Dreaming of 2022

This week I have been thinking about my next steps for my inquiry for next year. I want to use what I have discovered and found out this year and build on this again for 2022. This is what I have been thinking about so far...

The achievement challenge that I am considering as an area of focus in 2022 is “Lift the achievement in Reading for all students, with a particular focus on boys and Māori students (both genders) years 1-13. “ I am passionate about reading as I believe it is an important curriculum subject which leads into maths and writing. Reading can have an impact on learners' ability to access these other curricular areas and succeed in them. 

 This was a focus of my MIT inquiry in 2019 which I have continued to inquire into throughout this year. My MIT inquiry focused on my learners reading between the ages of 7-9 years creating a digital tool for reading levels purple, silver and gold. I have continued to use this tool in the classroom this year and as a team have used many of these generic templates while working with our reading groups. Looking ahead to 2021 the data of our year 5’s currently show we have a large number of readers who are reading below the age of 7 years and many stuck in that 7-8 age bracket. 

 As a school this year we have been having in-depth reading PD which has been valuable in my own teaching practice and working on this with my learners in the classroom. In our reading PD this year I have learnt many skills in how to work with our learners who are considered to be below and well below in reading. I believe that continuing to focus on this as an inquiry for next year will benefit my learners in reading achievement and help strengthen my teaching in this area. 

I have looked into some of the other CoL teachers from this year and their inquiries. One which stood out was Latini’s inquiry looking into raising reading achievement in her year 7 and 8 learners and getting them ready for high school. Looking at her data many of these learners are reading between and below that 8-9 age bracket. By inquiring into this next year I think it would be helpful in order to get our year 5 and 6 learners to accelerate learning past these levels in order for our year 7 and 8 teachers to focus on other areas for our students to be successful in high school. Christine’s inquiry has also shown that vocabulary is an important area in reading to focus on which I will take on board into my inquiry next year. Vocabulary is an area that my learners also need to focus on in order to make an accelerated shift in reading. 

Focus on acceleration of reading using learn, create and share. Having the students share reading which is giving different ways of sharing reading and in a context that is familiar to the learners. This will focus on having 1.5 x acceleration in reading through the learn, create and share model. 

Woolf fisher research has shown that we need to focus on explicit teaching of reading and not just have follow up tasks that are questions straight from the text. We have worked as a team this year to use generic reading tasks which allow us as teachers focus on deliberate teaching of skills. The learners can then take ownership of their learning and read other journals and then have tasks that are generic and able to be completed without deliberate teaching of that particular journal article or story. 

I would like to continue PD on reading and how best to teach this in the classroom. Being involved in CoL PLD will help with my learning and knowledge in this area and think critically about what I am doing and why I am doing it.  I got so much out of the PLG from CoL this year and new ways of teaching and collaborating ideas with other teachers with the same purpose of teaching and learning so I think that it is an important part of sharing and learning with others. I hope to be able to share not only with my team at school and others within my school but also with other teachers in the CoL. 

Bursts and Bubbles 2021

 

Due to being in Level 3 in Auckland for our Bursts and Bubbles this year we conducted this online. Above is the video I recorded about my inquiry this year and what I have found out. This year was far from normal but there was still some great data and evidence that came out of my inquiry. Please feel free to check it out or read through my script below. 

Bursts and Bubbles script

My inquiry question for this year was: Will a focus on vocabulary and interest specific texts have an impact on reading achievement for my learners reading below 8 years? I identified this as my focus when I noticed that a group of my students were reading below the age of 8 years. This made me ask the question what is holding these learners back and what are some things that I can do in my teaching to help these students reach their expected reading age.

To build a picture of my students' learning I looked at a range of different data such as PAT reading, Star, Running Records and Student voice. I’ve broken this down extensively on my blog. 

The main patterns of student learning I identified in the profiling phase were that these students were able to read and sound out the words correctly but they didn’t understand or have the strategies to understand what these words meant.  By not understanding key and specific vocabulary it was making it difficult for the students to comprehend the text and answer vocabulary and inferential questions. 

