Target Group Selection

My target learners are students who are reading from the age of 9-12.5 years. Their learning levels are either just below or at where they need to be. What I want to do is focus on how to extend these learners to be at or above moving into year 7. Common trends that I have noticed is that these students are able to decode really well however when it comes to answering questions that require critical thinking such as applied knowledge, vocabulary and inference questions they struggle. Observations from these reading groups show that there are some confident students in these groups who will share their thoughts and feelings but there is no discussion and often they don’t even refer to the text for their answers. Observations from Vosaic shows that there is a lot of teacher lead discussion, with questions and answers and I am often having to prompt students to share their ideas with each other.

Ways in which I might be able to clarify my problem is through formative assessment looking at PAT reading and STAR as well as running record data from previous years. I will also compare this to 2025 testing data. From observations during literacy sessions I will be able to see students' behaviours towards reading. I will conduct a reader profile in order to see students' attitudes towards reading. I would like to look into research about language acquisition and see if there are some assessments that I can use to see the change in this throughout the year.

Potential tools and measures:

• Formative assessment
• Performance in current testing round
• Classroom behaviours
• Language Acquisition
• Attendance data
• EdPotenial data (longitudinal)

Target Group Selection

My target group has slightly evolved over the last few weeks as I had intended to focus on a group of students that were across two different reading groups however I have had a few students not return to Pt England this year. So what I am in the process of doing is combing both of these reading groups and having them all as my group of target students for 2024. Below I will outline some of the ways in which I have selected this group of students to be my target group. 

2023 Data

The first thing that I did was look at the data from 2023 and see what their end of year running record age and level was. I have also looked at end of year PAT data to gauge where these students are. 

2024 PAT Data

Now that we have finished testing and I can see the PAT data from this year I have had a overall look at the data across my team and class. From this I have then looked at the students that I had initially selected as my target group and the students around similar reading ages who have returned to Pt England this year and I have had a deep dive into their PAT reading and star tests which I have recored and will show later on this term. 

Classroom Observations

As stated in one of my previous blog posts I used observations of students and what they are showing during our reading lessons. I have observed through guided reading sessions to see how students interact with each other and how they share ideas in a group. I have observed students reading aloud in a guided reading session. I have also observed these learners during independent reading time to notice what might be happening for them in reading. 

Learner survey

Finally I have used the data collected from my learner survey to see what trends there are in the responses of students and how they feel about learning. 

Each of these things that I have looked at has contributed to why I have selected this group of students to be my target learners this year. Along with the discussions I have had with senior leaders and other colleagues. 

Looking at 2022 data

 2022 Focus

This year my inquiry focus continues to look at reading and raising reading achievement. This year I have identified my target group as those students who are reading between the ages of 8-9 years. This group of learners are either currently considered to be at where they should be or just below. I have found looking at previous years data of my own there tends to be a group of students who finish year 5 and are still reading at this level when moving to year 6 and they almost seem "stuck" (for lack of a better word) at these levels. This year I would like to try and find out why this is and what I can do as a teacher to help my learners make this shift before falling behind as they go up the school. 

Hunches

I have been thinking about this for a little while now and with some discussion with some of my other colleagues these are some of the hunches that I have so far that I will need to look into:

• Students are having to pass 2 reading tests (levels) in order to make it to the next year bracket in reading. I have noticed that some of my students may pass one of the levels but stay reading at the same age and then seem to get stuck getting to that next level. 
• The questions to pass are increased at this level of text, applied knowing and inferencing becomes a big part of being able to pass the text. They now need to pass at least 6 of the 8 questions rather than 4 of the 6 questions in previous texts. 
• Vocabulary and inferencing are areas that need work. Looking at the test data and what areas the students are needing work on these are gaps and struggles with inferencing and understanding what the vocabulary means in different contexts. 

I will look into these hunches in more detail throughout the term. This target group so far has been obtained from just looking at the data from last year, I will reassess and look at this data once I have the students in front of my in the classroom and see what areas are needing the most attention. So watch this space!

CoL Inquiry: Identifying the problem

This year I am going to again inquire into reading. I had the opportunity to have fantastic reading PD which I would like to continue working on and developing in my class this year. I have a large number of year 5 learners who are reading between the ages of 7.5 and 9 years. This is a trend that I have also seen when teaching in year 6. This seems to be an age and level where a lot of our learners are "stuck" (for lack of a better word). This is something that I have been keeping an eye on over the last few years and now teaching in a year 5 space would like to try and figure out what is holding these learners back at this reading age. 

Collaboration: 

I have had a discussion with Latini Ilaoa one of the year 7/8 teachers at Pt England School who is also looking into reading as her inquiry this year also. Latini has a number of learners who are reading between the ages of 8-9.5 years also. We would like to work with together this year and along with some other teachers to look into this. 

Target group:

So far I have identified my target group of students shown in the table below. For the next few weeks I will continue to note down what I am seeing from each of these students during  guided reading sessions and see if there are patterns in what they are struggling with and if they are similar. 

