Inquiry focus 2024: Part 1

Sharing my inquiry focus at this point in time will be done in 2 parts. This is due to the fact that after some hard hours of delving into data as a cohort and year groups of year 7 and 8 students at PES, it has NOT supported my initial hunches or observations in class this 1st half of Term 1. That was definitely an 'interesting' and confusing find for me, but here is a break down so far.

Learning Focus: Mathematics

Why mathematics? My automatic go to for inquiry focus over the last few years have been reading. This is due to a high number of students in Year 7 and 8 reading 4+ years behind their expected reading age. Our end of year data from 2023 supported this as well as cluster and school data from Ed Potential. 

However, upon discussions with our Team 5 teachers (5 of us all teaching Y7/8 at PES - 31 students per class), the whole team were all focussing on reading for their inquiry and had agreed to feed back to our group their findings as well things they are implementing in their classes. So because of this, I have decided to switch my focus to Maths, so we could share something for Maths with the team as well.

Along with this, MPI is set to start for Manaiakalani and would support this inquiry and findings as well. 

So going along with this, we've has many discussions in our team about making use of materials in our daily teachings of maths lessons this year. This is a follow on from our PD sessions with Manaiakalani Maths facilitator - Fiona Fox at the start of the year. 

Using this as a starting point, I used my first few CoL release days to make resources so my whole team could start with resources ready to go in their classes. 

What we discovered in our team meetings, was that a lot of our students struggled with 'imaging'. They could manipulate numbers in their heads based on their basic place values knowledge, but when working with materials, and having to cover big number properties, students found this part hard to do or grasp this concept. This was a common theme across our team of teachers.

After all our PAT testing was done, I decided to collate our data and back track the same group of students from the start of 2023 to the start of 2024. Here are my findings below. It actually showed a shift to the right with a bell distribution curve looking better this start of the year in comparison to 2023.

Upon seeing this, I took my findings to our Acting Principal Toni Nua, who has helped advise me on my next steps. My next steps will be to set up an asttle test for this same group of students and see if we get the same results. 

New Role: Across Schools COL Teacher 2024

 Talofa lava everyone!

Last year I decided to apply for one of the across schools COL roles and was fortunate enough to be successful. So this year I am excited to inquire into my own teaching practice and cater towards the needs of my new students this year. But I am also quite keen to get around to other schools and see how I may be of use or pick up new learning that can be used in my Y7/8 class and team of teachers at Pt England.

Last year in my application, I was really passionate about pursuing Maths for Years 7-8 learners and bridging the ever widening gap as they move up in the school. However,  we've had a cluster wide look at our data through Ed Potential and I feel there could be some changes in terms of my focus area for the year. Watch this space as I have more korero with fellow COL teachers and school leaders to see where my main focus will be for the year.

Otherwise, I am excited to start this new role and meet more teachers across our cluster. If there is anything Year 7-8 related, TESSOL related, or you are needing a sound board for ideas around our Manaiakalani teaching pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share, please book any of us across teachers in and we can pop in to visit you.

I look forward to meeting you all and the challenges this year.

Tofa ma ia manuia.

Toolkits: Pasifika Language Weeks

 Despite a very hectic week, I am so glad I made time to join Andrea Telea's toolkits about Pasifika Language weeks in schools on Tuesday afternoon. It was such a great time to talk Pasifika, and what it means for us as Pacific Educators, teaching Pasefika children.

We were able to share what we have implemented so far in our schools for language weeks and paint a picture for what this looks like. It was also refreshing to hear from Anne from Homai and Jesse from Kedgley Intermediate for some ideas we could start up in our school as well. 

My takeaways from this toolkit were the Pasifika books Andrea shared with hard data about our different ethnic groups and the maintenance of the language happening so far in NZ. The Tapasā I had already had some experience working through with our teachers at Pt England but the other 2: The Pacific Languages Strategy and The Leo Moana Survey Report were of interest to me as someone passionate about retaining language and teaching english to second language learners. 

Thank you Andrea for the opportunity to connect and Manaiakalani for having these toolkits available.

Term 2 - Inquiry Update

 This update comes as a result of testing in the form of running records using Probe testing for students reading above 8.5 years and PM testing kit2 for students reading below this.

From the 13 initial target students, 1 student left PES so we are left with an even group of 12.

Here are their Term 2 testing results.

My next steps will be to analyse their reading data, adjust their reading groups and continue to target their next steps based on their reading behaviours observed in group and testing time.