From speaking to other colleagues I found that vocabulary was a key element that many of our learners were struggling with.  I explored what the literature said looking at “Vocabulary developments during read-alouds” and “Utilizing nonfiction texts to enhance reading comprehension and vocabulary in primary grades.”

The changes I made to my teaching were having a visual word wall in the classroom and online that was accessible to all learners. I changed our overall reading focus each week and made it a whole class activity. Each reading group would learn about the same topic where they would need to complete research. I introduced spelling activities each week where students were exposed to new vocabulary and would have a pre and post test. I tried to incorporate text specific journal articles where students would be exposed to the vocabulary during guided reading sessions. During our learning online my team stuck to this similar format of having specific topics each day with a research component along with word work. 

The easiest thing to change was having an overall topic each week for the students to explore. Some of the challenges were finding specific non-fiction texts related to the overall topic and at the level of these students. 

Overall I would rate the changes in students' learning as partially successful. Students were really engaged with learning about new topics. My target group showed more confidence with reading in new vocabulary and working out the meaning using clues from the text. My mid year data showed improvements in reading ages for some of my students. This data also showed key areas that needed to be worked on during our guided reading. Student voice showed a shift, with many of my students saying they enjoyed reading and could understand what they were reading. 

A highlight from this year was when we spent a lot of time learning about the earth spheres. After learning about this for a few weeks we began our swimming lessons and one of my students called over to me in excitement to say that they were currently swimming in the hydrosphere. 

The most important learning I made about my inquiry was that language and vocabulary is very powerful and once students know how to use clues and not be afraid to ask questions they are able to work out meaning. My target learners are more inquisitive about new vocabulary and understand that if they read words into the context of the story or article they are able to understand the meaning. My students are more engaged and excited about reading which has had a huge impact on how and what they choose to read. 

Term 4 - Lockdown continues...

We are still currently in alert level 3 in Auckland so term 4 has begun the same way that term 3 ended, with online remote learning. As a team we have continued on with our layout of the class site with creating a range of different content each day. This term we have decided to scale down on some of the activities and focus our efforts towards guided reading groups. This is something that has been a little bit of trial and error this week. I thought about having each of my groups separately but in order to have two texts a week this was going to be challenging in regards to google meet times. I am very aware of students being stuck at home and having lots of google meets can not only be a time pressure on the students but with their whānau as well. So I will call this week guided reading a trial and error model! This has however given me some guidance in how I could run this better next week. 

Plan going ahead:
Next week I will go back to having three reading groups, two of my groups are reading at a similar level so I will run this as one group. My other two groups with my target learners I will focus back in on the level of text that they need in order to make shift within their reading. Again without trying to overload the students and their whānau I am working on a way to make these guided reading sessions fit on to the end of my google meet sessions. I am really looking forward to continuing this on next week with my students as many of them were really excited to have this focused on their specific reading group. This in turn also means that is is possible for the students to have more specific follow up tasks to the texts that they are reading. 

Data collection?
Over the holidays and during this week I have been thinking how can I continue to work on my inquiry with a focus on vocabulary. My plan at this stage is to try and create a google form specifically for my target learners to check where they are with spelling and comprehension. My thinking at this stage is to try and have a weekly spelling test (pre and post) with vocabulary related to the texts we will be reading as a group. I then want to create a form that at the end of reading each text the students will fill out so I can gauge how they are going with comprehension and what I need to do to facilitate this learning online. 

It has been tricky to continue on with the momentum for my inquiry however I am excited and ready to create these new changes with my class next week and to see how this can strengthen my learners and what they need to work on for reading. We have seen low attendance again this week but I am thinking this could be due to the first week back of online learning, so will hopefully pick up again in the next few weeks!

Holiday Blogging

These holidays I have continued on with the team 4 holiday blogging blogger that was set up a few years ago by Matt Goodwin. This is our own team blogger especially used for holiday blogging. With the students still continuing to be at home even in the holidays with their chomebooks at home we thought why not continue on some momentum for learning during these holidays! This was an optional task for our learners as I know there were many of them still wanting to have access to some form of learning each day. 

