Collecting data to show change

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

Identify informal & formal ways you are monitoring the effects of your changed practices/intervention on learner outcomes.  Explain the reflections and tweaks you are making along the way (Don’t wait to the end of your inquiry cycle and find it didn’t work)

As a teacher and an inquirer I always have a plan. However I often find little goes the way I have planned no matter how hard I try. This year so far has been a model of that even though I have tried so hard not to let it be. 

With the World wide Covid 19 Pandemic and Alert levels 3 and 4 making things more challenging I have found it especially hard to stick to my plan and collect data about the small and large changes I have made to my practice. 

This blog post however reflects back on what tangible changes have been made so far and what I plan to do next as I look into reading and accelerating it.  

So what was/is my plan for how I will collect data and what has and hasn't gone to plan so far. 

My plan this year revolved around a number of check points. 

1: Every 2 weeks read 1-1 with students in my target group making  detailed notes about what they are and are not doing to develop specific measurable goals for teaching next steps. 

2: Collect student voice 3 times a term starting in term 3 and look at what they stay about students reading a long side teacher notes. 

3: Conduct a high frequency word reading test twice a term and see what changes have occur in knowledge of students. 

4: Video record teaching every 3 weeks to see what has changed in teacher and student actions. 

5: Video student independent work to see what has changed in activities and learners interaction with these. 

6: PM kit running records and notes on these as required to move children forward. 

Describe how you will keep a record of each of the above in a manageable way (‘cos you won’t otherwise remember all your many micro-decisions and why you made them). 

Data will be record and stored my my inquiry data spreadsheet and shared as it is collected here on my blog. Each piece of data will be display different depending on what it is. 

Survey data will be display as seen in this post.

Student reading notes like these. 

Student running record data like this. 

Videos of reading will be edited and reflected on student needs and growth and teacher strategies used. And is likely to be displayed like this. 

High frequency word test will be displayed as a table similar to Reading notes. 

So what has a relativity been so far. 

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. 

Bursts and Bubble Reflecting on my inquiry

I am excited to share my inquiry in 3 minutes at our Bursts and Bubbles. Thought, Idea, Innovation, Imagination, Inspiration



The catalytic aspect of student learning for my inquiry was gifting vocabulary across my literacy program in an effort to increase overall literacy achievement for my learners.



I identified this as my focus when I noticed that while the cluster wide and school wide data showed a need to focus on improving reading many of the learner in my learning space were struggling writer coming into year 3 writing at a 1B level.



The sources of evidence and data I used were from both the areas of interest for me and my learners. I used Star Reading data, Running records, e-asstle writing data, samples of writing taken from the learners writing books as well as my own observational notes of students reading and writing behaviours.

The main patterns of student learning I identified in the profiling phase were that learners were writing very short stories that were lacking in the areas of ideas and organisation. They also struggled with decoding in reading with all 11 learners in my target groups reading at a year 1 level. While they were eager learners they often struggled to get started and to attempt unknown words in both reading and writing.



My profiling of my own teaching looking back at previous years data showed that I made  good progress in reading using my current approach. I noted however that when teaching writing I was not gifting the amount of language I suspected was enough to support vocabulary acquisition and retention in reading or writing.  This led me to think carefully about the gifting process in my teaching when the introduction of texts for reading, engaging learners in a writing experience and throughout the writing process.



The changes I made in my teaching were carefully selecting language when introducing learners to their texts in reading. I also worked on intentionally gifting language throughout the writing process and making this rewindable the use of audio clips in the explain thing activities. During my implementation I notice that writing was still short and that sight word writing was holding learners back. This is when I worked on building automaticity of sight words in context.



The literature/expertise that mostly helped me decide what changes to make were looking back at the inquiries in this area conducted by others in the past. I also drew on the professional learning from Jannie Van Hees and took the ideas she shared in CoL meeting and team meeting into my practice.



Overall I would rate the changes in student learning as interesting The evidence for this is that student achievement in reading was great with all but 2 learners making over a years progress and 2 learners making over 2 years progress. This is significant for these learners when compared their progress in previous year. While learners writing length increase this did not translate into shifts in writing level on the e-asttle test. I wonder if more regularity in implementation of approach would change the impact. 

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. 

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.

