Summary of my teaching strength and next steps

Write a reflection in which you summarise your main learning about your teaching and next steps. This will prepare you to design an intervention next time. (WFQ 10)

What have I learned about my strengths?

From all the data I have gather it is clear that one of my teaching strength in reading is getting children excited to and wanting to read. Even my target group who struggle with reading for the most part love doing it. Only one children said he didn't like it and I suspect this is due to not doing it regularly enough to gain enjoyment from it. 

I also feel Mileage is a strength but an area I can continue to work on. The children did feel listen to and that they had an opportunity to talk and I noted that I often use why questions during lessons. This I feel is a real positive and was an area I might have jumped to as a need when perhaps it is not. 

Next steps:

Sight words and building word knowledge. I really feel from this data that words are the gap, the sticking point and an area I should be able to change quickly and with thoughtful planning maintain. I think part of this is text selection and being clear on why I am choosing not just one book but a series of books. 

I also need to think about the talking that is happening in groups. Is it all Me to the children and them back like I saw in the video. If so how can I change this? or is this what it should be? What is the best use of this limited group time? I noticed kids were not asking questions. What is the impact of this? Is a question I will be asking and researching moving forward. 

I have already made changes in my teaching to adjust for some of these learning but I have many more to make if I want to really fill the gaps and make a meaningful difference in reading achievement. 

Student Voice- What we say about reading and the teaching of reading.

 

Present findings from this inquiry about your teaching. Ensure qualitative data includes rich descriptions of your teaching and quantitative data is clearly presented. (WFQ 9)

I conducted a survey for two reasons. One I wanted to gain some student voice on how they felt about reading and their own strengths and areas of need. I also wanted to see what they had to say about my teaching strengths and needs.

It was interesting to see what they had to say. Here is a link to the survey. 

Questions

1.I like reading..

Scale of 1-5 Not at all - it is my favourite

2.What I find hard in reading is...

3.How many books do you read in a day?

4. How often do your teachers listen to you read?

5. I get to talk about my book

Scale of 1-5 Never-Always

6. My teacher helps me practice new words

7. I can ask questions about my book....

Here is what each of the 8 student here on the day of the survey said. 4 children were alway and I will add their data on as soon as possible and 1 child has left the school and therefore is no longer in my target group. 

Summary of results:

Question One: This question asked about attitude toward reading. Mostly they had very positive attitudes toward reading with many saying it was their favourite thing to do. This did not surprise me as even though they struggled they always try so hard and get read every opportunity they have.

One children put 1, I ask why he said "It is hard."

Question Two: All children stated they found new words hard. Many said accurate reading without stopping. Interestingly using the pictures was challenging for some as was talking about the book. Most felt they understood the stories well.  

Children said they read 1-3 books a day. I feel this could be increased more to get more mileage. Perhaps a question about where they read might help paint a picture of how to increase this. Children all said they read to their teacher 3-5 or more times a week. This means I am getting the group coverage that I need.

Most children felt they got to talk about the book a lot however I cam concerned that there is not equity in this. One child feels like she never gets a turn to talk and this worries me. Asking questions is something they feel they get to do less, however this is much more regular than I expected based on my observation and teacher notes. 

This graph is the most interesting to me as it shows wide inconsistency between kids. It does not suggest if this word work is new sight words or topic specific words. Perhaps adding a question about practicing small words I know would help to understand this better. 

From this I am sure I need to work on this area in my teaching more. 

Self study- Reading site review

Present findings from this inquiry about your teaching. Ensure qualitative data includes rich descriptions of your teaching and quantitative data is clearly presented. (WFQ 9)

In this reflection on my teaching I looked at 2 books for each of my three reading groups that make up my target learners for this inquiry. The group in made up of children reading below Green (Level 12, reading age 6 years). I looked at the word count for each book. Main sight words, main topic specific words and made a judgment on overall change. As they are all levelled texts challenge is some what obvious but this gave me a better picture of my text selection early in the year. 

