Causal Chain

One thing that I have been working on when looking at my inquiry is creating a casual chain. Below I have shared my casual chain where I have looked at my inquiry focus question in detail and have thought about how I can show changes in my students achievement. My focus question is 

How can I help my students reading between the ages of 9 and 10 years make accelerated progress?

Some key things that I have been looking at is 

• Comprehension strategies specially applied knowledge and inferring. 
• Extended discussion and how I can help my students to be able to do this independently. 
• Vocabulary that is specific and academic that the students are being exposed to. 

In some of my previous posts I have talked about why I have chosen to look at these areas as well as what I might try differently in the classroom to have accelerated shift in reading. I have outlined these in a lot more detail in my casual chain below. 

Formulating an Hypothesis

During out CoL PLG's we have been asked to formulate a hypothesis around out research question. We have looked at this serval times over our last few CoL PLG's and have been asked to share thoughts, ideas and readings with our fellow CoL colleagues. I have uploaded a screenshot of my hunches and how they have changed and evolved from having conversations with CoL colleagues as well as other colleagues.

Formulating a Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a tentative answer to your research question that has not yet been tested. 

How to formulate? The simplest way is to use this form: if...then…

1. “If I encourage my students to write for real reasons, then they will be motivated to write.”

2. “If I focus on extending their 'on-task' behaviour with strategies to manage themselves then they will improve their writing.”

3. “An emphasis on behavioural and cognitive engagement as well as teaching social skills will enhance my students’ ability to focus and increase their writing skills"

The readings that I have discussed in prior posts have helped to structure this. As you can see we having been working on this since the very start of May and it is now the beginning of June and there has been a lot of reading, a lot of research and now hopefully a solid hypothesis to my CoL inquiry question. 

Class OnAir: Claude Monet Art

Last term our school theme was "Art Works" and our teams focus question was how can I express myself through the arts. I created a lesson for Class OnAir this term that incorporated my reading and writing through art. I thought this lesson fit in really well with my inquiry and shows the links that I have been trying to make between reading and writing. This term I was lucky enough to add art into the mix. Please check out my lesson below:

The learning intention for this lesson was to research, investigate and understand the artist Claude Monet and his famous artworks. This lesson shows a whole class reading lesson where the students learn all about Claude Monet's life and paintings. This lesson also shows the students sharing their facts and ideas with each other. Finally this lesson shows the students creating one of Claude Monet's famous paintings. 

I really enjoyed teaching this lesson even though it was a bit stressful with the paint! You can check out the full lesson plan and extended reflection here. During the term we had also been an art critic looking at some of Claude Monet's work which was really nice to tie in at the end of the term.