Bursts and Bubbles 2023

Last week the Manaiakalani COL teachers shared the impact of their 2023 Teacher Inquiry. The link to all the inquiry bursts can be found here. 

Here is my journey...

Here’s a question that frustrates me each time I mark easttle writing samples… Why have you used that word? Yes, the words change, but the question stays the same. 

We model, unpack and provide rich opportunities for a wide variety of vocabulary to be explored and used, yet at the end of 2022 and again at the start of this year, most of my learners reverted back to using simple everyday words in their independent writing. I thought this was the catalyst for the low vocabulary and spelling scores. Scores, I thought, we could improve with a concentrated focus on spelling conventions and rules.

The time point 1 data analysis showed that my learners were using words they could spell, instead of the words they wanted to use, but couldn’t spell. 

However, as we all know, some ideas don’t go the way you want them to. I thought, if we knew how to spell the words, we would use them. Wrong! Yes my learners could easily spell and define the vocabulary we explored in class, but unless directed to, simply did not use them. 

This all changed when Dr Jacinta Oldehaver sent me a professional reading that unpacked the word gifting journey Sylvia Ashton Warner had been on many years before me. 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. 

My students were conscious of the words they were meeting in their T shaped literacy units because they owned them. When I say owned them, it is because I physically gifted them a word each. A word on a square of paper that they had to keep alive by looking after them and bringing with them physically, to each literacy lesson. 

The motivation to learn these words, and more importantly use them in context came through daily challenges that as a group they were expected to meet. Who would have ever thought these small squares of paper would encourage 15 students to make sure each word had been used by its owner twice each lesson! This group knew when a word had only been used by it’s owner once, and got very creative in their ways to ensure the daily target had been met. Intrinsic motivation at its best.

Ironically I started hearing these words used in discussions across the curriculum and noticed they were spelt correctly when used in written responses, which was something we never actually focused on. 

The inclusion of these words in the T4 easttle writing samples resulted in a noticeable change in vocabulary and spelling scores when time point 2 data was analysed. Student voice collected at both time points shows the fear of making a mistake remains the biggest hurdle. However for these students, the journey towards overcoming this has begun.

The most important learning I made in regards to fostering a culture of word consciousness, is that sometimes things don’t go to plan so don’t be afraid to start again if it all goes wrong. Drive the change and find ways to give your students ownership of the change you want to effect by making it purposeful and fun.

Sharing time at PBS...

Over the last few weeks we have had our own PBS version of Bursts and Bubbles to share our 2023 teaching inquiries. This was really interesting to listen to as I could see the change in practice being embraced. There were many successes celebrated as we continue to work together to accelerate shift in the achievement levels of our learners.

The DLO below is a snapshot of a year of inquiry and is shared with permission. If you would like to read about the journey behind the summary, click on the teacher's name and it will take you to their professional blog.

COL interview 2024...

What achievement challenge are you considering as an area of focus in 2024 and why? Include in your WHY both evidence and your own passion/expertise

This year my inquiry focus began with me thinking it was the challenges spelling brought to the table that caused most of my learners to revert back to using simple everyday words in their independent writing. I thought I could improve with a concentrated focus on spelling conventions and rules. My thinking was by doing this my learners would start to use the words they wanted to use. I was wrong!

It turned out what I actually needed to do was swamp them with words they had never heard or seen before and make the challenge of connecting to them fun and purposeful. This journey is explained on my blog, and made this year of change practice a fun one. This made me think, I need to do more of this, but in different ways, which is why I think strengthening vocabulary is the direction I see my 2024 inquiry going. 

What learnings from the 2017 - 2023 CoL teacher inquiries have informed or inspired your thinking.

Learning with and from my fellow CoL teachers has meant I have collected many ideas from others along the way that have become firmly embedded in my practice, like this one. A number of years ago Kiri and I observed Matt Goodwin teach a guided reading lesson. What stuck with us was the collaborative doc he was using with his students. We were inspired to use and have overtime, adapted his original idea to what is now our planning format.

How would your work support Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa?

