Tools, Measures and Approaches

From our last CoL meeting we were asked to think about the tools, measures and approaches that we might use this year as well as having baseline data to compare our inquiry to for the end of the year. In this blog post I have outlines some of the tools, measures and approaches that I will use as baseline data for my learners which has continued to from and shape my inquiry.

PAT Reading Test
Looking at raw data from this test as well as a deep dive into the type of questions that students were able to answer and those that were a struggle and see if there is a trend in this data.

PAT STAR
Looking at raw data from this test as well as a deep dive into the type of questions that students were able to answer and those that were a struggle and see if there is a trend in this data.

Running Records
Exploring running records from 2024 as well as previous years for each of the students to see if there are trends in this data and what areas these students might be getting "stuck."

Attendance Data

I would like to have a look at this data to see if there are any trends into this and what the attendance is like with this group of students.

Student & Whānau Voice
Completing a student survey around attitudes and feelings towards reading. I would also like to hear what Whānau think about their children's reading and what we can do to work together to have student success.

Observation Data

We have been using Vosaic to analyse our teaching and share things that we can work on in our teaching. I would like to use this for my teaching as well as with these groups of students while they are completing follow up tasks to see the shifts and trends throughout the year.

Reader Profile Survey Results: Term 1

As part of my inquiry this year, I’ve started by gathering student voice through a Reader Profile Survey. This was something that we did last year for RPI and is something that I have decided to do again this year as well as get my team to try and do in their classes. From this survey in term 1 here are some key findings:

A number of students reported that they don’t read very often outside of school. This is something I’ll need to consider when thinking about how to support reading mileage and reading habits beyond the classroom.

Confidence levels are mixed. Some students feel comfortable sharing their ideas and participating in discussions, but others are still very quiet and hesitant. This lines up with what I’ve been seeing during group reading time, where a few confident students carry the conversation while others hang back.

Talking about reading isn’t yet the norm. The data suggests that many students aren’t regularly discussing what they read, either in class or at home. Encouraging these conversations will be a key part of my focus this term.

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)

Discussion with Colleagues and School Leaders

So far this year, our staff meetings have been focused on setting our inquiry direction for 2025. As a school, we are continuing to prioritise raising achievement in reading and maths, which reflects the needs we have seen across our learners.

After reviewing my 2024 data, spending time observing my students in reading sessions, and having valuable discussions with colleagues and school leaders, I have decided to continue my focus on reading for this year's inquiry. While my focus area remains similar to previous years, I want to refine and deepen my approach based on what I am seeing in my current class. This year, my inquiry will centre on raising reading achievement for students who are currently reading between the ages of 9 and 12.5 years. I will continue to focus on developing critical thinking skills and encouraging extended discussion during reading sessions. Through my observations so far, I have noticed that some students are confident and naturally lead group discussions, while others tend to sit quietly and rely on their peers. I want to find ways to empower all learners to contribute meaningfully to discussions, share their ideas confidently, and strengthen their reading comprehension through richer conversations.

Bringing Every Reader Into the Conversation – My 2025 Inquiry Focus

Last week we had our first CoL PLG for the year and our focus before our next session is the summarise the challenge of student learning. One of the cluster goals this year is 1.5 years progress inside a year, focusing on the big three of reading, writing and maths. As a school we have found the key areas that we want to focus on with those being reading and maths. From looking at my data and my reflections from being part of RPI last year I would like to continue my focus on reading. Being part of the Reading Practice Intensive (RPI), gave me lots of practical strategies and helped shape the way I thought about reading in my classroom. This year, I’m keen to build on that learning and continue to focus my inquiry on reading, digging deeper into what my learners need, and how I can better support them.

At the end of last year when I was looking at the data for 2025 and presenting my ideas for CoL 2025 my thought process of what I wanted to look at for this year was to extend my students who at or just below where they should be for reading and focus on critical thinking and extended discussion. From looking at 2024 data for these students in my class I would like to focus my inquiry on my students who are reading between the ages of 9 and 12.5 years.

I have spend the first few weeks of this term observing my learners in reading and have found that there are two extremes in this group of students. There is a number of students who are confident and really like sharing their thoughts and ideas in guided reading lessons, however there are a large number of students in these groups who rely on these confident ones to share and will just sit back and not take part in these discussions. I have completed a reader profile survey in week 1 and I will share the results of this in another blog post but it was really interesting to see the students thoughts and feelings around reading.

The main challenge that I can see my learners are facing is being able to have conversations and discussions as a group with everyone being able to share their thoughts and ideas. I want to be able to build a space where students love to read and share what they have read with each other. This is the transition from learning to read to reading to learn and this is what I want to empower my learners with this year.

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.