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.