2021 Teacher Inquiry Evaluation

This year I set out to find out if a focus on oral language in maths would accelerate student confidence and capability to use spoken and written maths vocabulary and language.

In order to be able to do something, you need to have access to the tools you need and the understanding of how to use them. This is no different in a classroom. The challenge for my students this year was to make accelerated shift in Maths by being able to talk about their learning in thinking groups, explain it on their blogs and create comment threads that invite others to respond by talking/writing about their learning in maths. This was something I quickly realised that I had to unpack fully, as my initial analysis of my target group’s thinking group conversation showed that my students were not able to access the content vocabulary they needed to be able to have a rich learning conversation. The quieter students chose to remain silent which resulted in the more confident students filling the void with ideas that lacked detail eg: “I did this and then I moved that number…”. They did try to initiate a discussion however, “What did you do?” was the only question I heard being asked. Simply put, my students were not able to talk in depth about their learning.

Being silent is not an option if acceleration is to take place so I realised quickly that I needed to model the language of explanation eg: “I saw that the question was asking me to… so I knew I needed to think about…” or “Groups of means… so I…”; and support the use of questions that encourage justification, eg: “How do you know it works?”, “So what happens if you…”, “What about if you say…does that still work”, “So if we…”  if I wanted rich learning conversations to become the norm.

Summarise evidence about key changes in teaching and other factors that influence student learning.

When asked specific questions eg; “What is this question asking us to do with the numbers?” or “How did you find your answer?” The learned go-to was to remain silent, however being silent is not an option if acceleration is to take place. My initial thinking was that a lack of comprehension remained one of our biggest obstacles. After listening and observing from a distance I realised my students were just not confident when using maths vocabulary as the connections between the words and the strategies had not been made. 

I began breaking down the barriers by:

• Introducing the Talk Moves framework into our maths program so that the discussion stems could become the norm within our learning time. This didn’t work for us because we simply did not use or connect to the words in the stems in. Our solution was to repurpose the Talk Moves idea by co-constructing and implementing a framework that we could connect to because it used our own words. We called it LS2 Moves.

• Modelling the language and supported the use of questions which lead to justification like “How do you know it works?”, “So what happens if you…”, “What about if you say…does that still work”, “So if we…”. 

• Unpacking Jo Boaler’s positive classroom norms.

• Stepping my students through the Talk Moves framework by explaining each component and giving individual students different roles within the group.

• Explaining the purpose behind having a learning conversation.

• Actively planning for talking about and reflecting on our learning in each lesson.

• Actively planning time in class, for students to create blog posts, comment on each other's blogs and respond to comments on their own blogs. This allowed me to see where connections to the learning content were strong, and where the gaps in knowledge were evident.

• Acknowledging individual success in talk time regardless of how big or small that success was.

• Setting the expectation that during our talk time, everybody in the group needed to participate actively.

• Modelling how to bring someone into a conversation in a way that wasn’t seen as ‘scary’.

Summarise evidence about key shifts in the problem of student learning:

Due to the impact of lockdown the shifts in my student’s learning this year are based on OTJs and observations. I collected detailed baseline data in Term 1 and student voice in Term 1 and 2, but am unable to make any time point 1/time point 2 comparative shift analysis this year as lockdown forced me to draw a line under my original inquiry. I literally lost contact with half of my focus group. Due to the length of time we had been learning from home, as a school we decided not to formally assess our students at the end of the year. Because of both these reasons I can not make accurate measures in academic shifts this year. I have additionally chosen not to use the three student voice comparisons I did manage to get as this does not paint a true picture of the change in my learner’s perspectives on maths. 

Write an overall evaluation of your intervention in terms of the causal chain you had theorised. To what extent was the intervention successful in changing factors such as teaching? To what extent were those changes in teaching effective in changing patterns of student learning?

In all assessments our students are required to read and respond to questions. Often our students are not literate in their own language so the gaps that emerge when questions are written in English are getting wider, thus causing bigger disconnects in the learning. This year I want to implement the strategy of Talk Moves in Maths. Talk Moves is a strategy that promotes classroom conversations centred on maths that helps to improve students' understanding of mathematical concepts. It is a framework to prompt the discussion, and will allow me to capitalise on the learning I got from my inquiry in 2020 by providing authentic opportunities to use this 'talk' within blog posts and blog comments to help strengthen connections.

What I had begun to notice in class was that there was a stronger connection to the maths language used in written questions. The evidence I have for this I have taken from my observations in class lessons (T1/2), GLOSS testing (T2) and online collaborations (T3/4). 

