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.
