Emma's Teaching as Inquiry

Write an overall evaluation of your intervention in terms of the causal chain you had theorised. i.e. 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? This intervention has been successful in both changing factors in teaching and improving the progress of student support learners in literacy.  Changes to learners progress:  We recognised a HUGE problem, that year 3 and 4 learners were coming into our hubs without any skills to decode unknown words. The progressions we were designing our learning from throughout the school had a focus on the following skills: Name the parts of a book (front, back, spine, title) Explain the difference, and can give examples of, a letter, a word and a sentence Look for the difference between small letters and capital letters Show where to begin reading Read from left to right, starting at the top to the bottom of a...

  Explain how some of the data you have used to build a profile of the students’ learning will be used as baseline data at the end of the year. As you can see in post #4,  we have collected formative assessment data from Running Records, Little Learners Love Literacy and Liz Kane's 'The Code' spelling tests to gather baseline evidence for where our target learners are sitting at the beginning of the year. We will use these assessments throughout the year and will monitor their progress. If we notice that there has been no shift in the data at the middle of this inquiry, we will revaulate.  We have also decided to monitor the wellbeing of these learners. Stonefield's has developed a Wellbeing Assessment Tool called Te Whare Tapa Wha. We will use this to monitor the wellbeing of learners at the beginning of the year and the end.  We are also able to track their wellbeing progressions through Schooltalk. Below is a snapshop of target learners wellbeing gap analysis:...

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...

 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. 

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 ...

Share three pieces of academic or professional reading and explain how they and other sources helped you form hypotheses about aspects of teaching that might contribute to current patterns of learning. Reading #1:  Claudia L. Keh “Feedback in the Writing Process: A model and methods for Implementation.  Feedback is a fundamental element of a process approach to writing. It can be defined as input from a reader to a writer with the effect of providing information to the writer for revision. In other words, it is the comments, questions, and suggestions a reader gives a writer to produce ‘reader-based prose’ (Flower, 1979) Through feedback, the writer learns where he or she has misled or confused the reader by not supplying enough information, illogical organization, lack of development of ideas, or something like inappropriate word-choice or tense.  She discusses the benefits of 3 types of feedback:  Peer feedback Conferencing  Written feedback  My take away...

 We were lucky to have Shawn Hawthorne come to our school to present his research on engaging reluctant writers! These were my takeaways:  Data:  97-2016 data showed:  Attitude to writing declines with age (2012)  Girls acheive higher than boys  Boys have a less positive attitude than girls Māori and Pacific Islanders achieve lower than Pākeha.  Engaging in Writing:  What do we mean by being engaged?  Behavioural engagement - we can see it  Cognitive engagement - how do they feel about writing?  Emotional engagement  **Some researchers added Agency as a 4th element.  Why do some children fail to engage?  They do not see themselves as 'doers' They do not see a need for it. It's too hard/risky.  Little respect for teacher Engagement is essential for other things to click Factors:  Interest/relevance choice/control Knowledge/skills  Belief about writing and self as a writer. What do they perceive writing t...

  Kia ora,  My inquiry question this year is ‘ How might   my design for learning and deliberate acts of teaching in writing, support  boys, in particular Māori learners to become effective writers and cause shift in writing.’  With 2020 being the year that it has been, it was the perfect opportunity to get creative with my writing design. I was surprised to see how many learners were engaged with learning online and especially with their determination and creativity when it came to writing.  What happened for my learners:  The learners attitude towards writing was the biggest change. Learners who previously would not write anything independently were now writing narratives, information reports and mysteries. A survey given to target learners at 3 points in the year, showed an increase in their attitude levels and when asked to find a piece of writing they were proud of and were previously unable to do, were now showing 2 or 3 examples. E-asTTle da...

Baseline Survey Data from Target Learners    Below is the data collected from my baseline survey from my target learners Below are the baseline writing samples from my learners. They chose these pieces as the piece they are most proud of.