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. 

2022 Teacher Inquiry Evaluation...

This year I set out to find out if focusing on Reading for Enjoyment would increase student self efficacy and capability in Reading?

My reason for choosing this inquiry and the shifts between time point 1 testing and time point 2 testing are explained in detail in the previous two posts. The changes/tweaks I made are shared here and the picture the data paints is here. These posts explore both the qualitative and quantitative measures undertaken this year.

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

Creating a causal chain helps you to stay focused on the purpose of your teacher inquiry. It is so easy to fall down many rabbit holes along the way so having a causal chain to look back on helps to keep you on track. My biggest takeaway from looking at a variety of readings is if we are to develop reading for pleasure habits in students we need a collective and collaborative approach that allows our tamariki to see role models at school and at home who value reading.

I wanted my students to want to read a wide variety of texts because they want to. My aim this year was to help the students in LS2 to see our weekly library visit as both fun and to quote one of my learners, understand 'that opening the covers of books you haven't read books is a fun way to find new ideas or even learn a thing or two.... It's like a supermarket for the brain' - quote taken with student permission from this year's T1 writing sample. My challenge was to find out why the links in the chain appeared to be broken again. I work in an ILE and share a class with Dianne Fisi’iahi and knew that if my inquiry was to become a success it needed to become our inquiry.

We began by:

• Actively planning time in class for reading for enjoyment, after all if you want something to happen you need to make time for it to happen.
• Getting to know our learners as readers by gathering student voice through Naomi Rosedale’s Reading for Enjoyment survey.
• Analysing beginning of year data to give us a clear picture of what our students can do and where our knowledge gaps are.
• Connecting with whanau to foster support for reading for enjoyment at home
• Using our student leaders as role models to promote reading for enjoyment across our school
• Creating our own LS2 Reading Challenge to motivate our learners to read a wider variety of texts.
• Making reading for enjoyment visible in our class
• Researching the benefits of RFE and ways other schools have grown this culture

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?

At the end of Term 2 I looked back at my causal chain and realised through our weekly RFE tips shared at assemblies by our student leaders and our Leaders in the Library initiative, my students are seen as readers. More importantly they are beginning to see themselves as readers as we are actively reading for enjoyment in our classroom each day. To reinforce this latter point I made a point of capturing all of this in photos which were prominently displayed in our classroom. However because I was always beyond the lens I had not been allowing my learners to consistently see me as a reader.

I was introduced to my students as readers when they completed RFE survey at the start of the year and got to know them better by observing what books they were choosing to read then taking time to talk to them about their chosen texts. I also asked for text recommendations and made sure my learners saw me reading the texts they had suggested I read. This served two purposes, one showed that I was an active reader and the second that I valued their input.

We turned the results of our monitored time we spent RFE and the RFE survey into purposeful statistical inquiries by using the data gathered to identify the problem areas and offer possible solutions. This gave all of us ownership of our shared goal of increasing the time we spent reading for enjoyment.

The RFE display in the classroom not only gave my learners the opportunity to see themselves as readers but also the opportunity to talk about the importance of RFE to their whanau during our student-led conferences. The parents/caregivers enjoyed seeing not only their children in LS2 reading but also their younger children. Listening to some of the conversations taking place during this time I realised that our learners understood what RFE was and were able to talk about why they needed to be encouraged to do this at home. As a result most of the parents/caregivers leaving the room promised to help keep the reading for enjoyment going at home.

Timetable opportunities for RFE so students read the books they take out of the library and introduce LS2 RFE challenge to encourage students to RFE in their own time helped us to drive this initially, however whilst the timetabling remained in place, our reading challenge fell by the wayside. After several attempts to reignite this we understood that our 2022 were not motivated by the follow up challenges. We wanted them to want to read so readily removed any barriers that may have prevented this from happening. What was a success however was our RFE Holiday Challenge. A reading challenge created and managed by two of our student leaders. What was exciting to see was who participated and what they have posted on their blogs, even more amazing was the interaction that took place in the blog comments. 38% of our class took part in this challenge which may look like a low number, but in my mind that's 38% of our class that we know of who made time to read for enjoyment over the holiday break.

As I stated in a previous inquiry, in all assessments our students are required to read and respond to questions. Often our students are often 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. Sharing an infographic I saw online with our class last helped to strengthen connections and understandings to the importance of RFE. We didn't focus on the test scores rather the amount of word knowledge gained by finding 20 minutes a day to read.

