Tools, Measures & Approaches

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

Recently, I had the opportunity to analyze PAT assessments from our school and discovered some concerning learning gaps among our students. Many students struggled with questions that were not covered in our classroom maths programmes or were only briefly covered (based on my personal, team and other teachers' reflections)

If students have never been exposed to specific maths concepts or skills, expecting them to answer questions on those topics is not fair. In fact, testing students on material they have not been taught is not only unfair, but it is also not an accurate reflection of their true understanding of the maths curriculum.

The PAT exams are designed to assess a student's understanding of the broader maths curriculum, but this does not mean that students should be expected to answer questions on topics not taught in class. 

I used the 'individual items' report for all our classes and identified similarities in topics that most students struggled with: Statistics, Geometry, Measurements, Fractions and Algebra. Some examples are below:

                                                                    Year 5:                                                                          

Year 8:

Year 4:

On the other hand, I also analysed which areas of Maths we delivered effectively. This is just a great illustration of "what we taught - our students learnt!" We just need to review our maths programme and include the areas that we neglected before.

                                                                     Year 4:                                                                            

Year 5

A hypothesis I developed was that our current maths programme was not adequately covering all the topics included in the PAT assessments. To create a rich picture with a high degree of reliability and specificity, I plan to create an e-asttle test including all the areas tested in PATs. Gloss data also will be used to support Number knowledge and strategies results. 

Along with these 3 tests, I will collect student voice. I already interviewed a few students after their PATs and discovered that many of them experienced frustration due to their lack of knowledge on certain topics. Formative assessment is ongoing.

At the same time, we need to ensure that we're not simply teaching to the test. Our goal should be to provide our students with a well-rounded understanding of the subject. This means incorporating a variety of teaching strategies, including hands-on activities, real-world applications and opportunities for critical thinking and problem-solving. Teaching Measurements, Geometry and Statistics can be part of the integrated curriculum - our LCS pedagogy. 

I shared my findings with my school's teachers and senior team. My purpose was to highlight the importance of using assessment data for planning. 

I will continue with my inquiry about helping teachers understand the value of using assessment data effectively to create a culture of data-driven instruction in my school and hopefully the wider Manaiakalani Kāhui Ako.  I truly believe that this can lead to improved student outcomes and a more effective and meaningful learning experience for both teachers and students.

Refining my TAI (What, How, Why) - Focus on Design and Assessment for Learning

1. Design for Learning in mathematics involves creating a comprehensive plan or roadmap for teaching and learning mathematics. This design should consider the specific needs of the students and align with the NZC. 

I believe that mapping an effective maths program should include clear learning objectives, a scope and sequence, lesson plans and resources, PLDs for teachers, and monitoring student progress using formative and summative assessments.

2. Assessment for learning (AfL) is a critical aspect of teaching mathematics in primary schools. It involves a process of ongoing evaluation and feedback to help students understand:

• what they have learnt, 
• what they need to improve
• how to achieve their learning goals. 

In the context of mathematics, AfL is particularly important because it allows teachers to identify areas where students are struggling and tailor their teaching to meet individual needs.

I discussed my 2023 inquiry focus with a number of leaders and teachers at my school and was impressed by their responses. I'm ready to embark on a new challenge and thrilled to be doing so with the GTS collaborative team.

Student Agency Readings - LCS and the integrated curriculum

Student inquiry is a teacher-supported process that provides a structure for students to learn through the process of inquiring into questions they develop themselves about a topic or concept. There are various models of student inquiry and I reviewed and reflected on a number of different models.

Interesting Points

The LCS approach to learning is based on the belief that students are powerful learners who must be actively engaged in the process of investigating, processing, organising, synthesising, refining and extending their knowledge within a topic. They also are able to work collaboratively and develop their key competencies while working on their LCS projects.

Teachers have to provide a clear structure and share their expectations of student learning. To make this process purposeful and enjoyable, teachers have to put a lot of effort into planning and collecting student voice.

Another interesting point that resonated with my view of the LCS process is the use of an integrated curriculum. Such an approach gives students a real purpose for learning and provides real-life experiences which in order help students see the world as a complex system rather than a number of separated topics. "The coherence principle states that “the curriculum offers all students a broad education that makes links within and across learning areas”

(Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 9, emphasis added)

The LCS (or inquiry) learning supports the development of students' critical thinking.

Concerns I have from within the reading

From my own experience, I know that LCS requires a high level of organisation, flexibility and negotiation skills to challenge the range of diverse learners. It requires a lot of careful planning and structured delivery. LCS can be messy and noisy due to the students' enthusiasm and drive.

My concern is mostly about inquiry learning in the ILE. Teachers have to be on the same page with their expectations and standards and have a high level of trust between them and learners.

