2021 Inquiry Focus

 This year, I have stepping back into a year 3/4 classroom and I have decided to take another look into reading with my students. However, the focus this time around is centered primarily on working with my students in the Orange, Tourquiose and Gold groups (Reading at a Year 2/3 level). 

In speaking with another year 4 teacher at our school during the first Covid Lockdown of 2021, we realised that we both noticed our children reading across these three levels often struggled to express opinions and ideas or deepen their thinking about a text. Generally, these students have basic decoding ability but respond to conversation with one word or short answers. They also do not choose to read without prompting. This led us to believe that the students are not engaging in a meaningful way with the range of literature required to increase comprehension to working at or above their chronological age. 

We were prompted by Rebecca’s presentation during the Manaiakalani Data Staff meeting at the beginning of the year to think about how to increase students' responsibility to think critically about what they have read. This led us to wonder how changing teacher scaffolding from supporting literal engagement with the text to supporting more open provoking questions would we be able to move the responsibility for processing the text at a deep level from the teacher to the student. We also wondered if providing more texts of high interest to the students and creating choice in this process would increase movitivation to read longer novel texts. Lastly, if we were to teach our students to use Google apps to create and share their thoughts, opinions and connections to texts in meaningful ways would that increase critical engagement with texts and support students to think deeper about what they are reading and why they are reading it. 

Ultimately we decided that our Inquiry goals for 2021 are:

1. To increase students comprehension of novel texts

2. To increase motivation to read novel texts

3. to increase discussion and critical thinking across text types

Using Baseline Data at a Future Date

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. (WFRC #6)

Based on my previous blog post about preliminary findings, I am planning to use those results as baseline data at the end of the year in the following ways.

GLOSS Survey: The results from this survey will be collected at various times during the year to provide an ongoing assessment of student understanding and gaps for future instruction. By comparing the data each term, I will obtain a clearer picture of student understanding. 

PAT Mathematics Test: Term 1 test results will be compared to the student data from the test administered at the end of the year. Hopefully, I will also be able to look at the progress each student made during the 2019 school year and compare it to the progress made this year as well. 

e-Asstle Adapted Number Maths Test: This is an assessment that we (as a team) will administer periodically throughout the year to monitor gaps in student understanding before beginning a "Number Knowledge" strand focus and achievement at the end of each focus. This data will also be collected at the end of the year to comparatively show student acceleration in this particular strand throughout the school year. 

Once back at school (after the Covid-19 lockdown ends), I will also administer iKANN tests with my students and it is my hope that each student will take this test 1-2 times a term for the remainder of the year, to help provide students with a clear picture of their individual progress. 

Nature and Extent of Student Challenge

Share your findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge. Make sure it is clear what evidence from your inquiry supports each finding. (WFRC #5)

Earlier this year, during our before school professional development staff meetings, we discussed the accelerated shift of our students as a school. We also took some to explore student achievement from year level to the next. It was evident that our students were continuing to make accelerated progress in Writing but not in Reading and Mathematics. Due to this finding, we determined that within these two subject areas was the current challenge for our students.

Over the past few years, we have discussed the acquisition of vocabulary as a common thread for building self-efficacy and understanding for our students across the subject areas. When looking at my Year 7/8 Maths students, it is definitely a case of low self-efficacy holding them back. However, I don't believe that the struggle is always with the process of problem solving as much as it is with understanding of the question and the explicit explanation of their computational process.

They often think they know how to "show" you their mathematical thinking but they do not have the necessary age level vocabulary to explain their computational thinking step by step. For example, when describing how to solve a problem similar to 486 + 245= students commonly respond with something like "Oh! You're plussing" instead of explaining step by step how to use addition to add the two numbers together using place value. While this example is a basic one, it is important to realise that at some point students need to be exposed to and begin using the correct mathematical terms when problem solving.

Tools to Gain an Accurate Learner Profile

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools. (WFRC? #4)

When thinking of my inquiry this year, I have considered the tools/measures/approaches that I plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of my students learning. These tools are:

1. Student Learning Survey: I plan to create a survey to help gain some student voice about their own understanding of their mathematical abilities. I'm interested to know what they like/dislike about maths, and their own understanding about their mathematical ability.

2. PAT Scores: This is a great way to obtain baseline and end of the year data across my class, team and our cluster.

3. Easstle Scores: As a team, we have decided to administer e-asstle pre- and post-tests to our students at the beginning and the end of each designated topic of the curriculum.

4. Teacher observations: During our small group interactions, I am able to monitor student understanding, which allows me to identify individual gaps in student understanding and provides time to help fill in those gaps. I am also able to see how far I can stretch student understanding and raise the roof on their mathematical ability.

5. GLOSS tests: I intend to administer the Gloss test to help gain a deeper understanding of where my students are. I would like to do this (especially for my focus group) just before our Term 2 report and our Term 4 report.