Creating and referring back to my causal chain has resulted in this intervention successfully changing my thinking around the value of RFE in the classroom. I am now seen as a reader and know that if this is to continue I need to continue to motivate my learners and plan time for this to happen within our class program. The changes in teaching have been effective in changing patterns of student learning as our students now open the covers of the books that once simply stayed in their trays. The data analysed in my previous two posts are evidence of the shifts in both mindset and learning. I do see a change in attitude towards reading, strengthened connections to new learning, increased vocabulary awareness which has been transferred to personal writing, higher levels of self efficacy and an overall shift in achievement which has resulted in a higher number of our learners achieving at or above the expected norms in literacy.

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

One of the most important changes I made in my teaching was to make sure my students saw me as a reader. Chrissy Smith put it best when she said ‘by not reading with our students we are not valuing what we are asking them to do’. I am definitely now a teacher who actively opens a book when my students open a book. My biggest takeaway from looking at a variety of readings earlier in the year was that if we were to develop reading for pleasure habits in students we needed a collective and collaborative approach that allowed our tamariki to see role models at school and at home who value reading. Leaders in the Library, whanau support and sharing RFE tips at assemblies has helped achieve this and are initiatives I want to keep in place when we move into our 2023 learning journey.

I have summarised my own learning in my Bursts in Bubbles presentation which can be read  here. My journey this year reminded me if you want something to become a success you need to be walking the walk and talking the talk. Plan for it, drive it and find ways to give your students ownership of the change you want to effect.

Describe and explain the changes/tweaks you have made in your practice along the way...

Motivation is intrinsically related to engagement, so learner engagement was a vital component in establishing a class culture of learners who are motivated to read for enjoyment and understand the benefits that reading outside of the classroom could bring them. Developing this motivation did not happen by magic. This is something Dianne and I have worked hard to develop with one of the most important changes we made to our teaching being to make sure our students saw us as a readers. Chrissy Smith put it best when she said ‘by not reading with our students we are not valuing what we are asking them to do’

If I roll back the clock to the start if the year, I remember walking past the student trays in our class and noticing that the library books I had seen earlier in the week were in exactly the same place. The reason for this was simply that no one said they could take the books they had borrowed home. I knew I needed to do something about this but I didn’t know how.

After a very rich learning conversation with Naomi Rosedale I had a tentative pathway mapped out going forward and was challenged to think about and inquire into and track my learners’ reading dispositions and interests. I didn’t have to start from scratch as I was able to use Naomi's Reading for Enjoyment survey with my class to help me get to know my students as readers.

Our data showed that within our class there was a huge disparity between the students who have made the connections they need to allow them to operate at a higher and more challenging level, and those for whom the gap has widened each year. By strengthening students connections to the benefits of reading for enjoyment, I hoped to see a change in attitude towards reading, strengthened connections to new learning, increased vocabulary awareness 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.

Gathering student voice gave us a clear picture of where our students were at, what they were thinking and what we needed to do to allow our learners to make their individual connections to the learning. Naomi's reading for enjoyment survey has allowed me to measure both the small and big changes. The presentation below does exactly that. Each slide 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 although this was a whole class inquiry I have only anaysed the data gathered from the 26 students present at both data collection times. I have gathered data from a cross section of students. The biggest and most noticeable change towards the benefits of reading for enjoyment are the mindsets of our students. 

Link to presentation

We adapted our timetable to incorporate RFE as a valued and visible part of our program and by that I don't mean we just made a time slot for reading. We discussed books, created book chains, created our own student led holiday reading challenge (explained in more detail in this post), introduced the Leaders in the Library initiative (explained in more detail in this post), shared our weekly RFE tips at our school assemblies and invited our whanau to share our journey. Reading for enjoyment needed to be visible so I spent the year capturing and displaying photos of our learners actively reading. The idea behind this was that if we couldn't see ourselves as readers change would not happen. Additionally we made and displayed posters to encourage others to RFE. 

One of the most successful ideas we tried was to put the data we gathered back in the hands of our learners. As a class we analysed the initial RFE survey findings and came up with ideas as to how we could change the deficit we had towards RFE. This was how the LS2 Reading Challenge was born. Our thinking was that if our learners had ownership of the challenge they would have more skin in the game. Following on from this we decided to capture the time spent RFE. This post explains this in more detail. What surprised us as teachers was that simply being transparent with the amount of time spent RFE motivated our most reluctant readers to come in before school and open the cover of a book. 

