Beginning implementation

 Last week, I had the perfect opportunity to implement my change in practice. We had a Matariki celebration day where I had a whole day to focus on capturing the day across the school! I created five groups of 3 students who worked in teams to capture the learning from the day for their allocated team. In each group, there was an 'expert' (a child who had already done some videography and editing) and two students who were to learn the skill.

The day was a great success! The groups talked lots, there was an instant improvement in confidence from the students who were learning the skill (as well as the student who was teaching the skill) and every group managed to film and edit a movie to get a finished product. From my point of view, I noticed the improvement in confidence through:

- Laughing, smiling and talking
- Focusing on the task
- Sharing of ideas
- Taking turns
- Asking questions

It is going to be important to find out from the children what the positive's were for them from this one day of Tuakana Teina. Today I am going to construct a survey to get feedback from the children about the day.

Cycling back to Hypothesis generation now I have identified a potential catalyst

"If you carry one handle of the kete and I carry the other handle we share the load." (Aroha Puketapu & Graeme (Kereama) Smith).

Check out this great description of Tuakana Teina on TKI.

Important Māori values in this Tuakana Teina approach to be aware of (see video below to see these explained):
- Ako (learning/teaching)
- Manaakitanga (caring/uplifting each other)
- Rangatiratanga (uplifting students)
- Whanaungatanga (relationships)
- Tuakana Teina (apprentice-expert)

Article from Inclusive Education with some great ways to build confidence in the classroom. Many of these are things we are currently doing at our school.

Potential Catalyst for Change: Using the pedagogical approach of Tuakana Teina

What I am trying to develop: Confidence/ Self-esteem

Potential Hypotheses ("If _____ then ______")

1. If I pair children up with more experienced classmates, then confidence of the less experienced partner will develop.

2. If a less experienced classmate is supported by a more experienced classmate, then their confidence will improve.

3. If a less experienced classmate is supported by a more experienced classmate to learn a new skill, then their confidence in this skill will develop as well as their confidence in other areas of school and life.

4. If children have opportunities to learn a meaningful and purposeful skill alongside a more experienced peer, then they will develop in their confidence to speak up and lead.  

Stopping, Reflecting and Refocussing my Inquiry

 Today I continued looking into research but realised I was still uncertain about what I was actually trying to achieve. I stopped and reflected on who my target group are. The target group are children who showed low confidence in terms of speaking, presenting and sharing ideas. Understandably, I have gone down the path of oral language and what makes a good 'speaker' however when considering the big picture, I don't believe I am going to get good results if this is my focus with this group of target learners. I first need to support development of their confidence before I even consider supporting them to become better speakers. 

During a Kāhui Ako meeting at the beginning of this term, Across School Teacher Amy Tofa, suggested using Tuaka Teina to develop children's confidence. I am in a unique position where I have children ranging from year 5 up to year 8 who are all experienced and skilled in Presenting, Videography and Video Editing. I also have children who could benefit from being paired up with a supportive, patient and experienced student who can support my target learners in developing  their confidence through various roles in the production of our school news.

This week, I plan to introduce these Tuakana-Teina partnerships.

How this will look: 

1. Presenters. Any children who have been paired to develop a potential presenter will attend our news filming at 8am on Monday through to Thursday. They can being by practising the same script as the Tuakana and as buddies, will decide when the Teina is ready to present. They can use tools such as quicktime to develop the confidence of the Teina, even if they don't yet have the confidence to present in the actual news. 

2. Videographers. Each Tuakana will support a Teina by taking them along to sporting events and other school events to film together.

3. Video Editing. Each Teina will work with Tuakana to edit footage from sporting events, student movies from around the school that have been filmed by Videographers. This could be the same children who were the videographers.

Assessing speech

 To assess children's speech, I need to create a rubric. I researched ways that people have previously used rubrics to measure speech.

Fountas & Pinnell's (2010) Six Dimensions Fluency Rubric

This rubric can be used to measure:

• Pausing
• Phrasing
• Stress
• Intonation
• Rate/pace
• Integration

This article clearly explains these six dimensions.

Fluency Rubric. This includes:

• Expression & Volume
• Phrasing (also in Fountas & Pinnell's rubric)
• Smoothness
• Pace (also in Fountas & Pinnell's rubric)

Morrison & Wilcox (2020). Assessing Expressive Oral Reading Fluency.

