Inquiry Focus 2023

Inquiry Focus Question

This year my inquiry focus question is: 

How can I develop the dialogic discourse ability of my children so they can freely engage in discussions about a text and what effect will this have on their vocabulary and comprehension?

It is widely acknowledged that there is a reciprocal relationship between oral language influencing reading development, and reading influencing oral language development. The National Reading Panel’s (2000; p.230) historic report points out: “Vocabulary occupies an important position in learning to read. As a learner begins to read, reading vocabulary encountered in texts is mapped onto the oral vocabulary the learner brings to the task….The reader learns to translate the (relatively) unfamiliar words in print into speech, with the expectation that the speech forms will be easier to comprehend. … When the word is not in the learner’s oral vocabulary, it will not be understood when it occurs in print.” Therefore oral language and vocabulary development is crucial to improving reading comprehension. 

The Problem

Generally speaking, many of literacy student's struggle to engage in discourse about a text. I suspect this is due to a potential number of reasons such as:

• Feeling shy, anxious or worried about sharing. Sharing in a group is a vulnerable thing to do even for adults. The unknown responses from others in the group can cause a reluctance to share. 
• Having a 'can't be bothered' attitude. 
• They don't know how to have a discussion. 

Proposed Solution/Hunches

I suspect the process to developing the dialogic discourse ability of my children will require a number of actions:

• Creating a safe classroom culture where every contribution is valued and respected. 
• Getting buy-in from the kids. Demonstrating the importance of being able to share your thinking and opinions.
• Explicitly teaching/modelling how to have a discussion. This includes outlining Rules for Talk.

• Using texts that are engaging and provocations that evoke discussion. 

Next steps

Attain some baseline data such as:

• Easttle reading  results
• PAT vocabulary result
• Observe children having a discussion about a text recording what takes place

Reading Practice Intensive Day 3 - Reflection

Day 3 of the Reading Practice Intensive gave me a lot to think about. Here are some of my leanrings and take aways. 

Summarising

In his work on teaching summarising, Timothy Shanahan's suggest an important part step is for teachers to model deleting the information that isn't necessary from a text. This was new to me when it comes to summarising and makes a lot of sense. Usually my focus has highlighting important pieces of information however this isn't any easy thing to do and deleting the information that isn't necessary may a more effective strategy. I look forward to using this with my kids. 

Mixed Groups

Historically I have used levelled groups when it comes to my reading program i.e students with similar reading ages are grouped together. After today, I am interested in incorporating mixed and flexible grouping into my reading program. There are many to consider in doing this however I think providing flexible grouping will be beneficial for my kids. 

 

T Shaped Literacy

I found the discussion around text sets interesting, in particular T-Shaped Literacy

The T-Shape Literacy Model (Wilson & Jesson, 2019) proposes that learners’ literacy learning can be enhanced when they read a range of texts (represented by the horizontal bar of the “T”) to explore a unifying concept in a deep way (as represented by the vertical bar).  - From RPI Day 3 content

Over the coming term I will be endeavouring to incorporate the T-Shape Literacy Model into my text selection process. 

Reading Practice Intensive Day 2 - Reflection

Toaday was day 2 of the Manaiakalani Reading Practise Intensive. The focus of toad was around knowing your leaners as readers. 

One of the biggest learnings for me was around tracking our kids progress. In teaching, there are so many pieces of relevant information that needs to be used to assess children's learning needs and design their learning. The challenge can be storing this information so that it is easily accessible. Today we were introduced to a comprehensive digital Teacher's Workbook that can be used to not only hold the information but plan for leanring as well - a one stop shop as such! Though initially the Teacher Workbook look overwhelming due to the number of tabs it's easy to see that in the long run a tracking and planning document like this will be of great value to my teaching practise.

I was also reminded how much useful and valuable information there is through analysing the PAT data of my children. I can use it to see common gaps in my students reading comprehension and then design specific leanring tasks to tend to them.  I'm interested as to what I'll find out.

 

Reading Practise Intensive

Today was the first day of the Manaiakalani Reading Practise Intensive. A course aimed developing our knowledge and ability of teaching reading effectively.  There is much to take away and digest but below are my initial wonderings

Reading for enjoyment

I'm not someone who naturally enjoys reading.  I wouldn't sit down and read a book for pleasure. For whatever reason I never got that bug.  While this is the case, I do still read but when there is a reason to, like when I want to learn something specific. Today, one of the readings mentioned that for people who enjoy reading "reading was about finding pleasure, wellbeing, connection, relationship, meaning, and a sense of identity in the world". It struck me that the benefits of enjoying to read went far beyond having fun with the inclusion of better wellbeing, connections and relationships etc. This has got me wondering how can develop not only my own desire, but the desire of the kids in my class to want to read. How can I instil in them a love of reading?

Student choice 

My other wondering has been how can I incorporate greater student choice within my reading program. Greater choice in texts and activities. We were shown some examples which will be a great starting point. 

Watch this space.

Teacher Inquiry

For my teaching inquiry this year I am asking the question: How can I foster the prosocial behaviour of my students? 