I have for a very long time run a visible site. A large number of my resources have been shared across the motu. I see them in Manaiakalani programs like the DFI and RPI, and have been a part of a number of research initiatives with Wolf Fisher for a number of years. All initiatives that have helped me continue to change and adapt my practice to help my students achieve the 1.5 times shift and give them the tools they need to find success.

Which elements of the extensive Manaiakalani research findings inform or challenge you as you think about this?

Recognising our tamariki don’t have the academic literacy to access the learning is the research finding that continues to challenge me. Many of our learners simply do not have the literacy skills and confidence needed to record their ideas independently. When you add to this the fear of failure or making mistakes, it’s not hard to see the reality of the struggle many of our children face in Y7/8 with topics they are struggling to connect to.

How would you like to be supported in 2024 as you undertake this inquiry?

The support I would like in 2024 is to continue to be a part of planned opportunities to see and hear how other COL teachers drive inquiry in their schools. This would enable us to build on and strengthen the processes we already have in place.

How would you plan to support your colleagues in your school with their inquiries and/or teaching in the area you are exploring?

Aside from continuing to model my inquiry on my blog, I have found that the best support I can offer my colleagues with their inquiries is to guide them through the inquiry process term by term. To make this rewindable and manageable a few years ago I created our PBS Teacher Inquiry DLO, which is our version of a ‘how to’ process and is shared with staff in termly chunks. In term 4 we come together and have our own sharing session. Something I have driven as our PBS within school kahui ako is to ensure opportunities to focus and discuss our teacher inquiries are planned for, in order to keep the process alive throughout the year. 

I would like to add that even though I am not in a position due to my teaching, mentoring and DP responsibilities to apply for the across school role, it is not because I do not want to challenge myself in this role. It is simply because I do not have the time available to commit regularly to the time requirements of an across school kahui ako. However, I am, as I have been in the past, always happy to support anyone with their teaching inquiry or teaching program if I am able to.

Exploring Qualitative and Quantitative Data...

Each slide below contains the comparative data gathered from time point 1 and time point 2. Underneath the graphs I have analysed the shifts in more detail. It is important to note here that I have only analysed the data gathered from the 15 students in my literacy group that present both data collection times.

 

What I noticed as a result of my intervention was that once the knowledge of simple rules and/or conventions of spelling was in place, the challenge element was lost. If I wanted the momentum to continue I quickly realised I needed to adapt and change my thinking and my approaches.

As mentioned in my previous post, 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. The learning became about the words and not the hurdles that prevent them from being used. The more I used these words, the more my students used them. Being confident to use and apply more sophisticated vocabulary in context accurately became the norm. My expectations were clear and I noticed that as my student's confidence grew the higher my expectations became. The exciting part was the students took ownership of this challenge and regularly helped each other find the words to use to shift responses to the next level. Student created and driven tally charts evolved as a way of monitoring that everyone had used their word twice, with the others in their group prompting those who had not met daily challenge. 

An interesting observation with the word gifting strategy was when I physically gave my students a piece of paper with their word on it, the ownership and connection to that words was much stronger than when we used a randomiser wheel to select our words. I feel this was because the words on paper could be physically touched, seen and used. Making the gifted words digital made them more abstract. Maybe this was a step too far too quickly, as looking back we overlooked the consolidation step. 

Student voice gathered at both TP1 and TP2 and collated in the DLO above, allows for a comparison of student voice and attitudes towards spelling. To collect this data we used a Google Form survey to get to know our class as spellers. I have edited the original survey responses to reflect those only from my focus group who were present at both time points.

The comparison between the two timepoints (all analysed in the DLO above) shows there are some positive shifts happening in mindsets but when looking closely at how my learners see themselves I see we have a long way to go. This is possibly due to the historical belief that I can't spell it so I won't use it, ESOL obstacles and a fear of getting it wrong. This will definitely take more than a year for change to cement itself, but as we close our 2023 learning journey's deep dive into word consciousness, I feel confident we have laid some strong foundations to build on.

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.