What Evidence?

*Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention. (WFRQ? #12)

*Identify informal/formal ways you are monitoring the effects of your changed practices/intervention on learner outcomes. Explain the reflections/tweaks you are making along the way. (WFRQ? #13)

*Describe how you will keep a record of each of the above in a manageable way. (WFRQ? #14). 

It is important to remember that during the Inquiry process that you are ultimately looking at the things that YOU the TEACHER can do to make YOUR teaching practice more effective. 

The focus of my 2020 Inquiry is "How can providing opportunities for mathematical vocabulary acquisition strengthen a student’s self-efficacy in maths?" 

Although my intended route has been altered some due to the Covid-19 Lockdowns, and changes made in our school timetable as a result, I have been able to implement the following interventions in my teaching. Due to the nature of the questions asked by the WFRC, I decided it was best to link my responses in one blog post.

 

1. Very specific purpose to our whole class problem solving and small group micro teaching sessions. In my lesson plans (DATs), I try to specifically think about what I want to do with/focus on with each maths group prior to our problem solving sessions. In doing this, I am able to clearly know (and remain on task) with the mathematical concepts and vocabulary that I am trying to work on with that group of students. In addition to my actual DAT plan, I also keep rather in depth reflection notes often indicating where certain students have successes and failures, in addition to thinking about my next steps as a teacher. 

                         

2. I started out the year, providing students with "A Closer Look" learning tasks. Before beginning a new section of a unit, I decided to try front loading the students with the vocabulary that they should know

(at Level 4) in order to be successful working on that specific topic. This is an idea that I based on the work we had done as a team last year with Dr. Jannie van Hees around Genomics and our Literacy program. Once students have had a closer look at this vocabulary, I plan my problem solving questions using these specific vocabulary words in a way that will get students using them as they discuss their problem solving strategy and solution. 

3. I have been capturing student voice, and my own teacher voice, through video recording our lessons and monitoring the amount of times students use, are prompted to use and I, as the teacher, use proper mathematical vocabulary. An example of this can be found on my blog post entitled, "Formative Assessment and Baseline Data"

4. The last thing I plan to do differently is implement the use of some strategies that I read about earlier this term: the Four Square and Feature Analysis approaches (as discussed here).  Unfortunately, I don't feel confident implementing these new strategies while we are Distance Teaching. My hope it to be able to implement the use of these strategies once my class is back in the classroom as a regular Level 2 class.  Students will be able to keep a personal record of these tasks on their class blogs. 

In order to keep a record of everything, I will be using student blog posts, reflection and DAT spaces on my weekly lesson plans, and learning tasks monitored and filed appropriately in my Google Drive. Student voice will be collected through student blog posts and in class videos that I record during specified lessons. Once I find something worth sharing, I will be publishing regular updates on my blog, which  provides a quick and reliable place to share change in my teaching and student shift data. I also keep regularly updated spreadsheets that monitor student shift (PAT, eAsstle, etc) and my own anecdotal notes on student progress. 

Decimats: Rewindable Learning

 Now that we are back in school under Covid restrictions, I am remaining very aware of the students that I have in my class that have yet to return to school. The majority of these students are still working from home, but without the classroom connection and direct teaching that was available when we were offering Google Meets. As a result, I decided to make another rewindable teaching video showing students how to use a Decimat since it was the first time that many of the students have experienced this learning tool. 

This rewindable video was a great resource for my students who were in the classroom and those at home. It was also used by students in other learning areas of our. teaching block to help them to further their understanding of decimats. 

My 2020 CoL Inquiry Focus

My 2020 CoL Inquiry Focus:

“How can providing opportunities for mathematical vocabulary acquisition strengthen a student’s self-efficacy in maths?”

The Manaiakalani Community of Learning is working together on this task using the expertise existing in of our community of learning.

In 2020 for my inquiry I have selected the following CoL achievement challenge: 

Increase the achievement in Years 7-10, in Reading, Writing, and Maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets.

The teaching as inquiry framework I will continue to use in 2019 has been specifically co-constructed for Manaiakalani schools using our familiar Learn Create Share structure.

The elements in this framework share close similarities with other models New Zealand teachers use.

Throughout the year, I will be labelling my blog posts to reflect our Learn, Create, Share structure.

