Collaborative Inquiry Group

Today at staff meeting we met in three groups:

- Those with a focus group of children who learning to read.
- Those with a focus group of children who are reading to learn.
- Those with an inquiry focus on maths.

I went along to the group of people who were focussed on those children who are reading to learn, as this covers my focus group of children. Our group was led by our Principal, Russell Burt. Others in the collaborative group were:

Gabriel Hughes - Year 5/6
Kelsey Parrant - Year 5
Latini Ilaoa - Year 7/8
Sally Va'afusuaga - Sport
Jenni Clarke - Reading Support
Migi Siō - Year 4/5
Adina Iordache - Year 4

Through discussions around my inquiry, we came to identify that my focus group have an output mileage problem. That is, the children are not being given enough opportunities to practice 'output' through speaking and presenting.

Through discussions around other people's inquiries, I identified areas that could be useful to explore such as teaching understanding around lexical chunks rather than individual words as well us looking into pragmatics of oral language, being the way we interact socially with one another. More can be read about pragmatics here.

I found this collaborative inquiry session really valuable in terms of supporting one another, making links between different groups of children at different levels and sharing knowledge.

Speaking & Presenting

The challenge: There is a disparity between the level of oral language and vocabulary which the year 5-6 extension children use and the level of language and vocabulary they can read and recognise in written texts.

In term 1, the year 5&6 and year 7&8 extension children had opportunities to share their learning through speaking and presenting. What I observed was really interesting. Quite a few children in both groups of children really lacked confidence to share their learning through speaking and presenting. I assessed the children using the following rubrics:

Here are the sections of the rubric relating to speaking and presenting:

YEAR 5&6

YEAR 7&8

These graphs show the break down of how the children scored in the speaking & presenting area of the NZ curriculum:

YEAR 5&6

YEAR 7&8

My focus is on pulling up the levels of these children who fall into the 0-3 scores of the graphs. These children are all very competent readers however tend to lack the confidence and skills to share their learning through speaking and presenting using the high levels of vocabulary which we know they have.

Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day

 Last Friday, we had a Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day with a focus on literacy. We had a fantastic keynote presentation by Dr Rae Si'ilata. During the day, we also went to 3 workshops run by teachers in our schools. I took a workshop on my inquiry from last year, where I researched, used and adapted Peter Worley's Concept Box Framework into my teaching to support development of critical thinking.

Here are the slides from my workshop:

Student Voice: Reading Habits

The challenge: There is a disparity between the level of oral language and vocabulary which the year 5-6 extension children use and the level of language and vocabulary they can read and recognise in written texts.

 I asked the children in my year 5 & 6 extension class about their reading habits using this google form:

Here are their responses:

1. Tick the genre of books you MOST prefer (choose as many as you want):

2. How often do you read at home?

3. Why do you read?

Creating a hypothesis around the student challenge

The challenge: There is a disparity between the level of oral language and vocabulary which the year 5-6 extension children use and the level of language and vocabulary they can read and recognise in written texts.

These children are all reading above their chronological age, so are good readers. As a result, I have hypothesised that using their strong reading as a medium, I will be able to support their development of oral language when participating in discussions around texts. I will do this using roles formed around the 10 language functions as explained in Teaching Pragmatic Language Awareness as an Integral Aspect of Reading and Language Arts Instruction (Monica Gordon Pershey).

The 10 Language Functions (Halliday, 1973; Smith, 1977) explain why the language is being used. They are:

- Instrumental
- Regulatory
- Interactional
- Personal
- Imaginative
- Heuristic
- Informative
- Divertive
- Authoritative/contractual
- Perpetuation

I have used the text, Teaching Pragmatic Language Awareness as an Integral Aspect of Reading and Language Arts Instruction (Monica Gordon Pershey) to make up these support cards and am in the process of making them more child-friendly using this text on thoughtco and this text on eltguide.

CoL - finding my collaborative inquiry partner

In preparation for our CoL meeting this afternoon, I have planned to meet with 5 other CoL teachers who I will chat with about their inquiry focus this year. Here are the teachers I plan to meet with:

I will update my blog with notes after I talk to each of these teachers.

CoL Inquiry 2021: The Challenge of Student Learning

 The last couple of weeks has involved lots of learning about the children in my class and their learning needs. I teach the year 5-8 extension children. Over the last couple of weeks I have:

- Tested the year 5-6 extension children on spelling. Through this, I found there were about 4 children whose needed work on their spelling however spelling was not enough of a challenge for this group of children to spend a whole year on as an inquiry project.

- Tested the year 5-8 extension children on vocabulary. After discussions with deputy principal, Toni Nua, we both agreed that language development was something our extension children needed to work on. We decided to test the children on a PAT vocabulary test to find out more information about this.

Here is the data from the vocabulary test:

*Stanine 5+ is at or above where we would expect the child to be for their year level. 

With the year 5-6 children, at first glance it appeared there was not a challenge as all but one child scored a stanine 5-7. I did however wonder whether I could look into the disparity between what this data showed and why/if we don't seem to see that same level in oral language or written language. From what I know of the year 6 children, having taught them last year and just through observing them in their project we have been working on this year, I would say their oral language is definitely not as high as this. It would be interesting to find out WHY and WHAT I can do to support their oral language development.

Therefore, the challenge of student learning which I am going to look into is this:

There is a disparity between the level of oral language and vocabulary which the year 5-6 extension children use and the level of language and vocabulary they can read and recognise in written texts.