Student Challenge

5. Share your findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge. Make sure it is clear what evidence from your inquiry supports each finding. (WFQ 5)

At the beginning of the year we as a school discussed a need for accelerated shift in reading and maths across our school. This linked to the data we received from the researchers and our own school data. As a staff we talked about the challenges our learners face in vocabulary. This is an area we have not yet found the answers too. 

My Target group is made up of three are year 3 and the remaining 9 are year 4s. On the right is a graph of my whole class running record data, from this it is clear their is a huge ability difference between these children. 

From my teaching notes in term 1 I said:

"This group struggled with beginning sounds. They were not thinking about the meaning of words. They also struggled with the words 'shouted' and 'he'. We worked on beginning sounds finding words that start with k, f and s and writing them on the table."

These two boys "use each other a lot listening to each other ideas and not trying without support. I need to do more work with them on attempting and self checking."

"This group weren't attempting challenging words. We looked at how to break them into parts and they also did not know some of the animals." 

Over all these comments and the data point to struggles with vocabulary, letter knowledge and confidence to try and perhaps a fear of failing. I want to explore this more in a student voice survey.

The star data paints a similar picture for me. It raises the question, why are there such big gap between learners and what can be done to address the gaps in the area of vocabulary and confidence. 

I think based on the data that there is a significant need for more vocabulary exploration, amount of vocabulary children are exposed to and building of confidence as reader and more generally. Children need to be able to take risks and learn from failure and that is a huge area of develop in see.