Dreaming of 2025...

What achievement challenge are you considering as an area of focus in 2023 and why? Include in your WHY both evidence and your own passion/expertise

Achievement challenge 3 lifting reading achievement. I believe that reading is key for our students to be able to do well as it opens access to all other areas of the curriculum. My passion is reading for this reason and I believe is one of the reasons that I enjoy teaching it as it is not just closed off to one curriculum area. The data that I have seen so far shows that many of my students have been reading around 10 years and this suggests that they are needing to develop that critical thinking and extended discussion during reading. From previous data I have found that students are struggling to read and comprehend the questions that they are seeing in PAT maths and Star along with reading. It can be seen that they are unable to infer meaning or apply knowledge. I have found that many students do enjoy reading while they are in a guided reading session and that extended discussion and critical thinking can come through. I am trying to build on that while they are completing follow up tasks and working independently. This group of students have started to show an understanding of inferring but are lacking the critical thinking skills to understand the text in greater detail. As a school we have also been talking about the importance of extended discussion and how we can make sure this is happening when the students are not with the teacher. A possible question could be how can I facilitate extended discussion to happen with my students when they are working independently? Another thing that I have been thinking about as I have been looking at my data is the students' understanding of maths terms and vocabulary which could be hindering them from answering questions correctly. 

What learnings from the 2017 - 2024 CoL teacher inquiries have informed or inspired your thinking.

Working with other CoL teachers this year and being able to share in the process of what is going on for my inquiry as well as the inquiry of others has been really beneficial this year. I have been extended in my own thinking which has made me think outside the box. 

Some key inquiries I have been inspired and interested in have been 

• Dee Karl 2024 - Bringing real-world texts and experiences into literacy activities. Focusing not just on students reading books but allowing the students to have texts that are meaningful and relevant to their own lives so that they can see themselves in the texts. 

• Robyn Anderson's inquiry from 2022 about the enjoyment and passion that students have for reading and to take ownership of choosing books to read for enjoyment along with what we are reading and learning about in class. 

• Clarelle’s inquiry from 2021 where she looked at the critical thinking of students linked in with my 2021 inquiry using vocabulary to strengthen students' knowledge. 

How would your work support Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa?

There are many ways that this work would support Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa: 

• It reflects the value of learn, create and share. It reflects the focus of Manaiakalani schools next year looking into raising reading achievement along with how we can ensure that we are planning for and having extended discussions with the students. 

• Collaboration with other colleagues as well as students. 

• Supporting connected and empowered learners. 

Which elements of the extensive Manaiakalani research findings inform or challenge you as you think about this?

Manaiakalani observations have shown that extended discussion is an area that could have some development and be seen more in teaching. Manaiakalani research further investigates critical thinking and the use of generic reading tasks in order to focus more time and energy into planning as well being able to hopefully allow for that extended discussion of learners. Being part of Manaiakalani Reading Practice intensive this year I hope to carry on my learnings from this and the research that we have looked at to further strengthen my own teaching as well as aligning with Manaialakani research findings. 

How would you like to be supported in 2025 as you undertake this inquiry?

The opportunities for regular discussions with other colleagues around our inquiries and how we can help and guide each other. I have found this really useful this year. Continuing to focus on academic data and research to make changes to my own practice. Along with the support of other teachers as well as the Manaiakalani team. 

How would you plan to support your colleagues in your school with THEIR inquiries and/or teaching in the area you are exploring?

Being available for collaboration with others within my school with similar inquiries. Supporting other teachers within my own team with findings from my inquiry to help build on their own inquiries as well as the direction we are going in a team. Supporting my colleagues through the running of workshops, sharing knowledge and offering assistance and ideas where needed. Working collaboratively within my team and other teams in the school. Ensuring that at a team level we are spending time in our team meetings looking at our inquiries and how we can help each other as well as sharing our inquiries so that we can use these within our own classes as well. 

CoL Evaluation 2024

The time has come to evaluate my CoL inquiry from this year. I have really enjoyed completing my inquiry this year and I feel that it was more focused around student input and engagement. With being part of RPI this year I also had the opportunity to work alongside some experts in the field of reading and make changes to my practice that were meaningful and well research. If you have check out my bursts and bubbles presentation you will see that I have rated my intervention as successful and I will outline some of these key successes in this blog post below.

