Reading/Writing Links - Vocabulary Focus

2016 Inquiry Focus

School-wide Focus: Formative practice in reading/writing to improve students achievement.

My Inquiry Focus: Track students use of of vocabulary in writing to measure the impact of the vocabulary expansion programme.

Term 1: Looking at de-constructing and re-constructing (re-crafting) writing collaboratively.

The end of 2015 required us to reflect on our inquiries and see where we could make improvements. In the process, a lot of data crunching was done, and out of this came some clear pointers for where to start for 2016.

A clear outcome was how poorly students did in the vocabulary section for tests such as PAT, STAR and running records. It was also evident in their writing that students level of vocabulary was not up to the national standard for year 7 and 8 students. 

So this clearly stated to me what problem my learners were faced with, and I also had actual data to support this. My next step then was to develop an action plan of how I was going to address this in term 1. 

I've decided to attack this from a writing angle (de-constructing simple paragraphs and re-constructing to make them sound more interesting) and then slowly make links towards their reading tasks during small group discussions.

Another change I've made in my literacy program was making time to 'read to' my class using novels so they are exposed to higher level vocabulary.

Watch this space too see how this works out.

Last Inquiry post for 2015

After all was said and done, what did it actually mean in terms of student achievement? Here is a summary/reflection of my inquiry this year. Yes, some students made the necessary progress. But what I've learnt the most from, are my students who didn't make the necessary progress. It made me look hard at myself, what tasks I was providing for them, and also looking at the learners needs more closely. This was definitely a learning curve to improve on for next year. 

My very first screencast!

Today is our last day of our Digital Immersion PLG for the year. We spent our morning learning about making our learning and teaching visible not only for students, but also the benefits for our parents and family members having access to their child's work from home. Our task was to create a screencast to share how our learners are currently using our Google site. My hope was to share how easy it is to navigate around our Team 5 site and where things are found. Also to share some things that could be improved for next year.

Inquiry Reflection - Term 3

The guidelines for our reflection about our Term 3 inquiry was to look at the barriers we encountered throughout the inquiry process so far this year. As well as identifying these barriers, we shared with our staff the things we put in place to try and address these barriers, and then reflect on the impact these implementations have made so far. 

Manaiakalani - Digital Immersion day - Term 3

Today was a good opportunity for us to have some useful learning conversations with other teachers across the cluster. We managed to start planning what our DLO will look like for next term incorporating and promoting cybersmart with our students. Here is an outline of what we came up with.

How has my teaching changed?

Term 3 has kicked off to a great start. Our first inquiry meeting offered some good insights into how (if any) our teaching practice has changed thus far. The biggest changes I have made to my teaching since arriving at Pt England, would be teaching students who are all on 1:1 devices. This challenged my approach to teaching and how I was to deliver the curriculum. This also brought along other challenges such as dealing with students who leave their chrome books at home, chrome books not charged, as well as keeping up to date with 'marking' students work through their folders or commenting on their blogs. All this however, was dealt with through the help and support and my fellow staff and team members as well as Manaiakalani facilitators.

In terms of my actual teaching, the changes I have made have been as a result of the year level I am teaching (Y7/8). By the time students have reached Year 7 & 8, the levels at which each student operates at differs and the gaps between students also widen the older they get. The changes I have made have been in 'what' actually gets taught to them. In the planning stages of what to deliver my students, I had to prioritise what 'must haves' students needed to address first in order for them to cope with work at year 6, 7 or 8 level.

What have I learnt so far?

So what have I learnt this term? I actually had a really good time putting my learning together for this inquiry presentation.

I have been very fortunate with the amount of support I've had from Manaiakalani facilitators, my team and other staff members on my learning inquiry into 'learning to create'. My presentation is a reflection on where I am at in my inquiry. I have included our staff PD we have been fortunate to have and how this has been implemented in my teaching.

Here are a few examples of the types of 'create' activities we have been working on class and the benefits of this for students learning as well as areas in which I can still see needs improvement. I have been working on creating activities which can be transferable across the curriculum. I also have slides which show hands on activities as a reminder, that despite having 1-1 chrome books, it is still important to provide opportunities for the different types of learning.