TAI 2020 WFRC #7: Readings to support my hypothesis...

Share three pieces of academic or professional reading and explain how they and other sources helped you form hypotheses about aspects of teaching that might contribute to current patterns of learning.

If I want my students to leave quality blog comments then I need to make sure my instruction and explanations help them understand what this looks like. 

'We tell children that a good summary includes "the most important ideas," but some children are left wondering how to tell which ideas are most important. Unfortunately, explanations are often unhelpful. Children can define the main idea, for instance, but they still cannot construct an adequate summary reflecting the important information in a text. Explaining a process is an improvement compared to simply assigning students work, but many children do not acquire useful strategies from explanations alone..... A model makes the process of understanding a domain of knowledge easier because it is a visual expression of the topic.'

Salisu and Ransom (2014) 

The Role of Modelling towards impacting quality education

If I want my students to engage in blog commenting and respond to comments left on their blogs then I need to make sure I allow time in class for them to be 

'participating actively and with understanding... and be able to see worthwhile challenge and purpose in their tasks.'

Effective Literacy Practice Y5-8

If I want my students to see the value of, and interact with feedback comments received on their own blogs then I need to help them to see the power a dialogic interaction can have on strengthening their own connections to a topic.

'Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement.... Feedback is conceptualised as information provided by an agent... and while a teacher can give corrective feedback... peers can suggest an alternative strategy.... However there must be a learning context to which feedback can be addressed... so others can use their knowledge to suggest more effective strategies whilst growing their own error detection skills.... Feedback that is not linked to the learning focus is not effective.... those searching for feedback on the mood in their story will not be looking for feedback on spelling or presentation....' 

Hattie and Timperley (2007) 

The Power of Feedback 

TAI 2020 WFRC #6: How I will use the data...

Explain how some of the data you have used to build a profile of the students’ learning will be used as baseline data at the end of the year.

By creating a Historical Data Pathway that reflects student achievement in the three main assessment areas of our cluster wide standardised testing, I have been able to form a clear picture of my target student's learning achievement for the last three years. What I found interesting here was that whilst many students have continued to progress upwards, a few seemed to peak in Year 5 but have not maintained this level. Possibly because there are disconnects between what they are being asked to do and their confidence in using their knowledge of content specific language that they bring to the challenge. The end of year data will give me the opportunity to look closely at the shifts between the two time points to see if increased opportunities to use and transfer content specific language has made an impact on student achievement. 

When I analysed the blog comments over the last 2 years I noticed that most students were not replying to comments received. I wanted to explore this further so I met with my target group on Google Meet. We had an open and honest discussion, and used this collaborative DLO to capture time point 1 student voice and establish the group's understanding of how to write a quality blog comment. I will repurpose this DLO at the end of the year to see if there have been shifts in attitude, understanding and the quality of content of their commenting skills.

TAI 2020 WFRC #5: Nature and Extent of the Student Challenge...

Share your findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge. Make sure it is clear what evidence from your inquiry supports each finding.

The challenge for my students this year is to continue to make shifts in the learning areas of Maths, Reading and Writing. My initial focus was linked to our school wide professional development of Maths, however lockdown and postponements in PD delivery has meant I have now widened my scope to include Reading and Writing as well. 

Last year as a school we noticed it was a lack of content vocabulary that seemed to limit assessed student achievement. In many cases what we observed in the classroom was not replicated at testing time. As a school we want students to see that learning used in one area can be transferred to another - linked to vocabulary, instruction and strategy, as this was not happening. End of year (2019) and beginning of year (2020) data is evidence of this as class based work and achievement results support this theory. Refer here to the historical data pathway I created to show my target student's achievement since Year 5.

I know from observations in my class, and other classes across our school, if students are asked to have a ‘learning conversation’ they will confidently carry out a conversation using content specific language and learning intentions to give their partner (or group) feedback and feed forward connected to a completed task. However across our school in the Summer Learning Journey it was highlighted that very few of our students were practising this when replying to blog comments. Often comments were met simply with a thank you, or not responded to. The evidence to support this statement is woven throughout the SLJ comments on my class blogs. I am unable to put specific links here as this would disregard anonymity and would identify these students.

Having looked closely at the blog posts and comments on my target student's blogs I noticed that learning intentions are often omitted and explanations of tasks (blurbs) are often reduced to 'Today we had to...', or 'Here is my my DLO of...'. The detailed content and purpsoe for learning is often actually missing from the initial post and has prompted questions like this one I was asked by one of my target students, 'Mrs Anderson how can I comment on the learning if I don't know what they were learning?'.

The challenge for my learners this year is to create comment threads on blogs to help strengthen their connections to the learning. I want my learners to refer to the learning intention and confidently use content specific language when giving feedback and feed forward. I want them to ask questions that provide opportunities for those receiving the comments to justify their thinking, and I want them to understand that giving and receiving blog comments is an important part of our learning. However if before that can take place I need to make sure that my learners are creating quality blog posts that clearly identify the purpose of the learning, a detailed explanation of the task and a personal statement linked to something they found interesting or where they feel they did something well.

Sharing a snapshot of this week's Distance Learning in LS2...

Today I want to share some of the amazing distance learning work my students have been doing this week to keep their learning going. Last week I started to include a sharing time during our Google Meets to celebrate hard work. I didn't only choose the 'best' work, I chose work that showed me a huge effort had been put into the task. What I didn't expect was daily emails from my learners asking if they could share work they felt they had done well. The next step was easy... we extended the sharing time each day. 

Student engagement in distance learning in LS2 has been huge. We meet each morning to set ourselves up for success and have a catch up. I have learnt over the weeks what type of work gets buy-in and what doesn't. To keep the motivation going this I asked my learners what type of learning tasks did they wanted me to set. Apparently 'Reading' and 'Writing' is not 'fun' at home so I very quickly adapted my thinking and disguised both of these curriculum areas within the very popular request of 'Research'. A direct result of that has been that I have been kept very busy giving feedback and feed forward. The rich conversations in the comments tool in g-suite paint a very clear picture of the learning journey we have all been on as we try hard to keep our learning going.

All the work shared below is being shared with permission from my awesome class:

Chris' blog

Liletina's blog         Juel's blog

Fau's blog              Liletina's blog

Sulia's blog

    Florence's blog        Victoria's blog

Matthew's blog.     Ong's blog.      

Kahoot challenges linked to our learning

Karlos' blog