New learning from this reading

It was interesting to read about different models and approaches to inquiry learning. Different schools and teachers use different models that suit them, their beliefs and their learners. It was great to see various rubrics for teachers to measure the quality of inquiry learning and outcomes. We used some of these ideas when working on the Team Kea LCS model.

What excites and enthuses me from this reading?

I personally love the integrated learning and LCS approach as I see these as great opportunities for students to learn in an authentic context, not to mention their enthusiasm and motivation! I believe that the LCS approach takes students beyond what they already know and supports the development of important lifelong skills and key competencies.

Reflection

The more knowledge we have about inquiry learning, the better our common understanding of all aspects of LCS becomes. I actually was excited to see that my team's understandings of the LCS process are pretty similar. I believe this is a result of our close teamwork and collaboration.

Thinking about my learners, I believe that during inquiry learning, peer learning becomes as effective as teacher-led learning. Some meaningful “aha!” moments often come in authentic interactions with other students. Sometimes, during the LCS projects, the class transforms into a space where everyone can try different roles: a teacher, a facilitator, a leader, an IT guru etc and has something to share! Inquiry-based learning triggers students' critical thinking and problem-solving capacities and pushes them to take action instead of learning passively.

It was great to have these readings done before and during our work on the Team Kea LCS model as we kept referring to different ideas and models and synthesized them into our own pilot LCS model that we are excited to implement in term 4.

Readings:

http://pjsibpyp.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/2/3/11231090/inquirymurdochwilson.pdf

http://pjsibpyp.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/2/3/11231090/kath_murdochs_inquiry_model.pdf  This has awesome components for students to know what they should be doing / working through that you can add to Learn, Create, Share

https://www.nzcer.org.nz/system/files/set2012_3_015.pdf  This reading is more of an academic read, but gives great information.

Refining my Inquiry Focus - Team Collaboration and Student Engagement

Over the past 2 months, my Team and I experienced many changes in our teaching approach and pedagogy. I would say, that we naturally started to collaborate in order to address new challenges of hybrid learning and the transition of students returning back to school after lockdowns and isolations. 

As a team, we are heading into a new era of collaborative planning, teaching and learning, and it looks and feels exciting. During my TAI, I want to understand how collaboration can support and better our classroom practice and also our professional well-being. We are at the beginning of our collaborative journey as we have to develop a common understanding of what effective collaboration looks like.

Does Teacher Collaboration improve student achievement and their learning experiences?

Does Teacher Collaboration improve the team's professional well-being?

I read an extract of an article about 'the outcomes of four Australian schools' efforts to promote greater collaboration between teachers in each school by Bruce Johnson: Teacher collaboration: good for some, not so good for others', and found it very interesting. 

"Collaborative ways of working helped most teachers feel better about themselves and their work and provided them with opportunities to learn from each other. However, a minority of teachers were negative about the new teaming arrangements claiming that the changes had led to an increase in their workloads, a loss of professional autonomy, and the emergence of damaging competition between teams for resources, recognition and power."

I definitely want to develop an effective team that is happy to collaborate without experiencing any of the above-stated negative situations. We already addressed the issue of the extra workload by having our daily and weekly reflections on our planning and teaching and developing a model of team planning that is clear for everyone and can be recycled over the next terms and years. We found out that having the planning schedule helped us scaffold our understanding of the NZC and learning progressions.

Literature Review: Quality Teaching for Diverse Students - #8

I've been looking for a good read about quality teaching and the best evidence-based and proven practices in New Zealand and came across the following report:

Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling: Best Evidence Synthesis 

by Adrienne Alton-Lee (2003)

(‘This report is one of a series of best evidence syntheses commissioned by the Ministry of Education. It is part of a commitment to strengthen the evidence base that informs education policy and practice in New Zealand. It aims to contribute to an ongoing evidence-based discourse amongst policymakers, educators and researchers.’)

It was an interesting read as it confirmed my thinking in a way that ‘quality teaching can optimise outcomes for diverse learners across the curriculum, and throughout Schooling.’ 

The research identified some practical areas of how to improve the quality of teaching that can be summarised and aligned with the High-Leverage Practices that Manaiakalani schools have been focusing on.

I decided to benchmark my teaching practice against some of the research-based characteristics of quality teaching to reflect on and identify areas for improvement.

Quality teaching promotes learning orientations and student self-regulation

- I use student voice to allow my student to take ownership of their learning and create student-driven content.

Teaching promotes metacognitive strategy use (e.g. mental strategies in numeracy) by all students.

- I use Number talk, choral counting and problem-solving in maths that require a lot of thinking, and Integrated learning that allows my students to apply their new knowledge in real-life situations.

Teaching scaffolds reciprocal or alternating tuakana teina roles in student groups, or interactive work.

- I use mixed ability groups and drama to provide opportunities for tuakana teina learning.

