Exploring Qualitative and Quantitative Data...

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

As I have previously stated, motivation is intrinsically related to engagement. If my inquiry this year was to make an impact on my learners achievement, I needed to find engaging and purposeful ways for my learners to embrace the challenges that come from being introduced to a wide variety of new vocabulary. At the start of the year I felt that the hurdles in front of us were connected to spelling and my learner's connections to rules of spelling. Time point one spelling and writing assessments showed a huge disconnect between how words sounded and what my learners appeared to hear. 

I began by capturing my learner's attitudes towards spelling through the e-asTTle self reflection analysis and through a survey that helped me get to know my learners as spellers. There were definitely some eye opening results with the fact spelling was seen as important but this group of students did not see themselves as being good at spelling with the majority choosing to use an easier word when the one they wanted was not one they could spell. Traditional spelling activities were suggested as ways of strengthening our connections to the conventions of spelling but I was excited by this. I remember as a child learning my words, getting them all correct in the weekly test then never thinking about them again. I didn't see the purpose of the test then and I couldn't see it now. I do remember the students who rarely found success in this activity spending many Fridays in the sickbay. I did not want that pattern to develop so I knew what ever we did it had to be fun, purposeful and achievable. This where, following an online PD session with Louise Dempsey that I blogged about previously, our journey into the world of affixes began.

What I noticed here was that once the knowledge of simple rules and/or conventions of spelling, (eg: dropping the 'e' off a base word before adding the suffix 'ing') was in place the challenge element was lost. My learner's enjoyed the activities but I noticed the time taken to complete them became shorter, and the reliance on the dictionaries to create new words from a base or root word was becoming less and less. Therefore it was time to make some changes to keep the learning and motivation going. 

Change came after a meeting with Dr Jacinta Oldehaver. I explained my dilemma and asked if there were any readings she knew of that might support my word consciousness journey. Jacinta shared a reading with me about the word gifting experiences of Sylvia Ashton-Warner. I was about to begin a new T shaped literacy focus and needed to find a way to help my learners connect with the sophisticated vocabulary associated with the unit that they needed to be able to use and apply in context and independently. This post will explain what we did. In a nutshell, what began as a focus on spelling conventions and rules quickly morphed into an inquiry into word consciousness which involved my learners 'being aware of new words, their meanings, and how these words are used. Students who are conscious of the words they are meeting are motivated to learn them and use them. 

Student responses to the texts reflected an accurate use of words most had not heard of before, being used both in extended discussions and in the justifications of their thinking. A definite win here! My learners thrive on challenge so as explained in the link to the post above, I added the challenge of each person being required to use their word twice each reading lesson. I noticed that both of my groups had created a tally sheet so the score was kept. I view that as intrinsic motivation at its best! 

The fear of spelling a word wrong or choosing a simpler word seemed to have been left behind as the desire to use the words was more powerful. I was able to quickly correct spelling errors with a hotspot style workshop that used the conventions of spelling as a reference point. To consolidate that part we used the dictionaries (our version of 'paper google'), to find other words that followed these conventions so that we could make the all important visual and auditory connections needed. The learning became about the words and not the hurdles of the order the letters are written, that prevent them from being used. My part in this was to model the use of these new words we were meeting across the curriculum. The more I did it the more my students did it. The key learning here as their teacher is, if I want something to happen I need to walk the walk, talk the talk and continually drive the challenge outside of the context in which the words were actually met. You can not simply introduce something and leave it there. New learning must be revisited and used if it is to become internalised knowledge. 

The graphic below is something I found after I had been on my inquiry journey. This reaffirms the direction I took to shift student achievement and change my practice was the right one. The reading component in the graphic below aligns with the T shaped literacy units of Great Beginnings, Representation and Genre that I have been doing as part of a research initiative lead by the University of Auckland.

