Student Profiling

As a continuation of my inquiry breakdown - This blog post will be covering who my target students are. 

I have 8 students whom I have chosen as my target group for this particular inquiry. They are made up of 2 Year 8s and 6 Year 7s. 5 females and 3 males. 

The following slides outline parts of my Student Profile I have covered thus far. The first slide are my baseline data or preliminary findings which I will explain in more detail later on in my inquiry. The next slides are made up of a student survey which I conducted on the whole class through a Google form. My last slide are my own observations on what behaviours I've noticed during small group and class time around the subject of maths.

Who are my Learners?

 My target group consist of 8 Year 7&8 students who's reading ages range from 8 - 9 years old. 5 girls and 3 boys.

G1 - Year 8 currently reading at 8.5 years old. She attends class regularly and looks like she pays attention. Upon group check ins, most of the time she has sat there doing nothing. Her reading is very static, and often needs to repeat after me to hear a more fluent sentence.

G2 - Year 7 currently reading at 8.5 years old. She is able to decode fluently but often does not take in what she is reading. We've had multiple tries at re-reading or scanning a text for key words we discuss in group time.

G3 - Year 7 currently reading at 8.5 years old. She comes off as quite confident in group situations. However when reading 1-1, she reverts back to doubting herself and comprehending what she has just read.

G4 - Year 8 currently reading at 8.5 years old. A second language learner to English. She has only been in our NZ schooling system for 2 years. Very confident with playground language, but struggles forming her ideas about a text. She decodes very well and can sound out unknown words confidently. 

G5 - Year 8 currently reading at 9 years old. She is able to complete set tasks but can totally miss the mark with comprehension questions at times. Literal questions are simple for her but anything to do with opinions or providing supporting evidence she tends to get confused with.

B1 - Year 8 currently reading at 8 years old. A second language learner to English, he made great shifts in 2020 from a reading age of 5.9 to 8 by the end of the year. He is currently already 13 years old turning 14 this year.

B2 - Year 7 currently reading at 9 years old. He tends to rush through a lot of things from tasks to reading. But when asked to slow down, he struggles to put into words the work he is struggling with. Vocabulary acquisition is a big thing for him. He often forgets a lot of new vocab from day to day group discussions. 

B3 - Year 8 currently reading at 9 years old. A second language learner to English, he moved made a whole years shift from 8-9 years old in 2020. He is more able this year in navigating his way independently through his learning. His reading and writing make more sense, and he normally helps out B1 with his daily tasks. 

This here is a brief summary about my target group this year. There are 2 more students in this group but for tracking purposes, I have purposely left them out due to frequent absenteeism. 

Later on this term, I hope to have a more complete profile of my learners using student voice survey, as well as academic data from beginning of year tests. 

School Wide Reading Inquiry

This year, we have split our school-wide focus in 2 parts. The first half of the year we looked at Maths and our PD was focused on that. So my CoL inquiry is based around my maths learners. If you would like to check that out, click on this link here --> TAI2020.

This second half the year we are looking at Reading. Rather than change my inquiry, I am aiming to keep track of both. The aim of our reading PD is to make sure we are using the same language, strategies, and understanding when we talk about 'learning to read' across the school from Years 1 to 8. 

To start, we selected a target group that we would work closely with and implement and track the teaching strategies discussed in our PD. Here is my target group I've selected.

The first week of school we observed our students and how they attempted difficult words. Because our first focus is on "learning to read" we were to observe the behaviours/strategies students showed when faced with difficult words. Above are my findings for my target group.

These next two weeks, we are all going to implement (or carry on) Gwyneth Phillips 1st reading prompt. This focusses on students recognising that they had made an error. Here is the prompt we are working on this week. Stay tuned for more prompts and progress reports to come.

Preliminary Findings

TAI 2020 WFRC #4: Collecting evidence and data...