My target group is made up of 7 students, 5 boys and 2 girls. Each of these children struggle to demonstrate prosocial behaviours such as, following our school and class rules, helping and expressing empathy towards others. I find myself spending too much time and energy addressing their antisocial behaviours. It is time consuming and draining and not fair on the others in the class. My hope is that I can establish some protocols, or put some systems in place that will help develop their prosocial skills, which  in-turn, will create an environment that is more conducive to learning for everyone in the class.  Growling doesn't appear to be working so I need to change my approach. Watch this space.

Back In The Saddle!

This year I have returned to teaching at Pt England school after a 3 year break where I was pastoring and co-leading a central Auckland church. I am the team leader of our Year 7/8 syndicate which is made up of around 140 children and 4 other great teachers.

It has been an interesting time to come back to say the least! Initially, I hopped that the effects of COVID-19 on teaching in 2022 would be minimal, however that was wishful thinking. Like previous years we have had to adapt to the changes that COVID-19 has bought. I am so proud with how our children and teachers have adapted to the ever changing landscape. We all know that change is never easy, however the team, children and adults alike, have rolled with the punches and coped so well with the daily changes that came up. 

Currently, I'm working out what to focus my teaching inquiry on. I have wonderings around improving children's ability to discourse and share their opinions. I also have wonderings around engaging boys in reading that leads to achievement. I'll keep you updated with what I settle on.

Inquiry 2018 Summary

Inquiry Focus
This year I have been inquiry has been based around developing the mathematical dialogic discourse ability of my children. In particular my focus has been on developing their ability to explain and justify their mathematical thinking as this was an area of weakness for my children.

Target Children
My Target group were made up of 3 boys and 3 girls of varying mathematical ability. They were selected because they all struggled to express and justify their mathematical thinking.

What happened for my children?
 - More confidence to share
Every child became more confident to share their thinking in class. Anecdotally this is what I was seeing in class as the year progressed. Children who once shied away from sharing were now sharing and children were becoming more confident to speak up when they didn't understand something and question it. This Anecdotal information was verified with the data collected from a student voice survey.

 - Increase in ability to explain and justify their thinking
My target kids had a small increase in their ability to explain and justify their mathematical thinking. As mentioned in previous posts this has been an area of frustration for me as I have not been seeing the gains I thought I was going to see.  Below shows the data of my target children taken from the measuring tool I designed to capture their ability to explain and justify. It needs to be pointed out that this data was taken when children were working independently on their maths problem these responses were unsolicited. This was not a teacher facilitated discussion.


 - April

  - June

  - August

 - November

The greatest improvement has been in the children's use of the word 'because'. In the last few months we have really been focussing on using 'because' to justify our explanations. My kids would often explain what they did but would not justify it. This data matches with what I'm seeing with the rest of my class too. It has been slow going and we have a way to go but we're getting there. 

Anecdotally the children are talking more and developing the ability to discuss and justify their thinking. Children who were once not engaged are now showing engagement and children who once would not participate in discussions are which is encouraging.

Has this had an impact on their maths achievement?

The jury is still out on this. The Maths PAT data below shows minimal increase in their achievement however these results have been effected by our schools' teachers and children learning and adjusting to DMIC maths. 5/6 of the target children made progress. Their progress average was 4.3 scale points. According to NZCER the national progress average for year 7-8 is 5.4 scale points. The average for the whole class that made progress was 5.1.

 - PAT data

What did I do to make this happen?

 - Waka paddle prompts
There was deliberate teaching on the type of things one would say if they were effectively explaining and justifying their mathematical thinking. These phrases and words were made into little waka paddles. The children would hold a bundle in their hand and the key was to use them in a maths session. Once you had used a prompt you would discard it. the idea was to get rid of all the waka paddles from your hand. This was used as a way of introducing the phrases and vocabulary into to the children and reminding them to use it.



 - Insisting on a response
In our maths sessions opting out was not an option. If I child was called upon they had to give some sort of response. "I don't know" was not an option. If they didn't have a response they had to say "Can you ask someone else please?". At that point I would ask someone else but then come back to them.

 - No hands up
Hands up was banned in our maths sessions. The children soon learnt that anyone could be called on to share their thinking which encouraged them to participate in the problem solving. They couldn't really on the usual eager beavers. At times the eager beavers found this frustrating as they really wanted to be the one to share but as time went on they adapted to the new system and no no hands up is the norm.

 - Discussion based games and activities
I used games to help get the children used to using the discussion vocabulary. For example to help ingrain the word 'because' in the children justifications they had to each say the following.

"I'm going to a dessert island and I'm taking _____________ BECAUSE _____________."

The focus of this was on the because. Starting a maths session with this simple game helped the children explain and justify more effectively when it came to their maths.

Next steps
As mentioned before this inquiry has been pretty slow going and I haven't seen the maths achievement I had hoped to see. I'm interested to see if next year the maths achievement will come now that the children have had a year learning how to effectively engage in dialogic discourse. My hope is that with this embedded in the children they will be able to focus mainly on maths in their maths sessions not on developing their dialogic discourse ability.