I was fortunate to facilitate a Share meeting just before we went into the latest lockdown.
Myself and educators from around the country were able to connect and share strategies around writing and our learners. We had rich dialogue, lifted each other and shared resources. Thank you ladies for your openness, you have inspired me!
Restate your inquiry question:
How will I change my teaching practise and design for learning to support learners' ability to articulate their next steps in writing?
Implementation =
The learning outcomes I want to improve for my students in this inquiry are:
Know and understand what successful writers include in their writing
Co-construct the success criteria for writing
Use the success criteria to articulate their next steps in writing
The changes I have made to my teaching practise are:
Using the writing process and slowing the learning down. We now spend a few days building our knowledge before we even write!
Adopting mixed ability writing ropu (groups) and moving writing to the morning block of the timetable.
Showing learners multi-modal examples of what good writing looks like. Below is an example from my learning design around narratives.
Co-constructing the success criteria with learners. Below are some examples from my learning design around narratives. There are different success criteria for my 3 different ropu.
Implementation of my change in practise will be evident in my design for learning and will be recorded on this blog. Monitoring =
I am monitoring the effects of my changed practices/intervention on learner outcomes through SchoolTalk evidence and writing samples. I keep samples from each learner from the beginning of the year till now and it shows the progress they have made. I will also be monitoring thorough student voice, observations and anecdotal notes. This information will be recorded on my blog.
Reflection = Learners are engaging with the co-constructed success criteria and can reflect on their writing when conferencing with me. However, I want to further develop learners' ability to articulate their next steps in writing when they are independent of me (working with a buddy or whānau). My next step is to create feedback prompts to support learners articulating their next steps.
Additionally, I have noticed an increase in learners' confidence in writing. I had learners at the start of the year that were writing 1-3 lines with lots of teacher support. Now these learners are writing 1-2 pages independently! My next step is to gather student voice to see if this is reflected with the learners.
Over the past two weeks, we had an update of our mid-year data. This data shows that writing is the biggest need in Stonefields School.
Here are my noticings =
We are seeing some progress!!
The overall year group shift data uses matched data to show how different year groups have made more or less than expected shift in the last 12 months. Therefore, the year 1s are left out of this data set as they have been at school for less than a year.
Of standout note are the Year 2s where 24 learners have made more than a years' gain. This represents 53% of all year 2 matched learners.
My Wondering = Year 2’s data lower than Year 1’s. How can I reduce this statistic?
Along with National data, there is an emerging phenomenon that boys are achieving lower than girls. Why is this still the case?
This data gives me motivation to keep up the mahi in my inquiry so I can see positive change in the data at the end of year.