Teaching promotes sustained thoughtfulness (e.g. through questioning approaches, wait-time, and the provision of opportunities for application and invention).

- I use Talk Moves across the curriculum.

Teaching promotes critical thinking.

- My programme includes a lot of questioning, information analysis, compare and contrast tasks, and Learn-Create-Share projects.

Teaching makes transparent to students the links between strategic effort and accomplishment. - Just a recent example. My students worked on a play. I recorded their first attempt, then we watched it and discussed how we could improve their performance. The students came up with great ideas and continued to work on their play. Finally, we recorded it again and evaluated it. My students were very proud of their effort and the result.

It was a good exercise as this will help me continue to refine my own practice and support my team in their teaching journey.

How to Raise Student Achievement? Q+A episode

I really enjoyed watching last Sunday’s Q + A, from TVNZ on Demand, https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/q-and-a/episodes/s2021-e11  as earlier this year I posed the same question for my own inquiry. Although I focus on developing critical thinking and cognitive engagement across the curriculum, my biggest focus this year is on Maths.

It was very interesting to listen to different points of view and confirm my own understanding of current problems in maths teaching in NZ. I think I am lucky enough because I have insight into different international educational systems as I came from the European part of Russia, and I'm also familiar with other European educational systems.

I truly believe that some NZ teachers don't have enough content knowledge in maths. Some of my colleagues don't feel comfortable teaching maths as they are not 'fluent' in it.  Some classes don't have a structured programme because teachers don't really understand maths progressions and pedagogy. I observed lessons when students were asked to solve equations and they struggled to do so simply because the numbers were abstract to them, those students had to use material instead. 

I agree with Prof Bobby Hunter who emphasised the importance of a balanced programme (direct instructions, practice and problem-solving (=create part). A few years ago, we went through a maths PLD that promoted problem-solving. It was very confusing as the kids had to solve problems using various strategies and we were supposed to discuss those strategies in a group. The explicit teaching and scaffolding were missing and I questioned that. However, that PLD introduced the Talk Moves that I implement in all subject areas.

Since that moment, I reflected on my previous international and NZ teaching and learning experiences, and decided to take the best parts that proved to be working well across all the subject areas: 

• direct teaching of new concepts, 
• practice - application of new learning
• use of materials, hands-on
• learning conversations (strategies, creativity in maths)
• problem-solving 
• acceleration vs filling gaps
• integrated learning - purpose!!!

My hypothesis is that designing a well-balanced purposeful classroom programme based on the above High-Leveraged practices will help develop my students' critical thinking and cognitive engagement and improve their outcomes in maths and other learning areas.

What, Why and How of my TAI 2021 - #4

WHAT aspect of my professional practice do I want to grow my capability in?

• Balance of DATs, 
• Talk Moves and Positive Norms for learning  - Class Treaty that is used throughout the year, not just a beginning of the year activity), 
• Integrated curriculum - LCS projects as multiple opportunities to develop students' critical thinking skills and boost cognitive engagement.

WHY is this important to me and my School or Centre?

• Targets set up in our School Charter
• A strong need to accelerate our learners and improve student achievements
• Student engagement to foster their love of learning

WHAT do I want to achieve for my learners? 

Create a learning environment where all learners are engaged in purposeful learning,  use their critical thinking skills, achieve well in all curriculum areas with a big focus on Maths and enjoy learning

How will I achieve my goals? 

• Implement Talk Moves, Number Talk and Problem solving
• Explicitly focus on developing a Growth mindset and changing their negative beliefs about 'being bad in maths'
• Participate in COL and ALIM networks to improve our student engagement, critical thinking and achievement across the curriculum.
• Continue to differentiate and plan for learning/ teaching using school Matrixes, WALTs and the NZC
• Collaborate with my colleagues by presenting during the TOD and publishing my Class OnAir episodes to share and reflect on my practice and to seek feedback to improve it.

Teaching Inquiry 2021 - #2

As the beginning of 2021 was interrupted by a couple of lockdowns, I haven't got a complete assessment set of data yet. However, I didn't want to waste our precious learning time and started with what was available: I analysed the last EYO data, did selective Running records and formative assessments to help identify my new targets.

This year I plan to focus on the implementation of High Leverage Practices across the curriculum with a spotlight on critical thinking and cognitive engagement. As the majority of my current class are operating below and well below the expected levels, I believe that they require a lot of explicit instructional teaching along with engaging authentic learning experiences. 

Finding the right balance of teaching approaches,  engaging tools and the effective use of formative assessments to accelerate my students’ learning and develop them as enthusiastic learners and critical thinkers should become a focus of my TAI 2021.

Boys in Literacy - Professional Development with Marshall Diggs

If I was to summarise the key things I took away from this Professional Development what would they be and why?