The holiday blogging challenge is a research type model that is set up by the students and the topics that they think others will want to learn about. Each day there is a new challenge on the team 4 holiday blog and the students are given the opportunity to research this topic. The task is the same each day where they will need to find out facts and information about the topic challenge. This finishes off with the vlog or screencast of the students sharing what they have learnt about the topic for the day. We run this Monday to Friday each week of the holidays with some days have double challenges!

I found that these holidays I had a lot more students wanting to share topic ideas and also complete the learning each day. The students that have participated in this holiday blogging have absolutely loved it and there was no pressure to have to complete it each day. We just had it there as an extra thing that students could do while still being in level 3 during the holidays. There were some fantastic challenge ideas along with some really creative research tasks created by students across the whole of team 4! It was a great way to keep momentum going along with having our learners set up to take part in the summer learning journey over the December and January school holidays. 

Lockdown teaching

 As term 3 draws to a close and we are still in alert level 3 in Auckland I have taken some time to reflect what we have been producing for our team content wise. The things that have worked well are changing the topic up each day for the students and giving them the option to decide which order they can complete the daily tasks each day. Having access to an article and response to text each day has also been a big highlight with my class and they have enjoyed learning something new each day. As a team we have been pondering how to make this accessible to all of our learners and the differentiated reading levels of our students. This so something that we will spend the holidays working on and trying to structure this in a way that hopefully will make the transition to level 2 (hopefully next term) a little bit easier on our students. 

We have continued to use the model of a new topic each day with collaborative planning across the team. This has ensured that each of our students have access to quality reading, writing and maths tasks each day. Continuing on with having four facts each day this allows every student to feel like they have accomplished some learning today while doing reading and research at the same time. We have found that numbers of our students have been dropping off towards the end of the term so have decided to have this last week as a fun movie learning week which the students have been really excited about!

Reading with small groups during our google meets has been really effective and the students have loved coming together in smaller groups to read aloud and discuss the stories and articles that we have been looking at. 

Hopefully next term we will be able to reenter our classes and try and regain some sense of normality with our learning. This term has definitely been an interesting one and we are really hoping that we will be able to get back to level 2 close to the beginning of the term. Due to the uncertainty we will continue to be ready to teach online but I know like many of my fellow Auckland teachers we would love to be back in the class with our learners as soon as possible!

Inquiry during lockdown

We are currently in lockdown which has seen a bit of a set back with my inquiry. During our last CoL meeting we were asked to think about how we can continue on our inquiry during lockdown and I have gained some great insight into how I can still work on this while completing remote learning from some of the other CoL teachers. 

In the next few weeks before the end of term I am going to try and have break out sessions with each of my reading groups using online texts. This will still give the students the opportunity to read with me at least once a week and have targeted follow up activities related to what they have been learning for that day. 

What are the challenges?
Some of the challenges that I have seen so far especially with my target group is these group of learners tend to be the ones not turning up to our google meets online. I can see that some of them are still blogging the learning from the class site but are not turning up to our scheduled google meet times. I can see that it is a challenging time for many of our students and their whanāu at this time and will continue to see what I can do to keep up learner engagement and getting the students online to google meets. 

Class site and word work:
As a team we have been planning collectivity on the site and trying to keep the students engaged and turning up to our google meets and completing the learning online. We have done this through having a different topic for the students to learn about each day. They will need to turn up to the class site each morning to see that the learning is. We have continued to focus on vocabulary by having word work for the day. Each day the students will have a new word to learn where they will have to find the definition of the word and think about how they can use this in their reading and writing for the day. 

Response to text:
Another thing we have been working on as a team is to give students the opportunity to access a different reading each day. This article is teacher created about the topic that we are learning about for the day. With my class we have been reading this on our 9am meets where students are given the opportunity to read aloud. After these we have created a number of response to text questions that the students will need to answer. These include multiple choice answer as well as written answers related to what they have just read.  I have found that by going through the as a class on our 11am meet most of my students will complete this activity so they can answer the questions online. I have also made it so those who potentially need more help with this type of questioning can follow along and fill out the answers as we are learning as well.  I have found that most of the students love this and love being able to share what answers they got with everyone on the meet. 

