Tools the Measure

 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.

The purpose of inquiry is to understand an issue in student learning and take considered and active steps to address the issue through intervention. 

As my focus in an issue on student learning in reading, I plan to use a range of reading assessments to understand the issues for student learning. 

First I will do a running record on all children in my target group. I will do this to get more qualitative data about their reading ability and comprehension. From the running records I will look closely at what is happening in the way of decoding, and comprehension. 

Second, I will look at standardised test data from STAR and PAT reading. I will look at this in comparison to their running record and note similarities and differences in achievement from one test to the next. I will also look to see if there are patterns within the group or outliers that suggest other areas of need. 

Third I will collect student voice about reading. Focusing on what they find challenging and what they enjoy about reading. This will provide some additional data to build my profile. 

Fourth: I will video my reading groups and note what I am seeing in the way or reading behaviours and  discussion behaviours. This will focus purely on what the students are doing. 

Finally: I will look back at reflection notes and note any interesting discovers I have had as a teacher this far in our learning. 

 

Catalytic Issue

 Explain why you judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year (In chemistry, a catalytic substance is one which increases the speed of a chemical reaction. Catalysts offer an alternate pathway for a reaction to follow, with a 'lower activation energy.')  

To explain why is this a Catalytic issue for my learners I started by look at data on each of the learners in my target group range from level 15-20 a reading age of 6.5-8 years. By the end of the year children should ideally have a great age of 9 years of age. 

My target group is made up of 15 children, 7 reading at 6.5 years. 6 reading at 7 years and 2 reading at 8 years. The group has 9 girls and 6 boys. 

It is interesting to see that for many of these children shifted has been limited in their reading shift across their 3 years at school. 

Why I see this as a catalytic issue is the fact that student shift is so limited. This shows that what we have been doing as not has the deserved impact on student learning and something needs to be done differently. 

From conversations with learners about text their expression of opinions is limited. It often come in the form of a retell or something they directly noticed in the text. For example when asked what do you think about this story one learners said "It was about a bear." 

As such I believe that developing more curiosity about texts and becoming critical of what they read will making reading more meaning full and engage learners in more thinking therefore impacting their achievement in reading more generally.