Beyond a Blackboard

 In my last blog post, I looked at the overall trends in my data to get a better understanding of my student challenge. Overall I recognised that my students have low confidence/motivation, struggle to comprehend the key ideas in a text and need strategies to make sense of unfamiliar words. After identifying the student challenge, I went on a bit of a mission to scour through research literature to understand the pedagogy that might cause it.  Metacognitive Reading Strategies Can Improve Self-Regulation .  Susan Nash-Ditzel (2014) As I recognised that these students have some similar challenges to my 2020 target group, I began looking at literature that related to this, specifically about students not identifying when they don't understand something. Nash-Ditzel (2014) looked at students whose teachers had taught reading strategies such as questioning, but did not teach the students to be metacognitive  - to recognise when they needed to apply them. This case study f...

 Throughout term one, I collected and analysed sources of student data to identify what was causing my students progress in reading to stall. I used both summative/formative assessment (PAT/ Probe/ ARBs/ Student's learning in class) and collected student voice through an interview and survey.  I analysed some of these in greater depth and posted about them here and here . In this post I will be looking at the trends I discovered after analysing all of my student data. This will enable me to identify the aspects of reading that my intervention needs to address, as I will be aware of the things that my students struggle with. Low motivation/ confidence From my student voice collection - both my interview and survey, the students expressed a disinterest in reading. Only one student reported reading for fun outside of literacy class and shared that reading is their favourite subject. The other students all shared that they prefer other subjects and don't feel very good about read...

Over the last few weeks, I have been conducting a mini inquiry to identify trends in my current practice. One limitation that I have had throughout this inquiry is that I am focussing on my literacy practice but currently do not have my literacy class (and will have gone almost a term without teaching them). Instead, I have been analysing my literacy practice with my maths class, which may slightly alter what I notice. I am aware of this and will be conducting some further data gathering at the start of next term, to get some more baseline data for my inquiry and to reflect further on my practice. I used three sources of data to inform this inquiry, a student voice survey, an analysis of my planning/ student activities and an observation of my teaching. I have interpreted each of these independently and I am now making connections between them and the literature that I have read on this topic. My focus question for this was: how am I supporting my students to monitor their own unde...

My 2020 CoL Inquiry Focus: “Will reading across the curriculum lead to improved reading outcomes?" The Manaiakalani Community of Learning is working together on this task using the expertise existing in of our community of learning. I have selected the achievement challenge of:  Increase the achievement in Years 7-10, in Reading, Writing, and Maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets. The teaching as inquiry framework I will continue to use in 2020 has been specifically co-constructed for Manaiakalani schools using our familiar Learn Create Share structure. Throughout the year, I will be labelling my blog posts to reflect our Learn, Create, Share structure. LEvidence Learn - Gather Evidence CPlan Create - Make a plan SPublish Share - Publish LScan Learn - Scan CTry Create - Try new things SCoteach Share - Co-teach LTrend Learn - Identify Trends CInnovate Create - Innov...