LEvidence	Learn - Gather Evidence	CPlan	Create - Make a plan	SPublish	Share - Publish
LScan	Learn - Scan	CTry	Create - Try new things	SCoteach	Share - Co-teach
LTrend	Learn - Identify Trends	CInnovate	Create - Innovate	SModel	Share - Model
LHypothesise	Learn - Hypothesise	CImplement	Create - Implement	SGuide	Share - Guide
LResearch	Learn - Research	CReflect	Create - Reflect	SFback	Share - Feedback
LReflect	Learn - Reflect			SReflect	Share - Reflect

Small Steps to Vocabulary Success!

One of the things that I have been considering recently is how successful has the deep diving been when developing vocabulary acquisition with my students this year.  I discussed my initial process with Deep Diving in an earlier blog post found here.

Recently, I spent some time deep diving a few words/phrases that I felt were important to discuss with my reading group prior to beginning the text.  However, I asked students to circle any words or phrases that they were unsure of while reading the article with a partner.  It was my intention to spend some time discussing these words as a group later in the week.  However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that some students took it upon themselves to deep dive/word web the identified words/phrases and share their understanding on their blogs.  This is seen in Lillyana's blog post below.

Click here to see this post and interact with the slides.

I was really impressed with Lillyana's post because also took the time to indicate using a question mark (?) the possible definitions for the words she was exploring. 

What Evidence?

Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention (so it is clear what you doing differently). (WFRC 10)

Describe how you will keep a record of each of the above in a manageable way. (WFRC 11)

We were challenged by the Wolfe Fisher team during our last CoL meeting, to spend some time thinking about how we have been recording how WE as the TEACHER have changed our own practice.

When we began the journey earlier this year, my initial focus for my inquiry was, "Using dialogic discussions to expand vocabulary usage, while strengthening reading comprehension." In order to make this happen, I have been working very hard to change my teaching practice in a few specific, yet meaningful ways:

1. Very specific purpose to our oral reading sessions. In my lesson plans (DATs), I try to specifically think about what I want to do with/focus on with each reading group prior to reading, while reading and after reading. In doing this, I am able to clearly know (and remain on task) with the literary elements/vocabulary that I am trying to work on with that group of students.

2. I have been providing student led methods of discovery for vocabulary acquisition (Deep Diving). I have been strategically spending time working through what a new word means instead of simply having students take one random guess while reading and then telling the group the true definition or modelling how to conduct a "define:" smart search.  

I now grab a piece of paper (or on the whiteboard) and write the word in a bubble before turning the pen/marker over to the group to add what they think they know about the word.  Students then asked to continue adding to the word cloud to build their understanding of the word as they continue their reading or watch the assigned video.  Students then create a digital model of the deep dive to post on their blog and link to my spreadsheet. There are also been times, when we have simply stapled the paper copy on the classroom wall. 

3. After working with the DMIC mentors, one of the things that I have been trying to pull into my teaching this year is strategically talking less while encouraging the students to talk more. I do this generally by providing them with the topic (video, paragraph, question, etc) for discussion and then providing them with 30-60 seconds of "prepare" time to formulate what they are going to share. They then have 30-90 seconds to "share" their information with a partner before we come back together and "report" back to the whole group/class.  Keeping an accurate record of this is something that I have not actually considered until this past week.

So far, as the reporting back has occurred I have created a mind map/brainstorm/note taking model for the students to use when completing future learning tasks. The notes that I put on the board are often added to or modified as more students share.  The whole class notes are photographed and put in a folder in our class Google drive.

After our PD session with Aaron and Hanna, I am now thinking that perhaps I should set up a video camera more often during my class discussions simply to capture student interactions, voice, and sharing.

.

Digging Deeper

In an effort to dig deeper in to vocabulary acquisition, I have been taking some time to change the way that I have always viewed providing students with the definition of a new word. In the past, I simply told the students the definition or told them to look it up. Now, in the beginning of the teaching career it sounded more like, "Grab a dictionary and see what you can find out" and since teaching in a digital environment it became, "Use a define: smart search."  This is not to say that in the moment of working with a group of students (especially those reading at the lower levels of the colour wheel),  I did not focus in on using context clues to determine the meaning from within the text. However, after meeting with Dr. Jannie van Hees at a recent Professional Development session with my team, I began to think of ways to provide more student voice as we dug into deeper understanding of vocabulary found within our texts.

After providing my students some time to independently read through the text, in our small group session, I led them to specific sections of the text that I had previously determined. While those shorter sections orally, I stopped and pulled out specific words and phrases that I felt we needed to dive deeper with. I simply began with a "Hmmmm, I wonder what that means...magnificent height and breadth?"  I then, grabbed a sheet of paper and put that phrase into a bubble in the middle of the page, and asked the students what they thought. After adding all of our ideas to the word chart, we read the selection again and students were asked to formulate their own definition using our word chart.