Graphic retrieved from here

Being confident to use and apply more sophisticated vocabulary in context accurately was a huge step towards changing mindsets. I know this helped us make shifts in literacy in the classroom this year and am looking forward to seeing if there has been a change in the types of words used in our time point two writing assessments. By strengthening students connections to vocabulary and the spelling conventions that accompany these new words, I hoped to see a change in attitude towards word choice which would be transferred to personal writing, higher levels of self efficacy and an overall shift in achievement so that a higher number of our learners are achieving at or above the expected norms in literacy. The most noticeable change has been the change in the mindsets of both myself and my students. 

Restating my inquiry question and chain of events...

This year I want to find out if a focus on spelling conventions foster an environment where word consciousness strengthens connections to the learning? Creating a causal chain helps me stay focused on the purpose of my teacher inquiry. We all know how easy to fall down many rabbit holes along the way so having a causal chain to look back on helps to keep me on track and visualise the end point. My initial post to introduce my causal chain is here.

At the start of term 2 my role in our school changed dramatically. I went from being one of three deputy principals to being the only DP. This change aligned perfectly with the start of my ERO journey so as I'm sure everyone will appreciate, my focus and time was spent co-constructing our matrix evidence. I found I was spending less time in the classroom and more time meeting the commitments of my DP role. Fortunately our students weren't bounced from reliever to reliever as Dianne took on the leadership of our day to day teaching component and I tried as hard as I could to be both a teacher and a leader. I quickly realised that I needed to let go of many of the lessons I loved teaching. The only one I held steadfastly to was literacy. That part was non negotiable. I was one year and one term into my T shaped literacy journey and didn't want to let that go so I had to learn how to be present in both roles. The flip side of this was that although I was using my teaching time to work towards increasing my learner's confidence using more powerful vocabulary and exploring affixes in an attempt to strengthen phonological and spelling awareness I did not blog my journey formally. Instead I had a Google doc full of notes that I knew I would be able to transcribe at a later date.

I capitalised on the PD provided as part of the T shaped literacy initiative and attended a number of online PD sessions run by The Literacy Place. This helped me grow as a teacher who knew I needed to model what I wanted my students to replicate. Looking back at the 'intervention' box on my causal chain kept me on track. I ended up using this like a checklist which meant I had a plan and was able to stick to it to help me achieve the goals I set for myself. When looking through my student's eyes, the reading responses both oral and written, to questions and provocations provided by our T shaped units, has continued throughout the year to be our record of their shifts in the complexity of their vocabulary choices from experimental to mastery. 

Celebrating the win...

This week the words I heard in our class speech competition completely stopped me in my tracks. Standing in front of an audience of their peers was every member of my reading groups confidently used the vocabulary we have encountered, unpacked and explored throughout our Reading units this year in context. Gone were the usual go-to's and in their place was a plethora of sophisticated vocabulary. This is a win in every sense of the word! 

To give my last sentence some context, the previous week I had taught an explicit lesson on speech writing. This lesson contained exemplars at a variety of e-asTTle writing levels. That meant my learners were exposed to a healthy mix of simple and more powerful vocabulary. One of our challenges involved applying our knowledge language features to edit an exemplar and move it to the next level. This is where my students very sound understanding of the more powerful vocabulary needed came to the fore. This then lead to a rich discussion as each group discussed their vocabulary choices and explained why they had made these changes. We applied the same strategy to levelling up the structural features.

Unfortunately the next few days saw me off sick, which meant my learners were left to work independently on their own speeches. I did share explicit instructions via email but knew these students would be working without guided teacher support. The comments tool in Google docs definitely gets a shout out here. I shared my feedback and left them to it. Move forward to today. I saw and heard the outcome of explicit teaching, creative ways of helping my learners connect to new and powerful vocabulary and a year long focus on affixes in action. 

My next step is to record some of these speeches that will be uploaded here so that I have a permanent record of what success looks like.

T Shaped Literacy Unit 2 - Representation...

