Bursts and Bubbles 2019

Yesterday we had the opportunity to share with the Manaiakalani team and fellow CoL teachers, how successful our CoL Inquiry was for the year.
It was an informative session, with a few successes and challenges being shared.

My question was: Exploring accelerated learning strategies within literacy in Pasifika dominated classrooms'.

I had 3 minutes to share - some of the things I covered in my presentation were:

1. How the ALL strategies were implemented in my class
2. What happened for the learners
3. What evidence do I have
4. What did I do to make it happen
5. Wonderings/Next Steps

Evaluation Blog Post

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

This year has been eventful, challenging but achievable at the end. I've had some astounding results from the assessments but also throughout the year. My students and I have experienced both good and bad days, but that's teaching, there are days of failure and days of success. 

Implementing ALL strategies has been crucial in the progress my learners have made. With a target group of 6 students, I started by listening to what they had to say. They shared with me their favourite genres in reading, what types of books they enjoyed reading, what made reading difficult for them and what they would like support with.

The plan was, to see my group 4 times a week. There were times where this was achievable. With the use of assessment data, we started cycle 1 & 2 by identifying areas of weakness. These areas were: VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE, INFERENCING & ACQUIRING AND USING INFORMATION. With this information, I knew I had to change my practice to be able to tackle these areas. The changes I made were:

*Monday became a whole class lesson. Because the 3 areas identified was a general consensus with all students, I decided to use Monday as a front-loading session, for what their focus would be for the rest of the week. The students agreed on a novel to read, and we unpacked the novel using WALTS based on the areas of weakness.

*The intervention heavily focuses on "Acceleration rather than remediation". I had to know what Reading looked like for Year 7 and 8 students, so I had to refer to documents such as the LPF (Reading) and the NZC for guidance.

*Using the ALL strategies; brain storming/mind mapping, front loading, double dosing, gradual release of responsibility (GRR).

*I read more to the class. In term 2, our class novel study was HOLES, term 3 was MATILDA and this term is WONDER. My whole class Monday lessons were based on this text. Here is an image of our learning wall with some of the students' work around VOCABULARY, INFERENCING & ACQUIRING INFORMATION.

2. Summarise evidence about key shifts in the problem of student learning.

Comparing my planning from cycle 1 and cycle 2, change of teacher practice is evident in my planning for cycle 2. From their Mid-Year results, I noticed steady progress and not much acceleration. I asked myself "why" and came to a stand still. Starting Term 3, I decided to create a padlet with 3 questions to ask my ALL students: 

1. What makes reading fun?

2. What would you like to read more of?

3. What can Miss Tupou do to help me with reading?

With this information,  I decided to change Monday's to a whole class reading session. I decided to include the whole class so there is consistency but I also took into consideration my ALL students and not wanting them to feel isolated or targeted (in a negative way). Using the ALL strategies along with my change in practice, I was able to focus explicitly on my Inferencing activities, Vocabulary activities etc. Before reading the novel, i'd have some words written on pieces of paper from the chapter i'll be reading, displayed on the whiteboard and discussed prior to reading. 

Along with the change in practice, our ALL facilitator gave us a Gap Analysis sheet that required me to unpack my students reading strengths & areas to work on. From this activity, Vocabulary was identified as an area of weakness amongst all 6 students.

3. Write an overall evaluation of your intervention in terms of the causal chain you had theorised. i.e. To what extent was the intervention successful in changing factors such as teaching?

My Intervention - A.L.L (Accelerated Learning in Literacy) is an intervention that uses 4 main strategies to accelerate rather than remediate. So ACCELERATION OVER REMEDIATION It’s designed to support schools to inquire into their teaching practices to do something new or different to accelerate the progress of students not meeting expectations in Reading and Writing.

To what extent were those changes in teaching effective in changing patterns of student learning?

The use of purposeful strategies + clear WALT/LI/Expectations led to very focussed lessons. Some lessons were a challenge and some were a fail, but I was open about learning from it, accepting it and moving on. My biggest challenge with intervention was managing to see my ALL group consistently 4 days a week. How can I manage this in future? I don't know. Some children made accelerated progress, others just made progress. When comparing their vocab & comprehension PAT assessments, greater shifts were made in comprehension than vocab. One student made accelerated progress in vocab, 2 made accelerated progress in comprehension and the rest of the group made 1 level shifts. We celebrated their achievements together.

4. Write a reflection on your own professional learning through this inquiry cycle.

My journey with this intervention proved to be a 'work in progress'. Yes, progress was made from all students BUT I feel like there's still room for improvement. I've enjoyed this inquiry cycle because I've managed to reflect more on my teaching practice and implement changes I thought could be effective. It's my second year working on this intervention and I feel I had more success last year than this year. Perhaps because I've changed my focus from Writing to Reading and Writing is my strength. 

