My Inquiry focus for 2023 is:
WOULD A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH TO TEACHING AND LEARNING INCREASE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND READING DATA?
What was happening for my learners?
My learners were both teachers and students. Our current reading programme at the time was ok but we needed a change.
What evidence do I have to support this?
In Term 1, my team and I worked in our school hall due to class renovations. Obviously, this meant my teacher practice had to change. MLE wasn’t new to us, we’d heard about it and we’d visited some MLE schools, but to teach in an MLE environment, that was new to us. We were in one big space with 75 kids and 3 teaching.
We thought we could continue with the usual timetabling schedule we had in our single cell classes…one week later? It flopped…groups were too big, kids weren’t engaged, teachers were exhausted.
What changes did I make?
We sat and re-grouped our students - where we teach students from all 3 classes.
Our students are learning through a collaborative approach.
We included RPI resources into our Reading programme
Our Teacher Practice was constantly evaluated, driven by this new approach to learning.
We referred to the pillars of practice document guidance of our reading programme, we created interactive taskboards, a digital teacher work-book, a tracking sheet for students to link their work into etc
We sat termly e-asttle tests to monitor and track learning progress with the RPI intervention.
Some literature that helped me along the way were:.
Literature I used can be found on my blog.
The hardest things for me to change was:
My practice…Being part of the RPI programme, you are constantly reflecting on a daily to ensure that you’re applying what you’ve learnt the Reading Practice Intensive in the classroom.
Ensuring the students a reading for enjoyment, that they’re aware of the ground rules for talk, that my teams groupings are flexible, that we read like writers and write like readers and we provide our students with effective feedback and feed forward and we provide opportunities for Higher order thinking learning.
My wonderings?
Much of what drives me as an Educational leader is a commitment to the well-being of students and positively engaging with them in a culturally responsive way. Students value those who 'hear them out' and make an effort to understand them. Could this relational pedagogy help when they transition from Y8 to Highschool?
How can I ensure that the knowledge and understanding my Y8 learners leave GTS with, is maintained and cared for in Y9?
Why is there a drop-off in Y9?
Could a collaborative approach to teaching and learning be effective in Y9?
For my EOY results - check out my blog :)