Distance Teaching and Learning Online

Convid-19 came thick and fast at the start of week 8 of Term 1. While as a team, we were preparing for learning and teaching online, no one could predict just how fast it came about.

Luckily for us, we were up and running with our first  google meet with our literacy class at 9.30am on Tuesday 24th March. From here, we've kept in regular contact with both our literacy and numeracy students tuning in twice a day to go through learning set for them and to answer any questions they may have.

As well as this, our Team Leader Andrea Tele'a has also kept our normal daily notices with videos giving the latest updates as given on the news as well as those shared by management regarding moving the holidays forward and this being the official last week of Term 1.

The most exciting part this week was taking part in our school assembly today which was streamed live for our students. This ran through our normal assembly program of Karakia, national anthem, Duffy certificates and even sports news! Feedback from my class later on during the was incredible. They were buzzing out about assembly and really enjoyed teachers coming together online for this.

Overall, quite proud of all that we've achieved this week, the connections we've made and the learning that took place. In such unprecedented times, well done PES!

Area of Inquiry for 2020

TAI 2020 WFRC Question #2
#2:  Collaborate with your senior leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals.

As a school, one of our goals this year is to be singing the same tune or making sure we are on the same page. This is across all areas of learning and school life from behaviour management, to what is being implemented in classes as well as best teaching practices.

Our 2 main learning area focuses are on Maths for the first half of the year, then Reading. 

Our learning conversations in our team meetings have been mainly around Maths and how we can combine the approaches of DMIC (Developing Mathematical Inquiring Communities) that worked well over our last 2 years of PD, together with micro-teaching of strategies and number knowledge.

This is where I'd like to start with my CoL inquiry this year. Looking at Maths, how it can be implemented using whatever approach works best, but cater mainly to students who are still 3-4 years behind in maths.

This would be useful towards my team and wider school as we are focusing our PD sessions around maths for these first two terms of the year. I also hope to find other teachers who are inquiring into maths to share ideas and research with throughout this inquiry journey for 2020.

Inquiry Stocktake

TAI 2020 WFRC Question #1
#1: Use the ‘inquiry stocktake’ doc to reflect on and write about what you aim to learn about inquiry this year.

Based on my inquiry around 'How can we better support students in reading who are ‘stuck’ in their learning (4+ years behind) and prepare them for college', here are some reflections points based on our stocktake list.

What worked well:

• Support and guidance from the Woolf Fisher Team
• Finding and identifying the mini-shifts in amongst the big picture
• Blog posts guide provided and noted by Fiona
• Learning conversations between our CoL teachers as well as wider staff and management
• Delving deeper into students learning behaviours BEFORE finding an intervention to try
• Getting enough evidence before the intervention. Great forward planning and prompting from our researchers

Challenges:

• Creating activities/tasks at a Year 7/8 level but catering to their reading ages which are 5-7 years old 
• Busy class timetable - being consistent throughout the Term/Year despite the busy schedule and events happening
• Research - getting into the habit of research again and making sense of it all

Additional Support I'd like:

• A spreadsheet with areas of learning and interventions that have already been tried that we can have as a starting point
• Research - Where to start, who to approach, time to do it

2020 End of Year Learner Profile

In Team 5 we like to start our year by reminding ourselves what our ideal graduate of Year 7 and Year 8 would look like by the end of the year. What values would we want them to leave Pt England with?

Normally we focus more on the Year 8 graduates and simply try to build up our Year 7's to get there eventually by the end of their second year in Team 5. What we realised by the end of 2019 was that we needed clear guided steps for Year 7's to introduce them to Team 5 expectations and carrying out the Pt England Way.

We really enjoyed putting this together as a team and sharing our clear expectations for each year group. This is being displayed in our Team 5 teachers bay and is a nice reminder on those tough days what our end goal is.

My reflection on my Inquiry

 Write a reflection on your own professional learning through this inquiry cycle. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed our PD for CoL meetings led by our Woolf Fisher researchers Hana, Aaron, and Rebecca. I have appreciated and learnt a lot from Hana and Aaron's step by step 'delving deeper' into finding what the actual challenge is for learners are. My normal reaction or next step would be "Oh I think TESSOL strategies would help them". Jumping straight to a solution rather than conducting some actual research into what has already worked for others.

I enjoyed Rebeccas random challenges when she's in attendance. "So what did you change in your teaching? How do you know that's what caused the change? where's your proof/evidence?"

Working so closely with my target group of students enabled me to get to know them better, especially their families as we conducted consistent bits of data throughout their learning journey this year.

As I head into the new year, my wonderings still remain about Mr Burts 'three-fer' and how we go about achieving that. This year, my professional kete has been filled, not just learning about my own teaching practice, but also new and interesting ideas for my team of teachers next year.
It has been a great year 2019!

Summarise evidence of key shifts

2. Summarise evidence about key shifts in the problem of student learning.

My 2 catalytic areas of focus for this inquiry was targeting reading mileage and vocabulary acquisition. I found this really difficult to get started due to my target students poor self-esteem and attitude when it came to reading. This showed up in one of my first student voice surveys which I shared in my blog post about preliminary findings.

The above are the shifts in reading levels and reading ages made this year alone. The table below shows their shifts over the past 3 years. This is to show the comparison to what had been their 'norm' in terms of shifts in reading, compared to the shifts they made this year alone.

As you can see, student FM made no shift in reading levels for 2 years and only made 1 shift last year. This year he has shifted up 4 levels in his reading! That is an incredible feat and achievement for him,

Student AV only arrived in NZ in 2018 and made no shifts that year. This year she made a whopping 8 level shift! I have a feeling she may have been put at the wrong level to start with due to the miscommunication and language barrier at the start of her journey in NZ.

Student LL made a combined shift of 5 levels over the last 3 years. She has made the same shift this one year alone.

Student SK has had a history of missing out on testing that she's only been on record as moving 2 reading levels over the past 3 years. She is very thrilled to have moved up 6 levels this year.

Student PT is new to NZ and Pt England so does not have any past data to compare with.

Student AT has missed almost half the year of schooling and is yet to return in Term 4. He has done well to make 4 levels shift in reading compared to 4 level shift over the last 3 years combined,

Student GW looks like he actually peaked last year with his reading shifts. That might explain why it was very hard to make shift this year. He only managed to shift in the second half of the year.

Student RF has maintained a high shift in reading levels last year and this year. This is great compared to no shifts made in 2017.

Another area of learning that showed shift, was the student voice data that was collect at certain intervals throughout the year. Here is the link to the slides.

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)