Marshall's inspiring presentation was aiming to empower teachers to understand boys as learners and equip them with skills and strategies to enable boys to achieve and succeed in literacy and in their learning in general. As we know every child is different but boys do learn differently to girls, and it was great to listen to his ideas and reflect on my own practice. These are some of the points I found most interesting:

• Being CLEAR means being KIND to the boys
• Competition gets them excited
• Boys learn best with short and sharp exercises (active games, PE breaks, brain breaks, etc)
• Who are their male role models? Do they see men writing for fun?
• Are there spaces where boys like to learn?
• What topics do they prefer to read about? What will engage them?
• Be firm, fair and fun
• How much talking is happening in a lesson? More reading/writing, less talking (teacher talk)
• Relationships with our students is a priority
• Learning is more important than the result
• Align the curriculum with the child and put the child at the centre.

How has this professional development challenged my thinking?

I haven't changed my thinking, this PLD just confirmed that the use of the LCS pedagogy helps empower my male students to succeed in their learning. This year, I was impressed by the enthusiasm and engagement shown by the boys during our LCS projects. I'm very glad that I managed to involve more junior syndicate teachers in our LCS projects and see our boys' growing engagement and love of learning!

What aspects of my practice would I consider changing as a result of this professional development and why?

There are some pretty amazing things happening in our school but we can always be reflective and look at ways of improving. My plan is to have this conversation during our next team meeting and develop a plan to support our male learners:

• introduce short breaks and include them in our daily planning: 

- Word association game (president = Trump, Fruit = orange etc.)
- Give a fist pump to 4 people/elbow bump, touch 4 walls, find 4 green objects, etc
- Ninja punctuation activity: Capital letters - fist pump, Full stops - turn, Comma - twist,     Number - signal, Paragraph - yee hah
- Summary (in 3 words). Turn to your buddy and tell him/her what are you going to do this holiday? Then the buddy has to summarise in 3 words. Other students are to guess:-)
- Catch hand/finger game (activate both hemispheres of the brain - brain exercises)
- Word scrabble: how many words can you make from this one word (give time frame).

• Literacy - inspiring topics: Factual/ Competition/ Humour/ Survival/ Conflict/ Adventure
• Shared reading - big books - align with their interest and our LCS Term 4 plan
• S. Cameron and L.Dempsey activities
• LCS project - our learners have to be active participants
• Art - collect student voice! Differentiation.
• Maths - problem-solving and hands-on learning vs drilling
• Inclusiveness - identity and connections 
• Digital curriculum and digital tools to support boys' learning/ engagement

The COVID period and its impact on my learners and inquiry.

Question: How has the Covid-19 period impacted the learners in your focus group? Will you need to make any changes to your Inquiry?

My focus students have shown consistent progress since T1 and that was assessed at the end of Term 2. I did Running records and other formative assessments including online and in-class observations. I also collected student voice about their distance learning experiences and literacy dispositions. 

For me, the COVID period was interesting for 2 reasons. First of all, it confirmed that the outcomes of my last year teaching inquiry and the tools I implemented are effective and help my students stay engaged and motivated. 

Secondly, my new teaching experiences and the structured Manaiakalani COL inquiry framework helped me shape my hypothesis and develop an intervention that I will start implementing this term. 

Before the COVID experience, I was thinking of a wider range of tools to accelerate my students in literacy; however, after referring to the research literature, analysing my own practice and my students’ voice, I decided to narrow my focus down to vocabulary and comprehension work.

Tomorrow, we’re having our reading PDL with Sheena Cameron and I hope it will help me to select the most effective strategies and tools that I could implement to support my inquiry.

Elena's COL Inquiry 2020 

Inquiry into my current teaching and self-reflection

Over the past few months, I have been looking at and analyzing current dispositions, experiences and outcomes of my students and the ways of how I can improve my own practice to address their needs and help them achieve better results in reading and writing by keeping them engaged and motivated.

By this time I have learned a lot about my learners, and it is now time to inquiry into my own teaching and analyze my strengths and areas for improvement. Firstly, I made a plan what areas of my literacy teaching I should observe and then analyze in order to grow as a professional; this included self-observation, student voice, reviewing my teacher tools and the activities that I've been using.

Many of my students identified that they need to learn more words and their meanings in order to understand texts better. I conducted a short teaching experiment by feeding forward the specific topic vocab during our dragon learn-create-share project and then giving them comprehension tasks that contained the taught vocabulary. All of my students from the target group completed the task and were proud of their results because they felt confident in using the new words and that made them feel successful in their learning.

I also identified that many students will not admit that they don't understand some words unless you ask them. I began to clarify the meaning of those words that I guessed my Y2/3 students might not fully comprehend and it showed me how many words (common from my point of view) they don't know. We also discussed the importance of understanding all words and what strategies and resources can we use to figure out unknown vocabulary.

