COL PD: Monitoring and Identifying Change to Practice

During our COL Meeting, we spent some time with Aaron and Hanna discussing where we are at this time in our Inquiry process. Below are the points to ponder from that discussion.

Aaron and Hanna (WFRC)

Monitoring and Identifying Changes to Practice

Restate your Theory of Action:
The valued learning outcomes I want to improve for my students in this inquiry are….
The changes I am making to my teaching to improve their outcomes are…
The reasons why I think these changes in my teaching will be effective to my learners are…

Implementation
By the end of you inquiry, you want to know what the changes are that have happened for the learners and what has been the reason for it? What has the teacher done that caused those changes?
-Pre/Post for student understanding ...also pre/post updates on what is being changed in the classroom by the teacher
-Implementation fidelity-How faithful are you as the teacher in making sure that the actual intervention is the planned intervention (how can I be sure that opportunities in the classroom are authentically occurring)

Monitoring
-As well as informal monitoring (lesson-by-lesson and minute-by-minute planning), it is useful for more formal checkpoints
-Reflection and Inquiry have two different purposes...Inquiry has evidence to back it up. Reflections are more about how did it go.
-More micro-formative assessments (ie mini-easstles for reading tests)
-Student voice is vital. Quick fire exit questions, or chats with some case study students.

COL PD: Valued Learning Outcomes

WFRC: Aaron Wilson

As part of our second CoL Meeting of the term, we had an opportunity to once again hear from Dr Aaron Wilson from the Wolf Fisher Research Centre.  Dr Wilson pointed out the importance of recognising patterns and identifying Valued Learning Outcomes. Below are my notes and take aways from the session. 

Recap of Session 1:

Don’t focus your inquiry on the low hanging fruit things...what are the stubborn issues in your classroom and what can we do about it?
Teaching as Inquiry should not be an individual thing. In order to effectively change the cluster, we need to be grouped together more often to discuss our challenges and successes to ultimately make change for everyone.

Point of thought: Are our inquiry groups too small? Should we be focusing on our whole class or a larger group of students within our class?

Pattern Recognition: we need to come together as educators to see the patterns in our successes and failures so we can ALL learn from them.

Identifying Valued Learning Outcomes (VLOs):

• Achievement
• Progress
• Māori learning as Māori
• Key competencies
• Participation
• Affective outcomes

We need to focus on obtaining an holistic picture of our students.

Reading VLO’s:

• Able to read and comprehend unfamiliar, age appropriate, texts independently - PAT/asTTle
• Develops in reading ability at an at least expected rate of progress - PAT/asTTle
• Reads regularly in and out of school
• Loves reading
• Has strategies for selecting texts for particular purposes
• Knows that some texts will require resilience and persistence to make meaning from
• Has a toolbox of strategies that s/he can use deliberately
• Can synthesise across multiple texts
• Considers connections between oral, written and visual language
• Can read critically and is hyper-aware of authors’ positioning of readers
• Appreciates aesthetic properties of language and literature

When you value things that are not texted in standardised tests you need to look at things much differently.

Point to Ponder:
For the problems that we are looking at, in order to build a really rich picture of student LEARNING (achievement and progress) what is that we need to know and how will you measure it? How can we find out what children CAN do?

CoL PD: Researching as Inquiry

Aaron Wilson -WFRC

During our first CoL meeting of 2019, we heard from Dr. Wilson from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre. He spent time talking with us about Researching as an Inquiry and the attributes of an Inquiring Teacher. Some really good reminders as to why, we as NZ teachers Inquire into our teaching practice. 

Researching as InquiryWe need to spend more time “understanding” our students more in the beginning of Inquiry before we jump in and start “trialing” things with them. We need to be analytical about our students in the beginning of the inquiry cycle and our teaching before the intervention.


Why Inquire? Three views of effective teaching (Aitken 2007)
1. The “style” view
2. The “outcomes” approach
3. The “inquiry” approach

The first two views do not effectively allow teachers in NZ to inquire accordingly with the NZ Curriculum.

It is necessary to have your Inquiry directed at something that is a hard to solve problem. It needs to be something that requires lots of contextualised problem solving.

8 Attributes of Inquiring Teachers

Efficacy: knowing that, notwithstanding other factors that affect student learning such as prior learning or socio-economic status, teachers can make a difference.

High expectations for all. An inquiring teacher is not satisfied because some or even most students have achieved valuable learning outcomes. Rather, she will seek to change, improve or refine teaching until learning success can be achieved by all.

