Bursts and Bubbles 2025...

My concern that the rigor Structured Literacy brings would unintentionally lead us back to the uninspired consolidation tasks of the "duplicated worksheet" era was my why behind this inquiry. This was a time that stifled creative expression and deep, transformational demonstrations of learning, so my goal was to ensure creativity thrived alongside the new structured literacy framework.

To explore this I compared the planned Create opportunities across our kura between Terms 2 and 4 by analysing teacher planning, staff feedback, class sites and student blogs. I wanted to see not just what was planned, but what was actually happening in classrooms. 

Early observations showed very quickly that our junior team already excels in hands-on, collaborative creativity. This insight prompted me to shift my focus to the senior team. However, it soon became clear to me that no one needed added pressure from me when they were implementing new learning for the first time. So I decided to refine my focus to my own Year 7 and 8 classroom, where I could explore creative practice with our most confident readers.

In my classroom, the introduction of AI tools such as Gemini Gems, alongside our established follow-up challenges, enabled students to build on prior knowledge and engage in richer, more independent learning conversations.

By narrowing my focus or, as I like to call it, “taking a selfie”, I was able to demonstrate that maintaining a creative emphasis within a structured curriculum is not only possible, but highly effective.

The findings were encouraging and I was able to see that Create oportunites are firmly embedded at PBS without explicit intervention from me. They just needed to be viewed in an alternative way.

The greatest challenge throughout this process has been adapting to the various course changes my inquiry has taken. My journey has reminded me that Create must be purposeful and engaging. It is not an optional add-on; it is a vital vehicle through which students construct, represent, and deepen their understanding.

I will move into 2026 recognising that: 

Create extends beyond digital tools; hands-on, collaborative approaches are equally powerful.

And finally, student agency drives academic rigour; when learners have creative choice -  engagement and independence increase, because this is when learning becomes truly transformative.

Unpacking Qualitative Data - My Journey to Balancing Rigor and Transformation...

My central motivation for this inquiry stems from a concern that the necessary rigor of the Structured Literacy framework could unintentionally stifle creative expression and deep demonstration of learning. 

My perspective is rooted in my own educational experiences from a time dominated by repetitive, uninspired reading consolidation (the classic ‘duplicated worksheet’ era) where genuine engagement was rare. The moments that truly stood out were interactive like using the listening post or, more enjoyably, performing plays, especially when we could create our own costumes or masks.

This pattern continued early in my teaching career. I often defaulted to guided reading worksheets that, despite having diverse texts, asked the same predictable questions, which stifled independent thought. While I attempted to introduce new ideas, limited classroom technology and a lack of accessible Professional Learning and Development (PLD) hindered my sustained pedagogical growth.

When I joined the Manaiakalani cluster I was introduced to a culture of continuous learning and innovation that prioritises student engagement. This culture intensified my fear that the required intensity of Structured Literacy might accidentally regress our practice back to those days of ‘boring repetition.’

This concern drove my inquiry into effectively utilising the 'Create' component within our kura. A core goal of our previous PLD was moving teaching and learning 'above the line' of Dr. Ruben Puentedura's SAMR model—a framework that pushes technology use from simple enhancement (Substitution and Augmentation) toward transformation (Modification and Redefinition). My primary focus for this year was to ensure our literacy instruction maintained its rigor without sacrificing this transformational practice.
Initially, I looked at creative opportunities school-wide, quickly realizing the junior team excels in this area. For early readers, creativity is best fostered by hands-on, collaborative fun, rather than only with digital tools. This realisation saw me pivot for the first time as I couldn't limit my study to only digital affordances if I wanted to fully understand and strengthen 'Create' within Structured Literacy.
My next step was to narrow the focus to the senior team. However, I soon realised that a team embracing new PLD needs time to build confidence and implement change. Feedback from team meetings told me they certainly didn't need me critically observing the create opportunities in their reading lessons. This led to my final pivot of focussing exclusively on my own practice in my Year 7/8 classroom.

Focusing on my own Year 7/8 students (our most capable readers), provided an advantage. Given my existing literacy PLD, I wasn't entering the Structured Literacy framework completely cold. I challenged myself to incorporate the affordances of AI, alongside my well established kete of follow-up challenges, to encourage students to build on prior knowledge when showing their understanding of the new texts we unpacked.

A clear example is the inclusion of Gemini Gems in our guided reading follow-up (unpacked in an earlier post). The resulting change has been significant as student responses now feature more extended, student-initiated, and student-led discussion.