Based on my literature review, I confirmed for myself that my hypothesis is similar to the following statement: 'nine out of 10 Year 2 students whose decoding was fluent, but whose reading comprehension was inadequate, had a low vocabulary level' (Wagner and Meros).

My next steps: 

extend, improve existing and implement new vocabulary teaching tools.

continue to use explicit instructions in inferential strategies 

Professional Reading #3: Teaching Children to Read

This review of the evidence-based scientific research literature helped me to think of my own teaching practice of reading and how can I improve it to achieve good progress for my students.

This review contains a lot of information about teaching at different levels including the early school years, and it resonates with another research that I shared in my last post. 

The researchers looked at different types of instructions and discussed their effectiveness in teaching vocabulary and comprehension strategies.

Analysing both of these research reports, I've identified my next steps and will focus on these areas when inquiring into my own teaching practice and reflecting on it in order to form my hypothesis and plan my intervention:

 - teaching vocabulary (activities, approaches, material)

 - selection of texts 

 - explicit teaching instructions 

 - reading comprehension strategies

Professional Reading #2: Read about it : Scientific Evidence for Effective Teaching of Reading by Kerry Hempenstall

Title: Read about it: scientific evidence for effective teaching of reading / Kerry Hempenstall; edited by Jennifer Buckingham.

Major reviews of research on reading agree on the key components of effective reading programs:

• Phonemic awareness: Knowledge of, and capacity to manipulate, the smallest distinct sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. 
• Phonics: Learning and using the relationships between sounds and letter-symbols to sound out (decode) written words. 
• Fluency: The ability to read accurately, quickly and expressively. Fluent readers are able to focus on reading for meaning. 
• Vocabulary: The words children need to know in order to comprehend and communicate. Oral vocabulary is the words children recognise or use in listening and speaking. Reading vocabulary is the words children recognise or use in reading and writing. 
• Comprehension: Extracting and constructing meaning from written text using knowledge of words, concepts, facts, and ideas. 

The author unpacked every key element providing multiple sources of research behind each of them. I believe that our schools have been doing a lot of instructional teaching of decoding and fluent reading and we now need to explicitly target vocabulary and comprehension strategies at early levels.

Kerry Hempenstall quoted a number of researchers stating that 'vocabulary has significant corpus of research. Hairrell, Rupley, and Simmons documented six reviews and two meta-analyses published between 1998 and 2009.168 The findings across age groups from preschool through to Year 12 highlighted how important was early vocabulary knowledge and hence instruction to academic success.'

Most of our students arrive at school still operating at the 3-year-old level of language development and they definitely require supplemental intervention in addition to classroom-based vocabulary instruction in order to make desired progress. As stated in the article, in a study by O’Connor, Bocian, Beebe-Frankenberger, and Linklater, intervention at the beginning of school produced far better outcomes than did intervening later in that first year.

This reading confirmed my hypothesis sharing the research findings and emphasising 'that a multiple strategy approach is necessary for vocabulary building. The features highlighted are direct instruction/explicit teaching, guided instruction, multiple encounters of the same words in varying contexts, working with a partner or small group, story retelling, use of props or concrete objects, comprehension and vocabulary discussion, and ensuring vocabulary instruction is embedded in all

curriculum areas.'

The author explored a number of research papers, summarised and explained the proven effective teaching instructions that have been effective for teaching vocabulary and comprehension. He also compared two approaches to teaching reading: explicit vs discovery.  'There is a strong body of research supportive of a

systematic, explicit approach generally, but particularly when it involves learning of new concepts and operations, and also for students who struggle with learning. By contrast, approaches that are student-led, systematic, and rely largely on personal discovery have not been supported by evidence.' 

I found his literature review very interesting and it resonates with my hypothesis that using DATs and explicit teaching of the 5 key elements of reading will accelerate our learners. I will definitely use this review when planning (or improving) my reading programme.

Professional Reading #1: Closing in on Close Reading by Nancy Boyles

After I have finalised my teaching focus: vocabulary (H-F, word building and meaning), increasing their general knowledge and comprehensive strategies, I referred to research literature to find out the most effective strategies, approaches and tools.

I looked at the professional blogs of my COL colleagues and looked at the research literacy they recommended. I was interested in what approaches can help with the students' vocabulary and text understanding at the same time. 

Article: Closing in on Close Reading by Nancy Boyles

N. Boyles describes three things junior teachers can try to effectively use close reading: 

• use more short text;
• aim for independent reading by posing questions that go beyond the content of the text to look at the structure, craft, and integration of ideas throughout the work; 
• teaching students to observe details clearly in anything they read and analyze how those details work together

I have been using close activities in my teaching practice; however, I now look at them from a slightly different angle. I guess I see more purpose behind this exercise and also some ideas of how to run them more efficiently.

