below.

What I found was that strong connections were made by the owners of these words. This was evident in reading responses, extended discussions and questions asked. What I wasn't expecting was that every student in the group could use every word accurately and in context. The example below from team 1 shows how these words were used in context accurately and effectively.

With the success I found in reading using this strategy, I decided to transfer this challenge to our science inquiry. Again, ownership meant connections and connections meant explanations of experiment outcomes were explicit. This is definitely an activity I would use again as it was unique, purposeful and fun.

Teacher inquiry at PBS 2023...

This year Dianne Fisi'iahi and I are both in-school COL teachers for Panmure Bridge School. What I like about this is that there are two of us leading the implementation of teacher inquiries for 2023. This means neither of us are trying to find time to have the professional discussions needed with our colleagues. By sharing the responsibility we are able to manage this much more effectively than past years. I look after the teachers participating in the RPI program as I am their mentor, and our beginning teachers. Dianne looks after the more experienced teachers. This means we are playing to our strengths and guiding teacher inquiry effectively in our school.

We began our journey by using the presentation I created a few years ago which helps us set up our PBS staff for their inquiries into their own practice. With two sets of eyes we have adapted and tweaked my original slides, making our inquiry process more streamlined. I am also enjoying the fact their are two voices delivering the messages, which means we can support each other in staff meetings. 

We began by supporting our teachers to analyse their data to find the gaps in learner knowledge, then use this to identify a target group and formulate their inquiry questions. All inquiries are visible with links to professional blogs being recorded on a shared doc so that we can learn with and from each other. Our second TAI session was about creating a causal chain to help map out inquiries and stay on track. Both of these TAI staff meetings have been shared with a purpose to encourage buy-in and inform blog posts. 

Dianne and I share our inquiries as exemplars to guide those new to this process. We have also shared the link to the Manaiakalani Kahui Ako page so that teachers can find exemplars of inquiries that align with their year levels. Our next step is to encourage our PBS teachers to tap into the expertise of the Across School COL teachers. 

Causal Chain... A tool for planning and reflecting...

Link to causal chain

This year I want to find out if a focus on spelling conventions foster an environment where word consciousness strengthens connections to the learning? Creating a causal chain helps me stay focused on the purpose of my teacher inquiry. As I have said before, it is so easy to fall down many rabbit holes along the way so having a causal chain to look back on helps to keep me on track. Creating a causal chain allows me to visualise where I want my students to be at the end of the learning year, then map backwards the steps I will take to strengthen our (mine and my learner's) connections to the topic. 

My 'crusade' this year is to grow the vocabulary knowledge of akonga in my literacy groups. This year Dianne and I are undertaking a collaborative inquiry as we share a learning space. Although we are approaching this challenge in different ways, the reason behind it remains aligned. We have seen our students fall back on the familiar and simple words like 'went' when writing independently, possibly because don't  have the confidence to draw on the more powerful words that would move their writing to the next level. Our hunch is that reliance on the 'known' maybe due to the 'fear' of making mistakes when spelling the more challenging words expected at a Year 7/8 level. Spending time focussing on identifying meaningful chunks in words (root words, base words and affixes) might be the key that unlocks the door to the 'unknown' and may help my learners strengthen their vocabulary, spelling and decoding development in literacy so they are able to use and apply this knowledge when working independently..

Implement and Try #1: Digital Escape Rooms

Last term I attended the Creating Digital Escape Rooms with Donna Yates toolkit. Donna introduced us to a collection of published digital escape rooms which we had an opportunity to explore. We were also shown how to create our own escape rooms using Google forms. 

Here is the link to Donna's presentation. Slides 7-15 have clear steps to follow if you are keen to give this a try.

As a way of putting my new learning into practise and helping my students strengthen their connections to their affixes learning, we created our own affix themed digital escape rooms. The challenge was to devise 10 affix related questions that their peers would then answer in their quest to open an online game that let them apply their new learning in a fun way. The games selected were found using our smart searching skills so are not our own creations. That is one of our next challenges.

This was a fun and practical way of reinforcing learning. Dictionaries were out in full force and the discussion was rich and very loud as questions were being tested on friends orally before being recorded on the Google form. What I liked about this activity was the fact it forced my learners to draw on and recall their new learning, the dictionaries and the books they have been completing challenges in were used purposefully and the whole activity was met with a huge level of enthusiasm. 'Easy' questions were soon pushed to the side as the desire to write the 'hardest' question became the challenge of the day. This activity took two blocks of learning to complete but was absolutely worth it as the 'I've escaped' cheers showed the level of buy-in and allowed my learners to see their own success in real time, and I was able to see just how strong the connections to our new learning are.

We have created a page on our class site for our escape rooms which can be found here. 

Our First Footsteps into Word Consciousness...

After attending the PLD: Supporting students to become confident and competent spellers run by Louise Dempsey I put some of my new learning into place. About 1/3 of our class are participating in the STEPSWEB program which opens up a slot on our timetable for the other 2/3 of our class to focus on growing their own word knowledge.

Introducing affixes:

I used a template shared by Louise that shows how base words become completely different words with the introduction of prefixes and suffixes. We began by defining base words as being a complete word by itself that prefixes and suffixes can be added to make a new word. The example we used was the base word, happy. I then challenged my learners to make new words that had the word happy in them. At this stage we had only the knowledge of affixes that we brought to the lesson. As the words were generated from known words I filled in the template on the board (see image below).