Curiosity. Inquiring teachers do not accept the status quo. They ask why things are the way they are and how they can be changed. They seek new knowledge from experts, from published research and anywhere else they can get it.

Clarity about the student learning that is desired and the indicators of such learning.

Noticing. Inquiring teachers notice patterns of student learning during their classroom interactions with students, when they assess student work and examine achievement data.

Collegiality. The stubborn and persistent problems that are worth inquiring into can seldom be solved by one person. Good inquiry requires teams, leadership support and challenge, external viewpoints, external expertise, moral support.

Criticality. Inquiring teachers look at their own practice critically and look critically at easy solutions offered by others

Resilience. Because inquiry should be directed at the most stubborn and persistent problems there will be disappointments - the key is to monitor and notice as soon as possible and to see “failure” as an opportunity for new learning.

Reflection: 2018 Professional Learning Cycle

When I first thought of this learning cycle, I had a difficult time packaging it all together. However, looking back through my blog posts and reflecting on the pathway that my students and I have embarked upon this year I have to take a deep breathe and nod my head at the difference it has made in my own teaching. Strategically remembering to take time out to develop a love for language and language development through reading (using many of Dr. van Hees’ techniques and a few of my own) has made a world of difference for my students.

NZ Curriculum (TKI)

I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the Professional Development we have received as a CoL team this year. Whenever I listen to Dr. van Hees, I gain so much knowledge and sequentially grow as a teacher so much in my understanding of how to provide a pathway for vocabulary acquisition through dialogic conversations. I have also become more aware of using rich vocabulary in all of my interactions with my students and in what we provide as visual aids around the classroom and on our site. The CoL Professional Development from the Woolf Fisher Team has pushed me to become more aware of what is necessary to further my own professional learning through inquiry and how to present my inquiry at a higher standard.

Most of all, I have enjoyed being able to share my inquiry with others. Whether it be during our CoL meetings, PES Inquiry meetings (twice a term), presenting at the Manaiakalani Hui or conversations in the staff room, I find that I always gain perspective from the insight of others. Iron sharpens iron when you have professional conversations about your teaching practice with others in the field of education and I feel that I learn so much from these conversations...even if I sometimes have to remind myself to take a step back and not take offence when suggestions are made for improvements, which often provide motivation to reflect upon my inquiry at a deeper level to see where change is being effective and where it might need to be adjusted, scraped or turned completely around.

I can no longer go back to teaching without conducting an Professional Inquiry at anything less than the level we were pushed to achieve this year. I can only hope that I have done the process justice. However, I know that I have grown greatly as a teacher and as a result my students have flourished as well.

CoL PD: Aaron Wilson Formative Assesessment

Aaron Wilson

Formative Assessment for our Inquiry

As part of our Week 1, Term 2 CoL Meeting we heard from Dr. Wilson from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre and he discussed with us how to formatively assess our own Teaching Inquiry. Below are the outcomes that he suggested we (as teachers) use to assess our inquiries at this time.

Outcomes for Today:

1. Restate your Inquiry Question and your theory of action/chain of events (keep your eyes on the prize!)
2. Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention (so it is clear what you are doing effectively)
3. KEY POINT: Clearly show readers what you did differently so they can make a judgement on whether or not it is reasonable to think that changed learner outcomes are related to your teaching practices
-Be sure to use a repeated measure (same tool..over and over)
-Detailed description before, during and after the intervention
-Show exactly how the learning changed for the student
4. Identify informal and formal ways you are monitoring the effects of your changed practices/interventions on desired learner outcomes and explain the reflections and tweaks you are making along the way (so you don’t wait until the end of your inquiry cycle and find it didn’t works)
5. Be sure to plan some formal checkpoints
-Checkpoints provide a systematic way that shows how students are experiencing the intervention and whether or not the impact you are trying to achieve is occuring
-Use micro-formative assessments at set intervals (ARBS, mini asTTle reading tests, etc).
-Student voice is vital! Be sure to collect this regularly in a manageable way. Ex: Quick fire “exit” questions
6. Describe how you will keep a record of each of the above in a manageable way (cuz you won’t otherwise remember all your many micro-decisions and why you made them)

CoL PD: Theory of Action

Once again, our kahui ako was able to spend some time hearing from Dr. Rebecca Jessen
and Dr. Aaron Wilson from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre at Auckland University.
They began by asking us the following question:

What will it take to obtain knowledge that is transferable when looking at our Inquiries?