Most Important hypothesis and evidence I will collect.

8. and 9. Explain the hypotheses about teaching that you decided were MOST worth testing, and why and explain how you will test it and what evidence would support (or refute) that hypothesis.

Scaffolding and Gifting
I choose this hypotheses because I felt it has the most value in terms of developing students writing and reading ability. We often talk about the power of teacher supports for students learning and I believe a close look at and changes to the way I scaffold could have a big impact on students learning. I know this because of the conversation we have had with Rebecca Jesson and Dr Jannie van Hees. By looking closely at my scaffolding I will become more critical of what I am scaffolding, why I am scaffolding and how children feel about these scaffolds.

How will I test this:
First I want to make a list of all the types of scaffolds I use, what they aim to scaffold and identify exactly what I am doing. I will also get some to come in and develop and observation tool for looking at how children are engaging with the scaffolds. I will also use a survey to ask children how they feel.

Connections between reading and writing and sight words. 
I have wanted to make connections between my reading and writing program particularly in terms of developing vocabulary. I believe this will be a good hypotheses to test because I have noticed that students engagement and excitement reading in much higher than in writing time.

How will I test this:
I will use my reflections in reading and writing to see if the ideas and links are being made. I will also video both reading and writing lesson, looking at engagement and vocabulary connections. I will also look at samples of writing and look at what sight words they are using that they learnt in reading time. I will do a sight word test on target group, reading and writing sight words.

What can I change my practice?

6. Develop a set of hypotheses about patterns in your teaching that could be changed to more effectively address the student learning focus.

Reflecting back on my teaching practice I have asked myself many questions. In this post I have been quite critical of myself. I believe that this will help me develop.

Hypothese:

Scaffolding: 
Am I under scaffolding, how much scaffolding is right? I have read a lot and had a lot of professional conversations about scaffolding. I have also been thinking a lot about this and I often think I limit scaffolding sometime because I value independence particularly in writing. So How much scaffolding is right?


Gifting: 
Am I gifting the right amount and how much should I be gifting? This links to my pervious idea and this blog post. I currently do quite a lot of gifting. I do it in dictation, word walls, examples and shared writing. I do wonder though how much is too much and what should I gift. I have some writers for whom even simple words are challenging how much do I gift and how much do I expect them to try on their own?


Connections between reading and Writing: 
Am I helping students to see the connections between reading and writing? I have seen more shift in reading than in writing, at this early stage in the year. It leads me to wonder am I making enough of a connection between reading and writing.

Sight words: 
Am I supporting sight word development in my classroom in both reading and writing? Currently sight word practice happens mostly in reading and focuses on the reading of sight words. Would linking this more to writing, through speed sight word writing games, dictation and word work support writing speed and increasing independent writing ability? How would I make this fun and different?

Rewindable:
Am I providing enough opportunities for children to rewind and revisit their learning? 
Well we capture a lot of the learning and ideas we share. I have noticed that I am not providing the time I think learner need to revisit this themselves. We often revisit as a group but how to I empower students to take responsibility for finding what they need when they need it.

Feedback: 
Can I development better feedback loops, teacher to student and student to student? 
We have a system of feedback that is very teacher to student. This limits the amount of feedback they get. How can I expand this feedback?

Student choice:
How can I cater for student choice and student voice when children need a lot of scaffolding and gifting to write? The thing I have really noticed is that many of the children in my class who struggle to write have great ideas they can share orally and even record but when they come to write them they freeze because they can't spell it, or they struggle to get the words onto the paper. I have found gifting and dictations work well for them but this limits their creative voice. So how do I cater for their individual stories and gift for their individual stories when they are all different and there are over 30 of them?

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

Preliminary Findings

4. 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.

Data collection process:
I want to focus this year to be on the academic has much as possible for this reason the main for this is that in the past I have used more anecdotal evidence than academic and standardised data. I wanted to pull out and go deep into the data and really be aware of the areas in which, I need to change my practice. 

I also want to conduct a student voice survey to collect how the students feel about their own reading and writing and look at how this matches with the academic data. I will also be using video and observation evidence to support my understanding of my own practice. I want to do this before the end of term 2. I understand that this is later than ideal however with my schedule being in the class 3 days a week. 