However not everything we tried worked. When we began this journey as I mentioned earlier, we created our own RFE challenge. This started with a hiss and a roar but Dianne and I quickly realised that our students preferred to read and talk about their books instead of completing follow up challenges. Not wanting disengagement to raise its head we let this idea fall by the wayside. It's not something I wouldn't try to use in the future but was something that didn't work this year.  

Did our focus on Reading for Enjoyment increase student self efficacy and capability in Reading? The qualitative data discussed and analysed in this post indicates that we most definitely increased our student's motivation to read which tells us that barriers have come down because we took the time to make something that was not the norm become the norm. By walking the walk and talking the talk we removed the fear of failure that fuels low self efficacy and showed our learners that RFE opens the doors to a wide variety of learning opportunities.

TAI 2020 WFRC # 9 To what extent were the changes in teaching effective to changing patterns of learning?

To gain a clear picture of the changes that have been made to patterns of learning I looked at patterns in their historical achievement data and analysed the shift data (PAT Reading and Maths, STAR and e-asTTle writing) of the Year 7 students in my focus group. To establish a norm across my classroom, I have compared their results against the remainder of my other Year 7 students whose data was captured at both time points. Additionally I have compared the student voice captured at Time Point 1 with the student voice captured at Time Point 2 as this best reflects the growth this learning journey has taken these students on. 

Assessment Data

Scale Score Shift Analysis

'The average scale score progress for each year group is described by a benchmark scale score for each year level from the Term 1 trials. They can be used as a guide to compare individual student /class progress between two assessment time points.' - source NZCER

I noticed student engagement, work completion rates and the confidence levels of my focus students increased when new learning was introduced and unpacked. This pattern was evident both in the classroom and during distance learning. This confidence did not always transfer to assessment situations. Student G71 and student G73 although both focused and engaged in class, seem to completely freeze when the task ahead is an assessment task. Their results do not reflect the work produced or quality of learning conversations I observed in class. This pattern is historic and shows me that next year I need to build self efficacy in this area.

Learning intentions gave us the purpose for the learning and once the connection was truely made to the value of understanding this, blog posts became easier to write in all curriculum areas. Content specific vocabulary was used to explain and discuss learning both in class and on blogs. This meant that comments on blogs linked specifically to the learning and threads that followed replicated learning conversations in the classroom. 

Questioning was another area we focused on. Once my students understood the power of open questions the quality of online interactions in blog comments became much richer. I noticed in class that my focus group students were the students who asked the most questions during learning time, something that became evident in emails to me to clarify understanding during distance learning time too. 

Student Voice

                         

The Time Point 1 student voice data (captured 4/5/20) shows that all my focus students were aware of the purpose of commenting on others blogs, but when we unpacked this further I discovered that these were the words they had heard during cybersmart lessons and that they did not truly understand the value their feedback could have on their peer’s learning. The Time Point 2 slide shows these students have made a significant shift in their thinking as they have strengthened their connections to the purpose behind commenting on blogs. A possible reason for this is that blog commenting has a place and a purpose in our classroom.

B72: We comment on blogs so that we can give feedback and give them gratitude about their work (TP1)

B72: We comment on blogs to give positive feedback to someone’s blog post to help them improve their blogs. Commenting also gives us the opportunity to ask questions about their learning, by doing this we can create a comment thread (Blog Conversation). (TP2)

My initial hunch was that our students weren’t commenting because they were 'lazy' (even though they identified this as a reason in Time Point 1), but possibly because as teachers, we had not set them up for success in this area. When I saw their responses I knew that I was on the right track. This data has been unpacked in an earlier post. The Time Point 1 slide below (captured 4/5/20) . The Time Point 2 slide shows these students have made a significant shift in their thinking as they have strengthened their connections to the purpose behind commenting on blogs. A possible reason for this is that blog commenting has a place and a purpose in our classroom. 