TARGET: What is my theory of action?  How will I know?

The logic of what we are doing:

THE CHAIN OF EVENTS

A causal chain is when a cause leads to an effect and that effect becomes the cause of another effect.

How and why will the specific outcome impact the general achievement challenge?

How and why will the teaching impact the specific outcome?

Source: Woolf Fisher Presentation

These next three questions to ponder we presented to us to consider when working through our own

teaching inquiry.  I will be spending some time working on my own answers at this time

over the next week or so.

-Why is important to articulate all the links in your theory?

Making it obvious for my own Inquiry!!

-What knowledge and knowledge-building activities are needed to develop a strong theory?

-What is it I want to see change for the kids will be knowledge-building for me as the

teacher.

Things That Work-PD w/ R. Jesson

Today, as part of our back to school PD, our staff met with Dr. Rebecca Jesson from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre to discuss "Things that Work" according to our cluster and school wide data.

High Ticket Items for High Progress Teachers

1. Critical Thinking
2. Extending Reading/Writing (Mileage)
3. Extended Discussion

How can we continue to raise the ceiling for our fluent students and still provide advanced learning for our kids who are struggling?

We Need to Continue:

1. Focused reading instruction/guided reading
2. Extra mileage from reading literature and reading to inquire (wide)
3. Extra thinking through discussion about illustrations/inferences/perspectives/author’s craft (deep)
4. Scaffolding for independence in reading

Risks of Scaffolding:

1. Dependence:
1. Teacher attention (noticing)
2. Teacher correction (fixing)
2. Narrowed opportunities for Learning
1. Read aloud (so read less)
2. Receive more item knowledge instruction (read for meaning less)
3. Engage in tasks with less ‘holding power’ (read less) and off task more
4. Given less to read (read less)
5. Get interrupted more often, by more people, more quickly (read less)

Scaffolding both Wide and Deep:

1. Choosing content for thinking
2. Choosing texts for thinking
3. Ensuring balanced diet of texts to build thinking over time
4. Generating discussion for thinking

Critical Decision #1

Content choice-important, contestable, relevant

1. Reading and writing about something
2. Reading and writing to access the curriculum at level

Critical Decision #2

Text Choices

Critical Decision #3

Textual Diet:

Narrative dominates:

• Controlled Vocabulary
• Controlled Challenge
• Tight Learning Focus

Critical Decision #4

How to generate student discussion:

• We know children tend to guess what’s in your head
• Often say as little as possible to let you know they know what’s in your head
• Find ways to communicate that the purpose is to build on one another’s thinking

Accelerated Learning From Reading Wider and Deeper

As a result of our PD from Dr. Rebecca Jesson and the Wolfe Fisher Research Centre, the Team 4 teachers (of year 5/6 students) decided early on this year to refocus the way we approached our Reading Assignments. Students were given a 2-3 week mini-topics that supported our term long school topic focus. During those mini-topic inquiries, students explored an underlying topic in more depth through the use of multi-modal texts consisting of School Journal Articles, Online Articles, In Class Demonstrations and Online Videos. As a result of our strategic wider and deeper reading, our students have been able to confidently engage in dialogic conversations during their micro-teaching groups and with their peers across our ILE.

Originally, we decided to focus our wider/deeper reading to our students who were reading at age 9 and above. Due to the make up of my literacy class, this meant that I would be going wider/deeper with 10 of my students (rougly 1/3). However, as the term progressed, I started to use similar lessons, with many of the same reading assignments, with my students reading anywhere above age 7. It is important to note that the way my students were expected to read the texts varied based on their learning group and reading age. Generally my students reading above age 9 were expected to read the text silently to themselves during their micro-group lesson prior to opening the floor for a dialogic conversation to take place. When looking at my students reading from age 7 to 9, we would often take turns reading the text aloud in our micro-group. Other times, I would point students to one specific paragraph or section of the text that I thought was most important for us to spend some time looking at.

Students were more engaged, and conversations in my classroom increased greatly. Students were also more focused when working on their follow up and create tasks. That's great and all, but what does my data show?

My data for the end of the year is amazing! I am so proud of the achievement that my students have made, and I look forward to working to see how to make this work again next year.  I only had three students who did not increase their reading age this year. All of those students have been receiving services outside of the classroom and have made their own personal achievements to their learning during the school year not measured on a Running Record.