I noticed that my target group approached a written question by immediately looking at what the question was asking. (eg: This says XXX had 3 times as many XXX… that means we need to times it). By doing this, the talk then moved quickly to which strategy would help them solve this in the most efficient way. On this occasion I saw this group all solve the problem using their preferred multiplication strategy, then share their ideas with the group. Student G83 then took on the leadership role, cast our LS2 Moves framework to the TV and asked everyone to share their strategy. What was interesting to see was that without a teacher involved the discussion flowed much better. Possibly because these students feel less pressure when talking in front of their familiar group of peers. Acceptance of all contributions was the key to the success on this occasion, with student B82 taking on the role of affirming each response.

During GLoSS testing all these students repeated the question I had asked aloud, then set to work to find the answer. What impressed me here was no one ‘worked it out in my head’ - the usual go-to when they don’t have the words to explain what they did. There were calculation errors but the foundations for the Y8 students were much stronger than I remember in the previous year. What I wasn’t expecting was all these students asked questions for clarification when their connections to the strategy they had chosen weren’t as strong. I asked each person what they felt they needed help with and got quite specific responses (eg: I want to learn more words that mean addition… I think I need more help with XXX strategy… I need to learn my times tables so I can use them to help me with the bigger numbers… I need to practise my place value…) 

The online environment was completely different. The talk just stopped. This meant I had to think carefully about how I could keep the thinking going. I did this through skill drill challenges, which for some reason got huge buy in,  by basing our maths questions around popular topics/themes and by introducing the idea of ‘find the error, fix the error, explain the error’. My thinking here was that if I couldn’t hear the talk I could still read it. My students shared with me that they collaborated on the maths tasks so behind the scenes talk was happening, but most importantly they remained connected as a group.

Write a reflection on your own professional learning through this inquiry cycle.

This year’s inquiry into my own practice as a teacher has highlighted the importance of being creative and making adaptations that work for the tamariki in front of me. One size definitely does not fit all and in our case using Talk Moves did not work. Rather than discarding the idea of using a talking framework, I asked my students why they felt this wasn’t working. We came up with the theory that we simply didn’t speak this way, so we worked together to co-construct a framework we felt would work for us. A week later LS2 Moves had evolved and had become visible in our learning environment.

We were on a roll when lockdown happened this all changed. I have summarised my own learning in my Bursts in Bubbles presentation which can be read and/or watched here. My journey this year reminded me you need to continually think outside the box. You need to adapt and try, then try again. If something doesn’t work, look for the why then find a how.... then repeat.

TAI 2020 WFRC # 10 To what extent was the intervention successful in changing teaching?

I initially linked my inquiry question 'Will strengthening connections to Smart Relationships help our tamariki to understand and use content specific language and vocabulary in Maths?'  directly to our school wide professional development of maths, but due to the changes lockdown and distance learning presented, I widened my focus to incorporate the additional curriculum areas of reading and writing. This is something I see as a bonus as it afforded me the opportunity to reinforce and make connections across these curriculum areas. 

Since beginning my in-school COL teacher journey in 2017 I have realised the power knowing how to transfer learning across the curriculum areas really has. This isn't something new or something I hadn't done previously, but rather something I learnt to take time to think about and actively try to facilitate by consciously drawing attention to, and is something I feel is one of the key changes in my practice this year. 

Drawing attention to the learning intention helped us to identify the purpose behind the learning. In maths for example, the purpose of the lesson may be to 'make ten then add', and in reading might be to 'identify the main ideas', however because the word 'purpose' has been unpacked and used in context, the outcome is that my students know why they are learning what they are learning in both curriculum areas. Revisiting learning intentions (LI) to strengthen my own knowledge has meant these have become more specific. For many years I have written learning intentions on my teaching DLOs and discussed them at given points in the instructional lessons. One big change I have made this year is to record the LI's on the board, in modelling books or on whatever I am using to build the rewindable opportunities that allow visual connections to be made. I now make a conscious effort to begin each instructional lesson by introducing the learning intention. It has a dedicated place within each lesson and is referred to throughout so that I can show my learners where the connections are between the purpose of the task and the actual task. Even though I write these LIs before we begin the learning, on many occasions these are now tweaked and reconstructed with my learners using their words. The latter being highly valued as I think as teachers, it is important to embrace opportunities to learn from our students.

Identifying the learning intentions on blog posts became our point of focus when commenting on each others blogs. When I asked my learners to comment on their peer's blogs I taught them to first look for the learning. Knowing the purpose of learning intentions helped my learners to find the learning in the post. We followed this with a focus on questioning and explored the difference between open and closed questions. This enabled feedback to be given and questions to be asked that dug deeper and linked directly to that learning rather than surface level comments linked to the visual features of the DLOs. As a direct result dialogic and rich learning conversations in the form of comment threads emerged.