I've noticed there is a big emphasis on sentence structure along with the word choice and comprehension strategies. I'll take this on board and include into my group teaching practice.

Student Voice: Literacy Dispositions

In my last post, I discussed how an understanding of my students' learner identities is crucial for effective teaching and learning. During the lockdown, I collected evidence of how taking into account their learner identities (e.g. personal identities, cultural and social backgrounds, academic performance and learning preferences) helps improve motivation and enhance students' learning outcomes. This confirmed that my hunch about coherence in putting my students at the very centre of their learning and making their learning experiences authentic is crucial for their engagement and achievements and it makes a big difference in their learning outcomes.

As one of my inquiry next steps, I asked my students to complete a questionnaire about their literacy dispositions. It required my students to think critically about their own learning, self-evaluate and self-reflect. It was not very easy for my year 2 and 3 students. In the beginning, they said it was very hard and they were not sure. However, with my prompts, they started to talk about their learning in small groups sharing their ideas. It was very interesting to observe them making the first steps in thinking about their learning! After the small group discussions, I asked them to complete the questionnaire. Most of the year 3's students became very excited to express their thought and even asked if they could help younger learners with their forms. To keep the results and data truthful, all the students were asked to complete the survey independently. 

My preliminary findings showed:

• differences in students' personal interests (as expected)
• 53% students would prefer to create their own stories over recounts, reports and poems (was a surprise for me)
• girls like reading more than boys (as expected)
• the vast majority said that shared brainstorming helps them in writing (73%)
• 40% of students found that doing 'hands-on' activities help them understand topics better
• 53% use vocabulary displayed around the class to support their learning
• the vast majority identified that they need help with an understanding of unfamiliar words

Analyzing their answers and referring back to my own findings drawn from the formative and summative assessments, I finalised my teaching focus to accelerate my students in literacy: vocabulary (H-F, word building and meaning), increasing their general knowledge and comprehensive strategies. 

My next step is to make a hypothesis and do literature research to best advance my teaching practice and make an informed decision about tools and approaches that I need to implement in order to improve my students' achievements.

Profiling: understanding the nature of my students’ learning strengths and needs in detail

There is a complex of factors that influence student's learning. Getting to know your students is extremely both for their well-being and academic achievements. 
The more we understand our students, the more efficient we can ensure their learning successes. When we have an in-depth understanding of how our students learn, there is a major impact on diagnosing student needs and planning effective programmes and supports. 

I combined the data gathered during in-class learning in Term 1 and the formative data collected during distance learning ('Covid-19 data'). 

During the lockdown, I experienced a new opportunity to look inside our learners' lives and observe them learning from home, observe their learning styles, reveal their personal interests, motivation and key competencies. Interestingly, I enjoyed a very high level of engagement in comparison to similar junior classes in my school. I believe that one of the factors that contributed to this success was a love of learning and self-motivation of my learners that we have been developing together during in-class learning.  Another factor was the use of personalised tasks that helped to keep my students engaged and motivated. Effective learning takes place when the amount of task structure by the teacher matches a student's level of development. 

My 2020 inquiry is about raising student achievement in literacy by promoting deep learning that requires students to develop cognitive engagement and critical thinking across the curriculum. I decided not to change my inquiry focus. After the lockdown and distance teaching I witnessed and confirmed for myself that understanding of learner identities is not just important but crucial for effective teaching and learning. 

Pre-Covid data: 
I analyzed results of the beginning of Term 1 Running record in reading and e-asttle in writing and found that most of my Year 2 students are well below the expected levels both in reading and writing. My year 3 students are placed at different levels, however, all of them require to focus on reading comprehension, vocabulary and spelling. 

I looked closely at the RR and identified that while my Year 2's need to work on decoding and comprehension skills, my Year 3's students mostly require to focus on making inferences and improving their evaluation skills.
The e-asttle writing data and their independent writing exemplars also suggested focusing on ideas, vocabulary and spelling.
All of these findings helped me to identify and prioritize 3 main areas for developing my teaching intervention: general knowledge, vocabulary(meaning and wordbuilding) and spelling (phonics, H-F and word building).

Formative "Covid-19 data".
Formative data collected during distance learning also showed that my students have limited general knowledge of various topics. Based on various reports from Reading eggs, Sunshine classics, Kahoot topic games and completed tasks on Seesaw, I found that my students need to work on their inferential skills and vocabulary. Distance learning proved that taking into account their learner identities (e.g. personal identities, cultural and social backgrounds, academic performance and learning preferences) helps improve motivation and enhance students' learning outcomes.

My next steps:
- collecting student voice: their literacy dispositions, interests and self-evaluation in reading and writing.
- finding related literacy research
- making my hypothesis

Adapting to Remote Teaching and Learning

In my last post, I wrote that our school's Year 0-3 students are not part of the 1:1 Manaiakalani programme. My challenge was to establish accessible remote teaching and learning for my team and all junior students. Glen Taylor school decided not to change the term dates and we had to quickly adapt to the new teaching environment.

