Emma's Teaching as Inquiry

  Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention (so it is clear what you doing differently) Observe each other teaching Structured Literacy - student engagement, structured approach and how it is different to previous guided reading sessions Student voice  Feedback from whānau  Mid way check in - structured literacy data T2, Learner voice T3, Running records t2, Liz Kane spelling results  Outside person asking our learners prompting questions

Plan and conduct detailed inquiry into specific aspects of your current teaching that are relevant to the hypotheses you identified in the literature. Inquiring into your teaching should give you: Formative information about your current strengths and areas for development Baseline information that you can use at the end of the year  to provide evidence of shifts in teaching Use multiple tools such as self- or peer-observations, analysis of your class site, student voice. We have designed a structured intervention for our target learners. We have researched multiple different Scope and Sequences and have decided to follow the iDeal Scope and Sequence. We like the way this Scope is easy to follow and has resources to go with each progression. It is also really helpful that it shows the books that are appropriate for the progression across a range of different programmes. Formative information about your current strengths and areas for development: - Teaching reading is one of my pa...

  # 4 Explain why you judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year This is my second year teaching some of these target learners literacy. For some of my student support learners, they have been reading at red/yellow for almost a year now. I need to figure what will work for these learners.  What will support these learners to develop their phonological and phonemic awareness? How will I give learners the strategies to decode words?   What will help develop a love of reading for these learners?  How can whānau support their children at home with reading? My wondering is that if I can make it work for these learners, then I will have the tools and strategies to lift achievement of all learners.

  #2 Describe how and why you have selected this challenge of student learning. Locate your inquiry in the context of patterns of student learning in Manaiakalani overall. I am so grateful that I am teaching with another Manaiakalani COL teacher this year. I think our collaborative approach to this inquiry will enable us dig deeper and extend our inquiry even further this year. We have decided to focus on Manaiakalani Achievement Challenge 5 Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/key competency using language symbols and texts.   However, as a school we are focusing strengthening our abilities to use the Stonefields Learning Process. In year ¾ we have identified that we have strengths in using the Learning Process is our planning and talking about the different parts and different thinking skills during our workshops. We wonder if our next steps would be around getting the learners to reflect on which thinking skills they hav...

 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...

 One of the main targets for my inquiry this year, was to engage boys in writing! This has been something I have found difficult throughout my whole teaching career. For some reason, boys just don't enjoy writing. Until it's about Minecraft that is...  My recommendation to every teacher is to look at Minecraft Education ! It is amazing! There are lesson plans and ideas for everything you could imagine; maths, literacy, social sciences and even te reo Māori!  We started with this - we used lessons from Minecraft Education and adapted them to suit our learners. We found a 'First, Next and Then' structure to be useful so they had a very clear view of what was expected of them every lesson. We also did not have the luxury of having someone supervise the learning full time (we we still teaching other workshops in the hub).  Success!! This targeted the interests and passions of all our target writers and they were engaged! We were also surprised to see that the learners ve...

 It was fun sharing at the Manaikalani Create Staff Meeting! Create to Learn is such a powerful way to engage learners in learning! Here are our slides: Using Minecraft to Spark Imagination  

 During lockdown round 2, I found it diffciult to monitor much real evidence. This was due to a number of different things:  1. The kids online attendance was a lot lower this time round 2. Target learners were not submitting any of their learning to me With that in mind, I am able to use some anecdotal evidence from before lockdown around my recent changes to my teaching.  I found that the learners were particularly excited about the topic of Aotearoa. I believe this due to the fact that it connects nicely to our concept learning for term 3 so learners are able to make connections to the knowledge they have already built. Also I think they enjoy writing about themselves as a character in a fictional story.  Some evidence that I have been able to gather is from their gap analysis on Schooltalk. It is obvious that my target learners are getting stuck when it comes to generating ideas, building their vocabulary and using a variety of sentence structure. This is great a...

  As part of my intervention, I have used Schooltalk gap analysis to create groups for my learners based on the different skills they need to work on in their writing.  I have then started to design learning that is fun and can be taught in a quick workshop that will not interrupt the flow of the writing the learners are completing for the week.  The main areas for focus are:  - Vocabulary   - Sentence Structure - Organisation - Revise/edit (includes punctuation)  I hope that after these workshops, learners will be able to then include what they have learnt in their writing.  Reflection:  - How will I measure if these workshops have been beneficial to the learners?  - How will I ensure that they are targeting a range of abilities?

  In my previous post, I discussed some areas that I wanted to inquire into and make changes to my learning design for writing.  I am going to inquire into the following areas:  - Topics - are they engaging? Relevant to Māori boys?  - Vocabulary Building - where are the opportunities for this in my learning design?  - Feedback - what have I learnt about this from lockdown?  - Separate programmes - handwriting, phonics, spelling  - Fitness - how could this be included in my learning design?  - Learning pit - reflection opportunities before, during and after learning  With these in mind, I designed learning to meet these needs. I observed a lot of excitement when this topic (Aotearoa 500 years ago) was first revealed and learners appeared to be engaged in the writing. We had a great session around vocabulary (adjectives) building and then lockdown happened.... This learning was continued during independent learning time in lockdown which some ...

  Plan and conduct detailed inquiry into specific aspects of your current teaching that are relevant to the hypotheses you identified in the literature. Inquiring into your teaching should give you: Formative information about your current strengths and areas for development Baseline information that you can use at the end of the year  to provide evidence of shifts in teaching Use multiple tools such as self- or peer-observations, analysis of your class site, student voice. I am going to inquire into the following areas:  - Topics - are they engaging? Relevant to Māori boys?  - Vocabulary Building - where are the opportunities for this in my learning design?  - Feedback - what have I learnt about this from lockdown?  - Separate programmes - handwriting, phonics, spelling  - Fitness - how could this be included in my learning design?  - Learning pit - reflection opportunities before, during and after learning 

My Inquiry so far: Term 3 2019 Main changes I have made to my teaching:  1. Introduce a range of different oral language activities and strategies in reading and writing.  2. Allow time for reflection in reading and writing time The first change was easy, I implemented a huge variety of games into my morning routine. We spent the first 15 minutes of the day playing games and talking. It was fun and the kids loved it!  These activities were transferred into our reading programme. Learners were being agentic by choosing the activities that they wanted to do during reading time through this magical map:  I found that these activities were fun and engaging for learners. They were being agentic by choosing games and activities that they enjoyed. But.. I wanted more. My goal was for the learners to develop agency in literacy. I wanted them to have a better understanding of their learning and next steps. My student voice showed that my learners STILL h...

Blog post #10 Restate your inquiry question and your theory of action/chain of events ( so you keep your eyes on the prize ) Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention ( so it is clear what you doing differently ) My Inquiry Question How might an increase in oral language opportunities support Maori learners to develop agency in literacy? Changes to my teaching:  I have increased oral language opportunities into my literacy programme. - Independent activities: - Time to reflect on learning by using learner qualities:  - Gifting vocabulary to reflect on own learning and peer learning:  - Creating a success criteria of what a "good speaker" looks like and sounds like. Reflection:  I am noticing a change in my learners oral language capabilities through the Combi tool data, as well as seeing good progress in most learners running record results. However, I would like to see ...