                         

At the beginning of my inquiry this year I realised I needed to revisit how to write a quality blog post so that my learners had the tools they needed to work with when creating comment threads. The way I chose to do this was to create a blog post scaffold, and was something that forced me to really think about what learning I wanted my students to take away from each lesson. 

our blog post scaffold was created during our first round of distance learning and was  initially written by me, we progressed to co-construction as the year went on. Each scaffold gave my learners the title, blog post labels, the learning intention, a few points of information and / or a short co-constructed blurb that used the content specific vocabulary we had been using to unpack the learning, and a prompt to give a personal insight to the task. 

As with any class, my learners have a wide range of abilities. Some learners need a lot of scaffolding, while others use that scaffolding as a prompt, in this case, to help them write their own task description. By co-constructing these scaffolds with my learners we first get an opportunity to revisit the purpose of the learning and the content specific vocabulary we have been using, then get a further opportunity to think about the title and labels. 

By strengthening this area my students were then able to leave quality comments as they had the vocabulary tools to work with. 

I linked our cybersmart lessons directly to the learning taking place in our classroom. This allowed for immediate connections to be made. We revisited the purpose behind leaving a comment and discussed how this would help us strengthen our own connections to the learning. When I looked at the way I taught my learners to be cybersmart I realised I was skimming over components I believed my learners had already connected with and knew how to use. This was something I changed immediately. I realised that despite having participated in cybersmart lessons about how to write a quality blog post and comment since their digital learning journeys began, many of my students across all ability levels had not actually made a strong connection to this. 

To effect change here I began weaving this into all our sharing sessions. The words I used were the same, the scaffolds I used had the same structure and my expectation was that all blog posts would contain each element needed to allow our audience to make connections to our learning. Blog commenting was unpacked, scaffolded and given a place within the timetable. I found by actively planning for these opportunities they became the expected norm. 

Modelling and purposefully using the content specific vocabulary was another area I concentrated on in my own practice. In day to day classroom life often we think we are doing something, but the reality is often it this doesn't happen. To support this my observations this year have all focused on my use of content specific vocabulary (CSV) and how I am supporting my students to use this in their blog posts and comments. 

What do you want me to notice during the observation?

• Do the student blog posts match my teaching DLO?
• Are my instructions explicit?
• Am I using content specific language throughout the lessons?
• Does this language link to the task and the LI and cybersmart?
• Are the students using CSV in their blog posts to explain their learning?
• Do comments left use CSV reflect a connection to the learning?

Kiri Kirkpatrick observed my practice in Term 2 and then again in Term 4. Both observations had the same focus to allowed us to have a rich discussion. From these observations I see that I:

• Provide very explicit learning intentions, both verbal and written
• Vocabulary introduced by teacher and generated by students is recorded on the board so students can refer back to CSV
• Students are engaged and ask questions for clarification.
• Opportunities for peer to peer talk to strengthen connections

The most important learning I made through my inquiry is that by embracing change we strengthen our ability to provide our tamariki with the tools they need to strengthen their connections to the learning.

WFRC #14 Evaluating changes in teaching practice ...

The catalytic aspect of student learning my inquiry focused on this year was whether ‘increased emphasis on reading comprehension instruction could lead to better subject achievement in reading, writing and maths’. After talking to Fiona Grant at the start of Term 3, I realised that I had already narrowed this from 'increased emphasis on reading comprehension instruction' to 'increased emphasis on the reading comprehension strategy of inference'. We all need an overarching umbrella question to guide our inquiries whilst giving us room to veer off and explore, but I now realise I had an overarching marquee! My question was too broad and without refining would have meant valuable stones were left unturned.

I identified this as my focus when I noticed how real the ongoing struggle is for our learners who do not have the language acquisition and literacy skills needed to make sense of learning at our level.

To build a rich picture of my students’ learning I used their historical data, their current data (PAT Reading and Maths, STAR, e-asTTle writing, Probe running record analysis, IKAN and GLoSS), student voice (T1, T2, T3) and my own in-class observations.

                                                  

The main patterns of student learning I identified in the profiling phase were that they struggled to read and interpret instructions and tasks, which meant that all testing situations were seen as being highly stressful experiences. My target students could not see that we could use the language and strategies we learn in reading, in maths. I needed them to understand that what we learn in one subject can be used to help us in another. The example I chose to explore further was the strategy of inference because the data that identified the gaps in comprehension across my focus group, reflected none of them were able to respond accurately to questions that were asking them to infer. In addition to this, my reading and conversations with colleagues identified that often it is the inferential component in a written maths question that causes the disconnects.