Student	Actual Age	Reading Age	Reading Level PM
A	9	7.5	20
B	9	7.5	20
C	9.5	7.5	20
D	9.5	8	21
E	9.5	8	22
F	8.5	8	22
G	9	8.5	24

Next steps: 

I would like to look back at the last few years of students running records and see if there is a trend with their data and achievement. I will also look at each of their running records and see if there is a specific area that is holding these students back from making progress in their reading. I would also like to talk with some of the other CoL teachers regarding their inquires and see if there are any links or similarities that we are finding. 

Reading Target Group Update

 Before we entered into lockdown level 3 in Auckland I had been reading with my target group every day. To start with I began by just listening to each of my learners from this target group read to see what were they key areas that each of these learners needed help with. I started to add details from each of the sessions that I read with them to kind these key areas and again look to see if there were trends with my learners reading at the same level or if it was something that all my learners need to work on. Below is some of my notes gathered during reading sessions. 

A	03/08 - Puppy at the Door B and p sounds need to work  Sounding out names of people in the story needs work When reading a bit faster will add in extra words  Needs to look at word endings and read in correctly.  Is able to comprehend what she has read and answer questions about it.  27/07 - Dad, the Bird Caller  Needs to work on sounding out new words. Is able to reread when she comes across a word that doesn’t seem to fit into the sentence. Needs to work on rereading in new vocabulary that she comes across.
B	03/08 - Puppy at the Door Read as scraping word is scratching  Sounding out names of people in the story needs work Discovered instead of disappeared  Is able to comprehend what he has read and need to work on making summaries shorter and just the right amount of detail.  27/07 - Dad, the Bird Caller  Needs to work on sounding out new words, will just come to a word and pause. Needs to work on reading in new vocabulary for meaning. Will add in words when unsure of the words in the story.
C	03/08 - Puppy at the Door Sounding out names of people in the story needs work Needs to focus on looking at word endings and making sure that she is reading them in correctly. Will look at word endings.  Needs to work on comprehension of what she has read.  27/07 - Dad, the Bird Caller  Vienna adds in extra words as she is reading if she is unsure of the words. Needs to reread sentences for accuracy and clarity. (He made the in the (his) bedroom). Needs to work on reading in new vocabulary.
D	03/08 - Bend, Stretch and Leap  Tries to sound out words that she is unsure of. Need to check word endings to make sure that she is reading in the correct ending. If unsure of a word will look for pictures as clues to help with new words.  Victory instead of visitor - knows the meaning of the word victor but couldn’t figure out that it was visitor.
E	27/07 - Why People Should Visit Uluru  “When the sun is rising (When the sun rises)” He reads what he thinks makes more sense to him rather than what makes sense in the text. When unsure of how to read a word adds in extra words. Needs to work on reading in new vocabulary.
F	03/08 - Bend, Stretch and Leap  Word endings  Reading for meaning, work on stopping and correcting if the sentence doesn’t make sense. Good at making predictions on what will happen next and finding literal meaning of the story.  27/07 - Why People Should Visit Uluru  Needs to work on reading new vocabulary into sentences.  Also needs to work on making sure what she has read makes sense in the sentence and also what is going on.
G	27/07 - Why People Should Visit Uluru  Needs to work on sounding out new words will just pause when he gets to a  word that he is unsure of.  Needs to work on reading vocabulary into sentences for meaning.

After looking at what each of my learners needed to work on I was able to see that some of my learners had similar needs with their reading and others needed a different focus. As a staff at Pt England this year we are going to be looking at the Gwenneth Phillips prompts so that we are all on the same page with teaching reading and also our learners no matter what age and stage they are will know the prompts throughout the school. I will be working on using these in my group teaching sessions specifically with my target reading group. I hope after a few sessions my learners will be able to understand and notice these prompts and think about them as they are reading. 

I will continue to document reading sessions with these learners to see if I can notice improvements and changes in reading areas they need to work on. I will also try and record a reading session to see my own teaching practice and what I need to work on to make sure I am using the prompts correctly and effectively. 

Reading Inquiry 2020

Change of direction

With the change and things happening this year I have changed the focus of my inquiry back to reading for the second half of 2020. For this half of the year I am going to be building on some of the things that I have already put in place in the class and where I can make the next impact for my learners. I have selected a reading group to focus on which is my learners reading at levels 18-20 reading ages 7-7.5 years. 

This is a similar focus to my MIT inquiry last year but this year I will be building on the turquoise and purple part of my inquiry. Last year I was just focusing on reading mileage and having generic activities for the learners to complete on their own. This years focus is on my direct teaching in a small group and how I can teach the correct skills to my target group to make progress. 

Keeping it consistent...We are actually looking at reading and reading prompts as a whole staff so that we are all teaching the same tools that can be picked up and used anywhere in the school. This will mean that we are all on the same page on the prompts as well as the next steps and strategies that each of the students need to work on. 

The prompts that we are currently using a the Blue to Gold prompts where we are getting the learners to look at what they have read and think about if what they have read is right and accurate. 

I have been working with my new target group of students and spending the last few sessions observing key things that they are struggling with so that I can build on this after I have discovered with the problem for each of my learners is and what they need to build on. I will be continuing for the next few weeks to listen to what the learners are needing to work on and looking into the best way to teach these strategies. Watch this space!