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:
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.
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.
As mentioned in my previous blog post, I have observed that our year 5 and 6 children are really good at reading short texts that challenge them however many of them find it challenging to focus and be engaged in extended texts at their level which challenge them. There are a few questions I have around this.
For my 2021 inquiry this year, I have been thinking about what a challenge is for the year 5 and 6 extension children who I teach twice a week. I am in an interesting position where I do not have my own class of children. My role could perhaps be most likened to how secondary teachers teach multiple groups of children each week. I believe that the year 5/6 group would be the most appropriate group to base my inqury on as I see them twice a week. As a result, I would have more of a chance to implement a regular pedagogical approach with them.
I asked myself this: What do the extension children have as a challenge/ something they need to work on which I could inquire into? Alternatively: Is there something totally different which could be beneficial for me to focus on in my unique role?
I have come from teaching year 5 children. As a result, I can draw upon observations and knowledge of some of the children who would be my focus for this inquiry. I have observed that some children in year 5 who read above their chronological age in reading have some difficulty with spelling. Therefore, I was wondering whether a focus on spelling with these children could be beneficial. I tested the group of children and came up with some data.
Test 1: Schonell Spelling Test
Data:
Interestingly, only 4 out of 17 children have spelling as an area of concern according to the Schonell test I gave them.
As a result, I decided that spelling was necessary to focus on for those 4 children whose spelling level did not reciprocate their strong reading levels however, it was not an area that I needed to focus on for the whole group for the year.
I had a conversation with Angela Moala, the year 3/4 team leader. We used to co-teach in a year 5 space and do well with putting ideas past each other. Through this conversation, I mentioned another observation I have made whilst teaching year 5 children who are strong readers. This observation was seen when I gave a group of 4 year 5 boys a novel to read. We had built up this novel and the children were all excited to read it. However, when it came to reading the book, only 2 were engaged to read it independently from start to finish. In my conversation with Angela, we realised this is a real challenge for this particular group of children. They are very good at reading short texts at their level however they do not all show an ability to focus on reading an extended texts independently.
My second idea for my inquiry is therefore, how can I support extension children in year 5 & 6 to be engaged in extended texts which are challenging and which encourage critical thinking. How can I get the children to engage in deep and thoughtful conversations about these extended texts which they read?
I am going to spend this week exploring this second inquiry idea.
2021 is going to be a different year for me at Pt England School. I have taken over as the Creative Space and Extension Teacher. In this role, I will be producing the school news, PENN, every Monday to Thursday, taking children from year 1 to 6 for lessons in the creative space and teaching the year 5-8 extension children. With this change in role will come a change in inquiry focus.
So far this year I have had a clear out and made sense of what gear I have to utilise around the school. I have created three episodes so far for the school news (PENN) and taught three days of classes.
Creative space lessons this year are going to be broken up into Sight, sound and motion.
With having had three days with the children in front of me, and with the term well under way, I am now in a position to think about what my inquiry focus should be this year. To make this decision, I need to consider what is going to benefit me in this new role, what is going to benefit the children and what other teachers can learn from and implement themselves.
Here are some of the ideas I have had so far:
After implementing use of Peter Worley's framework, The Concept Box, into reading lessons, I collected data to compare with the data I collected at the beginning of the year. Graphs from the beginning of the year are also in these slides to make comparisons.
Below are a number of resources which I found particularly useful around teaching critical thinking. The coral coloured boxes look at critical thinking in general, where as the blue boxes share links to articles making a connection between critical thinking in a digital/creative environment.
Edutopia | Inside Higher Ed | Digital Learning Collaborative |
Wabisabi Learning 8 Classroom Edtech Strategies That Develop Critical Thinking Skills | Technology Online Creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving in digital technologies | JotForm Education How to use technology to foster higher-thinking skills in class |