We then explored possible reasons why I might have written some parts of the words in different sections of the table. A question that opened the doors for the introduction of the words prefix and suffix, and allowed us to unpack what these words might mean and what effect they had on the base word. All devices were closed at this time which gave me the opportunity to introduce the dictionaries and thesaurus' that were in all honesty, sitting on the shelf gathering dust. Having become so used to opening Chromebooks and defining words meant a quick lesson was needed on how to use a dictionary (or 'paper google' as it has now become known as).

After this I set my learners the challenge of building a word list using the base word excite. To make sure we were selecting actual words, only words generated that could be found in the dictionary were able to be recorded. We then unpacked what each of the affixes meant and explored how they changed the based word.  

Eg: the prefix over (too much or more than normal) + the base word, excite (being enthusiastic or happy) = over excite (more than normally enthusiastic or happy). 

Deziah's blog post explains this activity - (shared with permission).

Qu. #2 - Why we judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year...

Last week after talking to the teachers I am mentoring in the RPI program I was reminded of the Reading for Enjoyment survey I did last year to get to know my learners as readers. In a conversation with Dianne afterwards, I suggested that we could try to create a similar survey that would help us get to know our learners a spellers. Our Principal understands our concerns with regards to spelling abilities in our current class and is fully supportive of our proposed inquiry into word consciousness. 

The results of this survey are below.

Link to presentation

We judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year as the results here affirm our initial thinking that a deficit in word consciousness and a 'fear' of getting words wrong, limits the level of vocabulary used in independent writing, and causes meaning to be lost in reading. It will be interesting to analyse the self efficacy rating and the spelling level given when the e-asTTle writing assessment data is complete. (NB: Our plan is to look at the current and historical data of the e-asTTle writing, PAT Reading and the Peter's spelling test to identify trends). 

PLD: Supporting students to become confident and competent spellers - Louise Dempsey

To grow our own knowledge and strengthen our connections to teaching phonics, morphology and spelling conventions Dianne and I signed up to the PLD: Supporting students to become confident and competent spellers run by Louise Dempsey.

Aims of the two workshops:

• Develop subject knowledge about phonics, morphology and spelling conventions

• Unpack the progression of skills (phonics, spelling conventions, and morphology)

• Learn high-impact strategies and activities to teach word and sub-word level skills

Here are my notes

My takeaways:

• Spelling is an obstacle that gets in the way of reading and writing. However it is a learnt skill that can be taught and is an integral skill to make meaning. If learners can spell, they can read and write.
• Children need a decent bank of words to allow them to pick up and use a wider vocabulary
• Confidence comes when children can hear identified sounds
• Encourage self correction
• Phonics and spelling patterns are crucial for our students when writing
• Fluent writers need to be aware of spelling conventions, morphology/affixes and word origins
• Decode in reading and encode in writing by applying rules
• Spelling skills are learnt progressively - the list below was unpacked with valuable examples that are recorded in my notes
• Phonics: letters and sounds
• Analogy: rime eg: cat/sat/mat
• Try: say - listen- write -try and underline to show unsure = taking risks
• Analogy and affixes help strengthen vocabulary eg: look/looks/looked/ looking
• Spelling conventions: rules
• Morphology: know affixes and how to add them to base words
• Word origins eg: bio = life + ology = study of so biology = study of life

After attending these sessions Dianne and I decided we need to co-construct with our learners a 'working' wall display that we build alongside our learning of morphology, spelling conventions, phonics at our level. This not only makes it visible, but also makes it rewindable.

Resources to support development of word consciousness:

• Spelling bank - Link
• The Literacy Place books - Link

Qu 1: Student Inquiry Foci...

This year Dianne Fisi'iahi and I will be undertaking a collaborative inquiry. What this will look like exactly at this stage is still on the drawing board although we do know our purpose. This year we want to find out if a focus on spelling conventions will foster an environment where word consciousness strengthens connections to the learning.

We teach a Year 7/8 class with 40 learners, all who bring a wide a varied connection to the conventions of spelling to the table. We know from past experience and from what we have observed so far this year, that our learners physically stop writing, stop reading and avoid sharing back to the class when they lose the connection to words needed to continue to make sense of the learning. There are many reasons as to why this happens but rather than focus solely on that, we want to focus on how we can prevent this pattern from continuing to evolve into a hurdle that is too challenging to get over. Our thinking is that if we begin to develop these skills and understandings, the transition to language of instruction used in Y9 may be strengthened by stronger connection to word knowledge.

Having decided on our inquiry focus this year, Dianne and I spoke with Anna Salmon, our Reading Recovery teacher about the barriers children in the junior school face with spelling, and how she helps the students she is working with to overcome these barriers. We came away from a very rich learning conversation with lots of ideas to pull together a tentative pathway forward. Here are the notes we made to help us formulate a plan going forward

'Word consciousness involves being aware and interested in words and word meanings (Anderson & Nagy, 1992; Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2002) and noticing when and how new words are used (Manzo & Manzo, 2008). Individuals who are word conscious are motivated to learn new words and able to use them skilfully '(Sourced here). Our challenge now is to find out why the links in the chain appear to be broken again. Last year I began my inquiry by getting to know my learners as readers through a survey. This year we plan to use this strategy to get to know our learners as spellers. To do this we will be looking at shift or change in:

• Disposition
• Data
• Word consciousness
• Student voice
• Strategies used to make sense of new or unfamiliar words

Further Reading/PLD to grow my own knowledge kete:

• Supporting students to become competent and confident spellers - Louise Dempsy

• Literacy Lines
• Learning during read-alouds: word consciousness
• Building Vocabulary Knowledge: What Does It Mean to Know a Word?
• Fundamental Spelling Rules for Everyone to Know
• The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth