Planning my Intervention to Raise Student Achievement in Literacy

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?

I am a great believer that if a person genuinely wants to learn something, he/she will be successful. My job is to help my students find their interests, support and scaffold them during their learning process. I think about all the wonderful LCS opportunities that my learners and I can plan together to fully engage and explore in learning that is exciting and meaningful growing their learner identity as enthusiastic explorers and creators. 

This year, I’ve started to implement drama activities ‘giving students the chance to use all skills in decoding meaning, understanding the feelings of others, expanding vocabulary, making appropriate use of syntax, analyzing discourse, generating feedback within context, and building metacognitive knowledge’ (McMaster, 1998; Urian, 2000).

After analysing students voice and research findings, reading blog posts of my COL colleagues and reflecting on my teaching practice, I finalised my intervention that I have started to implement and already see clear signs of students successes.

My intervention is based on:

• Putting my students at the very centre of their learning and making their learning experiences authentic by designing LCS projects based on their interests and taking into account their identities.
• Scaffolding my learners during their projects by implementing and consistently using the tasks designed to improve their vocabulary and reading comprehension.
• Utilizing drama to develop cognitive engagement and critical thinking and raise students achievement in reading and writing.

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.