Causal Chain

This year my inquiry focus is year was on Mathematics and trying to support learners to gain basic facts knowledge in a meaningful way. 

I believe if I focus children on developing basic facts in a number of ways while building a collaborative classroom learners will be more confident and collaborative in maths. See the Causal chain for the process I hope to take. 

 Click here to see Causal Chain

Gathering information

Mathematics is a huge topic and covers a wide range of knowledge. To help me understand where the learners are at in some of this knowledge I created 3 levelled Explain Everything activities. 

These Explain Everything activities asked learners to respond to a range of voice prompts. 

These were drawn from Maths progressions I located when searching from another school. See here. 

 

From these assessment I noticed that some learners:

-Struggled with Teen and Ty numbers 

-Find remembering specific facts hard

-Struggle counting backwards 

-Struggled with fractions  

-Struggled to motivate themselves when working on a longer piece of maths. 

Collecting data Listening to reading

In order to gain a better idea of what children would do when the came across challenging vocabulary in texts I used the ARBs task The lion and the Monkeys. This task uses the text:  The Lion and the Monkeys,  School Journal, Part 1, No 1, Learning Media, 1987.

This task is at Level 2 of the curriculum and has a focus on vocabulary: The words in the text include: claws, finger nails, shiny, long, teeth, piano keys, clean, white, strong jaws, cheeks, yellow, soft, sharp ears, tufts, stroked, fast leg, silly, paws, furry, cuddly, cruel, roar, purr, warming gentle, cage. 

Question: What does the reading tell me about learner vocabulary and reading ability? 

During reading children often stopped at these topic specific words. Some had trouble decoding them which I expected give this text was slightly above their instructional level. Others were unsure of the meaning. When discussing the text with the children they noticed that their were many words they didn't know what they meant. 

What does this tell me? 

1. One, decoding and vocabulary understanding are not separate for these learners. 
2. Children need vocabulary not just for topic specific no fiction texts but across fiction texts also. 
3. They need strategies
   
   
   to figure out what new vocabulary means.   

Student Voice

As part of my data collection, I sat down with 8 students from my target group to gain a better picture of their feelings about reading and what they saw as their strengths and needs. 

Below you will find their responses to a range of questions about reading. 

What was interesting about this data was: 

• 7/8 students mentioned that they found words challenging with most making references to not knowing what they meant. 
• All students shared positive view and attitudes towards reading. 
• Most of the children talked about positive home reading experiences happening weekly with 2 making connections to special texts relating to their families. 
• One student asked that I read to them more often, another stated she wanted me to explaining the words and text ideas in detail to them. Others mentioned helping them with word knowledge and breaking up words to understand them. 

What trends to I notice:

1. Children have a positive attitude towards reading. 
2. Children are aware that they have a challenge around vocabulary. 

What questions does this raise fro my inquiry: 

• How can I use the childrens' positive attitudes to build vocabulary? 

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. 

 

Inquiry intervention

What micro changes have I made in my teaching so far:

Listening to children more one on one

This year I have made a point of listening to children reading below their chronological age one on one at least once a week. This allows me to give them specific feedback and more importantly positive encouragement. It also allows me to see needs that I could not see in a small group. 

Independent reading time

Every afternoon after lunch, I have independent reading time for my whole class. This is 10 to 30 minutes depending on focus and need of time for children to read books themselves. These range from readers, to picture books, to chapter book and non fiction books. I do limit this to physical books to support focus. In reading time children have access to digital books but during this time the focus is on reading physical books of choice. Children have suggest they like this time. I use this time to check in on my target group and listen to them one on one. 

Sight word teaching and games:

I have become much more specific in my sight word teaching. Using 1/3 of each group session to look at words. This can range for words in content, topic specific words to word families and sight words. I still have a lot of work to do in this area but have made a good start always writing words on the table. Next I want to capture this in a rewindable way so that children can go back to it. I have also introduce sight word games like jenga, sight word snap, memory and more. I want to introduce more games and get children developing their own games. 

Looking at the books closely:

I have started looking at the books closely and looking for books that provide more challenge like the ready to read books and sunshine books over the PM books. I have been careful in my selection to provide books they have not seen over and over. 

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. 

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. 

Building a common language

Now that our students know the class norms of DMiC (Developing Mathematical inquiring Communities) it is time to step it up and demand mathematical language and interaction from all students. I have been thinking about this a lot over the last three weeks and as a result of my observation in class and the professional learning we have had I am going to introduce some conversation scaffolds.

The idea behind these scaffolds is 3 fold. The first set aim to provide correct mathematical language and sentence structure for sharing an idea. They also aim to give students who still struggle to find a place to start or their voice to share a guide to join in.

These prompts are reminders of what the children already know but at times forget as this process is still becoming 100% embedded in our classroom. 

The second set of prompts is about increasing the level of back and forth conversation within the small groups. I have noticed that students in my class will take the first idea and stick with it without agreeing or disagreeing. 

I choose these prompts because it is clear that we need to develop more talk around the strategies being used to help the whole group understand the mathematical thinking. 

I added these prompts because of the professional learning we did yesterday and the need to now push kids to ask Why and think beyond the how of the mathematical thinking but why did we choose that strategy. I also provides the opportunity for critique and rethinking. 