2023 - Term 1 Inquiry

My inquiry this year is still based around reading. I've decided to carry on my inquiry from last year as I had made a start but didn't get to carry out our plan and see it through. My target students are also in the same reading age range as last years. 

Here is my blog post from last years inquiry. 

This year I have 13 students in my target group. 2 boys are reading at 5.6 years old (Level 7 on the colour wheel). 2 are reading at 6.5 years, 2 reading at 7 years old, 5 reading at 7.5 years and 2 reading at 8 years old.  Here is what they look like compared to their ages.

My goals for Term 1 were to set group norms and class routines to ensure students knew what to do each day and to gain some consistency. Although this is my introductory post for my inquiry, being the end of term 1 I can also give a quick update that my 2 reading groups are well established with their routines during reading time. They know where to find the text for the day and where books are located. Their follow up tasks have followed similar layouts that they are able to complete most tasks without assistance, especially help with reading instructions. 

I have many wonderings and thoughts about my target students. They are a combination of second language learners, some with learning difficulties, behavioural problems over the years, as well as frequent absences and general lack of interest in learning. Despite these barriers, I still want to give these students the best opportunities to navigate their own way through reading so they feel even just a bit of confidence in preparing them for high school learning. So far, they have been very open to the types of texts given, and the follow up tasks they are completing. 

Goals for Term 2 

The start of Term start starts with Y8 camp and Y7 step up program. So actual in class learning will not start until week 2. Term 2, I hope to be able to test students 2 or 3 levels higher than where they were placed last year. I will only test them back if they fail the initial first test. 

I am also gathering some resources from past CoL inquiries and MIT teachers who have created sites and resources to address students reading in this age bracket. I have made connections with Kelsey Parrant who has given me some resources around the Purple, Gold and Silver levels to get me started. I'd also like to pair up with Danni Stone as she has a lot of gems on different ways to accelerate learning for students in Year 7 and 8. 

I am definitely looking forward to seeing more student progress in Term 2. Stay tuned.

2022 - Inquiry intro and update

 My inquiry this year started towards the end of term 2 and I'm only now getting some traction in term 3. 

Focus Question: How can I make accelerated shifts in reading for Year 7/8 students reading at 7.5-8 year old?

As a staff we have been encouraged to set 2-3 goals that are simple, measurable and achievable. Although my inquiry question is not a simple one to answer, I have decided to inquiry into this by setting 2 goals that can be measured and can be achievable. 

I have 8 students who are reading from levels 16-21. For testing they need to complete 2 PM reader tests before moving to the next reading bracket (8-8.5 readers). This is how I plan to measure the achievement towards the middle of term 4.

How do we plan on achieving this? Our first goal is to increase our reading mileage. Students in this group have at least 3+ new texts to read each week. Our second goal is to ensure this group is seen each literacy lesson by the classroom teacher. Along with teacher time, everyone in this group also gets at least one other reading intervention with others around school. These are AWS (Agility With Sounds), Reading Recovery and Steps programme. Our hope is that all these interventions, along with intentional in class teacher time, and reading mileage, this would help to accelerate our focus groups reading levels. 

Check back next term for an update.

Preliminary Findings

 I started my data journey by analysing my target groups beginning of year STAR and PAT reading comprehension tests. I am always interested in find out raw scores (how many questions were actually answered correctly), the scale scores and stanines. Here are the results of my target group.

Unfortunately we had a technical glitch which didn't allow Student G1 to complete her test in order to generate a mark. 

One of the things I always find fascinating in analysing students test results is to look at their raw scores. How many questions our of the 37/38 questions in the test, did they actually get correct. As shown in the table above, only half the students managed to get more than 10 questions correct.

It's important to also note that the students whose test was out of 37 questions sat a slightly easier test that the rest who had 38 questions. This was because the students had already been identified as high needs in reading and writing in general. 

Another source of data gathering I conducted was collecting student voice. The list of questions and answers will be discussed in my next blog post.

My weekly reflections have been very useful. I have used my groups modelling books to take notes of vocab/attempts students have made as well as ideas being shared. This was to initially help with report writing comments coming up later in the term, but I've also found upon reflection that it works with my next steps for some students. 

One of the things which I didn't count on was having a student teacher. This meant I had 2 weeks of observing while she taught my classes. This gave me an opportunity to get some 1-1 time with my target learners, unpacking some of their thinking processes and ideas around school and reading in particular. This also will be discussed together with the student voice survey carried out.