Causal Chain, So what?

 This year I have been looking at what I can do to support learners in maths when they have a varying degree of knowledge, skill and understanding. 

How do I make this fun and what do I need to do as a teacher to know the issue, where to and what next? 

This is what I have come up with so far. 

Then to now: A reflection on my teaching

Then: 

Sitting here reflecting on my teaching I realised how positive it is that my inquiry is so connected to my 2020 inquiry and I have picked up the practice changes I made in 2020 and for the most part this was my pre intervention teaching. See my 2020 Inquiry for details. 

The one exception to this was that in 2020 I narrowed differentiation due to Covid I have not continued to do that in 2021. 

Another example of my pre intervention practice can be seen in this Class Onair Episode

In this episode the focus is on one texts and the ability to retell the texts in detail. 

Now: 

During my Data collection stage in my inquiry I released that this was a real need for connected Vocabulary exploration and Deep diving into texts in a way that allowed for critical thinking. 

As a result I began to question having different groups focusing on different topics, theme or ideas during a week. I asked wouldn't it be great if the whole class could focus on the same theme? Wouldn't that provide opportunities for children to encounter and discuss vocabulary across instructional levels? 

This linked nicely to what Rebbeca Jesson had said in her presentation about T-Shaped Literacy for Juniors. 

So I started to begin each weeks reading planning with a Theme and a Question. 

From there I selected books that connected with the theme and books that challenges the theme. Each group has different books but the focus was similar. 

While the comprehension focus was similar, the decoding focus, words and skills each group had varied based on group and individual needs. 

The create tasks however were the same and allowed for children to think critically, write and discuss in their group and across reading groups. 

Early on in the intervention I gave them choose in the activities, however I found that completing the same activity for each text and then making comparison worked more effectively. 

Here are some examples of learning tasks

Character Description 

Word Web 

Character Dairy

Teamwork 

What I have noticed so far is an interesting amount of writing and as they become more familiar with the structure of the text the depth of thinking is increasing. 

Theory of action

  Restate your inquiry question and your theory of action/chain of events (WFRC#11)

My inquiry question for 2020 is:

“Will increase discussion between learners and deliberate acts of teaching vocabulary improve achievement across multiple curriculum areas? ”

My Theory of Action:

For a number of year we have been discussing what is holding learners back from making progress in multiple curriculum areas simultaneously. While student have been making great gain throughout Manaiakalani in writing we still have not found a way to consistently accelerate maths and reading. My concern is that students are not moving as fast as they need to achieve accelerate progress  to reach their chronological age in reading and maths. As this is a huge challenge I have decided to focus in on reading achievement for my inquiry and adjust my math teaching based on our whole school professional learning.

 In reading I have noticed a number of challenges. Firstly student often struggle with decoding and I have been using targeted prompting to help children notice and fix mistakes. Vocabulary is a huge gap and something we have talked about a lot. Due to this challenge I have been making note of challenging words and discussing them with with the learners. What I would love to do next is make this rewindable for the learners. I have also been implementing more opportunities to read during increasing the number of guided texts and providing independent reading time each day. This week introduced sight word games into my program for all groups reading below their chronological age. 

The reasons why I think these changes in my teaching will be effective to my learners are because they created a more well rounded reading program that address phonic, mileage, decoding strategies and provides more opportunities to talk about more texts. This is what is recommended in the literature I have read. 

The Key changes I have made in my inquiry

1. Summarise evidence about key changes in teaching and other factors that influence student learning.

At the beginning of the year it was clear that there was a huge need for my learners in writing and reading. See this blog post.

This need lead me to look at my practice and think about what I was doing and what changes needed to be made to address the clear need in the data. As a result I tried a number of different practice aimed at building vocabulary in literacy and building writing capacity and skill.

As a result I tried a number of different things. Looking back perhaps to many different things and nothing for quite long enough but my practice definitely changed.

Each term I made a change based on reflections on student engagement, data and need.

Early in the year, Chrissy and I worked together with a focus on building oral language and written language through connection of reading and writing with a strong focus on oral record. We did this by focusing on an element of text, setting, character and plot for 1-2 week blocks and this being the main focus of all reading and writing with an aim of building descriptive language around each element.

This is an example of the children's created character and shares the same feature as the reading activity. 

Here are some example of what this looked like. We found that well the language used within their activities was similar to that they already had and that this was not maximising gifted language the way we had hope. Gifted language was used more in writing however.

Also in Term 2 (See blog post) I looked at how I could gift more language using the digital technologies. I found myself over gifting which and the learners were so overwhelmed. I learned from this experience.

In Term 3 we had some wonderful team professional development with Dr Jannie van Hees this made me think about the things that are missing in my program. What am I doing about sight words. I started using this approach and the kids said "I like writing the little word." "I write more this time."

I also filmed this lesson for my Manaiakalani Google Class Onair.

Inquiry update term 3

This term I have continue with write the little words this term a long with a focus on writing together. Trying to balance the I write, we write, you write in my classroom. I do not believe I have this balance right yet and hope that I will be the end of next term.

During this,  I have noticed that modelling the experiences before the children do it helps to build the vocabulary for them. I did this in my chocolate fish writing and the quality of language used by the learners increased considerably. 

I have also noticed an increase across the class of excitement about writing and want to write. With learner say “when can we do writing”, “Can I finish my writing now instead of playing a game” and “I love writing.” 

I have also noticed the connections with reading. The learners who are excited about writing are also making good progress in reading. One learner has moved from level 12 to level 19 this year and her engagement in reading and writing has increased also. 

Inquiry update Term 3

This week I had a release day to work on my MIT (Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher). The focus for my day was to amplify my Inquiry and step up the interaction and conversation in my classroom.

As a result of this my students and I talked about the vocabulary we have been learning through our discussion based mathematics and created rewindable videos that children can watch to remind themselves of the words we have learnt.

We also learnt to use a range of discussion prompts which can been seen in my earlier blog post.

In order to make this accessible for the learners and other teachers. I created a site which makes all this visible and links to QR codes which students can scan and see a model to support them. Click here to see the site.

Please note that this is not a finished site and will continue to develop throughout the year. 

Manaiakalani Teaching As Inquiry Framework

My 2018 CoL Inquiry Focus

"Increasing Mathematical ability,  using coding to build computational thinking and vocabulary"

The Manaiakalani cluster are always working together to overcome challenges for our learners with a focus on specific achievement challenges that exist with our community of learning.  

In 2018 my inquiry will focus on the CoL achievement Challenge: 

Lift the achievement in maths for all learners in years 1-13. 

I will be using the Manaiakalani cluster inquiry framework to focus my inquiry and make my learning and teaching visible in 2018. This framework has been co-constructed specifically for Manaiakalani schools drawing on the New Zealand teaching as inquiry framework and using the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy as a guide for inquiry. 

Throughout the year I will label my blog post to make sure it is easily accessed by others. I will label them using the Learn, Create, Share structure. 

Click on this link to see blog posts organised by label-Inquiry links