My 2016 teacher inquiry has begun!

This year Pt England's school-wide teacher inquiry focus is: Formative practice in reading/writing to improve students achievement. From this my personal inquiry for the upcoming year is.

"How can the study of words, their sounds and their parts improve achievement for low readers?"

This focus has come as a result of my inquiry last year into how to lift student vocabulary in reading? During the year I had a specific focus on vocabulary strategies but when I reflected on my end of year reading data I concluded that this focus was of benefit for my higher students but not at all for my lower students. Now this year with the average reading age of my students is even lower, range of 6.9 - 8.5yrs, I want to specifically focus on increasing achievement in reading for Yr 4 & 5 students who are well below standard. In order to do this I want to begin by increasing the actual study of words, their sounds and parts. Even though these students are 4-5 years into school they don't have the content or strategy knowledge to decode texts at their level. In order to complete this inquiry effectively I have chosen a focus group, the Drones, which consists of 7-7.5yr readers.

After analysing last year's data and testing each student within my group this year I establish three summary points. 

- All of my students within the group have low decoding skills. 

- When decoding students often sound out initial sound then simply guess the rest of the word

- At times students just say the first word that comes to mind which has the same first letter. 

From this point forward I have established two areas of focus

 - Tasks: Word study task (Learning to read) & Comprehension (Reading to learn).

 - Reading: The focus and attention within my group reading sessions.  

2015 - Looking Backwards & Forward

Where has this year gone? Looking back at the year gone it seems such a blur. When I began the year I was unsure of what I wanted to inquire into as part of my professional teacher development. So I began the year by focusing on establishing a digital tool, Steps to Success, that students could use to self assess their writing and therefore make improvements. I then moved the focus of this digital tool into Mathematics to guide students to use numerous strategies when problem solving. Within both of these areas it was difficult to get students to engage with the tool due to their lack of engagement and ultimately their low key competencies levels. While I was inquiring into these areas the whole staff actually had a professional development focus around vocabulary and reading. Therefore my professional teacher inquiry began to focus on my reading instruction and specifically the teaching of vocabulary. So as I look back at the year I recognise now that I actually put more attention into inquiring into reading without realising and documenting. Now that I am at the end of the year I have reflected on the year past by documenting my reading inquiry and what my goals will be for next year as I will continue to develop and inquire into my reading teaching practice. I hope as you read this or have followed my blog over the year that my inquiry may have proven valuable for your own teaching development and practice.

Term 3 Pitstop

This is an update and reflection on my inquiry journey over the past term. The two key points this term have been around motivation and engagement.

Term 3 - Journey to engagement & ownership

This term the two words that come to mind when I consider the next part of my journey are engagement and ownership. At this stage I have the structures in place for my students to be able to identify where they are working at within a SOLO based rubric for mathematic strategies. But I need my students to fully engage with it in order to get results.

Previously I have had my students complete problem solving tasks, then use the Steps to Success rubric to identify what level they are working at and what they need to do next in order to move up a step. The main constraint to this is that the students simply find it just another thing to do and another thing that they can't really be bothered with. When thinking about this issue, I think engagement and ownership are the keys to enabling students to use these steps. If I can get my students to take ownership of their mathematics learning then it would hopefully change this attitude. If students were aware of what level they are at, and then feel personal responsibility to get themselves to a higher level, then lack of engagement would hopefully not be such an issue. Whilst ownership is the ideal goal I think there needs to be other goals/motivations in order to achieve ownership.

This term my focus is to get students more engaged and take more ownership within mathematics. I have a couple ideas of how I could use competition based strategies to get students to engage in their Steps to Success with the hope of their attitude and commitment to learning mathematics improve.

Term 2 Pitstop

Term 2 Reflection on my personal inquiry. This term my inquiry took a big change from being focused within Writing to now within Maths. I introduced a number of new learning methods which my students quickly took on board. These methods are to give my students the opportunities to develop their strategies for problem solving. These strategies are what they are then able to track their progress with and use to decide what their next learning step is. Here is a presentation that I presented to a group of teachers as an update on my Term 2 journey. 

The next leg of the Steps to Success journey

Here is an update of what I have been doing in my inquiry and where I am heading next...

Term 1 Pitstop

Term 1 update on my inquiry.

Going SOLO

How can students being aware of what they are learning and what they need to learn to accelerate cognitive engagement? 

Over the past few weeks I have put much thought into how I could physically carry this out. Initially my plan was to use progressions with each student to identify what level they are working at. Then to make these progressions visible to the students so that they can see what is expected at the next level. But, I have faced a number of problems with this initial plan. Firstly our school progressions are very broad and are not worded in such a way for students to understand and identify achievement clearly. Secondly because the progressions are per year, the progress of a student is going to be very minimal. Therefore, such a goal could potentially be too hard and take too long to give students any sense of achievement and motivation. So this has left me with the need to have small achievable learning steps for each specific learning intention/WALT. 

The new direction which I have now taken to try satisfy this need is to use SOLO Taxonomy. In a recent meeting as a whole staff we explored SOLO and how it provides a model of understanding with several steps. From previous experience I value how SOLO breaks down learning intentions to give the learner explicit steps of their understanding. Therefore students are able to answer these three questions. What am I learning? How is my learning going? What do I need to learn next? 

As a result of this new direction with SOLO my original goals are the same but instead of using progressions directly I will break down each progression with SOLO to create achievable and visible learning steps.

Teacher Inquiry

"How can being aware of next learning steps help cognitive engagement?"

As a teacher at Point England School part of our professional practice is to carry out an inquiry. This inquiry is to refine, develop and learn within a particular area/topic.

My personal inquiry is related to awareness of learning steps and cognitive engagement e.g learning. This awareness relates to two areas, students and teacher. As I have reflected on learning and the process of learning I have become increasingly aware of the need for learning steps to be known. These steps are labeled as many things such as goals, aims, WALTS, and learning intentions. But the key similarity is that they all give the learner the focus/aim for what they are learning. In my inquiry I want to take the next step with these learning goals/aims and inquire into how can learning be accelerated by being aware of the progression of learning steps. If a learner is aware of where they are currently at, where they have come from and what their next steps are, will personal engagement and ownership bring increased learning and cognitive engagement?

As I am in a 1:1 digital classroom, visibility of learning is important and also more easily carried out. So visibility will be key within the implementation of this inquiry. A couple possible steps for this inquiry are to:

1. Establish where students are at in progressions and what the next learning step is.

2. Ensure learning steps are visible - on site with learning tasks, on blogs with published work etc.

3. Ensure students are aware of what they are learning - share and discuss.

4. Use learning steps to reflect on work - rubrics, conferences, peer feedback, blog commenting.

5. Publish reflections along side work on personal blogs.