G74:

I usually don’t comment because I’m not sure what to write. (TP1)

G74: 

For me it's not finding the L.I so I can understand the learning. This is very tricky because I can’t make a connection with them, and it is also very hard to find a question about their learning to try and help them fix their mistake. (TP2)

At the time this student voice was captured we were well into the first lockdown of 2020. I met with my target group on Google Meet. We had an open and honest discussion, and used this collaborative DLO to capture time point 1 student voice data and establish the group's understanding of how to write a quality blog comment. Posting and commenting on blogs during this time needed to be seen as a valuable part of the learning process so I set off on my quest to change their mindset and establish the purpose behind these two very important parts of our digital learning journey. Basically we reminded ourselves how to write a quality blog comment by co-constructing a collaborative comment and learnt how to create a comment thread. My learners then paired up and practised leaving comment threads on each others blog posts. As I have said earlier, I felt from the outset that this was not because they were lazy or disinterested, but rather because they were not sure of how to do this. After all if you don't know, you don't know.

One major hurdle we found as we began our challenge was that many students had become complacent when it came to including a learning intention. As one student said, ‘If I can’t find the learning, how can I comment on it?’ So rather than seeing this as a hurdle we couldn't climb over we decided that as a group we would model best practice. Baseline evidence unpacked here, had shown me that I not only needed to revisit how to write a quality blog comment, I also needed to revisit how to write a quality blog post. 

I knew from observations in my class, and other classes across our school, if students are asked to have a ‘learning conversation’ they will confidently carry out a conversation using content specific language and learning intentions to give their partner (or group) feedback and feed forward connected to a completed task. However before I could expect to see this taking place I needed to make sure that my learners were creating quality blog posts that clearly identify the purpose of the learning, a detailed explanation of the task and a personal statement linked to something they found interesting or where they feel they did something well.

.

TP1                                                      TP2

Comparisons between blog post content in the earlier part of the year and blog post content now is poles apart. 'Today we had to...', or 'Here is my my DLO of...' has been replaced with clear learning intentions and detailed explanations of tasks. I have noticed that content specific vocabulary is defined when included in a blog post, and used to build content. This shows learning in the classroom is being transferred in a way that shows connections have been made.

The challenge for my learners this year was to be able to create comment threads on blogs to help strengthen their own connections to the learning. I wanted my learners to refer to the learning intention and confidently use content specific language when giving feedback and feed forward. I wanted them to ask questions that provide opportunities for those receiving the comments to justify their thinking, and I wanted them to understand that giving and receiving blog comments is an important part of our learning. So has this happened?

In a nutshell yes! However, this success is not yet the norm for all my learners. The reflections here pertain only to my focus students. I chose to work with this group of Year 7 students this year so that I was able to move into 2021 with an 'expert' group who could both model and teach their peers how to strengthen their connections to the learning through blog commenting.

Capturing Student Attitudes and Understandings...

During our Level 4 lockdown I wanted to get some traction in regards to my inquiry so I began by capturing a picture of my student's attitudes and understandings linked blog commenting. What I found was that the picture I captured was quite different to the one I captured today (refer to the above DLO). There had been no face to face lead into our discussion and I could see that my inquiry group were trying to give me the responses they thought I wanted to hear. Fast forward to today and the picture looks quite different. The responses are linked to the learning and are informed (slide 3 and slide 5 of the DLO above). I believe that the student comments in the DLO above will allow me to make realistic comparisons at the end of the year.

When I captured my first picture of student voice I had initially thought of using historical blog post and comment data from their blogs, however when I looked more closely at this the numbers painted a negative picture and the disparity in numbers were too big to work with. This would not have been a great source of motivation for myself or my learners so I simply captured what was being brought to the table. This time around I used data that my learners helped me gather from their blog posts, blog comments and replies to comments in May and June. We added the data to a table which can be found on slide 7 of the DLO above. Afterwards I asked "What does this information tell us?" Their responses can be found on slide 8. 

I'm always looking for ways to continue to motivate my students so on this occasion I asked our top blogger and blog commenter (Student X) to join our discussion group as I know this group respond well to the element of competition. We talked to her about what motivates her to comment on others blogs and to reply to every comment she receives. Hearing her responses that were all linked to the learning resonated with my group. It made sense because they had all experienced the same learning. I noticed when she spoke about how having learning conversations with others by asking and answering questions linked to their blog posts, had helped her strengthen her connections to her peers (she is new to our school) and to the learning, heads were nodding. It made sense! 

Moving forward and with a bit of inspiration from Student X, we have decided to run a quality blog commenting competition within this group with extra points being given for replies and comment threads. I'm looking forward to seeing if this student derived idea can help these students become more motivated and feel more confident when creating comment threads linked to the learning on each others blogs.

WFRC#13 Summarise Key Changes in Student Learning...

'The average scale score progress for each year group is described by a benchmark scale score for each year level from the Term 1 trials. They can be used as a guide to compare individual student /class progress between two assessment time points.' - source NZCER

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.

Student self-efficacy and self belief about their own ability to understand, interpret and answer questions when in a test, determines the level of confidence or anxiety they bring to that testing situation. The insight my previous inquiry has given me in regards to student self-efficacy and self belief has strongly influenced the way I introduce new learning, guide and feed back to my learners. By this I mean, I have reflected a lot on the changes I made to my teaching practice last year. The excerpt below is taken from a blog post I wrote at the end of 2018.

'I lived by the idea of 'Repetition without boring' which when unpacked, means repurposing, revisiting and tapping into the known to help access the unknown. In other words repeat, repeat, repeat, but do it in a creative way! I used the same lesson format, regardless of text type. Began each lesson by co-constructing the success criteria and revisiting the available scaffolds and exemplars created by our group. Talk was actively planned for to front-load the vocabulary needed to unpack the topic in context, and the language of instruction personalised and explicit. Moving forward I will continue to actively plan time for front-loading, time for planning and time for talk in my lessons, but most importantly, I will try really hard to make sure my learners not only think that they’re good at writing but also think I think they’re good at writing.'

Whilst my previous focus was solely on writing, I found myself applying the same thinking across the curriculum areas. As this year has progressed I have noticed student engagement, work completion rates and confidence levels have increased so I was keen to see if this increased level of efficacy and self belief would be make a difference to my learners when we compared how they felt during data collection time point one with data collection time point two. 

After the Term 1 assessments, my target group shared the fact that for most questions, they simply clicked on any answer. This honesty meant I did not have a true picture of their achievement as I was not actually assessing their ability to interpret, recall and use their knowledge; instead I was in reality, assessing their skills of random selection.
It seems quite a lot has changed since our time point 1 testing. I asked these three questions at the end of each time point 2 assessment session to ensure their responses were authentic. The responses below reflect only the students in my target group who were at school during assessment week.

Link to Google Draw

'A rising tide lifts all ships' and I hope that the levels of confidence and self belief are strong enough to keep these students believing they have the knowledge and skills to swim with the current as they begin next year's learning journey.

WFRC #12

Describe the evidence you have so far about the effects of your changed practices or intervention on desired learner outcomes and how you summarised and recorded these...

Explain the reflections and tweaks you have made along the way and the reasons why you made these changes. Share your evidence for these decisions...

Previous posts that link to this question and describe the some of the tweaks in my practice can be found here:

• Critical Friend Observations
• Current Events with a Difference
• Spring into Maths Reflection
• Phonics with Y7/8

What do my learners think?

Often when I ask my students a question about their learning or my teaching they will try their best to give me the answer they think I want to hear. This often involves wanting to do well or learning something so they can go to university, especially when asked about the purpose of the lesson. This is despite me having unpacked and continuing to unpack learning intentions on a regular basis. To see if their responses would differ if asked by someone else I asked Donna Ryan to ask my inquiry group the same questions I ask at the end of each term. Donna is well known to my class so my learners were confident and happy when talking to her about their learning. Student G4 was away overseas for the last three weeks of Term 3 so has been excluded from this snapshot to keep the data clean.

                           

Link to Spreadsheet

What the data linked to my inquiry shows:

• 7/7 students enjoyed being in LS2 this term.
• 1/7 identified Maths as being their favourite learning area at both time points
• 3/7 identified Maths as being their favourite learning area when talking to Donna
• 1/7 responses to what they liked about Reading aligned at both time points. What I noticed here was that the responses aligned with the learning focus at the time. 
• 1/7 responses to what they needed help with in Reading aligned at both time points. What I noticed here was that the responses were detailed and specific so as a result I have been able to adapt my current term planning to address these needs.
• 2/7 responses to what they liked about Maths aligned at both time points. What I noticed here was that the responses aligned with the learning focus at the time. I can also see from this data that the Spring Into Maths programme is popular. This is good to know as student buy-in is vital to the success of the intervention.
• 2/7 responses to what they needed help with in Maths aligned at both time points. What I noticed here was that the responses reflected the common thread of times tables, larger numbers, strategies and fractions. What is needed now is more opportunities to practise the learning in a variety of contexts. Recalling quick responses is addressed through maths games.
• 5/7 responses reflect they feel they have improved in Maths and/or Reading at both time points. A possible reason for this is that we have celebrated successes throughout the year so my learners know when and how they have achieved the learning intentions.

What does this tell me?

The responses show that the student perceived successes and gaps in learning are quite specific (although at times link to the current area of focus at the time the questions were asked). That tells me that connections have been made, and learning intentions and lesson purposes have been unpacked successfully. I will be adapting my planning to meet the 'gaps' as that will show my learners that I value their opinions. I can see what learning they like as well. This is a bonus as I now have a toolkit of learning that resonates with these students. I will feed the gaps into the Spring into Maths and Phonics sessions so that they will have the opportunity to experience the learning in guided teaching time with me and during intervention time with Linda. 

Important to note:

Our end of term evaluation is given to the whole class and is much more detailed than the responses I have analysed below. I use the student voice to inform my planning and welcome the opportunities to make adaptations that will help meet the specific learning needs of my students across all curriculum areas. A section I always include in our end of term evaluations but have not shared as I need to respect privacy, is the sentence starter... 'I want Mrs Anderson to know...' This is very powerful as it allows me an insight to changes in friendship circles and home environments etc. Often something our older students tend to keep close to their chests but can definitely help to explain changes in work habits, connections to learning and behaviour. Mind you it is not all doom and gloom. My students also use this section to share successes and milestones, or thank me for specific help I have given them during the term.

T1/T2/T3 Comparison of what success in writing look like through the eyes of my learners...

Throughout this year I have focused on growing the self efficacy of group of reluctant writers. As I could only capture 6/8 responses in the T1/2 data comparison I chose to use the data of the same 6 students in T3. Notable changes in responses have been highlighted in yellow. I growth in content specific information that was emerging at the T2 checkpoint has continued to evolve, and there is a general consensus that in order to be a good writer across the learning areas you need to understand what it is you are being asked to do so that you can use your words to talk about and write about your thinking.

Changes I have noticed in class:

Target Students:

• settling to work quickly is the norm
• questioning is for clarity
• increased levels of confidence
• working with a buddy has once again become the preferred option at planning time with active engagement in talk/learning conversations 
• continued positivity towards new learning 
• work completion is the expected norm
• increased levels of risk taking 
• sharing work with class is the norm
• praise is owned and sought
• strengthened connections to the learning through engaged talk

Me:

• positive praise linked to previous success to engage reluctant writers
• overlooking the behaviour that accompanied disengaged learners and focusing on the task ahead. 
• continued explicit instruction
• increased front loading time so that stronger connections could be made
• timetable changes to allow time for work to be completed
• following the same teaching sequence meant familiarity with the process allowed me to reduce the level of scaffolding
• increased talk time for planning
• high expectations
• repetition of content specific language in context

T1/T2 Comparison of what success in writing look like through the eyes of my learners...

This year I have been focusing on building student self efficacy in writing. Why? Because I have a large group of reluctant writers. I know that no-one finds something they have success in boring so I have tried hard to be creative in my task design.

This DLO reflects the comparison of responses to questions I asked my target students in both Term 1 and Term 2 - (6/8 students were questioned at both checkpoint times so only these responses have been compared in this DLO). Notable changes in responses have been highlighted in yellow. I can see more content specific information emerging in their answers overall, but the part that excited me the most was that half of these target students are now seeing members of their own writing group as 'good' writers. 


Changes I have noticed in class:

Target Students:

• settling to work more quickly
• increased levels of confidence
• working with a buddy is no longer the 'go to'
• positivity towards new learning
• increased work completion levels
• increased levels of risk taking
• more willing to share work with class
• ownership of praise
• strengthened connections to the learning

Me:

• finding more opportunities for praise
• increased use of learner created exemplars from this group
• paying closer attention to explicit instruction
• calmer voice tone
• increased awareness of when I need to repeat/reinforce my instruction
• increased use of content specific language 

What does success in writing look like through the eyes of my learners...

Following on from my previous post I asked my learners what success in writing looks like. My initial thinking was that I would use padlet as my platform but realised this would remove the anonymity of my learners, so I changed to using a google form to collect my responses. The discussion around the questions I asked was rich and incredibly worthwhile. 

The presentation below reflects the questions I asked and the responses my learners gave with anonymity in tact. Out of interest I asked the people my learners identified as 'good writers' to contribute their ideas too (burgundy font). The difference in these responses is definitely reflected in the detail.

We will revisit this at the end of term 2 to see if an increased understanding of the writing process has changed any perceptions.