Emergent Stage: establishing online connections.
I decided to start small and assess what we had in place.  Our junior school had been using Seesaw and some families were connected to their children's blogs. During our Term 1 Talanoa time, we had updated the contact details of our parents and now we had to e-mail and/or call them to explain how they could access their child's Seesaw blog.
Tools used: 
-Seesaw blogs - to establish connections
-hard copy learning packs

Beginning Stage: implementing whole-class remote instructional teaching
My class was the only class from our junior school that had the class site. I also used the class site to reach other families of our Junior school and promote their Seesaw class blogs, Google Hangouts and other available online learning apps.
At the same time, we started to run daily Google Hangouts, engaging more and more learners.
It was a short period of whole-class teaching and I felt that it was not structured and engaging enough.
Tools used:
-Seesaw blogs - whole-class instructions (recorded videos of teacher morning greetings and daily instructions)
-hard copy learning packs (now with recorded video instructions on how to use some of the activities)
-Google Hangouts (3 daily sessions)
-My class site for the entire Junior school

Developing Stage: leading a change to improve remote teaching practices.

Reflecting on my remote teaching, I noticed that the change of my planning format and the constant use of my class site was a great tool to connect with my students and their families. It helped achieve a more structured programme and engage more learners. I felt that our junior school would benefit from having individual class sites and called for the syndicate meeting. I was very impressed by the GTS management and my team's dedication. However, some of my team members had no experience with Google class sites. I created a template of their class sites and ran a few online sessions on how to use their sites and implement our new planning format to improve our remote teaching practices.
In less than 2 days, our class sites were up and running! Well done, Team!

Current Stage: differentiated teaching, increasing student engagement and motivation
Everything described above happened within less than 5 days of our distance teaching.

My next step was making sure that my learners were engaged at the right level (differentiation) and motivated to keep learning.

The tools that I use now are:

• New daily planning format using Google Slides - easy to follow differentiated tasks.
• Google Hangouts - daily communication, oral language, feedforward and feedback, brainstorming ideas, students voice, sharing news and learning. A special thank you to Mrs Logan who was co-teaching during our online Meets and via Seesaw.
• Class site - design for learning - making learning differentiated, accessible, rewindable and visible.
• Seesaw - assigned individualised tasks based on their learning needs, ongoing feedback and feedforward, private messaging to improve individual learning outcomes.
• Hard copy learning packs - allowing more time for purposeful non-screen learning, providing video ideas of how to use some of the hard material.
• Learning apps - assigning group and individualised tasks, checking their progress, giving feedback and planning next learning goals. (ixl, SunshineClassics, Reading eggs, Hit the Button, Story Online, Matific)
• Class points based on their visible learning - drawing on my students' motivation and competitive nature. Constant reminders to bring all of their other work (on paper) after the lockdown to earn more class points.
• Learn-Create-Share pedagogy and the integrated curriculum have been utilised to keep my learners engaged, motivated and feel successful during these uncertain times.
• Students have been encouraged to pursue their own interests as I believe that this fosters the development of life-long learning.

By the end of Term 1,  my team prepared online holiday activities. We tried to select fun but educational activities that our students can do by themselves or with their families.

Please check out my class site and Seesaw blog.   Today is the 2nd day of the school holidays but my learners keep sharing their learning on our class blog. I believe it proves their engagement and motivation. 

I would like to acknowledge and thank the GTS leaders and teachers who have been working together to quickly adapt to the new learning environment.                                     

First Days in Lockdown and Distance Teaching

A day before the lockdown, my school was preparing for distance teaching and learning. It was more or less clear for our Year 4-8 classes because their learners had been empowered by being part of the Manaiakalani 1:1 programme and most learners had their own devices.
In Year 0-3 classes we had a different situation with the devices and online learning, so we urgently had to put a plan together on how we could make sure that our students had opportunities to carry on with their learning.

Firstly, I suggested preparing educational packs that were door-delivered to all of our students within the same day. My colleagues and I worked hard to include all individual passwords for the online programmes that we usually used in our classrooms: ixl.com, students blogs, Reading Eggs, Sunshine classics and Matific. We also made sure that we covered all the main curriculum areas and tried to make their activities engaging.

Later on, we received a lot of positive feedback about our learning packs from GTS whanau and students. Some of the activities have not just been used by our Year 0-3 learners but also by their older siblings.

We did what we could to support our learners during the very first days of the lockdown. My question was what to do next?

Teaching and learning from home is a big change. Without a physical classroom, how can I engage my learners and check that students are progressing? How do I stay connected with my learners?