Students Confidence It has been great to see over the year how the confidence of my readers has grown not only with their read aloud's but also being able to have conversations with each other as they are reading. One of the best things that I did was make these groups slightly smaller breaking my target group into two small subsets of a group. From this I also made sure that there was a mixture of already established friendships in the class which allowed for the students to feel more comfortable sharing with each other. This had a huge impact on the discussions that were happening during guided reading as well as during follow up task time. With having a few year 5's in this group I am looking forward to continuing to develop this going into 2025.

Reading Achievement As I said in my bursts and bubbles pretension I have some running record data back from our tester and have seen that at least two of my students so far have made 1.5 years progress within a year with reading. I will be continuing to conduct PROBE tests with this group to compare data from the beginning and end of year. I will continue to update the data as it comes in and hope in the next few weeks I will be able to share this data in a graph.

Students Attitudes and Beliefs Another great piece of data that I have been able to collect this year was the reader profile survey data. This was incredibly interesting to track and follow. I am please to say that the majority of my class rated themselves as good reader who love to read for enjoyment and not just because they have to at school. It was also incredible to see the shift in views of how the students feel that their teachers and whānau view them as readers.

Teacher Changes As I said above I really enjoyed this inquiry this year and I feel that I have grown a lot as a teacher from this. I have more focused reading planning and have a range of different tools and resources that I am now using in the classroom. I am excited to continue on using these tools into next year, I feel that I have found my passion again for reading and am really enjoying my reading planning that I am doing.

I think this has been an overall successful inquiry for the students in my class this year. The key takeaway for me at the moment is to make sure that I am following through with this again next year to see how this can impact my next lot of learners and I am sure there are a multitude of changes that I will continue to make to my practice along the way.

Bursts & Bubbles

Last week I had the pleasure to present my CoL inquiry at Bursts and Bubbles which was hosted by Panmure Bridge School. I have just added in the video recording of my pretension incase you missed it and want to check it out, I have also added in a previous blog post my script if you would prefer to read than watch the presentation. 

Reflection - Bursts and Bubbles

My inquiry question for this year was: Will implementing talk moves and collaborative activities during guided reading sessions enhance my students' confidence, facilitate meaningful group discussions, and improve their reading comprehension? I identified this as my focus after noticing many students were reading below their expected reading level and often couldn’t explain what they’d just read to their peers. This made me ask the question: what is really holding these students back and what can I do in my teaching to help these students become more confident readers.

To build a picture of my students' learning I looked at a range of different data such as Running Records, Probe, PAT’s, Anecdotal notes and reader profile surveys. I've broken this down extensively on my blog. 

The main patterns of student learning I identified in the profiling stage was that while students understood what they were reading, they struggled to put it into words for their group. These students were also able to answer literal questions from the text but got stuck on anything that required deeper thinking or making inferences.

From speaking to other colleagues, I found that many of our students encountered similar obstacles—building confidence and engaging in extended discussions was challenging for them. I was fortunate enough to be part of the Manaiakalani Reading Practice Intensive this year which provided me with a range of tools and resources to explore. After exploring research, I discovered strategies that could make a difference, such as using open-ended questions to encourage students to elaborate on their thoughts or respectfully challenge each other’s ideas.

The changes I made to my teaching was first introducing ground rules for talk, giving students a safe space to share, talk, and be heard. We started things off with light-hearted “Would you rather?” questions to ease students in and build their confidence. Gradually, we moved on to sharing their thoughts about what they were reading. I also added activities where students recorded themselves reading, completed response to text tasks, and worked together on vocabulary activities. We even used picture prompts to practise inferencing and discuss what the students had observed.

One of the easiest changes was creating structured follow-up activities for collaborative work after guided reading. Some of the challenges included building students' confidence to share with each other during small group reading. We spent a lot of time working on smaller, approachable conversation starters as a group. 

Overall, I would rate the changes in my students' learning as successful. My students can now confidently discuss texts with each other, leading to richer, more meaningful discussions. My mid-year data showed that most of my students made at least six months' progress. The small end-of-year data that I have available so far indicates a further year's reading progress for some of my students. 

A highlight from this year for me was comparing students' reader profile surveys from Term 1 to Term 4. Most students now genuinely enjoy reading, both in and out of school. The majority of my students also now see themselves as good readers—and believe their teachers and whānau share this view.

So what's the most important learning I made about my inquiry? Confidence and conversation are powerful tools in engaging students with their reading and helping them make inferences. My target students are now excited about reading and eager to share their ideas with each other.