Capturing ALL voices...

Today we worked with Dorthe and Liz from Tamaki WRAP, to explore what 'away' looks like when we say we have 'thrown something away', and why there is a need for initiatives like Plastic Free July. 

I wanted to find out what my learners had found interesting, what they had found shocking or what an important message to share might be. I knew if I asked these questions during a class discussion I would get a few responses from those who felt confident enough to share. I knew if I asked the same questions with my learners working collaboratively in small groups, the more dominant personalities would shine and the quieter ones would remain silent. Using flipgridcom to gather my learner's perspectives enabled me to capture everyone's understanding of the learning. 

This is our first attempt at using this app and I quickly realised that if I stepped back and let my learners help each other to record their thinking I would get a much richer bank of evidence. This is an unedited version and it captures exactly what I had hoped it would. All my learner's voices!

So excited to see this...

Earlier this week I set my learners a task that involved viewing a YouTube clip that explained in Samoan, the importance of observing the correct level of respect when talking part in Samoan cultural practises. Most of my learners are not able to access the learning through the language at this level but all of my learners were able to read and understand the subtitles. 

The language used was in places sophisticated, but as we unpacked the content together I knew the learning could be accessed. I then asked them to get into groups or pairs, their choice, and create a DLO that identified the main idea in the text. I'm not sure what I was expecting to be honest but I do know I was not expecting to see learning conversations in actions as they debated the purpose of the author's message. Nor did I expect to see the scaffolds we have used in guided reading lessons suddenly pop up on Chromebook screens. This is exactly what I have been striving towards achieving and it all unfolded in front of me with absolutely no prompting!

Why did this happen? I have many assumptions ranging from the fact I have helped my learners make strong connections through explicit teaching to transference of learning was taking place. To clarify my own understanding I asked my learners why they had chosen to use these strategies to help them respond to the task. 

Girl 1 + partner: We used the summary strategy because we wanted to see what the main idea was by thinking about what the most important words were. I knew if I could find these words we could write our own summary of what the learning was. Then from that we would be able to see the main idea because it would be somehow linked to the most important words.

Girl 2 + partner: Me and my partner had a learning conversation so we could agree or disagree on the information we felt was the most important. We did this by looking at both sides of the message then we thought about what we would think was the most important if it was our culture.

Boy 1/2/3: We did the negotiation game because it helps us find the important ideas, then the very important ideas and then the vital ideas. It was good to do this in a group because we could all add different ideas and learn from each other. After we did that we checked our thinking by doing a summary and look Miss, it was kind of the same.

This is definitely a woohoo moment for me because I saw that with explicit teaching and by embedding something in your practice, strong connections can and will be made. My learners were adapting and using new knowledge and skills to make sense of the task ahead. This is especially so when they are seen as purposeful tools that can be adapted to fit the learning across the curriculum. 'Transfer of Learning—the application of skills, knowledge, and/or attitudes that were learned in one situation to another learning situation.' (Perkins, 1992). I am most proud of the fact that this occurred with absolutely no prompting from me!

Examples of the scaffolds that supported the deep learning conversations.

Baseline Data Analysis

To gauge my learner's perspectives on how actively involved in the lessons they feel they are I asked them to complete Matrix 4 on the Evaluation Associates 'Student Capabilities Matrix': Promoting Further Learning. 

This paints an interesting picture as I have been able to see that all 5 students see their timing as being at the early stages as far as seeking feedback is concerned, but are spread across the matrix when thinking about when they implement feedback. When considering student initiation and involvement, 3/5 students identify as sometimes initiating or leading feedback that supports current learning and identifies next learning steps. 2/5 students seek explanation in a timely manner to take their learning further, with the remainder admitting that this may or may not happen. Pleasing to see is that 3/5 students are intrinsically motivated towards learning and feel confident enough to express their next learning steps.

I chose to use this method to measure levels of discussion as I believe if my learners can seek and respond to feedback from their peers they will realise that they don't always agree with opposing perspectives. Tapping into this is how I see the language of arguing developing in LS2. As motivation in the main is intrinsic, I am hopeful that personal connections to texts will become stronger as our learning journey evolves in a scaffolded and safe environment. My hunch is that if I actively plan opportunities for my learners to practise stating and justifying opinions in guided reading sessions, they will realise it is ok to see something through different eyes and will become confident dialogic learners who know when and how to share their own perspectives when working independently.