Monitoring Micro-Shifts

To recap what my inquiry is focussing on this year, here is the challenge I am covering.

Kahui Ako Achievement Challenge 5: Improve the achievement of students with special needs in the learning areas of English/ key competency using symbols, languages and texts.

My inquiry problem/ challenge: Students who are 'stuck' in their learning 2-3 years behind where they should be at for Year 7 and 8 getting ready for College.

One of the biggest positives to come out of this are the big shifts my focus group is making in their running records testing. This is covered in my End of Term 2 Blog Post.

One thing I need to do a better job at keeping track of, are the micro-shifts students are making from week to week. These are things that might not show up during testing time, but show progress from what they couldn't do before, to what they can do now. 

An example of this came from the analysis of their running records. The words students were getting wrong showed their reading behaviours at only looking at the initial sound (or 1st letter) and the ending. Then students started guessing whatever words they know which started and ended that way. This showed students were not looking at the middle letters/sounds and not even attempting it. Instead they looked first to the pictures or the ceiling to try and find words.

One way I thought to try and cater to this problem was Besty Sewell's 'Agility with Sound' program. I had first observed this style in action at the start of Term 2 with Helen Squires but haven't done much with it until I attended a seminar of Betsy's earlier on this Term. 

I decided to try this out on the boys in my focus group who had only made 1 level shift during the mid year testing. From this, I was trying to find who can hear the middle sounds and who can identify and retain sounds in their heads long enough to record down. Here are a few examples and observation notes of my session with them.