I have always sought and embraced feedback and suggestions from expert colleagues. so the profiling of my own teaching was done collaboratively with my critical friend, Donna Ryan who observed my practice across several different learning areas. Her observations showed that I had strengths in weaving learning from previous sessions into current lessons, co-constructing learning intentions and scaffold supports, teacher modelling of vocabulary and strategies, and questioning.

However I realised quite quickly that my students would likely make more progress if I asked them to remind me why we were doing the task we were doing. Putting the onus on the students to recap the purpose of the learning gave them an increased sense of ownership. Recording responses as they were offered allowed them to see immediate success and gave us a valuable resource to take further steps along our learning paradigm. I have always taken time to listen to and implement student feedback but this time I identified the person/people responsible for the ideas. Doing this again personalised the changes made and showed that I valued their thinking.

The changes I made in my teaching were that I consciously used think alouds to model explicit use of content language and/or the strategy I was teaching in all subject areas. For example, when introducing new words we unpacked the meaning then I used a variety of synonyms to show these words meant the same as known words. An example of this is the way the word multiply is broken down as times tables or groups of. Doing this each time I use the word allows a wider number of students to make the connections they need, to make sense of the learning.

                                                 

I purposely planned activities that encouraged my learners to use the vocabulary in partner, group and class discussions, and set follow up tasks that gave my learners opportunities to use and apply the vocabulary and strategies in context. To support this I provide co-constructed written models at the start of each lesson so my learners are able to continue to make the visual connections to the learning they need in order to find success. By generating these ourselves and not using pre-made versions, I found that my students saw recalling strategy steps and written structures as a natural part of the lesson. 

I took time to notice the types of questions my learners responded to and tried hard to adapt the type of question I asked to suit the purpose and the learner. What I mean by that was sometimes I had to scaffold the questions by really unpacking the language I used, and asking literal questions that I knew my learners could respond to. Other times my questioning was much more open ended for those who were able to respond to a challenge without feeling insecure. Ensuring my learners could find success was the catalyst behind this thinking. My target students preferred to respond to literal questions as they felt safe sharing information they could see. In comparison my more able students tended not to respond to these questions, preferring instead to offer their informed opinions. Over time I have been able to merge this gap by using question stems to support those who struggle with knowing how to word their responses. 

To grow my own knowledge I sought advice from colleagues who have expertise in teaching Maths. Donna Yates (Te Hiku Cluster outreach facilitator) shared an article with me and some great ideas to help learners access a wider variety of Maths language. Sheree Hodge (Ranui School In-school Maths CoL teacher) helped me strengthen my own connections to inference. The professional readings I used are listed in these blog posts - Link 1. Link 2.

Overall I would rate the changes in student learning as a success. The evidence for my rating is that despite the results achieved in the online testing, the results achieved in the GLoSS, IKAN and Probe assessments showed my learners have made progress. This aligns with what I have seen in the classroom. My target students, like their peers have become more confident when faced with new learning, are actively involved in discussions and try hard to apply strategies at their level when working independently on follow up tasks. The latter being something that was not happening at the start of the year, with my target students relying on the learned behaviour of waiting for help from their peers or from me. This is a huge change. They are no longer the students who sit quietly watching the learning happening around them as they adopt every known strategy to avoid having to answer a question or give an opinion. A lot of positive reinforcement and gentle nudging has helped them start trying to swim through the sea of learning by using and applying the strokes of their own knowledge.

The most important learning I made about whether an increased emphasis on the strategy of inference could lead to better subject achievement in reading, writing and maths, was that whilst standardised testing data is an important measure of achievement, it is most definitely not the only measure that should be observed. The external factors that our students come to school with are real. Our tamariki can not be expected to automatically disassociate from a highly stressful situation outside of school because I am asking them to in many cases, undertake the highly stressful situation of sitting a test. I am proud of the effort they put into their learning this year, even though some results do not align with the work that happened daily in our classroom.

The most important learning I made about inquiry was that change is paramount to success. If strong connections to learning are to be made as teachers we need to make the learning accessible for all students. We need to be empathetic and supportive as we push our learners out of their comfort zones. Our learners in return, need to take risks and embrace change; and where possible commit to continuous patterns of attendance to avoid the disconnects in learning that erratic absences cause. 

Some learnings that would be relevant to other teachers are that it is important to remember the external factors out of our control, should not affect the factors we can control.

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