Why I've selected this challenge

Describe how and why you have selected this challenge of student learning. Locate your inquiry in the context of patterns of student learning in Manaiakalani overall.

My inquiry has been selected from the Woolf Fisher research findings shared with our Manaiakalani Cluster in February of this year.

The above is our cluster data for the PAT Reading Mean Scale Score by Year levels and ethnicity. The 4th and 5th box relate to my Year 7 & 8 students and more specifically the Maori and Pasifika students who are my target group. (Yellow and light blue line)

A closer inspection would be this graph looking at our Pt England School data for reading.

To help me get to know my learners better, and get a picture of just how much (or little) progress they've made throughout their schooling years here at Pt England, I took a look through their black folders. Here are some of the things I found of interest and may help me in understanding exactly what in their learning these students are "stuck" with.

Of these 8 students, 3 are off to College next year. THIS is why I've selected this challenge. What can I do to help these students cope with the work load, general learning, and expectations of College. What skills, strategies can they take with them to help them be independent learners?

CoL Teaching Inquiry 2019

I am very excited to be one of the Within schools CoL Teachers for 2019. 

This is the Manaiakalani Teaching as Inquiry Framework which I will be following with regular updates throughout the year.

Over the last few weeks, I have been observing my students and getting to know them better. I am doing this in the hopes of identifying a group of students who are really 'stuck' with learning and need extra support to get them moving (at hopefully an accelerated speed). Students who are operating 3 or more years behind where they should be. This is crucial for our students as we prepare them for high school and NZQA qualifications. 

I will be labelling my posts as I update my inquiry throughout the year to make the content easy to access.

Labels:

LEvidence, LScan, LTrend, LHypothesise, LResearch, LReflect,

 CPlan, CTry, CInnovate, CImplement, CReflect,

SPublish, SCoteach, SModel, SGuide, SFback, SReflect

Label Key:

LEvidence	Learn - Gather Evidence	CPlan	Create - Make a plan	SPublish	Share - Publish
LScan	Learn - Scan	CTry	Create - Try new things	SCoteach	Share - Co-teach
LTrend	Learn - Identify Trends	CInnovate	Create - Innovate	SModel	Share - Model
LHypothesise	Learn - Hypothesise	CImplement	Create - Implement	SGuide	Share - Guide
LResearch	Learn - Research	CReflect	Create - Reflect	SFback	Share - Feedback
LReflect	Learn - Reflect			SReflect	Share - Reflect

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.

Knowing your end product at the start of the year

"By the end of Year 8 - What do you want your learners to leave with?"

This question was proposed to us by our team leader as the starting point for our first Team 5 team meeting for 2019. And what a starting point it was! Straight away we knew what we wanted our learners to leave us with. Basically, this was my own planning I had done before attending this meeting. Nothing was written down... nothing concrete or tangible in terms of resources... but what did I want my learners to look like, act like, think like for 2019. This question was a great starter and here is what Danni and I came up with.

A lot of these could be grouped together and when given the task of selecting our top 2 we came up with "Showing the Pt England Way" - where excellence is the norm and everything under the Pt England Way is simply the way they are in how they speak and conduct themselves. Our 2nd was Purposeful - this included being goal orientated and knowing what their purpose for coming to school was.

This set an awesome foundation on which we used to talk about our planning. Not just curriculum planning, but also the culture of our classroom/classroom environment. Planning what we are going to say, do, change in order to get to this end product.

This definitely set me up (mindset wise) and how I planned to foster my students to have a love for school and becoming life long learners. Being confident in who they are and how to cope with high school.

Very excited for the year ahead and getting to know my learners - so watch this space!

Last Inquiry post for 2018

2018 Inquiry Summary

Successes!

End of Year Data

Having missed the middle 2 terms this year, my successes are straight from the data outcomes from their end of year testing. From 18 in mid year to just 10 students now reading below the age of 9 years old. And from 10 students in mid year who made shifts, to 18 who have now made shifts. YAY!!!

• 7 made accelerated shifts of more than 1 year reading age.
• 22 made shifts up in STAR test

Work ons

Some things I'd like to work-on and make improvements on for 2019 is... To have more check points for students who need 1-1 help with a support staff. Expect more shifts and specific testing for vocab more often. One way to ensure this is done right is to make an effort to record feedback/feedforward for students. Another point would be to visit blogs for the CoL teachers who are covering ESOL principles and see what worked and didn't work for them.

Inquiry Update Term 4 2018

Inquiry Update Term 4 2018

Improving Reading Comprehension through focus of Language Acquisition.

ESOL Principles

1. Know your learners
2. Balance of receptive and productive language

Activities - Speaking frames & information transfer

Term 4 - Getting them ‘test ready’

1. How to tackle multi-choice questions (process of elimination)
2. Looking at pictures and surrounding text for clues to unknown words

Activities - Need to start with teacher @ start of week - hand over to support worker

Need help reading task - breaking down tasks. First do this, tick, then look what next

Tasks - similar to test structure - STAR, vocab, italics, author's view...

Data:

18 students reading under reading age of 9 years old - 10 made shifts in May RR 0.5

Inquiry 2018 - Language Acquisition in Reading

My inquiry this term is around Language Acquisition in Reading.

My question:
How can I strengthen/improve reading comprehension by focusing on language acquisition?

This falls under the Manaiakalani CoL achievement challenge #3:
Lift the achievement in Reading for all students, with a particular focus on boys and Maori students (both genders) years 1-13.

Why?
My assessment tools to measure this will be running records using either PM benchmarks or PROBE. My reasons for choosing reading is because every year, the majority of my students only ever make the expected shifts of 1 year. What I am looking to make is accelerated progress. This is critical as the majority of my literacy class are Well Below from 2017 and are reading at 5.5years - 9years.

How will I go about this?
Looking at my students, I have quite a few who are second language learners of English and would benefit from making links to their mother tongue. One of the ways to do this is through the implementation of the 7 ESOL principles.

The 7 principles are:

1. Know your learners
2. Identify the learning outcomes
3. Maintain the same learning outcomes for all learners
4. Make the abstract concrete
5. Provide multiple opportunities for authentic language use
6. Ensure a balance of receptive and productive language
7. Include opportunities for monitoring and self evaluation

These principles cover tasks which are made and scaffolded specifically for second language learners. Some of the tasks I will be trying out with my students are:

• Speaking frames
• Information transfer
• Interactive cloze activity
• Role play cards
• 3 level reading guides