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 

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

2019 Inquiry Stocktake

During my last year inquiry about students' intellectual and cognitive engagement, I focused on providing real opportunities for my students to become interested in their learning. I believe that my cross-curricular approach led to their increased motivation, genuine cognitive engagement and the rewarding achievement data at the end of 2019.

I’ve used the ‘Inquiry Stocktake’ doc to reflect on my TAI 2019 and think about how I can improve my teaching practice this year.

What worked well in 2019: 

cross-curricular teaching, collecting student voice and building on their interest and prior knowledge, being observed by my COL colleagues and ALiM facilitators and receiving their feedback, working with data

Last year, I used a cross-curricular approach trying to extend our inquiry learning through various reading, writing and math activities and show my students a real purpose of each part of the Learn-Create-Share process.

I believe that I developed a range of teaching strategies and created tasks, follow-up and independent activities that supported my students not to just stay engaged and motivated during our projects but retain their new knowledge and skills and be able to apply them in real life for a real purpose.
Learning from observations: It was good to have a COL observation and numerous ALIM observations followed by discussions and feedback from my COL colleagues and the AliM facilitator.
Collecting my colleagues' voice was an interesting experience as I'd never done this before. It helped me to critically reflect on my practice, feel appreciated but also plan my next steps for improvement.
Collecting student voice in T2 about relationships and in T3 about communication helped me to identify the areas to pay more attention to. I'm glad that the students were feeling safe, happy and learnt a lot in my class (according to what they said:-)
Analyzing data and effectively using it for my planning. As a result, all of my students showed great progress in all areas of learning.

Challenges that I had in 2019: 

having a Y2/3 composite class and time challenge 

Having Year 2 and 3 students in a class was a bit challenging due to their age-specific differences (same as this year). Reflecting on my 2019 TAI, I need to better control myself in order to slow down as I don't want my students to rush through their activities as it will affect their learning outcomes and experiences. On the other hand, my advanced learners also have to be continuously challenged and engaged. It requires a lot of planning and preparations. I have to remind myself that although I have high expectations for all of my students, I must keep it less challenging for my younger students to make sure they are feeling successful and motivated.

As a professional, I am constantly learning. Whether we (teachers) are learning through PD reading or during internal or external PLD sessions, we are being exposed to a lot of new and important information that is supposed to enhance our skills and knowledge. However, there's a big difference between absorbing information and putting it into practice. Without applying newly gained knowledge, the training people have received will go to waste. It's important to have a strategy and time for implementing new learning.

The support I need in 2020

I am going to reach out to other teachers who proved to be effective practitioners, members of the Woolf Fisher research team and the Manaiakalani team to help me connect with other teachers who are passionate about the integrated curriculum.
Currently, I am meeting with GTS Principal and DP fortnightly to discuss what I’m doing to support other teachers and plan the next steps.

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