Here is one student's response:

Creating with Slides

This term, I really wanted to find ways to engage my Year 7/8 students more when completing Learn and Create tasks. Now that I have a group of students working at a Year 8 reading level and it was my intention to provide them with some choice when selecting their supplementary texts. We spent some time reading and discussing the School Journal story "The Seeing Hawk." Students were then given opportunities to select a topic to independently dive deeper into (as seen on our site here).

After selecting one of two learning paths, students were asked to use the information to create a fun and interesting Digital Learning Object (DLO) of their own choice. As part of our DFI sessions, we spent some time looking at Google Slides and one week I had a go at creating an interactive game (Seen Here).  So, of course, before setting them off on their way, I quickly showed off my skills making a game using Google Slides.

A few of the boys in class decided to work together and they have been problem solving their way through to create this game about the Tā Moko.  When you play the game (in present mode), the various boxes are clickable and students can select the answer they agree with before the slides flips and they find out how they did.

I was very impressed that the boys took time to try something new and they have embraced the intricacies that come along with formulating a slide show game. I also really like that they are teaching after the answer in selected to provide more information about that question topic. 

This is an awesome Create (or Create to Learn) task that extends the computer skills and computational thinking of our older students. I am excited to implement more tasks similar to this in the upcoming weeks that will allow my students to feel like they are doing something new and exciting. 

Critical Thinking: Assigned Q&A

This week, I decided to take one of the suggested Google Docs Learning Tasks from DFI and put it into practice with one of my literacy groups.  It was an easy assignment to implement, especially because I already had the online articles pulled for the group to use.  All it required from me was to put the article on a Google Doc and give the students in that group View Only with Comment editing rights.

The group I assigned the Q&A to was comprised of 11 year 7/8 students instructionally reading between 11 and 11.5 years of age. They immediately took off and after reading the article through, they had so many questions written for each other in such a short period of time. They will be working through the questions assigned to them during class tomorrow and then we will be spending some time discussing their understanding of the article together.

Here is a screenshot of the article and the students' Q&A Commenting.
Please note that it is not shown in entirety to enable surnames to be hidden from view. 

One of the things I would consider doing in the future is breaking the group up into smaller groups of students for the Q&A.  It seemed that it was getting very crowded in the comment threads and some questions/answers were getting hard to see without resolving the comments.

Critical Thinking: Assigned Q&A

It was so fun to expand Critical Thinking with some of my fast finishers today. 

After attending our first DFI session last week, I really wanted to have some students expand their critical thinking skills using an assigned Q&A Google Docs assignment that Dorothy Burt shared with us. Unfortunately, the way things were in our learning space this week, we ran out of time to trial it as a whole reading group (or class), but I did have three boys who were fast finishers. So, I took their spare time and turned them into guinea pigs. 

Using an article that was already assigned as one of their reading texts for the week, I quickly copied the text to a Google Doc and shared it with the three boys. I took a few minutes to show them how to assign comments to each other (+their email address in the comment box) and then instructed them to ask each other questions about the text. They were very excited to trial something new, and while they were getting started, I wrote a question individually assigned to each of them to answer. 

They boys were enjoying themselves so much, they didn't even realise that the entire learning space shifted from literacy to maths all around them.  Once I realised they were still working in our shared space on the Q&A, I told them they would have to finish up later and they were actually bummed to have to stop working and shift to maths. 

So very excited to add this into my lessons for upcoming weeks to see how it goes with a whole reading group working together.

My 2019 CoL Inquiry Focus:

“Promoting vocabulary acquisition to strengthen reading comprehension and stimulate student led dialogic conversations.”

The Manaiakalani Community of Learning is working together on this task using the expertise existing in of our community of learning.

In 2019 for my inquiry I have selected the following CoL achievement challenge: 

Increase the achievement in Years 7-10, in Reading, Writing, and Maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets.

The teaching as inquiry framework I will continue to use in 2019 has been specifically co-constructed for Manaiakalani schools using our familiar Learn Create Share structure.

The elements in this framework share close similarities with other models New Zealand teachers use.

Throughout the year, I will be labelling my blog posts to reflect our Learn, Create, Share structure.