My next step with these cards is to get students modelling how to use them and adding QR codes to the cards so that students how are unsure can watch the video and see how these can help them converse in mathematics. 

CoL Meeting Rebecca Jessen

Rebecca Jessen- Planning and predicting: THEORY is everything.

So far we have work alongside a number of people to develop Theories.
-What language learning is going to go on in their heads.
-What is going to happen in my classroom program to make the learning happen.
-What am I going to do.

If we consider Dolphins as the model for what we are doing as Inquiry. We can only see the Dolphins (Learning) when they pop out of the water. Our theories should allow us to know where the Dolphins will pop out. But we know in reality the Dolphins always pop out not where you expect them to.

Now is the time to lift the game on what is working. It is about looking at each children and revisiting the theory in relation to each child. Why did it work better for some learners then others.

You only know if something works in a particular situation is by TRYING it out. 

Planning 

Where is the mismatch between what was planned and what actually happened. What did they kids think I did. 

Implementation

What it boils down to: 

1  - Figure out the students’ strengths and needs 

2 - Use the existing research base to plan something different that is likely to use strengths to meet the need

3 -DO the different thing

4-Which engages the students in a different way of learning

5-Which results in learning.

I had a great discussion with Rebecca about what I am doing how it is work and what conflicts are happening for me in my inquiry. 

-We talked about stepping it up by making the activities more focused. 

-videoing and analysing discussion

-Planning more closely at the language. 

-Providing discussion scaffolds. 

- Providing texts that support mathematical language. 

-2 Week cycles of analysis. 

I have a lot of ramp up this term and I am so excited to Ramp it up and see what We (My learners, Myself and of course you). 

Maths Norms and Language

One of the big language wins for me in my inquiry this year has been the establishment of a shared language of maths norms that we revisit regularly. This allows us to really unpack the language and have a shared understand that we continue to build on each day as we develop our shared maths community. 

As a class we have an understand that being an active listener means, listening to what others share and being able to ask questions or repeat what they have said in our own words. 

Assessment of and for learning

Thank you very much to the wonderful Angela Moala who shared with me her response to what Dr Aaron Wilsons shared with us last week. This is my response and I am very grateful for Angela's suggestion and structure which has really helped me to clarify my ideas in response to the importance of assessment in inquiry.

Designing learning with language in mind.

Often when I am planning maths for the week I am focused primarily on the mathematical concepts or strategies that I want the children to learner. However as a result of my inquiry I have been thinking a lot more about the language that is embedded in both my teaching and my tasks.

This term talked to my learners about their mathematical understandings and discovered some of the vocabulary and understanding around that vocabulary that was missing. One significant gap I identified was that most of the learners in my target group struggled to identify left and right.

As a result of this I made sure this was a focus on their coding activity this week. I have also planned a hand on physical activity for later in the week which will get learners moving and turning left and right.

My hope is that by exposing them to this language in these contexts and continuing to embed it in future tasks that learners will connect with the vocabulary and it will become a part of the way they talk in mathematics.

Below is a video of how I embedded the vocabulary in the coding task.

Who are my team?

As part of our MIT Hui we talked about inquiry and how as with any innovation that it is impossible to achieve great things on our own.

As a starting points for our inquiries it was important to consider the WHO.
WHO- is the problem for?
WHO-has a say in how it is address?
WHO-are experts in the field, who can support me in my inquiry?
WHO-are my sounding boards?
WHO-is on the same journey I am?

One thing that I learnt from this experience was not to be to general. Writing things like Someone who codes does not help you, but writing down specific names of people you know or even people you would like to know allows you to have a real clear picture of who to ask when you need help.

This is my startings of WHO I will ask for help as I continue on my inquiry journey.

After we had thought about who would help us we did the BAR Activity. 

In this activity you had to think. 

B-Bigger, if you had unlimited money and could be connected to anyone what would you do? 

A-Add someone who will help you. 

R-Remove someone. 

This was a big challenge for me but also helped me to open up my thinking and consider the wider world as resources for solving my challenge. 

My Bigger

I would extend my inquiry to include a larger number of kids and teachers in the junior school. 

If I had unlimited money I would connect with Google, Apple swift creator, Rocket Lab and Space X. I would also connect with big thinker in mathematics including Jo Boaler and Bobbie Hunter perhaps even more people I just haven't come across yet.

This would allow for a program that looks at how maths connects to the real world and create internships where students could engage with people and google and rocket lab and learn about maths in connect.

Through the BAR process I had to think wider and not confine my thinking to myself, my hunches and my context.

Inquiry focus:Vocabulary, Mathematic and Coding

As we all begin to settle into the 2018 school year it is time to get serious about our teacher inquiry and focus on tackling some big problems that we noticed in with in our learning communities. 

In the Manaiakalani Cluster of school we have noticed that language acquisition and vocabulary are holding back our learners across all learning areas and at all year levels. As a result our teacher inquiries are focusing on this with an area that is most problematic for our learners. 

I have chosen to focus on mathematics and how I can develop computational thinking and vocabulary through coding. 

Check out my ideas for first steps as I embark on this journey. I hope that you will join me and welcome any ideas that will support both my learners and my own learning. 

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