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!

2018 Maths Inquiry

This year I will continue to inquire into my mathematical teaching and how to improve in my own practice so that my students are getting the best out of their teaching time. This year my focus question is: How to get my learners to use and understand mathematical vocabulary. I have found from the beginning of this year that there are many terms and vocabulary words that my learners are still unsure of in year 6. 

 

I want to focus on ensuring that my learners are getting all of the vocabulary they need in maths in order to succeed. I am going to set up a maths vocabulary word wall so that all of the new terms that we come across and discuss as a class will be accessible to my learners at all times. I also want to make sure that my classroom is a space where my learners aren't afraid to ask questions when they are unsure of the terms that I have used in my teaching. We have been working as a whole class to make sure that we are asking questions if we are unsure and also when answering mathematical questions we are referring back to the items that we are using in our problems so that they have more meaning and the knowledge will hopefully stick.