5. Begin to collect evidence and data  and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence. (WFRC #4)

I have been thinking a lot about what the data tells me about the learners and writing in my classroom. I looked closely at the asTTle writing breaking it down by each area and the learners in Dec 2018 and Feb 2019. What I found interesting in that within my target group many had made small improvements from Dec to Feb. I also found averages to identify areas what might make the most change. I also wanted to identify areas of strength and find areas we can build from. 

What I noticed was the areas of most need are ideas, organisation and spelling. I believed based on looking closely at the pieces of writing that part of this is due to length of their writing. 

I also looked at the students reading levels and how this connected and reflects their writing. I looked at the data from the end of 2018. Their levels have changed since then and I will publish this after testing this term. What I found interesting is the difference between Star Data and reading ages. What does this suggest? I also found that these students all read at a similar level.

I still have a lot of data to look closely at and collect. I will be adding to this post with observation data and student voice data that I am still working on presenting and collecting. 

Why is it Catalytic?

3. 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 catalyst increases the rate of reaction, but it also offers an alternate path for the reaction to follow).

This group of learners have been stuck in the 1B writing bracket for a long time. They write very short stories and lacks specific vocabulary. I believe this is a catalytic because it is holding them back not only in writing but across the curriculum as they try to respond in a write form in reading and inquiry.

I read a quote that said

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

— Louis L’Amour

I think for my learners at this point in time the catalyst is giving them the tool to start and to get to a place of flow. I think the best tool is vocabulary that is the water that I need to support the to full the faucet with so that when they start writing they have lots to flow. I also think that vocabulary being increase orally and capturing this to make it rewindable will help to increase recycling of that vocabulary increasing students ability to use it. These ideas come from the professional learning we have been doing with Dr Jannie van Hees. 

I know I still have a lot of learning to do around this problem but I believe increasing writing amount and vocabulary for these learner in a way that is recycling language is a key that may help them across the curriculum. 

While I have tried a number of things this far I feel I still have a long way to go in finding the big ticket approach/approaches to address this issue. 

Selecting the challenge

2. Describe how and why you have selected this challenge of student learning. Locate your inquiry in the context of patterns of student learning in Manaiakalani overall. 

I selected the challenge of lifting writing achievement due to a number of factors. The first the identified need of the students in this area both from their writing samples from last year and more anecdotal evidence such as their struggle to spell unknown words, their speed of writing and quality and quantity of writing we are seeing in class.  

The second factor was a reflection on my own practice. Over my four years of teaching my shift in writing as not matched the level of accelerated shift I have achieved in reading. I am also aware that this is an area of my practice I have not yet inquired into. 

In terms of the Manaiakalani Data, I know that writing is an area that as a whole we do very well in. We have had many teachers across the cluster inquire into this and I know that drawing on these inquiries will strength my practice. However much like the data shows for the cluster many of our struggling writers are boys and lifting these students along with their female peers is very important to all of us. 

I also see this as a connected inquiry in that drawing on the learning that I make and changes I make in writing will lead to reflections and changes in my reading program as it is clear from my earlier post that my students have a need in both areas and My students needs come first. After all we inquiry to become better teachers so that we can accelerate student learning. 

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. 

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). 

Formative assessment in teaching as inquiry

As we engage in inquiry is to keep our eyes on the prize and be very aware of our inquiry question and theory of outcome. What do you want to achieve? 

Often we see research that is unclear as to the exactly changed in practice and for learners as research describes things in wishy washy terms. We need to very aware of capturing (recording) what we are doing and having informal and formal ways of assessing and monitoring this. 

In inquiry you make lots and lots of choices, changes and moves if you don't record these they are lost and we can not learn from nor can others. Ask the kids to monitor your changes in practice they should be learning a long side you and part of the inquiry process. 

You want to be able to say able that the changes you have made have with in reason been the factors that have impacted upon learning. 

We want to use repeated measures, this might be before, during and after. They should be formative and summative. The Everyday moves are important they inform next steps. Capture and monitor learners and learning.

There is a place for formal check points these would be formalised data. By setting a date you are making sure that you are doing these check points and making sure you capture it. 

You might use a checkpoint to check on of the smaller skills that you are focusing on. 

The information that you are collecting for this should fall out naturally from the intervention. 

Don't forget the kids. Student voice is key.