Bursts and Bubbles

Today our Manaiakalani CoL teachers all shared their inquiry's for the year in 3minute bursts. Here is my 3mins sharing for bursts and bubbles session.

Talofa Lava

Inquiry focus: 
How can we better support students in reading who are ‘stuck’ in their learning (4+ years behind) and prepare them for college.

2 catalytic aspects of learning I targeted are:

• Reading Mileage
• Vocabulary Acquisition

Why? I believe unlocking these 2 things will open learners capabilities towards accessing the wider curriculum.

Identified this as my focus when I noticed:

• 8 students in Y7/8 class (11, 12, 13 year olds) reading 3-4 years behind. 
• Reading age of 5-7 years old

To build a rich picture of my students learning I:

• Looked through black folders - records of all their learning @ PES
• Anecdotal notes, reports, special needs referrals

Sources of data used to measure progress:

• Running records
• Student voice surveys
• Sight words/spelling tests
• Anecdotal notes on learning behaviours

Main patterns of student learning identifies in the profiling phase:
Strengths:

• Interested in topic related texts
• Could work towards visual goals - coloured reading levels

Weaknesses:

• Basic as - connecting sounds with chunks of letters
• Connecting chunks together
• Needed purpose to read / motivation/ interest maintained
• Retaining what they’ve learnt

CoL across school teachers helped to identify them and address them, Donna & Clarelle

Profiling my own teaching showed I had strengths in:

• TESSOL strategies/principles
• Breaking down tasks to more manageable levels

Found students would make more progress if I developed a scaffolded self-sufficient routine for learning. This required:

• Consistent child support help
• Variety of engaging and do-able activities
• Interesting texts

Changes I made to my teaching were:

• How I utilise micro-teaching time in class. Rather than focus on getting through a text we did a deep dive. This is unpacking words/phrases extending students vocab by looking at it in and out of context & making connections to related word families.
• Creating more fluid discussions amongst group. Rather than T-S-T-S. We encouraged a fluid S-S-S-S
• More organisational one: Different text every day - follow up sight words and online stories to listen to.

Experts and literature which have helped me make these changes:

• Combination of Jannie Van Hees’ “Generating dialogic conversations” and deep dive/higher expectations
• Betsy Sewell’s agility with sound workshops.

Overall I would rate the change in student learning as highly successful

Evidence is in:

• Student voice surveys
• Shifts in reading levels made this year alone (2-8 levels) compared to their last 3 years of schooling from 2016 (2-4 levels combined)