However, this does not mean I'm going to throw in the towel. As a professional, I plan to find ways, initiatives and different approaches to how I could better implement the intervention in class. The biggest challenge was definitely TIME. Moving forward form this, I still plan to use the ALL strategies in my practice and will work hard to change my practice to better suit the students' needs.

Describing and Explaining the Changes...

Describe the evidence you have so far about the effects of your changed practices or intervention on desired learner outcomes and how you summarised and recorded these...

1. One evidence I have acquired throughout the year to identify formative feedback of my target students was having a tracking sheet for each term, of their assessment results.

2. Learning Wall - this wall is filled with the students learning from our Monday (whole class) reading sessions. Some of the reading activities we have pursued this term: Word Diagram, Vocabulary Ranking, Analysing Vocabulary, Drawing characters and scenes and Hot-seating etc.

Explain the reflections and tweaks you have made along the way and the reasons why you made these changes. Share your evidence for these decisions...

Reading whole-class on Monday: I came across my students assessment results from last term and found 3 areas the whole class needed support in. These areas were: VOCABULARY, INFERENCING AND ACQUIRING INFORMATION. I thought back to my early years of teaching and something my tutor teacher would do was use Monday as a whole class reading day and would teach grammar, vocabulary knowledge etc. That was a lightbulb moment for me and decided to try it this term.
I also took into consideration learner voice and student interest. So I chose a novel that has a movie to go with. The movie is seen as an incentive for when we finish the novel study. This term, I've split the 10 weeks over the 3 areas that needed focus on - Weeks 1-3: VOCABULARY, Week 4-6: INFERENCING, Week 7-10: ACQUIRING INFORMATION (Retrieval skills, skimming & scanning etc).

Student Ownership: Through learner voice feedback, students felt that I needed to give them more of a choice in what they are learning.

So, I created a padlet and asked my class 3 questions: 

1. What do you enjoy about Reading? 
2. What text types would you like to read more of? 
3. What would you like to learn about in Reading next term? 

The responses were great. I had students share that they like how we use different forms of texts for reading (Song lyrics, spoken word poetry, novels, plays etc), I had some students ask for more comic based books, non-fiction books about history and I had some students ask if they can read more about historical events, stories from the islands etc.

Monitoring evidence, sharing, and interrogation...

Describe how you will regularly monitor shift for learners, as a result of your intervention. This includes collecting, recording and reflecting on the micro-shifts of learners over time

How have you been systematic in that collection?​

- Teacher observations

- Formative Assessments

- Student work

- Student Engagement

- Student Voice

What are you going to do with the data in terms of ‘tweaking’ your intervention?

- Change my Teacher Practice

- Find resources and materials that better cater to the students learning needs

- Communicate with ALL facilitator for support/professional advice

- Professional Readings

- Talanoa with my learners

What does the data tell you?​

- Inferencing, Vocabulary Knowledge and Acquiring Information is an area of weakness for my learners. A change in my Teacher practice I've made since identifying this, is dedicate Monday to whole class sessions. The purpose of this whole class session is to tackle the area of weaknesses. My belief is that Monday creates an opportunity for the whole class to work together on the WALT. Then Tuesday-Friday, I will work in my guided groups and continue to scaffold the WALT from Monday. If I feel the group does not need to be scaffolded, I will find the group another WALT, based on their assessment results.

Here is an image of my learners LEARNING WALL and the work they have completed around VOCABULARY, INFERENCING & ACQUIRING INFORMATION.

Acts of Service (as CoL)

For our first CoL release this term, we got the opportunity to go into classes at school and observe our teachers do what they do best - TEACHING. The purpose of it was to collect baseline data around reading and how teachers deliver their reading lessons.

We looked out for 3 things:

1. Independent Activities
2. Collect Student Voice
3. Guided Group Lesson

What I took away from this learning opportunity

1. How are we supporting the teaching and learning of decoding and comprehension strategies?
2. Are all our teachers confident in teaching reading? (Content Knowledge)
3. Do our students understand the PURPOSE of what they are learning?
4. How can we, as CoL within schools teacher, support our teachers to teach Reading?

   

Sharing my Hypotheses...

1. Describe your process for developing hypotheses (hunch) e.g. what you read, who you talked with...

• Change in my teaching practice
• Change up choice of resources and materials
• Include student voice

2. Explain the hypotheses about teaching that you decided were MOST worth testing, and why...

What changes can I make in my teaching practice to ensure that I am meeting my students learning needs in Reading. I decided to focus on changing my choice of resources and materials to better suit the students. The first step I did was consult with my students. They told me what types of books they would like to read this term, what text type they prefer to read and what comprehension strategies they need support with.

3. For each of your hypotheses, explain how you will test it and what evidence would support (or refute) that hypothesis...