This T shaped literacy unit focused on representations in a text. Our students asked if we could do this unit as a whole class so we listened. I lead the sessions and was able to incorporate differentiation with Dianne reinforcing the learning with her groups. The only time we separated was for the introduction of the content specific vocabulary. I have discussed my word gifting strategy in an earlier post. This meant once again we were able to be creative and strengthen our own teaching styles. 

We began by introducing the vocabulary to give our tauira the resources they needed to help them unpack and make sense of the new learning. Our next step was to revisit the learning from the Characterisation unit before we built our own connections to the topic of representation by drawing on our prior knowledge and personal biases when looking at how scientists are depicted in a wide variety of texts. We then looked at well known scientists and concluded that our biases clouded our judgements.

Our topic this time was Superheroes. I chose comics as the text type and selected pre 1980 Spiderman, Superman, Batman and their female counterparts to help us compare and contrast the gender bias that was reflected a representation of the time. I chose the comics from this time as the later ones explore issues that would not be suitable for all my learners. As with my other T shaped units I chose to collate all my lessons in one DLO so that everything was easy to find and easy to access for both myself and my learners. The presentation below has the links to all teaching points, texts used, follow up tasks and student responses.

The DLOs below reflect the student responses and show their strong connections to the topic and content specific vocabulary. What they don't show however, is the rich discussions that took place as each concept was explored and unpacked.

Listening to my Learners...

Collecting student voice is one of the most powerful forms of feedback. As the strategy of word gifting was new for us I wanted to see if my thoughts aligned with the thoughts of my learners. To capture this I shared a Google form with the students in my reading groups. The slides reflect the responses.

The questions I asked were:

• What did you like about the vocabulary gifting in Reading?
• What might you do differently to get to know the new words in Reading?
• How did this help you in the Representation topic?

Implement and Try#2: Word Gifting...

I have been approaching my inquiry into word consciousness as a whole language focus and not simply looking for opportunities to strengthen spelling skills. This term I have actively planned for opportunities to adopt the word gifting strategy that Sylvia Ashton-Warner used to elicit key vocabulary. 

Making Reading Meaningful - Sylvia Ashton-Warner and the Language Experience Approach by Sherron Killingsworth Roberts points out that by embracing some of the guiding principles for practice of Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s work in developing the Language Experience Approach (LEA) we can strengthen the connections our tauira have to the more challenging topic based vocabulary needed to make sense of new learning. The principle that resonates most with me is to offer ongoing, authentic language and literacy experiences, including lots of opportunities to speak, listen, read, write, and think about their own and others’ words.

In my reading program this term I have been focusing on the concept of representation in texts. This unit was designed as part of the T-Shaped literacy PLD that I have been on with the University of Auckland for the past two years. In each unit there is a vocabulary component that we up until now have unpacked as a class. This time around I decided to make a few changes, with the most powerful change being to gift the content specific vocabulary to my learners. 

The first thing I did was to create a list of the words and their definitions. These were then cut up and placed face down in front of the groups. After everyone physically selected their card the next challenge was to find the their partner by matching the word to its meaning. We needed to establish ownership of these words so the challenge to use their specific words twice each reading lesson was laid down. To ensure this happened my learners were asked to bring their word to every time we had reading. These word cards were not pretty or laminated but became a part of every reading lesson as along with ownership came a sense of responsibility.

No one immediately connects to a word so each pair was given the challenge of introducing their word to us. The details of the challenge are on the slide below.

What I found was that strong connections were made by the owners of these words. This was evident in reading responses, extended discussions and questions asked. What I wasn't expecting was that every student in the group could use every word accurately and in context. The example below from team 1 shows how these words were used in context accurately and effectively.

With the success I found in reading using this strategy, I decided to transfer this challenge to our science inquiry. Again, ownership meant connections and connections meant explanations of experiment outcomes were explicit. This is definitely an activity I would use again as it was unique, purposeful and fun.