Rowing (Red, reading age 5.3 years)

Books 1, I like worms (Sunshine classics)

Word count: 86

Sight words: I, like, for, and, in, my, a 

Sample of topic specific words: worms, lunch, tea, skinny, soup, pizza. 

Book 2: Kitty Cat (PM)

Word count: 57

Sight word: here, is, a, look, at, comes, the. 

Sample of topic specific words Kitty cat, hungry, butterfly, Lizard, Fat?, 

Word family at, cat, fat

Teacher notes stated "Students were excited to read." "They need a lot of prompting to fix errors." "They were not looking at beginning words of sight words and were guessing, until prompted." "They struggled with I like worms due to the increased difficulty of the vocab."

Rugby (Yellow, reading age 5.6 years)

Book 1 Mothers day (PM)

Word count: 118

Sight words: Look, at, my, said, will, where, are, the, they, here, like, in, is, I, am, and, up, a, for, he, day, dad, mum, 

Sample of topic specific words: Mother, card, Emma, pens, forgot, breakfast, tray. 

Book 2 The little car (PM)

Word count: 123

Key sight words: Back, come, his it, will

Other sight words: said, look, my, and, the, can, go, here, is, little, where, for, big, not, see, in, went, away. 

Sample of topic specific words: Rachel, Sam, car, green, leaves, garage. 

Teacher notes stated "Group have come back with more confidence and are attempting more words." "Need prompting to go back and fix mistakes." "One child really struggling with topic specific words, said bucket for bowl, need word on noticing middle letters." "Did not know the word was in Mother's day." "Need to word on word family ay, ake."

Surfing (Blue, reading age 5.9)

Book 1: Open your mouth (Sunshine)

word count 185

Sight word:your, the, big, said, to, little, I'm, going, you, a, an, little, and, some, is, it, or, no, come. 

Sample of topic specific words: cat, kitten, hen chick, puppy, dog, surprise, eyes, mouth, open, close, give. 

Book 2: The missing socks (Ready to reads)

Words count: 205

Sight word: was, for, his, and, but, were, the, on, dad, I can't, my, are, they, no, said, she, in, the, ask, have, you, look, looked, mum, saw, taken, ran, out, through, across, into. 

Sample of topic specific words: socks, Jack, Noodle, pounced, rugby, boots, bedroom, pulled, lounge. 

Teacher notes stated,  " they are struggling when they make errors to notice that it does not make sense." "Keep working on sight words and noticing as this is a real need."

Overall from this analysis what I have noticed are three main this:

1: There is a real difference between PM, Sunshine and Ready to reads at the same level, PMs have high sight words with limited topic specific, Sunshine have more equal sight word to topic specific and ready to read step up in complexity significantly. 

2: I am not very good at reflecting on specific word errors, sound errors and comp issues. My reflections are very general and lack the detail needed to really dive into changes and issues.

3: Sight words, sight words, sight words, this is a big issue for all group but I don't spend enough time on it. I also need to be more careful in my text selection to make sure this are covered. 

I also have a question for my self about text length. if 205 words is all they are exposed to is that enough? If I am not exposed to a year 3 text can I become a year 3 reader? or year 4 text and year 4 reader? What is the right level of challenge, independent and shared text for these kids and how often should they read them? 

Reading about vocabulary.

Share three pieces of academic or professional reading and explain how they and other sources helped your form hypotheses about aspects of teaching that might contribute to current patterns of learning. (WFQ 7)

Book: What every primary teacher should know about vocabulary, chapter 2 The nature of words. 

I read part of chapter two focusing on word frequency. 

