Tuesday 19 March 2019

The Catalytic Issue and my Hunches

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Explain why you judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year. (WFRC #3)

This year I will be inquiring into promoting vocabulary acquisition to strengthen reading comprehension and stimulate student led dialogic conversations.  This is the most important issue for my group of learners as indicated by our school wide reading data and the 2018 Manaiakalani Reading data because as the years go on for Manaiakalani students the gap between our students and the NZ norm increases tremendously as they reach years 7-10.

I believe that based on the Professional Development we have received over the past few years from Dr. Janni van Hees focusing on Language Acquisition and the discoveries made by previous CoL teachers are key to building the link from primary to intermediate and then again from intermediate to high school.  I am very interested in seeing if the students from my focus group are able to grow in their understanding of unpacking topic rich vocabulary to ultimately lead to a growth in self-efficacy to promote dialogic conversations that will in return create a "want" in my students to independently go "Wider and Deeper" in their reading, as previously unpacked by Dr Jesson and Dr McNaughton.

Some possible wonderings that I am considering as I discover the catalytic issue of learning this year are:
-Have students at this age have lost the confidence to share with their peers? What can I do to promote student self efficacy in my classroom?
-Is it true that my students are not actively reading for pleasure?
-Do my students know where to begin to read for pleasure?
-How can I effectively model and recreate useful strategies for students to use to gain vocabulary knowledge while reading?
-What are the level of texts used in the high school reading program?
-What does the high school do to promote reading comprehension? What do their follow up tasks look like?
-Could introducing NCEA level vocabulary purposely in years 7-8 help to bridge the gap between intermediate and high school?

2 comments:

  1. Kia ora Angela, thinking about what you have identified as the catalytic issue for student learning your wonderings do resonate. Particularly interested in the first three you have listed and how you plan to find out more from your learners' perspective. I think you have begun to consider this in your post ... Valued Learning Outcomes. What do your learners value?

    Ngā mihi,
    Fiona

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  2. Thanks for reading Fiona! I have actually surveyed my students and I am working on putting that information together in a blog post to be shared soon.

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