6. IKANN: This is another great tool that I would like to use during terms 2, 3, and 4 to provide students with a clearer understanding of their mathematical ability and growth

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

Building an Accurate Student Learning Profile

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools. (WFRC #4)

When thinking about my inquiry this year, the tools/measures/approaches that I plan to use to help portray and accurate profile of student learning in relation to vocabulary acquisition strengthening reading comprehension and promoting student led dialogic conversations are:

1.  Student survey: My hope is that by asking my students to help paint a reading profile of themselves, (likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, etc) I will be able to hopefully plan the best reading tasks/genres/topics and have an idea of where to focus my lessons to help build student interest in a topic

2. PAT Scores: This paints a very quick picture for me as the teacher (and for my students when we go over the results together, which I hope to do early in Term 2) of a student's strengths and weaknesses. It also allows for a clear picture of student achievement at the end of of the year when combined with other data collection.

3. STAR Test Scores: This test allows for a picture of current vocabulary usage to be made for each student. Combined with the PAT test at the end of the year, it contributes to the clear picture of student achievement as well. 

4. BURT Word Recognition Test: After administering this test last year, I realised what an easy tool it is to administer and how it also contributes to that picture of student achievement.  Going through this with the students and allowing them to see what they were able to achieve now and at the end of the year is a quick indicator for them of the daily words they are able to recognise while reading.

5. Running Records: By administering Running Record tests, I am able to see firsthand what an individual's issues are when decoding/comprehending a text.

6. Teacher Observation/Group Interactions: I try to keep adequate anecdotal notes when working with my reading groups. I have begun to keep an "oral reading" log where I quickly note things I notice during our reading sessions in addition to my normal teacher plan reflections. 

The Catalytic Issue and my Hunches

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?

Selecting the Challenge of Student Learning

Describe how and why you have selected this challenge of student learning. (WFRC #2)

Manaiakalani Kahui Ako Achievement Challenge #4:

Increase the achievement in Years 7-10, in READING, writing and maths, as measured against agreed targets.

After teaching in Year 7/8 for a year in 2015, I have been bouncing from year 6 (2016) to 4 (2017) to 5 (2018), which has enabled me to have a first hand look at what tools and understanding students are coming to years 7/8 with. Knowing that I was heading back into a year 7/8 classroom this year, I kept thinking of the presentations we have heard from Dr. Rebecca Jesson over the years beginning with the year I spent in our Intermediate block.

For the past two years, I have focused on Language Acquisition and Dialogic Conversations when Reading, and it has become something that I am passionate about. I am very eager to see which successes I had teaching younger groups of children will work in the same manner with the older children. I am also very eager to learn more about what is expected at Years 9 and 10 literacy and how we can begin to make that an easier transition for our students by either raising our expectations or realigning content and class expectations between years 7/8 and Years 9/10 at Tamaki High School. I would also like to spend some more in depth time looking into the expectations and language used on the NCEA exams and in our Year 9/10 classwork with the hope of introducing and unpacking that language at the intermediate level.

When considering the Manaiakalani data, it was clearly apparent during our cluster presentation earlier this term that while we are making adequate shift in writing and maths we are not seeing that same trend with reading as indicated in the graph below.

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

Focus Group Data Term 4

Now that our Term 4 testing has been completed, I spent some time taking a look at the data and comparing it to their scores from Term 4 last year and Term 1 this year.  I was easily able to do this for all of my focus group students except in a few instances due to excessive absences during the testing period.

This year, I focused my research on a group of 7 Māori students in my literacy class (as discussed in a previous blog post).  Below is a graph showing the Reading Ages as provided by our 2017 and 2018 Term 4 Running Record Data.  At the beginning of 2018, all of the students in my focus group were reading below grade level between 7.5 and 8.5 years of age and as the graph below shows, they have all made some progress and are now reading between 8.5-9 years.

One of the tests that our students take twice a year is the  PAT-Reading Comprehension test.  Here is a comparison of their test scores from Term 4 last year (2017), Term 1 2018 and Term 4 2018.  The majority of the students did somewhat better on the 2018 Term 1 test, which indicates that there was not much summer drop off with my focus group of students and nearly all of the students made some shift from Term 1 to Term 4. 

Our students also sat the STAR (Supplementary test of achievement in reading) Test, which is another way for us to assess a range of our student's reading skills.  Although, the PAT shows not much drop off in the results, our STAR data clearly shows the opposite. However, I find that students who struggle with reading often decide that it is simply "too hard" and give up on the STAR test particularly in the beginning of the year.  It was my hope earlier this year that we would see greater improvement during Term 4 and in nearly all cases the students did somewhat better.

Lastly, as I stated in a previous post (linked here), I decided to administer an additional word recognition assessment to my focus group called the Burt Word Reading Test.

At the beginning of the year, I found the results of this test very interesting, especially when compared to the 2017 Running Record Reading ages and looking at it now, I feel the same way. The majority of the students who were able to complete both testing cycles made some improvement during the year and in nearly every instance the growth of their reading age this year nearly matched the estimated growth span (the age for the Burt test on the graph shows the lowest age in the scale score band).

I am very proud of the progress my students have made this year in their vocabulary usage and confidence when speaking orally and sharing their thoughts and opinions with their peers.