Ultimately, when 'Create' is properly embedded, it becomes a purposeful and engaging opportunity for tauira to demonstrate understanding. As educational theorist Elwyn Richardson observed, research shows students learn by actively constructing knowledge—a process that involves breaking down, rearranging, selecting, and demonstrating their understanding so that visualised thoughts were given an opportunity to be created.

Exploring Quantitative Data...

The purpose of this inquiry was to evaluate the integration and frequency of 'Create' opportunities, a key component of the Manaiakalani ‘Learn-Create-Share’ pedagogy, within Reading instruction across our kura.

To measure the shift in practice, analysis was conducted comparing:

1. Opportunities explicitly planned for by teaching staff.

2. Opportunities shared via class Digital Learning Objects (DLOs).

3. Qualitative feedback sourced from Teacher Planning in Term 2 and Term 4 

Confidentiality: Due to the identifiable nature of the small learning environment, all data is presented in aggregated and generalised form. Individual teacher or classroom data will not be shared to preserve the privacy and confidentiality of staff, ensuring the focus of this inquiry remains on collective pedagogical practices rather than individual appraisal.

Quanititative analysis of the data indicates a noticeable increase in the provision of opportunities for our tauira to consolidate their reading comprehension and literacy learning through the 'Create' component of the Manaiakalani framework.

The presentation below unpacks the increase in planned opportunities for our tauira to creatively explore their new learning. The detail in the analysis in reflected in the breakdown of the graphs on slides 4, 6, 8 and 10. It is important here to recognise the fact that our staff have a wide range of teaching experience ranging from less than one year to thirty plus years. It is also important to note that everyone has put a lot of effort into embracing a new curriculum and integrating new PLD, whilst trying hard not to throw the baby of 'create' out with the bath water.

The following factors are hypothesised to have contributed to the observed increase in 'Create' opportunities:

• Recognition that 'Create' extends beyond digital products to encompass various non-digital outputs.
• Completion of Structured Literacy Professional Learning and Development (PLD).
• Targeted staff meeting on the Manaiakalani ‘Create’ principle.
• In-class support provided by Manaiakalani facilitators.
• Active sharing of 'Create' outcomes in team meetings.
• Increased utilisation of blogging as an immediate output and sharing platform.
• Elevated kaiako confidence in teaching Structured Literacy.
• Improved kaiako confidence in utilising digital capabilities for task design.
• Increased staff ownership of accountability for pedagogical integration.
• Active planning for 'Create' opportunities.
• Effective establishment of connections between new and prior learning.
• Development of greater tauira (student) independence, enabling more complex, self-directed creation tasks.

The following factors are hypothesised to account for areas where the integration of 'Create' has seen minimal change:

• 'Create' opportunities were not explicitly integrated into planning cycles.
• Lower kaiako confidence in implementing Structured Literacy instructional practices.
• Lower kaiako confidence in leveraging digital capabilities for task design.
• Perceived pressure resulting from connecting existing practice to new PLD requirements.
• Initial resistance to pedagogical change within some practices
• Disconnects between teacher expectation and tauira capability, particularly concerning the complexity of independent creation tasks.

In summary, this inquiry confidently confirms that 'Create' opportunities are thriving in our kura. We acknowledge the wide spectrum of teaching experience within our staff, recognising that new pedagogical learning often generates self-doubt, leading some to initially favour highly structured, familiar methods. While there is a necessary place for less creative consolidation tasks, the key to effective literacy mastery is 'repetition without boring'. This critical element is demonstrably afforded when students are given agency, choice, and creative opportunity within their follow-up learning.

Research 1: Why 'create' so important...

To explore the importance of creativity in education I asked Gemini to carry out a deep research for me based on the prompts I gave it. The findings below are my words but are based on what Gemini generated. Sites I retrieved information from have been linked but this summary of my reading does not reflect all the sites I visited as a result of my initial search.

Creativity is a core building block in education. It affects how students think and turns learning from simply remembering facts into a fluid connection to the learning. When looking at it through the lens of school, creativity means a student's ability to come up with new and valuable ideas, solutions, or tasks. This often involves thinking outside the box, using their imagination, and being willing to take risks and try new things. It empowers students to think differently, look at problems from all perspectives, and create original answers that strengthen their connections to the learning. 

Image retrieved from here

Creativity helps prepare students for the future. In our ever-changing world, the ability to adapt, innovate, and solve problems creatively is essential if the students we teach today are going to find success tomorrow. Creativity improves learning outcomes when the learning is engaging, meaningful, and relevant. This is the catalyst to keeping our students motivated as it provides the opportunities needed to deepen their connections to the new learning.