First, I tried to connect with my students and families via e-mails, our class blog and phone calls.  Then, following our Year 4-8's successful example, I promoted Google Hangouts. I had a lot of technical difficulties to get connected with my students and whanau. For many of them, I had to present my screen during the Hangouts and teach step-by-step how to access students' blogs, how to do blog posts, how to find and login into the online programmes. To be honest, sometimes, I felt more a family educator rather than a classroom teacher. I am very glad that I managed to reach the majority of my learners! My distance teaching has begun!

My next steps are: help our junior teachers to reach more of their learners and establish a quality distance learning programme for my class, my team and my syndicate.

My COL Inquiry 2020

Inquiry: How can I change my practice to raise student achievement in literacy by promoting deep learning that requires students to develop cognitive engagement and critical thinking across the curriculum using Learn-Create-Share?

 As a Year ⅔ teacher, I've now got my new 2020 students who were part of Play-Based Learning last year or a year before. Play-based learning was introduced to GTS a couple of years ago and nobody really knew how to run it effectively. I didn’t feel comfortable with the new arrangements and, after a number of discussions, my colleagues and I began our inquiries into the effective pedagogy: Y0-1 were doing 'free play' for a year, Y2-3 used the Learn-Create-Share model.

 Earlier this year, I analyzed Year 1-3 data from the end of 2017, 2018 and 2019 school years and noticed declining trends in students’ achievements in Reading. Same patterns were found in Writing and Maths data. Most of my year 2 learners are well below the expectations and some of year 3 students are below. Being passionate about all GTS Year ⅔ students, I also looked at two other year ⅔ classes and found the same situation. It formed and started my inquiry with a focus on improving students' outcomes in literacy.

All of my last year target students made accelerated progress and all of them achieved the desired “at and above”. This year, I plan to continue to use the LCS pedagogy to improve outcomes for my and my colleagues’ learners.

I believe that coherence in putting our students at the very centre of their learning and making their learning experiences authentic is crucial for their engagement and achievements. My hunch is that will make a difference.

I will use the Manaiakalani TAI Framework:

Motivation and Cognitive Engagement in Learning Environments

Reading: Motivation and Cognitive Engagement in Learning Environments

Blumenfeld, P. C., Kempler, T. M., & Krajcik, J. S. (2006). Motivation and Cognitive Engagement in Learning Environments. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of: The learning sciences (pp. 475-488). New York, NY, US: Cambridge University

Press.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232418824_Motivation_and_Cognitive_Engagement_in_Learning_Environments 

Synopsis

In this reading, the authors briefly review the literature on motivation and cognitive engagement and discuss how the key features of learning environments are likely to influence them. They indicate some challenges for students and for teachers, which may have negative effects on motivation and describe strategies for meeting these challenges.

Motivation

When we think of student engagement in learning activities, it is often convenient to understand engagement with an activity as being represented by good behaviour (i.e. behavioural engagement), positive feelings (i.e. emotional engagement), and, above all, student thinking (i.e. cognitive engagement) (Fredricks, 2014).

I'm constantly trying to target all three types of engagement. I clearly see that project-based learning fosters student motivation and, as a result, student engagement. Reflecting on my practice, I see a big shift in my understanding of how to motivate and get my students intellectually, emotionally and cognitively engaged. However, I believe that personal and professional learning never stops, so I like to read more about this aspect of pedagogy and implement successfully-proven practices in my classroom.

How will it help me? How has it helped me?

Interestingly, the authors identified the same challenges that I face and have to meet in my daily work. They talk about using students' interests and the importance of incorporating topics that students find interesting (dinosaurs, space, etc). The challenge for the teacher is to make sure that while students are working on these topics, they focus not only on seductive details but the new and essential learning is happening. My role as a teacher is to guide my students and create meaningful and purposeful learning experiences that have value and cater to my students' interests and their needs at the same time. Relatedness is another aspect that contributes to student engagement. Our school values of FIRE (Fun, Integrity< Respect and Excellence) are extremely important as they allow my students to feel safe and appreciated during their learning experiences. This promotes collaboration, which in turn results in a higher level of cognitive and emotional engagement. Another challenge for keeping students cognitively and intellectually engaged is a lack of skills and knowledge.

So What?

To overcome these challenges, I will continue to create a positive learning environment, use a cross-curricular approach and some of the ALL/ALiM strategies e.g:

• Plan for teaching/learning
• Frontload topic-related knowledge
• Ensure that the learning environment is safe for sharing ideas.
• Develop students' confidence to present their ideas, knowing that they will be listened to and valued.
• Have a shared understanding that mistakes are an important part of learning.
• Building up their topic-related vocabulary
• Support students to communicate their ideas. (Maths talk strategies e.g. revoicing, wait time, etc) 
• Use of technology to enhance their learning 
• Foster and maintain students' interests