What I learned from this section:

• Having a estimate of the vocabulary size of the children is important. 
• Knowing what words they need to know is important. 
• Words are high frequency or low frequency in a text. 
• Only seeing a word once and discussing it will not cause knowledge of a word
• Children need repeated exposure to word to really know and understand them. 
• Low frequency words can make understanding a text very challenging for learners. 
• High frequency words must be learned before moving on to lower frequency words. 
• Word family understanding can help children better understand words from root words, prefixes and suffixes. 

So what:

This book has so much in it I have to chunk it into very small parts to gain the value I need. From this section I have learned to think carefully about vocabulary. I adds to my understanding that the gaps in student knowledge may in fact relate to high frequency words/sight words. Will plugging these gaps cause the shift I want in reading? Is there more to this problem? What is the best way to teach sight words? Is it root, in context or some other way I am yet to think of? 

What is the best way to develop wider vocabulary knowledge in literacy? Are these learners ready for that? What will have the biggest impact now without effecting the current high levels of motivation? 

How will I identify my current teaching practice.

Plan and conduct detailed inquiry into specific aspects of your current teaching that are relevant to the hypotheses you identified in the literature. Inquiring into your teaching should give you:
-Formative information about your current strengths and areas for development
-Baseline information that you can use at the end of the year  to provide evidence of shifts in teaching
-Use multiple tools such as self- or peer-observations, analysis of your class site, student voice. (WFQ, 8) 

In order to understand my current practice is relation to my hypotheses that a more rounded reading program with more discussion, student questioning and specific vocabulary teaching with increase reading ability I will use three measure to look at my practice in more depth. These are observation, reading site review and a student survey. 

Observation:

In order to gain a detailed picture of my teaching practice my plan was to observe myself using video already recorded through Class Onair and have another teacher observe me teaching and provide some feedback. Both observation would look at, How often do I provide specific vocabulary instruction? What does this vocabulary instruction look like? Does it relate to a sight word or topic specific word? How often do the children talk about the book? Is this retell, connecting to their experience or asking a question?

Reading site review:

Look at a notes number of books provided, level, topic and main sight words in the book for a two week period. What does this tell me about book selection. Am I provide enough challenge. Does this reflect patterns of student word knowledge as reflected in teacher notes? 

Student survey: 

Conduct a student survey to ask about general reading behaviours and thoughts. Always asking specific questions about teacher practice. These questions will aim to gain and understanding of teacher reading practices including, frequency of reading, word work frequency, discussion frequency and opportunities to ask questions. 

Note it would have been ideal to have done this earlier but due to Covid 19 and my other CoL across school commitments this is sadly the first formal student voice I have collected. I will re conduct this survey in weeks 5 & 10 of term 3 and weeks 1 & 5 of term 4 to give a picture of change or not change depending on the results. I may also change questions as changes are made the the intervention. 

I believe this data will provide a great reflection point on the changes I have already made in my practice and future plans that I have. 

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.

It's time to evaluate, What do I do?

Today we are talking about the evaluation process of our inquiry and the intervention we have put in place. Thanks to Woolf Fisher for sharing these key ideas with us and I hope they will help you also.
                                        
In order to do this we need to look back at the data we collected before the invention. Having robust data before implementing and intervention.

By looking at this data you can identify change or shift of the learners. Then make a link to the changes you made in your teaching. This however is not enough, we need to make comparisons with the norm or other data sets (this could be another class, last years year 3, children not in the inquiry group). Children get better under normal teaching conditions so comparing to other data sets can show significant shift.

This table shows a way of showing pre and post data. This could be done for both data sets and allow for great comparison. 

When looking at number you can easily compare these however not all evidence is data. 

When looking at qualitative data you still need to provide rich data with lots of detail. 

talk about the what in detail, how do you know they were disengaged, struggled to spell etc. Why is it the biggest success. 

What has shifted and why.

I have been asking myself a lot this term what has been the impact of my teaching? Have I really made a difference for these learners and how do I know?

This lead me to think back about the shifts I have been monitoring this year and the interventions I have put in place for my learners. 

