Stocktake of my Inquiry...

We are half way through the year and I realise when taking stock of my inquiry that the PLD start delay has impacted my inquiry significantly. I haven't really been able to begin until now as we have only had 4 structured literacy PLD sessions so far. My inquiry a school leader is not just a personal one, but also a team one. The positives to date are that we have been keeping the status quo in literacy so I do know we are currently all on the same page as far as planning is concerned. We are all on the same page as far as DLO scaffolds are concerned and our current shared language of instruction is alive and well. 

Moving forward this term sees us starting to implement structured literacy practises. What is a huge plus for us is that the changes are not big ones. Our current planning is structured. It unpacks the text and explores text structures, themes and vocabulary. What we do need to do is approach the tweaks we need to make to the vocabulary instruction at our own pace. What I mean by that is we are a team with a varied range of teaching experience which ranges from 6 months to over 30 years. If we change too much too soon I can see everything unravelling quickly. The point of PLD is to build on what we know to strengthen our practice not to throw everything out and start again.

Before I think about how I can support my team I need to put my own oxygen mask on first. By that I mean I need to jump into structured literacy approaches boots and all. I know I still need to capture student voice and will do this when term 3 begins. I needed to look closely at how I will adapt and tweak my current planning. I have done that by looking at the planning exemplar provided on the structured literacy platform we are using and have then made a few changes in what I already had in place. 

The end goal was to keep a 'create' aspect which I have done. I wanted to make sure I was covering what was suggested but I also know I can do this without folding back to using the worksheets I cut my teeth on as a beginning teacher. The first screenshot below is what is suggested on our PLD provider platform. The way I have interpreted this is to use the perspective DLOs I already have in place but add a creative aspect to this by using ADOBE podcast to capture the conversation behind the end product. (The discussion and summarising aspects are covered in the guided planning.) We do have planning scaffolds that we use but the way my learners show their perspective is totally up to them. I am also making use of text sets and my learning T-shaped literacy gave me. What I have added is a skill drill game that I created using Gemini. These multi-choice tasks have been a game changer in our class. They allow for quick recall and application of new learning. Examples of these challenges can be found here.

As I said earlier I, along with my team, are very much at the start of our structured literacy journey. Ours made slightly more challenging by the year groups being separated into PLD for Y4-6 and PLD for Y7-8. What is helping keep us all aligned is the planning framework and the conversations we have as a team.

Causal Chain - mapping my inquiry...

As a part of the Manaiakalani Kahui Ako we are challenged to think about what we want to achieve then work backwards to map our steps. This is called a causal chain and is the logical thought process we follow to help us stay focused on on track throughout the entirety of our inquiries. As I completed my causal chain for 2025 I realised I was actually building on from the inquiry I began last year. This is exciting as it is an opportunity to see how the team alignment we worked so hard on last year strengthens our team when staff members change and a new program (structured literacy) is introduced.

Link to my 2025 Causal Chain

A causal chain is when a cause leads to an effect and that effect becomes the cause of another effect - A leads to B. B leads to C. C leads to D...start from D and work backwards Any intervention you design will (consciously or not) be based on a causal chain you have in mind - this is your theory of action.... To really understand deeply how teaching (as a cause) leads to a valued student outcome (effect), we need to know about more than just the first cause in the chain and the final - we need to know about each link.' - Dr Aaron Wilson

Building an accurate profile of students' learning - tools, measures and approaches...

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

My challenge is to explore how the create aspect of the Manaiakalani pedagogy fits in and how we harnessing the digital to explore the create aspect of structured literacy. Our Junior team is currently running a structured literacy program and our Senior team are one week away from beginning our own structured literacy journey. As indicated in a previous post, I am very aware that 'creative skills help students become better problem solvers, communicators and collaborators.' (Manaiakalani). If a student can effectively use their DLO to teach it to someone else, then their own level of understanding and critical thought patterns (specifically analysis) are significantly strengthened.

To capture our starting point I chatted to our teaching team about how they currently use create in Reading and then followed this up by exploring the teaching slides on our class sites and a random selection of individual student blogs. The presentation below reflects my initial findings. Classes are randomly positioned on these graphs to preserve anonymity. My objective here is not to identify anyone or any class publicly as everyone is grappling with the challenges new learning brings.

One point I did not consider at the start of the year was the difference in learning needs between the students who are learning to read and those who are reading to learn. I have since discovered that with our newest learners the create aspect is very much 'hands- on' rather than digitally focused. 

With my Year 7/8 class in mind I will be continuing to use what I already know to build on my new learning. Having participated in the T-shaped literacy PLD for the last few years I can see where the ideas I learnt there can be capitalised on here. What is important for our senior team is that we follow the same line of thinking. We don't need to disregard for example, the summarising DLO and shared language of instruction we already use. This alignment that has been across the syndicate for the last few years is paying off in our room this year as our learners already have the knowledge needed to summarise a text. My role is to remind our team as we begin our structured literacy journey, to use what we know to unpack the new learning. We don't need to take our learners back to the start when they're already finding success in what they use now.

My Planning Focus:

• This year I changed the word 'changes' to 'focus' in this section as I am aware if create opportunities are to stay alive in my literacy program I need to ensure they are well thought out and actively planned for. I absolutely can not see the point in throwing the baby out with the bathwater to ensure I am following a structured literacy program.
• Looking ahead at the planning exemplars on the platform we are using I see that there are opportunities for our learners to summarise, find the main idea, identify the theme, make connections and see things from different perspectives. All follow up challenges I already do. What I won't be doing is using the provided worksheets as I have a wide range of strategies in my kete that will allow me to align with the planning but also keep create alive in my classrom.