Emma's Teaching as Inquiry

   Target group T1 T2 T4 OTJ Spelling Vocabulary Target learner 1 1P 1P 2P Y1 - Y2 2P Target learner 2 1B 1A 2P Y1 - Y2   Target learner 3 1B 1P 1P Y1 - Y2   Target learner 4 1P 2P 2P Y2 - Y3 2P Target learner 5  1A 1A 2P Y1 - Y3 2P Target learner 6  2P 1A 2A Y1 - Y2 2A Target learner 7 1B 1P 1A Y1 - Y2 1A As you can see in this table, all learners have made progress in their writing since term 1. However, the two highlighted in orange did not make any progress from term 2, to term 4. It is important to note that these 2 learners had low online attendance and one of these learners never returned to school in term 4.  Spelling:  I was pleased to observe in the learners writing books that all learners had made progress in spelling. Some feedback from parents in our Digital Learning Converstaions in term 4 was that they appreciated having the spelling notebooks and spelling rules coming home as it was something they could support with. I will definit...

  Lockdown reflection:  What a crazy year it has been! With most of term 3 and 4 in lockdown, I have been blown away by the digital capabilities as well as determination and resilience of my learners.  We had a really high percentage of learners from our hub attend all of their workshops. When term 4 started, we had noticed that our learners were lacking enthusiasm for online learning. They missed their friends and learning at home isn’t the same and we weren’t receiving as many follow up tasks as we would have liked. So we decided to change up our timetable and make it more fun. Some feedback from the learners was that they enjoyed coming online because they wanted to see everyone but got a little bit confused if they had back to back workshops and when was there any time to complete the follow ups. We decided to have a maths day and a literacy day (alternating) and add in a fun workshop with our guardian groups for playing games and sharing. I also added in an extra opt...

  Which  Achievement Challenge are you considering as an area of focus in 2022 and why? Include in your WHY both evidence and your own passion/expertise   Achievement challenge 5.  32% of our learners at Stonefields School on the Student Support register.  literacy interventions with a group of student support learners across year 3 and 4.  strength in building positive relationships with learners and whānau  seeing these learners make progress (even small steps) and igniting the spark for learning has been so rewarding.  I really want to know more about how to best support these learners.  I have observed that many learners who are coming into year 3 have low oral language, they have little knowledge about phonics and how to read chunks in words and therefore do not have the confidence or ability to write.    What learnings from the 2017 - 2021 CoL teacher inquiries have informed or inspired your thinking?   it has been insp...

This year my inquiry focus was: ‘How does feedback develop assessment capable learners and cause shift in writing?’  At the beginning of this inquiry I gathered learner and whānau voices about what they believed to be the barriers in writing. From this, I discovered that the learners did not understand their next steps. Whānau were concerned about spelling and handwriting and a lack of enthusiasm for writing. I looked at Schooltalk gap analysis, e-asTTle results and guided writing sessions to identify that the areas with the most gaps were vocabulary, sentence structure, spelling, writing legibility and punctuation.  My initial hunch was that if I offered regular opportunities for feedback from peers, whānau and teachers, they would become more assessment capable. To begin with, I created success criterias based on the genre of writing we were exploring. After attending Murray Gadd’s course ‘What makes a great writing programme’, I made some key changes. We moved away from ha...

  Monitoring my inquiry:  There are many ways that I plan to monitor the progress of my intervention:  As spelling, handwriting and phonics are taught in isolation, I will need to be checking the writing books to see if the learning is transferring into the independent writing. It will be good to compare with writing from the beginning of the year and middle and end.  The success criteria will be a great tool for measuring achievement. I will be able to see if they are noticing what they are including in their writing.  I will monitor the assessment capabilities of my learners by seeing if they are able to use their success criteria to identify which skills workshop they need to sign up for.  Reflection:  After some thinking and conversations with many colleagues about the success criteria, I have reconsidered how I use it... As a year ¾ team, we have developed a list of writing codes that the learners can use in their writing. The idea behind this is ...

 My colleague Rob and I ran a workshop on Reciprocal Reading in our literacy PLD this morning. It was basically a discussion with other colleagues about how they could make it work in their hub. 

 My amazing colleague Sammy and I ran a workshop at our staff literacy PLD. We wanted to share some of our learning from Murray Gadd's course and what is working for us in terms of success criteria. We had a really thought provoking conversation about what is working in different year groups across the school.  Thanks team for making us think and reflect on how we can leverage success criteria's in our writing programmes. 

As part of my research for my inquiry, I was lucky enough to go on a course with Murray Gadd. I was blown away! The course gave me so many take aways and inspired me in so many ways.  Unfortunately I cannot post all of the notes here but some of my top take aways were:  - Ways to motivate and engage ALL writers - Murray uses a lot of picture books to engage his writers. His videos are on YouTube for future reference.  - Vocabulary is a key focus area for writers. How can I give learners more opportunities to explore different verbs and adjectives? Mainly verbs.  - Effective teachers ensure that ALL writers know that they have something to say and something to write.  - All writing tasks need to be goal oriented. This means asking 'What am I going to have to be good at as a writer to do this task well?' 'What does achievement/success look like?'  - Murray talks about giving learners a success criteria that involves using looking words (words I can see on my ...

 My amazing colleague, Melissa and I ran a workshop for whānau around how to support your child at home with literacy learning. It was a huge success w and we were given loads of positive feedback from parents.  There were 3 sections to the workshop:  Reading at home  Writing at home  Spelling at home  We made the workshop interactive with a game or activity for parents to complete at the start of each section. We also had a takeaway pack filled with loads of resources including: spelling lists, reading question prompt cards, spelling games and ideas for writing at home.  Check out the slides :) 

  Restate my inquiry:  How does feedback develop assessment capable learners and cause shift in writing? Implementation:   Through this inquiry, I hope to have 3 outcomes that will lead to a shift in writing achievement:  Learners able to articulate next steps.  Learners will use a wider range of vocabulary Learners spelling and handwriting will improve  Changes i have made to my practice:  Using the writing process to scaffold the learning. The planning stage of the writing process involves a lot of build knowledge before we even get into planning. For example; we look at examples of writing and identify what makes this a good piece of writing. Organising my groups so that each group can have targeted goals. Note this is their initial writing groups - they later opt into skills workshops. Learners use their success criteria to evaluate their writing.  The learners use success criteria to identify what they have done well in their writing. They hi...