Below is a presentation that shows writing samples from one learner over 3 time points. It looks at what shift was made in terms of number of words, working out unknown words, content and punctuation. If you look through the presentation you will see that this learner has made a great deal of shift in these areas. 

I included this example as the main way I monitor writing shift is through conferencing with the learners and looking closely at their writing looks. 

Below is the reading shift for my class from term 4 2018 to term 3. The blue shows the starting point by number of students at each PM reading level and the red the number of students at each level in term 3.  You can see we have had a large number of students shift however shifts have not been as significant as I would have liked. 

This data shows level and age shift of my target learners. Many of whom have moved a number of levels but this has not meant a large shift in reading age. 

During this reflection I have found that the interventions I have put in place have been beneficial for the learners however they have not been constant enough. This is due to time spent out of class with my CoL Across School Role and the changes that have happened in my space with year with changing co-teachers. 

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

10: Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention (so it is clear what you doing differently)

11: Describe how you will keep a record of each of the above in a manageable way

When I started my inquiry my question was will the use of more rewindable teacher and learning in literacy lift student achievement and support improved teacher practice? What I have come to realise is that this question is huge and that perhaps rewindable is not the biggest change I need to make in my teaching. I realised this as the students became reliant on the rewindable resources. As such I have adjusted my inquiry question will gifting language and targeting specific area lift achievement student achievement in literacy.

What am I doing differently in my classroom?

-I have had focus blocks on setting and characters
-Used gifting EE to support writing

What new changes I am going to start
-Building sight word automaticity through writing warm up
-A focus on modelling, guided and shared writing.

How will I measure and monitored changes in my teaching?

I have begun pull a group of learner to do a writing sample, dictation and automaticity test. I will do this very 5 weeks and monitor changes. I will also ask learners about their feelings towards writing and monitor changes in this.

Process of developing hypotheses

7. Describe your process for developing hypotheses (what you read, who you talked with).

Professional conversations:
Rebecca Jesson, Looked at writing samples with me and we discussed what data I could collect next and how to look at the closer break down of writing sample data.
Russell Burt, Discuss how ideas could develop and what value they might have for others.
Christine Eadie, Constantly discussing the children's writing and reading data and observations that we make.
Team conversations: In our team we have noticed treads and have been talking about these and what we can do.


Blogs I have connected with:
CoL within school teachers,
Naomi, has a similar inquiry focus to me and looking at her ideas has helped me form questions and develop my thinking.
Angela, Her 2018 inquiry looked at vocabulary and using Dr Jannie Van Hees strategies and this has helped me thinking.
Helen, Is doing a lot with sound and word knowledge to fill gaps.

Research
Jannie's Book: What every primary school teacher should know about vocabulary
Effective literacy Practices years 1-4
Colleen Hayes: The Effects of Sight Word Instruction on Students'Reading Abilities

Inquiry Focus for 2019

1. Summarise the challenge of student learning you plan to focus on in this inquiry. Be as clear and specific as you can about the evidence you have about this to date.



Focusing Question: Will the use of more rewindable teacher and learning in literacy lift student achievement and support improved teacher practice?

This year we have noticed that our students have a lot more needs in terms of their literacy ability. We have a huge group of 30 children out of the 52 learners in our space reading at green level 13 or below. This mean there is a significant need to acceleration for these learners who are already over a year behind their chronological age.

As a result we have talk a lot as a team and are working on taking learners back to the Gwynneth Phillips Reading Prompts. As a team we are learning to use these effectively and making sure there is consistency across the year groups. Due to my data from last year and the year before I am confident that we have the skill to make shift in this area. 

We notice that these result are similar in writing with the majority of learners being 1B writer. Students struggle in particular to put ideas into full sentences and writer how have this skill lack a clear knowledge of structuring their writing so it flows.

