RPI - Day 1: Reading is core

This year I am very fortunate to join a whole lot of teachers joining the Friday RPI Cohort 3. Today was day 1.

The following are some of my reflections or things I've picked up from the day. 

Acceleration! We need our students to make more than one years progress in reading, writing and maths, in order for them to cope with the curriculum as it opens up more when transitioning into high school.

One of the things we covered today was reader profile. What is the profile of a good reader? how do we gather this? and how can we unpack or address this in order to be successful readers?

What I was reminded about, and really landed with me was the slide below about Whanaungatanga - fostering connections to learners' identities.

Todays segment on professional reading will definitely be one slide deck I will revisit to familiarise myself with more of the literature out the there in order to support my knowledge and kaupapa around reading.

A digital tool I will be making more use of will be the Canva whiteboard with sticky notes. Here is one where we shared about how we gather student data about their reading interests.

I also really liked studying the Pillars of Practice and highlighting our strengths and what we could work on. I hope to revisit this at the end of our 9 days of RPI and have made more change colour to green!

Overall, I feel like I had a bit of a head start as my whole team of 5 teachers have been through RPI and as a result we have implemented many of the tasks and extended discussion tasks we looked at today.

Across Schools CoL 2025

 Talofa Educators!

For those who are new to this space, my name is Latini Ilaoa and I have been fortunate enough to be an Across Schools CoL Teacher again for 2025.

This is my 11th year teaching Year 7/8 at Pt England School. Last year, I focused my inquiry around mathematics and accelerating students in Years 7/8 in order to cope with the transition into high school.

This term, I am also picking up RPI (Reading Practice Intensive). Due to this, I am still tossing up whether to keep with Mathematics as my focus for inquiry (more so now with the new curriculum refresh), or switch to Reading to align with what I will be learning about in RPI. So far, looking at my class data this year, I'm leaning more towards acceleration in Reading as a focus for my inquiry. I'll unpack this more as I gather more testing data.

Below is my booking form with time slots I am available for on Thursdays and Fridays. Please feel free to share this with your fellow teachers and school leaders. I am more than happy to travel to you, meet online or book a room here at Pt England School.

If you have any questions, please email me: lilaoa@ptengland.school.nz

I look forward to connecting with teachers across our cluster.

Faafetai lava

Latini

Summary of evidence

 The following are a few comparisons of the pre and post intervention data collected throughout this year. 

1. PAT & GLOSS data - Overall Teacher Judgements (OTJ)

The following show the actual results of all 8 target students. During my Bursts and Bubbles presentation, I had made a quick OTJ based of data made available. Upon reflection and further analysis, I realised I was too generous in my judgement and need to remedy this OTJ before reports are published. 

My initial report was that 3 students made accelerated shifts (1 made 2 years progress, 2 made 1.5 years) 3 made 1 years progress and and 2 made 6 months progress. 

The correct OTJ summary:

• 3 made accelerated shifts - all 3 made 1.5 years progress
• 2 made 1 year progress
• 3 made 6 months progress

Students A, B and E made accelerated shifts, which was the ultimate goal for this inquiry. 

Students D and H made 1 year progress. Still a good shift.

Students C, F and G made 6 months progress this year. Not ideal, but along with many contributing factors, I am still happy they've made progress.

My OTJ was based on a collection of data points. Their book work, online work, Maths Whizz progressions/achievement percentage, as well as our standardised testing of PAT, and Gloss testing. This was great to see students achieve what they set out and practiced in class, but also seeing some students who's testing did not always reflect a lot of their work completed in class. This required a good balancing act as well as some input from my team to ensure we all made the same judgements across our team.

2. Student Voice Survey

This was an End of Term 3 survey I wanted to try and capture students thoughts before the holidays. The main idea behind the survey was to get student voice about what I set out to change - Warm up games and using materials. Here are the results of the student voice survey. 

To check out what the student voice survey looked like at the start of the year, check out my blog post about Student Profiling.

Bursts and Bubbles 2024

 Last Thursday we came together for a final showdown of our inquiry in what we call 'Bursts & Bubbles'. A fun and quick way to present in 3mins what the top points of our inquiry this year was. 

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to our fellow CoL members present their hard work and listening to their success stories. A lot of us still have data yet to come, but the journey and outcomes we have so far have all been very positives. 

Thank you to Panmure Bridge and our Manaiakalani team for being awesome hosts. Thank you also to our videographers and photographers for capturing this presentation. Here is my 3minute presentation. 

Monitoring and recording - Part 2

 

Monitoring and Recording - Part 1

 This week is one of our check-point weeks where we gather information, evidence, and reflect on what we have to show what we were aiming for at the start of our inquiry.

This is what I have so far. I've used my hunches as a starting point and back-tracked to find the evidence that would support what I'd initially set out to do. What I've discovered is that I need to ensure that I gather more concrete evidence as I teach. Take a snapshot of the group I'm working with, as well as student work or independent work they are doing.

Here are some 'before' the intervention, and 'after' shots I have so far.

Professional Readings

 1. Using Concrete Manipulatives in Mathematical Instruction

Using manipulatives has been my main hunch as to why a lot of my students are 'stuck' at the Year 5-6 level. Manipulatives in the education scene is defined as "physical objects that are used as teaching tools to engage students in the hands-on learning of mathematics". We've all read about the different variations to an approach to teaching mathematics, this reading talks about the Concrete, Representational, Abstract (CRA instruction as a process for teaching and learning mathematical concepts. CRA instruction allows students to make associations from one stage of the process to the next. My takeaway from this reading was to re-affirm my hunch and that no matter what level my students were operating at, we still needed to take things back to the manipulatives levels when teaching any new mathematical concepts.

2. What do culturally diverse children in New Zealand value most for their mathematics learning?

I decided to take up this reading after being able to experience using the DMIC (Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities) approach and how it was rolling out in our schools. With our school being predominantly Maori and Pasifika, I believed this to be good paper to help support my understandings for what would be most helpful for our learners. 

This reading focused on student values, and that when values are acknowledged in the mathematics classroom, there are significant benefits. It was also useful to read this as it was using a Year 7/8 class in NZ.