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

Using Kahoot for instructional practices and formative assessments

Game-based learning is considered one of the most effective teaching practices.  Research and empirical data support game learning because it engages students in problem-solving and critical thinking while building up their content knowledge. 

Today, I’d like to talk about using Kahoot in my practice! I believe that Kahoot not only helps create a fun virtual learning environment but also motivates and stimulates the learning process. 

Every morning, I use my Class site and the Seesaw blog to introduce daily activities. Students have to work at their own pace due to various reasons (different age, levels, abilities, internet access, family arrangements, etc). However, after introducing Kahoot games as part of our Google Meets, more students began to join in on a regular basis and the amount of completed daily tasks escalated. 

Playing Kahoot with junior students looks different from games played with older children. I use Kahoot games not just for doing formative assessments (without students knowing it) but as opportunities to use various DATs depending on the situation and questions. There will be more explicit teaching when we play a new topic Kahoot for the first time, then, during the subsequent games, I gradually release my control and let students rely on their knowledge and skills.

For example, my class has been working on place value and symmetry this week. 

The first Kahoot game revealed their understanding of both areas:

Every day this week we played ‘the same’ Kahoot quiz, however, it was not exactly the same game as I kept changing the actual numbers and pictures for the questions. For example, the question stayed the same: How many tens are in this number? But each day I included a different number and its representation giving my students an opportunity to think and apply their knowledge rather than memorising the previous answers. I also assign related tasks on Seesaw and provide my learners with ongoing timely feedback on their completed tasks. 

4 days later, my students played this Kahoot with the following results, the number of engaged learners has also increased:

The report for each student and his/her answers for each question is also available in the Kahoot report section. This report helps to differentiate and design individual or groups tasks to improve student understanding. I always share the reports with my learners after the game and I discovered that they find it valuable. Even if they don’t come first, my students are reassured that their knowledge is growing along with their confidence.

I think Kahoot fosters student cognitive engagement, motivation and critical thinking. The analysis of data collected during Kahoot games provides the opportunity to identify areas of weaknesses and strengths and helps to inform my teaching in order to improve student achievement.

Tools, Measures and Approaches

TAI WFRC: 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.

My 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?

Firstly, I've reflected on my 2019 Inquiry and Term 1 2020 and analyzed what had been worked well for me and my learners in the past. Based on my experience, discussions with other colleagues and professional reading, I decided to focus on the following tools and approaches to carry out my TAI 2020:

• an integrated curriculum (Learn-Create-Share model)
• collecting student voice
• utilizing student interests and prior knowledge
• partnership with whanau
• developing a growth mindset and key competencies

To measure my students' progress and knowledge, I plan to use both formative and summative assessments with a bigger emphasis on formative assessment strategies. I believe this will help improve teaching and learning simultaneously. I aim to actively encourage them to be cognitively engaged and take ownership of their learning.

I think that explaining the assessment expectations to learners before any summative assessment helps them perform better. It is the same important as giving clear instructions and feedback.

Surely, along the formative assessments (observations, student voice, conferencing, tasks that require students to use skills or apply ideas, etc), I'll be using the standardized tests to evaluate my students' learning:
e-asstle writing and reading, Running Records.

I trust that 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.

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:

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.