In the past, literacy was seen as a foundational set of reading, writing, and counting skills. The 21st century has transformed this thinking to meet the demands of an increasingly digital, interconnected, and information-rich world. UNESCO defines literacy as a continuous process of learning and proficiency in reading, writing, and using numbers throughout life. This encompasses the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, and communicate information effectively in a rapidly changing global environment. This leads to a deeper comprehension than simply processing words and phrases at a linguistic level.

The article 'What is creativity in education?' by Tim Patston, retrieved from the The Education Hub, states that 'Creativity is producing something new, relevant and useful to the person or people who created the product within their own social context.... Something that is very creative to a Year One student – for example, the discovery that a greater incline on a ramp causes objects to roll faster – would not be considered creative in a university student.... Creativity is valuable in education because it builds cognitive complexity... it relies on having deep knowledge and being able to use it .... with an existing set of knowledge or skills... to increase both knowledge and skills. It develops over time and is more successful if the creative process begins at a point where people have at least some knowledge and skills'. The sentence in bold is the one that resonates most with me when I apply it to my structured literacy context. I refer back to my previous post where I explain how we are using creativity to build on the known.

Nicole Krueger's ISTE blog post from 2022 states that creativity motivates kids to learn because 'when students are focused on a creative goal, they become more absorbed in their learning and more driven to acquire the skills they need to accomplish it'. This post reaffirms my initial thinking that we need to continue to harness the digital affordances a 1:1 chromebook class has to offer as we navigate our structured literacy journey by stating that 'teachers who frequently assign classwork involving creativity are more likely to observe higher-order cognitive skills — problem solving, critical thinking, making connections between subjects — in their students. And when teachers combine creativity with transformative technology use, they see even better outcomes'.

This deep research has allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of my topic. I will be continuing my journey to explore the importance of creativity in learning in my next post. 

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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.

Student Inquiry Foci 2025...

With all our school starting or strengthening our structured literacy journeys this year, I have decided to focus on where the create aspect of the Manaiakalani pedagogy fits in and how we harnessing the digital to explore the create aspect of structured literacy. As I write this our Y4-8 team are yet to begin this journey so my hope is by voicing my hunch, we might avoid overlooking opportunities to create as we navigate our new learning.

I have been a part of the Manaiakalani cluster for many years and know the power the create component in learning has towards helping us achieve the 1.5x accelerated shift we need to ensure our learners are set up for success as they move through their individual learning journeys. 'Creative skills help students become better problem solvers, communicators and collaborators.' (Manaiakalani).

Sourced from Manaiakalani Pedagogy for DFI DLO

Students learn by actively constructing knowledge, not just absorbing it. This involves breaking down, rearranging, selecting, and demonstrating their understanding, so that  “...whatever was in their mind, whatever they could visualise, whatever they could see they created...” - Elwyn Richardson. 

The Apple curriculum supports this thinking and states 'After 40 years working alongside educators, we've seen — and research has shown — that creative thinking leads to deeper student engagement. And when students are more engaged, they take more ownership of their learning. Creative skills help students become better problem solvers, communicators and collaborators. They explore more and experiment more. They tell richer stories and find their own unique voices. They stretch their imaginations and make connections they might not otherwise make — and they carry these skills through everything they do in school. And beyond.' Why Creativity Matters - Apple Curriculum. 

The challenge of student learning is to demonstrate their understanding of a concept by creating something with the knowledge that they have unpacked and internalised. If the create process is overlooked where will we find ways to facilitate discussion and reflection? I can't imagine any student being inspired by. If students are not inspired to learn, then following a preset lesson to the letter will result in a structurally embedded underachievement issue that will see us lose the interest of those readers we have worked so hard historically to capture.

If I look back at my own time at school, with the exception of one year, I can not recall anything in reading lessons other than sitting in a circle reading a text round robin style then being sent back to my desk to answer questions in silence to demonstrate that I had gained meaning from what I had read. There were no opportunities to learn from others, no opportunities for collaboration and no opportunities to talk about the text, let alone creating anything with the information I had found. Sadly this was reading until I was about 9 years old, something I viewed as just a thing we did at school. The one year that stands out saw us being asked to draw characters in a particular scene, make information posters and redesign book covers. That was the year I saw reading at school as fun.

It is because of the very reason just mentioned, that I feel this is the the most important and catalytic issue of learning for our learners this year. I don't want to be introducing and unpacking a text verbally through preset comprehension strategies. I don't want to be the teacher who asks my students to summarise a text on a graphic organiser then leave it there. I want to be the teacher who asks a provocation and encourages talk and creativity. I want my learners to show me their connections to the aspects of the text we are unpacking using the plethora of digital tools available to us. Defaulting to substitution in response to a structured learning process does not, in my opinion, open the opportunities to 'empower my students with creative learning opportunities to help accelerate achievement'.