• Change in teaching practice: I have been reflecting on some of my lessons and asking my students for feedback on their learning. It's been quite effective being able to monitor what has been successful and what hasn't. I plan to video record myself teaching a reading lesson as evidence that further supports my hypothesis. I also plan to observe other teachers in the school and try and observe reading being taught at another school. By doing this, I could gain new ideas on the different approaches
• Choice of resources & materials: After collecting some student voice from my class, students identified having a preference for a mixture digital and hard copy texts. Being a digital learning school, I find myself dependent on digital resources, not realising that not all students enjoy that.
• To include student voice in my teaching practice was a challenge at first. It included a shift in mindset and tradition. For some of us we're immune to teachers being the decision makers and that's how some of us learnt at school. Now, having my students have a say in what they would like to learn, research their own information, create their own videos etc proves just how capable our students are. As teachers, we need to trust our students more and create opportunities to learn through exploration and inquiry.

My chosen few...

To get a more detailed and accurate profile of the students in my ALL group - I used a Learning Map doc. This doc allowed me to gain valuable information about my students' attitude and thoughts about Reading. This information becomes the foundation to what I need to plan.

I will also be using the A.L.L strategies such as Front-loading, Double Dosing, GRR
(Gradual Release of Responsibility) and Visual Learning.
These strategies will help assist in accelerating the students understanding of what they are
reading and what particular reading strategy they are learning.

Currently, with my target students, I see them 3 times a week. 2 of those sessions are explicit teaching and one is a 10-15 minute front-loading session. This occurs during my scheduled Reading time in class which is from 11-12pm every day. I also see my group for 10 minutes before morning tea to front-load/double dose them with what our sessions will be about.

The reading progressions is an important text I refer to when I am working with my students. The A.L.L intervention is a programme that was developed to accelerate the students. So I use the progressions to identify what my group needs to be able to do at Level 4 and I teach that, with support from the A.L.L and reading strategies.

These are some of the tools and approaches I am using with my group.

Data Analysis

Today, my fellow CoL within schools teacher, Poto and I decided to sit down and thoroughly look through our 2018 End of year assessment data.

Thoughts surfaced, wonderings came to mind and questions were asked. The discussion we had was very intriguing and informative. Here's what we found:

What did we notice:

Reading:

1. There was an increase in no. of students achieving at WELL BELOW
2. Increase in those achieving ABOVE expectation
3. Maori - achievement much lower compared to other ethnicities
4. Decrease in no. of students achieving BELOW
5. Decrease in no. of students achieving AT, but increase in ABOVE.

Writing:

1. Decrease in BELOW, but increase in WELL BELOW
2. Decrease in AT, but increase in ABOVE.

Maths:

1. Increase in BELOW and ABOVE, Decrease in WELL BELOW and AT
2. Increase in ABOVE,decrease in AT, Increase in BELOW apart from Pasifika and girls.

What judgements overtime can we make:

From the findings we discovered, we came up with many questions and discussed possible next steps for our Inquiry focus here at Glen Taylor. Some of the questions we had were:

• OTJs vs Formative assessments - what provides more insight? What is being measured?
• Did the ALL intervention in 2018 for Writing, prove to make discernible impact?
• How consistent are the teachers in evaluating formative assessments?
• What changes can we make in our Teacher practice to ensure the resources and materials we use in class are effective?
• Mixed ability grouping in maths vs ability grouping? Which is more effective?

Teaching Inquiry 2019

Summarise the challenge of student learning you plan to
focus on in this inquiry. Be as clear and specific as you can
about the evidence you about this to date.

Malo e lelei EVERYONE,

Earlier this week all schools in the Manaiakalani cluster met down at Tamaki College to look at the achievement data across all schools in the cluster for 2018. It always is a great learning experience for both teachers and Woolf Fisher research team to identify the strengths and weaknesses in our students learning.

Before attending the meeting I was still indecisive about which achievement challenge to inquire into this year. After the meeting, I decided that my inquiry focus for 2019 will be: 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.

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.

Listening to Woolf Fisher present their findings and learning that the gap is widening between Manaiakalani schools achievement levels and the national norm provoked me to focus my inquiry into reading. Leaving the meeting, I was adamant that Reading was the way to go.

Explain why you judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year

Being a Year 7 & 8 classroom teacher, it becomes a goal to ensure my students are prepared and advanced in their learning, ready for high school. Having had success with my focus in Writing last year, I'd like the same outcome for Reading this year.

Summary of my CoL experience for 2018

Summary of CoL Journey for 2018

Having started the CoL within schools teacher role half way through 2018, I decided to apply for the role again because it was an informative learning opportunity for me. I became more interested about Inquiring into students' learning and my own teacher practice.

Last year I had the opportunity to work with a group of 6 Year 8 boys and 1 Year 7 who were disengaged and not interested in Writing. They lacked self-confidence and self-belief in their ability to write. I implemented the Accelerated Learning in Literacy strategies of front-loading, double dosing and gradual release of responsibility into my teaching practice. I asked questions about their interests and incorporated their adoration of music and visual images into Writing.

Long story short - here are the results made by my focus group from 2018.