This is the area that Chrissy and I have choose to focus on. I believe that student need to read, shared read and analyse quality writing to build an understanding of what they need to do. I noticed that there is a lack of vocabulary I plan to increase significantly the gifting that I am doing in the classroom and make sure this is visible and rewindable for the children. I have begun to do this in a very structure way making it clear where in the writing the gifted words could best be used for effect and I am beginning to see with my 1A-2B writer an increase in this language. 

Also in My CoL across school role want to support teacher through making my practice, new and tried and true more visible with the aim of providing examples of effective practice. I also want to support other teachers doing great things to do the same so we as 1-1 iPad teachers in years 1-3 can also gain consistency in our practice and make the most of the opportunities we have to engage our learners in creative learning tasks. 

What do we need to be inquirier

What attitudes and beliefs are needed for effective teaching as inquiry
-Curiosity
-Clarity
-Working with others, collaboration and different view points.
-Resilience
-Honesty
-Open to criticism
-Noticing
-High expectations
-Formative assessment
-Take risks (open to failing)
- Self belief, If I learnt something last year that made great change in my students learning it should be a starting point for the next year.
-Regarding the kids as co-researchers

"Pose questions that capture the main dimensions between teaching and learning

Collect valid and reliable information

Analyse data to identify patterns and issue, (Aitken, 2007)"

We need to be aware the there are no absolute truth in education, hypotheses may fail, accepting that you are not always right and our beliefs and ideas can fail. 

Big problems can not be change in by one teacher, in one classroom, in one school. We have to do it together!

Resilience is about pushing through the barrier. Sometime it will feel hard, student will not always be ready for your high expectation but if we keep them up they will raise. 

We must make sure that our ideas about what students do are based on facts and data and are not just assumptions. 

Students have a huge voice. They can tell you a lot about their learning and what you have done and how that has impacted on them. 

We must not forget to be knowledge building so that we really understand the issues and their complexity. 

Connecting with families

This year I am focussing on visible and rewindable teaching and learning and making sure families, children and the wider community can easily connect with our learning in an important part of this

As part of this, I used the blog commenting template designed by Karen Belt in 2016 as part of her MIT inquiry. I made up a blogging card for the learners in our space to share with their families and so they can stay connect with our learning journey in 2019. It is great that we have these resources available to us as teachers from inquiry that were success full. 

Last night I check my email to find the one of the parents had already left and lovely comment on their sons blog as a result of having this card. This made it all worth it and I can't wait to see more commenting as we continue to share throughout the year. 

If you also want to get families commenting check out Karen Belt’s wonderful 2016 MIT project here.

CoL PLG

Today we had our first CoL PLG. Russell opened the PLG with a strong statement "You are the change makers in our community" He explained that we as CoL teachers will act on the evidence that we gather in our inquiries. Teaching is only improved to meet the needs of kids when we use data, are honest and learn what works and what doesn't work by trying things, being prepared to fail, failing and trying something different to find what does work.

Next we discussed the Data from our cluster meeting in week 2. We talked about how the data in writing shows we are doing really well but the picture is not the same in maths and reading. How can we make the same shift in other subject as we do in writing?

The Woolf Fisher team shared with us about Teaching as Inquiry and how we can get the most out of our inquiries as we start on this journey.  The Woolf Fisher team are now doing a Meta Analysis of the CoL inquiries from last year with the aim of understanding the practices that supported student acceleration and what makes an effective inquiry. Last year we wrote reports about all we had done this year they aim to spread this throughout the year as specific blog posts, so stay tuned to see that.

In terms of the inquiry we want to spend more time understanding the problem, learning, researching, diving into the data and really getting to understand the rich picture before we jump into solving the problems. We need to slow down and be really analytical about the student so we can make sure we adjust the teaching to address the problem.  We also need to know what the practice was before the inquiry. What are we changing and why?

We need to make sure we are tapping into rich data, this can come from a range of sources.

