Qu 4: Collecting evidence and data...

Begin to collect evidence and data and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence.

I will use this opportunity to introduce the group of students I will be working with on this inquiry this year. There are 19 students in this group of year 7/8 students (5 Year 7 girls, 3 Year 7 boys, 3 Year 8 girls and 8 Year 8 boys). When referring to the Writing and Spelling data, these students have been identified as our most able students. 

What I noticed when looking closely at their e-asTTle results was that our Year 8 students scored well in their vocabulary choices, possibly due to the increased levels of vocabulary they gained from actively participating in the Reading for Enjoyment and T-shaped literacy initiatives last year. The Year 7 students however, chose to play safe and use the words they knew how to spell. One example of this evident in a comparison of two of the Term 1 e-asTTle writing explanations on the same community facility. The Year 8 student referred to the facility as 'appealing' and 'affordable', whereas the Year 7 student explained that it was 'fun' and 'didn't cost much'. 

My next steps are to explore ways I can grow vocabulary, the knowledge of words and word meanings so that the words met on this journey are transferred from where they were found, to my learner's personal word banks.