LEvidence	Learn - Gather Evidence	CPlan	Create - Make a plan	SPublish	Share - Publish
LScan	Learn - Scan	CTry	Create - Try new things	SCoteach	Share - Co-teach
LTrend	Learn - Identify Trends	CInnovate	Create - Innovate	SModel	Share - Model
LHypothesise	Learn - Hypothesise	CImplement	Create - Implement	SGuide	Share - Guide
LResearch	Learn - Research	CReflect	Create - Reflect	SFback	Share - Feedback
LReflect	Learn - Reflect			SReflect	Share - Reflect

Expanded Vocabulary Usage

When planning for our reading groups during the past few weeks, we have been focusing on new ways to provide students with ways to utilise what they already know to further their understanding of unknown words.

We trialed it first with our students reading in the 9-9.5 instruction range and we used an assignment created by my teaching partner (Hannah West) as a follow up task for students reading the School Journal text "The Butterfly Project."  Students were first asked to look at a word in the context of the story and write what they thought it meant.  Students were then asked to look at a sentence from the story and replace indicated words with words that meant the same thing.

After seeing the success of this task, we decided to trial a similar version with our students reading at 8.5 years this week. Students were asked to replace indicated words in five sentences taken from the story with alternate words that have the same meaning.

Our hope is by providing independent tasks similar to these, at this level, our students will be able to think about the words they are reading and make meaning and inference at a deeper level.

A Team Approach

During our Week 6 Staff Meeting, we spent some time looking at our reading data trends in our own classrooms and then discussed what we were seeing across the team.  It was definitely apparent (as I questioned in my previous blog post "Mid-Term 3 Shift Update") that we have a large number of students across our Year 5/6 team (of six teachers) that are instructionally reading between the ages of 8.5-9.5.

We broke up into groups of two (a year 5 and a year 6 teacher) to consider 5 main areas when planning for the students reading at that level.  I was paired with a year 6 teacher, Migi Sio, and this is what we came up with.



When we shared back with the remainder of our team, it was very surprising to hear that most of us chose a very similar WALT to focus on (simply worded differently).

A next step for me will be discussing this further with my teaching partner, Hannah West, to determine how we will be implementing this focus in our learning space.

Language Abundance: Chain Linked Writing

Near the end of May, Dr. Janni van Hees came in and talked to the Manaiakalani COL teachers about Language Abundance within in our classrooms (see blog post here). One of the things that Janni spoke about was the idea of creating a dialogic chain (or paragraph) with our students to illustrate grouping details/ideas together in a physical chain.

This term, our school theme is "Move 'Ya Body" and as a focus the students in our learning space are exploring the Maori idea of hauora through their literacy tasks.  After introducing the concept of hauora to the students last week through their reading, we decided to have them write about how they have all four elements in their own lives.

This morning, I launched this concept with the students by providing time for them to Think-Pair-Share what they remembered about hauora.  We then discussed the elements of a paragraph (topic sentences, details, closing).  Students were randomly selected to read aloud sentence strips that were prepared ahead of time.

The class had to decide which statements linked together to form our introduction paragraph and which statements were random details that might fall into the body paragraph links later on in our writing. We also prepared a digital dictation of the paragraph for students to listen to and type into their assignment before writing their own body paragraphs. 

The girls enjoyed being our human paragraph chain. 

The chain was added to our wall as a visual reminder to apply to future learning. 

I look forward to later in the week, when we discuss student writing as a class to have students chain link the sentences they have written for their body paragraphs. Hopefully, this will provide a deeper understanding of paragraph development (and conversation skills) for the students in our class.

Enabling Exploratory Reading

This term, I decided that in addition to teaching my reading groups the basics for reading that we all teach (decoding, inferencing, etc) I wanted my students to understand that their Chromebook is a tool for learning independently as well. We have had many discussions about how it is ok to stop when reading independently and explore online for an answer to a question that may have popped up when reading. It amazes me that my students thought they weren't "allowed" to use the internet to further their understanding of a topic being discussed in class.

So, keeping with our Auckland Harbour Bridge theme (which has evolved from our read aloud novel), students were asked to read two newspaper articles about the Harbour Bridge and then one website page about the forces of bridges.  While reading, students were asked to list important and interesting facts on a padlet, and they were encouraged to click on other links found on those pages to further their understanding to ultimately become a "bridge expert."

Students loved the opportunity to explore on their own and many took the padlet assignment seriously. 

Language Acquisition: Using a Video Clip Day 2

When we were able to have some time as a class to sit together and watch the second half of the chosen video clip, I was very surprised at the reaction from my students. They seemed to be indifferent to the idea of watching a video clip (something our students generally love).  However, once it was time to begin the discussion, they jumped right in and even some of my quietest students were willing to share, both with their partner and then with the whole class.

