Key changes I've made in my Inquiry

1. Summarise evidence about key changes in teaching and other factors that influence student learning.

At the start of the year, I had a few blog posts which covered the achievement challenge my focus in class fell under. This was achievement challenge #5: Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/key competency using language symbols and texts.

Initially I started looking towards a TESSOL approach in this blog post, then while analysing more the problem at hand, these were my findings in my blog posts 'Why I selected this challenge', and 'Why is it catalytic?'.

This inquiry process this year has been very useful for me and my teaching practice, making me reflect and pinpoint exactly what my deliberate acts of teaching (DATs) are before and after the chosen intervention. The 'Tools, Measures and Approaches' blog post sets out how I had planned to monitor this change in my teaching.

The following slides show the 2 main changes in my teaching practice.
1. Deep Dive sessions: Used a combination of Jannie's higher expectations and Words have power workshop and Betsy's Agility with sound workshop. This unpacked words into syllables and known word groups. It also extended into word families, root word and synonyms.
2. More fluid discussion amongst the group. (Jannie refers to it as generating dialogic conversations). This needed students to have a keen interest/buy in into the topic and some someone to have some prior knowledge about the topic.

This is my blog post about 'Collecting and Monitoring the changes in my Teaching'.

One thing worth mentioning is the change in STYLE of learning as this was a major factor to getting my target group on board and interested in wanting to learn to read in order for them to be able to read to learn. This change was bringing in the use of iPads and Explain Everything. It was a new and exciting new way to learn for the whole group. This gave them 2 days of learning and the other days were back to normal site work.

Here is evidence in the change in my planning for reading.

Here is the change in my site layout over the year to accomodate for the different style of learning, and being able to work independently from the site and not waiting for the teacher.

Collecting and monitoring the changes in my teaching

Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention (so it is clear what you doing differently)

I plan to collect information about the implementation of changes through my weekly planning and highlighted in tables like the one below. 

Here is a detailed description of the changes I made in my teaching practice. 

One of the major mind-set changes for me as a teacher was EXPECTATIONS! I had no expectation what so ever for any student in this group to make much/if any shift at all. This was from reading their history of learning in their black folders which you get the general picture that this group of students had a negative outlook on their reading capabilities and actually hated reading time. I simply wanted them to enjoy reading. Feel good about themselves when they read. I have since lifted my expectations for this group by setting goals for us to work towards within a given time-frame. These goals are covered in my previous blog post about Interventions in Action.

My evidence of this change will be in my planning as my DATs (deliberate acts of teaching) will have less description of sequencing of lesson (coverage) and describing follow-up activity but more bullet points of important phrases and vocabulary I want to draw their attention to in a text.

Together with my "feelings" of how I think things are going, I have also collected a few student voice opinions every 3-4 weeks. I have also made sure to stick to my timeline for when I had planned to test students again. 

Here are my target groups mid-term 3 running records testing.

My 2 students I'd like to comment about are the ones of didn't make much/if any shift the first time round. My first student 'FM' only made 1 level shift in the previous testing round failing level 9. This time he round he passed level 9 and 10 so could potentially keep being tested up. Student 'GW' failed his level 15 test in term 2. This time, he passed level 15 and 16 and was quite chuffed with himself. My last student 'RF', although she is not getting the same change in teaching as she has moved reading groups, I can report she has made another 6months progress in her reading age. However this is not attributed to my interventions as she moved group at the start of Term 3. 

CoL Inquiry - CREATE checklist

Organising my blog posts into our Manaiakalani Teaching as Inquiry Framework has enabled me to identify the gaps in my inquiry which I have not addressed. The table below clearly identifies this for me as being the Create - Innovate part of our inquiry cycle.

Create - Innovate: 
Are we capitalising on the affordances of the technology to support the Five Affordances of Learn Create Share (Engagement, Teaching Conversations, Visibility, Cognitive Challenge, Scaffolding) identified by the WFRC

Reflecting back on my inquiry, I can confidently say these things have been happening and overlap with some of my other topics discussed in my blog posts under the label "Ctry" - try new things. So I will try and distinguish the differences between the 2 labels next time and be more specific to ensure I cover this aspect of the framework.

Make a plan	What can I already do and  what do I need help with? Who are the learners? Group/class What are the goals for my practice and student achievement? Set up processes for capturing evidence about whether the strategies are working for my students.	Make a plan Teaching as Inquiry Framework PD - Creativity Empowers Learning
Try new things	It is a constant state of action, monitoring, reflection, and adjustment - and then more action. Failure may occur. Feedback from learners - how will I engage them with new learning? Do they know we’re trying something new?	End of T1 inquiry reflection Student Voice - what do they really think of maths? Rotations and half-time breaks Extensions students Strand data - pre test It’s the little things that matter
Innovate	Are we capitalising on the affordances of the technology to support the Five Affordances of Learn Create Share (Engagement, Teaching Conversations, Visibility, Cognitive Challenge, Scaffolding) identified by the WFRC
Implement	Just do it!	Success Criteria and self assessment Rotations and half-time breaks T3 - Update on target students Extensions students Strand data - pre test Hands on Geometry
Reflect	“Inquiry into the teaching–learning relationship goes hand in hand with formative assessment, in the cyclical evaluation process that goes on moment by moment, day by day, and over the longer term.” Assessment-in-the-classroom/Teaching-as-inquiry	Success Criteria and self assessment Student Voice - what do they really think of maths? Rotations and half-time breaks Mid-Year GLOSS outcomes Teaching as Inquiry Framework T3 - Update on target students Extensions students Strand data - pre test Hands on Geometry

Hands on Geometry

Still following on with my inquiry:

Will providing more opportunities to 'create' learning in maths help to embed strategies and mathematical concepts for students?. 

We tackled geometry this week and I spent a lot of time thinking of how to deliver the learning so that it was hands-on and engaging for students - but still getting the outcome required for level 3 or 4 of the curriculum. I ended up with a task similar to one found on the NZ maths site. Here is one of my students slides she posted on her blog -

I was quite impressed with how students responded to the activity. Students were ALL on-task and they all managed to complete their task before the end of the week. In terms of embedding knowledge, I addressed this by going through key ideas and learning at the start of every lesson and at the end of every lesson. Now students are able to say what they have learnt without any prompts and use their slides to explaining what they are talking about.

One of the things I could definitely do better next time would be to be more specific with my instructions and work space to do this kind of activity so students are not hitting each others models over due to lack of space on their tables. Otherwise overall, a very successful outcome and I am really eager to see what I can cook up for my students for next week. 

Strand data - Pre test

One of my 'points of interest' that came out of one my previous post about MidYear GLOSS outcomes was: 1) Parents pointing out that STRAND work in maths was one of the weaknesses when they got to high school. 2) We had no formal way of measuring how much progress students actually make in strand.

To address this Team 5 (Year 7 & 8 block @ Pt England) decided to create our own asTTle test which covered curriculum levels 2-4 about geometry and measurement. We used this as a pre-test for the start of this term and the plan is to create a similar test for the end of the term to see how much progress students make.

Here is my Year 7 and 8 data as well as data for my 'target group' and my 'extension group'.
 
 
A closer analysis of students Individual Learning Pathways will help to target areas in which they need support in. But this is a great starting point for my teaching and I look forward to comparing it with my end of term data.