Next steps:
I am going to continue on having the response to text sessions as well as focusing on word work each day in my online sessions. I am also going to include as best as possible online guided reading sessions for each of my reading groups so that students are being given differentiated texts to read each week. I am going to try and keep this model similar to how we would have run reading in class to try and keep a little bit of normality in our class with these interesting times that we are facing. 

In reflection I think it is so important for our students to be working at their own pace as there will be many things going on at home as well. My learners who do turn up to meets are really excited to continue on with learning and seem to really enjoy the smaller reading group times that we have completed so far. So this is something that I will continue to work on. Student wellbeing is first and foremost the most important part of our online learning along with still trying to balance student achievement and to try and continue on with my inquiry. 

Collection of information around implementation

My next step and part of my inquiry is to see how I can collect information around what I have implemented in the classroom in regards to my inquiry question. I will discuss these ideas in detail below. 

Spelling: In order to see how my students are going with vocabulary I will be running weekly spelling tests. We will have a pretest on Monday before the students have seen the words to see how many of these words they are able to spell correctly. We will then have a post test on Friday morning where the students have had to opportunity to practice and use these specific words for the week. I will then compare pre and post test data to see how they students are going with the new words. These will be recorded in an excel spreadsheet each week along with how much time the learners were given to practice their spelling in class time that week. 

Anecdotal notes: I would like to each week work with students individually on my CoL release and listen to the students read aloud one on one. During these session I will record anecdotal notes to see what are the key areas that each individual students needs to work on with decoding and comprehension. With some of my target learners I have found many of them will read too quickly and often miss out the endings of words which again can have an effect on the meaning of those particular words. I will record this by using a google doc with the date and notes that I have taken during that particular session. 

Word wall: I will continue using this in the classroom I will access how this is used by seeing if the students are using these words in conversations, discussions along with writing and research tasks they are completing each week. 

Spot check running records: I will continue to complete running records when I feel that a student in my target group has made some progress and may need to be tested at the next level. Again I can use this data with detailed notes from the running records to see how the students are progressing and also gain perspective on the areas of learning that are required. 

Restating my inquiry question

We are now at the beginning of term 3 which means that we are halfway through the year. In our CoL meeting this week we have been asked to think about our inquiry question and make sure that we have not lost sight of the main goal that we set out at the beginning of this inquiry. We have been asked to restate our questions. This is something that I have been thinking a lot about in my planning for learning this term as well as looking at my data collected at the end of last term from running records and annotations from guided reading sessions. My questions still remains however I am still continuing to look at those other students of mine who are currently sitting at where they need to be for reading. These students are almost a extra target group of mine to focus on to make sure that even though they are where they need to be now they are still getting that push to the next bracket to make sure they wont begin the year next year below where they need to be. 

Inquiry Question: How can I change my teaching to support my students who are reading between the ages of 8 - 9 years in order to make the shift required in reading. 

My hypothesis is around vocabulary being an important aspect of reading acceleration for not only my target group of learners but also all of my learners in the classroom. 

Updated data

This is the data that I have collected from our mid year reports and running record data that was completed at the end of term 2. The first graph shows reading ages from the PM running records from Feb 2021 and then again in June 2021. You can see there is a slight increase for some of the target learners with some still sitting at the same reading age. I have also looked at the PM reading level data from Feb 2021 and June 2021 which can be seen below. 

Again this data show that there are some improvements in reading levels from the beginning of the year to now and there are some that have still stayed the same. 

Where to next?
From looking at this data and the running record notes that I have taken there are some areas that need further development and learning. I did notice that some of my students were more equiped in the running records to answer the vocabulary questions and are trying hard to read in new vocabulary. This is something that we will continue to work on during this term. Along with other aspects of comprehension. The majority of my students passed the reading and decoding part of the text but it was the comprehension that showed there were some gaps in the learning which is what we will focus on this term.