Once again, after watching the video, I took some notes to display on our literacy wall based on the information the students reported hearing in the video and seeing on the transcription.

I am excited to do this again either later in the term, or next term as time allows, using our School's Inquiry Topic as my video focus once again. I am very interested to see how the student's retain this information and are able to use it in the future. 

Reading or Oral Language

Do we do we do more of the same and not make the difference or do we change what we are doing and make the difference?

-Dr. Jannie van Hees

After hearing Dr. van Hees make this statement, I felt that I had been given "permission" to simply "roll with it" during our oral reading session. I am reading a novel to my class called "My New Zealand Story: Harbour Bridge" by Phillipa Werry.   I chose this read aloud because our school topic focus for the term is Physics: Force and Motion.  My hope was to engage my students (especially the boys) from a different angle using something that is part of their everyday life. 

We are having a great time reading this story, and having many discussions about New Zealand history along the way.  My class is beginning to feel empowered to further their own understanding about a topic they come across while reading.  We have learnt about Opo the dolphin and after hearing from Dr. van Hees, we spent some time exploring famous bridges of the world simply by looking at pictures. 

Students were asked to share what they saw with a partner and then report back to the class what their partner said. I took some time to record what they shared on poster paper so we could use them again at a later date. 

It was awesome seeing how engaged by students were and how they were making connections between the bridges by comparing and contrasting what they were seeing. 

We may not have done any actual "reading" sessions that day, but I believe the learning that took place in my classroom was far more valuable.  My students are now fascinated about bridges around the world and want to know more.  

I think I may have found a future reading assignment for later in the term. 

Language Acquisition: Using a Video Clip Day 1

This week, I decided to try out the video clip technique shared with us by Jannie during our CoL PD last week.  In planning for this exercise, I chose a video clip that provided a chance for my students to extend their knowledge on the four elements that are required for flight, which is our topic focus for Term 2.   I spent some time looking for a youtube video that would be in the "Goldilocks" zone for my students.  Hopefully, this will help provide an avenue for language acquisition to take place as Dr. van Hees suggested.

First, I spent some time watching the video and writing a transcript of the material presented.  I quickly realised that the video was too long to use for one session, and I decided to split it into two parts hoping that my students would be able to understand all four elements by the end of the second session.

As a class, we watched the video.  Then, after discussing what they learnt (or heard about) with a partner, we had a class discussion sharing what our partners learnt.  Students were asked to repeat or rephrase what they heard the student sharing with the class.  As students were sharing, I was creating a topic web on a large piece of poster paper for the students to refer to.

 Then, we popped the transcript up on the television screen, and I read it aloud paragraph by paragraph. We stopped after each and pair/shared before reporting back to the whole class.  Once again, I modelled creating a word web for my students on poster paper in front of the class.

Overall, I was extremely impressed with the level of vocabulary my students were able to pick up from this activity.  Students were then asked to create a Google Drawing illustrating what we learnt (using the notes I made on the poster).

 I am excited to do it once again next week with the remainder of the video.  For the first time going through this process, my students did relatively well.  We still need to go over turning my notes into their own sentences, but we will get there...together. 

A Virtual Field Trip?

Last week, my students embarked on their first Virtual Field Trip through Learnz.  I initially found out about the virtual field trip program after attending a session at ULearn in 2017 (click here to see my notes from the session). 

Keeping with our school theme for the year "Kaitiakitanga i ngā wā katoa" I decided that we would try the Sustainable Seas field trip.  Unfortunately, due to the timing of the actual 'live' field trip we were unable to participate.  However, I decided that we would do it on our own the week (or two) after we returned from our year 5/6 camp. 

The students were given a slides presentation, and were asked to work in a group of 2-3, especially at the beginning of the week to complete the readings, quizzes and learning task for each.   It took them a VERY long time in the beginning to get going, but I think now that they understand the process they are enjoying working at the own pace exploring deeper into the field trip as planned. 

One of the learning tasks that I gave the students while reading each text (or watching the videos) was to list the unknown/new vocabulary words that they came across.  When stopped to discuss these words with the group, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that many of the words they chose to write down were not the ones I expected to hear.  This was awesome to see because it meant that they were using the embedded tool on the site that provided difficult (topic specific) words in a different colour.  Students are able to hover over the words and have a definition pop up on the screen immediately. 

Students were also able to listen to the text while reading along, which is an awesome tool especially for those new hard to read vocabulary words.