Begin to collect evidence and data and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence

One of my takeaways from CoL last year was to have a larger pool of target students. Depending on what your inquiry is, this is sometimes not ideal. However, in looking at my students data, I realise I can actually have a larger target group which give me more concrete data on whether interventions are working or not. 

Before we went into lockdown, I'd only just started collating data on my whole and had not actually informed students I would be tracking them. Therefore I also didn't get a chance to get student voice from Term 1. I am planning on sending out a google form to get student voice while we are still doing distance learning in Term 2.

Out of my 27 maths students, I'm selecting 22 as my pool of target students. They range from levels late year 3 to late year 6. Here are their OTJ's (Overall Teacher Judgements) from 2019 reports and this year 2020 PAT results analysis.

An overall view of how this particular group of students look using stanines is below.

Throughout this inquiry process, I am hoping to shift these bars to the right with a higher number of students achieving stanine 5 and higher.

Update on last target student being tested

I felt it was necessary to write a separate blog post to update my last target student who was tested.

Originally, despite student FM being low academically, he still didn't qualify for much funding in terms of in class support as he was absent 50% of the schooling year. In Term 2, we had serious talks with other agencies and the family for a plan of wrap around support to ensure FM and siblings attend school more often. This started a new path for FM and we were also able to apply for some funding to support his learning in class.

Unfortunately, he has started to miss days again towards the end of this term hence why he missed the first round of testing with his group. Here is some data as his test results are not quite straight forward.

I tested him first on level 11 and he read well enough, but stumbled on some easy words (HFW) but showed he was able to pronounce chunks of an unknown word. The comprehension questions he did really well in and was quite confident with his answers. Because of this we decided to try level 12. This was definitely a lot hard, decoding wise, and it took a while to get through the whole text. Despite this, he still managed to get all comprehension questions correct. I decided to end the testing there and analyse the data. I discovered he got 95% accuracy rate for level 12 which puts him at instructional level, not independent. So I went back and analysed level 11 accuracy rate and discovered that was also 95%. So because of this, I've decided to bring FM back to level 11, so that he can work on his fluency and decoding skills.

Another point to note is, due to FM being absent on the groups testing day, he also missed out on the pre-test prep talk that I try and take the group through in terms of what to expect and remind them of some of the reading strategies we've been working on in class. I didn't have time during class to take FM through this same process and so his testing started without this support/reminder.

                      

Target group - Sharing their learning

One of our group goals this term is to share our learning on our blogs. We've made a good start of it so far with my target group. Here are examples of their learning from their blog.

Our next steps is to work on a task description which explains what they learnt about in their reading group. I have 1 or 2 students who can do this independently. but the rest will need to have a guided mini writing session to get this written and onto their blogs.

2019 - Inquiry into Reading

Inquiry Question: How can I utilise TESOL strategies in a Learn, Create, Share setting for Year 7 & 8 students reading below the reading age of 8 years old.

Achievement Challenge: Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/key competency using language symbols and texts.

Why this line of inquiry? I've chosen to take this line of inquiry based on Woolf Fisher research. Research showed that especially in Year 7 & 8, reading tended to move further and further away from the national norm. This was particularly true for Pasifika students.

Why TESOL? TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. The make-up of my 'target group' in my literacy is class are 8 students who are reading below the reading age of 8 years old. This group has 5 student's whose English is their second language. 4 Tongans and 1 Samoan. The group also has 3 students (2 Tongan and 1 Samoan) with learning difficulties or some sort and cognitively struggle to read simple texts.

Starting point/Hunches: TESOL strategies are purposely set up for students so their learning is repeated over and over again, and in the process, scaffolded so eventually they'll be able to say or write and read on their own. So I think if I apply and use TESOL style strategies and activities on students who are ESOL learners, students who are not speakers of another language would still benefit because they need the same repetition and scaffolding second language learners need.
This balances and encourages receptive and productive forms of learning. Making learning rewindable will be of great benefit to this particular group. This means the work they have completed is there on the site for them to access again at a later date.