• Rubric with same focus points as the fluency rubric above.
• Expressive oral language has been seen as important for a long time. In American education, many children read from the bible and there was an expectation that they read fluently.
• Early 1900s: a push for silent reading over oral reading, with valid justification for this, oral reading became less expressive.
• Report of the National Reading Panel (2000): 3 aspects of fluent oral reading: rate, accuracy, expression. 
• Prosody: How one reads with expression (not just the superficial features of consonant and vowel sounds).
• Prosody <---> Comprehension (Schwanenflugel and Kuhn)
• Automated measuring tool: Praat (2001) by Paul Boersma and David Weenink
• Multidimensional fluency scale (MDFS). Zutell and Rasinski - Found to create reliable and valid scores.
• This article recommends that human scored assessment tools are more effective than computerised tools as more is picked up via observation in terms of oral reading aspects. It is important for the human assessment tool that the rater/scorer is consistent otherwise reliability and validity reduces. 

From this, I put together a rubric which combines categories from all the above. I will share this in my next blog post.

Researching the topic

 Through researching the topic, I found an article which discussed the process of using public speaking and oral presentations in the classroom.

Boyce, Alber-Morgan, Riley (20067). Fearless Public Speaking: Oral Presentation Activities for the Elementary Classroom. 

Through communications with Naomi Rosedale from the Research team at Manaiakalani, I was reassured that Public Speaking was the correct avenue to be looking down for my inquiry however, I needed a bit more direction as this is still quite a vast topic.

Naomi also suggested I look into read aloud - in particular vocal modulation and prosody. She also suggested I look into 'journalism.'

With a focus on confidence, Naomi suggested I need some baseline data of speaking (by getting the children reading aloud or speaking) as well as confidence (self-efficacy). I have already had children fill out a questionnaire/survey for confidence/self-efficacy however I haven't yet got any baseline data of speaking. This is therefore my next step. I will need to formulate a rubric for speaking which includes such things as delivery, content and audience awareness.

Something I should be aware of (which my attention was drawn to during communicaitons with Naomi) is whether my focus is on scripted or un-scripted oral language. These are quite different things. In terms of the children I am focussing on, I think my focus for this year will be on scripted oral-language as I want my focus to be on developing confidence for these children. The children who I would like to work with are not my general news crew, but a group of children with which we want to develop confidence.

                           

Graphing the data

 I have begun to graph data on children's self confidence. 

Feeling Listened To:

There was a slight increase in number of children who responded positively (4 or 5 - green) when asked about their friends listening to them compared to their classmates. This suggests that there are some children who are more confident with those they have a closer relationship with. Interestingly, this trend was even stronger when asked about their teachers listening to them. So more children felt more listened to by their teachers than their friends. 

The last graph is an interesting one. 5/14 children were quite low in confidence when it came to feeling listened to by others. This could have a major impact on these children and their confidence in speaking if they are not feeling listened to. How can I use the various jobs within the school news to act on this finding?

Talking about Learning

The same trend of a group of children lacking in confidence continues into this section but only with a small number of children. There is however, quite a large group of children who are "sitting on the fence" suggesting they aren't confidence but aren't totally overwhelmed by the idea of speaking out. This is a great finding for my inquiry as children sitting at the orange zone would be a great group to target for increasing confidence by presenting on the news. 

Speaking & Presenting

When responding to standing up and talking in front of others, the number of children in the "red zone" increases.

Speaking my Thinking

On the whole, these children don't have a problem with vocabulary - most children feel quite confident that they have the words they need to be able to explain themselves.

Listening to others

All children in this group feel confident that they are good at listening to others. This is a really clear find which confirms that these children don't have an input challenge but an output challenge, with speaking and presenting.

Preliminary Data

 I have begun gathering some preliminary data for my target group of children. These children were selected due to being at the 'reading to learn' phase of their reading development. I have selected children whose reading ages are at 9 years and above as these children will be required to read from a script which changes on a daily basis.

Using my knowledge of these children as well as asking for teacher recommendations, I have selected a group of children who are noted as lacking some confidence or oral language capabilities, despite their confidence in reading and writing. These children are also children who show potential in developing their confidence. This information was found through anecdotal notes from previous teachers, conversations with teachers as well as my own knowledge of these children.

I asked these children to fill in a questionnaire about their own confidence and communication abilities.

I colour coordinated responses from this survey to create a picture of self confidence.

Example 1:

Response 1 = Red

Response 2 = Red

Response 3 = Orange

Response 4 = Green

Response 5 = Green

Example 2:

Response 1 = Green

Response 2 = Green

Response 3 = Orange

Response 4 = Red

Response 5 = Red

From this survey, I have created a target group of students. Students in the target group are children who scored orange and red across a number of their responses.

Their responses sat alongside the responses of a group of children who demonstrate strong confidence, oral language and communication. These children will not be in my target group as they always have strong self confidence. This will be some of my baseline data which will be compared at the end of the year.

Once I have found all children in my target group, I will use a standardised self efficacy test to which will be used to compare the responses of individuals in this target from the beginning to the end of the year.