Why inquire? The Three view of effective inquiry.
-The View of 'Style'
This is the focus on what the teacher does rather than what is happening to the student. This assume that a 'good' teacher will have a positive impact on all student.
The  view of "Outcome"
This is the focus on the student outcome and assumes that good student outcomes means good teacher practice. We must consider the 'black boxes' Student learning opportunity, Black box (how the student understand this learning), student outcomes.
-Teacher inquiry

“Since any teaching strategy works differently in different contexts for different students, effective pedagogy requires that teachers inquire into the impact of their teaching on their students.” (NZC, p.35)

Effective inquiry should tackle a big problem.

What have I learnt-Inquiry Term 4

This year the has been a whirlwind especially term 4. Thinking about what to share this term was more challenging than most. As a result of my inquiry this year I have learnt about the importance of reading as much as possible in as many ways as possible. For next year I will be trying my best to apply what I have learnt to my new class. I believe that videoing is more effective than just voice recording.  

Term 4 Inquiry update

This year I have thought a lot about the narrow nature of my inquiry. The reason for this has been my research needed a specific focus. While my specific focus has been narrow I realised that I have been using the skills I have developed in my inquiry throughout my reading program and that these have been valuable for my learner. I am excited to link my inquiry to our music theme this term and continue to build fluency but also critical thinking and reflection. 

Inquiry update term 3

This term I have been focussing on bring the fluency ideas we build through video modelling into our small group lessons. I have done this through modelling of small passages of the text during group sessions and getting children to read aloud and reread fluently. We have also be considering the different uses for the digital tool (screencastify) that we used for video modelling and students have been creating review video as well and screencasts of presentations to make digital stories.

The interest part for me has been how my teaching now reflects the key ideas emerging from my research.

These ideas are:



Well my inquiry has somewhat taken a back seat to the writing of my research this term. It is clear that developing the ideas of fluency is still happening in the small group setting.

The reading of our Penpal letters shows how far the class have come. Over half of my class wanted to read their letters out loud to the class and those who did read fluently and the rest of the class supported them in doing this.

Next term I want to draw on the term theme to integrate fluency. We will be doing a lot of song reading and listening and we will talk about how phrasing is achieved. My goal for next learn is to embed the fluency criteria in multiple media and transfer this into silent reading. I believe that this will increase comprehension for my class.

I will also be looking at how paired warm ups can support basic facts development in maths. This has come from the professional development that we received from Jo.

Many Hats

This term I have been both a researcher and a teacher. Taking on these two roles and considering what they mean for me and my class has been a challenge and a privilege. At times it was challenging changing hats and looking at my teaching and my learners through two different lenses. However it was also very rewarding. Having the structure of a research design and thinking carefully about how information was gathered and what action I took, why I took them and exactly what impact they had more critically as a researcher reminds me of the importance of stepping back as a teacher and looking at yourself through a different lense. You can't expect the same actions to produce different results so it is important to be very reflective and even critical of yourself to make sure what you are doing is the very best for your students and what they need to learn at this point and time in their life.

My two hats are important and having them in such a formal way this term has reminded me that if not in  a formal way I will always be a researcher as I inquire into my practice as a teacher.

By en:User:Eric Bouliane [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) 

Inquiry Update Term 2

This term my Inquiry has been focused on video self modelling to increase reading fluency. You might as why fluency. Research suggests that fluency is a key element that impacts comprehension. Reading fluency combines many elements and I believe understanding, thinking carefully about these will help the learner to develop these skills and use them effectively to build understanding. 

During this term learner have been recording themselves, watching these recording and self reflecting on their fluency.  I have noticed that engagement in this has been high however those learner who struggle to decode are less motivated to record. Overall I have seen an increase in understanding of what fluency is as why as reader it is important from a majority of my class. 

Next steps: Next term is our school production and film festival filming. During the term I want to focus on reading of plays and poems to father build fluency for all learner. The element I believe we still need to focus is expression. While phrasing and speed have had noticed changes the level of expression in reading across the class is still low.