No 4: Teaching as Inquiry 2023

 LEARNING

Initially I wanted to go on the course from the writing teacher. However, the dates did not work and so I did the next best thing and bought her newly published book: How to Teach Writing, Spelling and Grammar.

The book is broken down into three areas of writing focus: transcription skills, translation and composition.

Walls suggests a specific emphasis be placed on handwriting in the Year 1 classroom. Also, spelling needs to be specifically taught. In the first year at school a lot of the effort in writing is taken up in working memory by spelling and how to form letters. So plenty of practise in these two areas allows students to become more automatic and therefore more able to write efficiently when it comes to composition. These two skills are the transcription skills.

Translation is how the writer turns their thoughts into sentences. This involves the teaching of vocabulary and how to structure a sentence. Oral language is her key to initially teach these two aspects and can be done at another time to the composition time.

Composition is the third area and this requires a dedicated time to writing for students to generate ideas, construct these into sentences and then revise and edit to ensure the audience can understand what has been composed. In this time Walls suggests using clear modelling, time for students to plan, supported writing and a fast feedback system. 

Source:

Walls, H and Braid, C. 2023. How to teach writing, spelling and grammar: From research to practice. 

TAKING ACTION

Some parts of my writing programme will be tweaked and other parts more radically changed. Firstly, making handwriting a priority and ensuring I am giving them feedback to make adjustments straight away. I will implement chalkboards to provide kinesthetic resistance and enable good pencil grip. Also, ensuring I teach in letter shapes to ensure lots of practise in a particular handwriting movement. To ensure regular short practises of handwriting I will continue to use handwriting books in the afternoon. 

For spelling I will continue to do this during our phonological awareness activities and small group reading time when we practise sound changes. One difference will be in trying some gestures to ensure students are hearing and saying phonemes so they can transfer this into composition time.

I will try to give specific time to oral language of modelling a sentence. Vocabulary teaching I will continue to do in the BSLA format of using a quality children's picture book with explicit definitions of new vocabulary. 

The biggest change to my writing programme will probably be in the composition area. I will ensure to model writing and encourage students to state their writing goal. I will follow the scope and sequence of goals developed by Helen Walls. This means during composition time students who can not yet form letters to correspond to sounds will not be expected to compose a story. We will wait until they have an interest, and can write their name and recognise sounds on the letter sound chart. The focus for these students is to promote an interest in writing and give them skills first to have successful writing. To finish the composition process students will have their writing goal written in the back of their book that will become the focus point of our fast feedback session at the end of the process. 

No 3: Teaching as Inquiry 2023

 DEVELOPING A HUNCH

I believe from my BSLA professional development that I would like to devote my professional learning this year to implementing structured literacy practice to writing in my Year 1 classroom. The evidence in all students making reading gains suggests that applying this theory to writing should help all students, particularly students who have entered school with the lowest phonological awareness.

My interest in structured literacy has led me to learning about Helen Walls the Writing Teacher which initially started from viewing the Education Hub website displaying practices in New Zealand schools.

No 2: Teaching as Inquiry 2023

 FOCUSING

To focus my inquiry I have chosen four students who have low test scores in their initial BSLA testing. They also show other factors that impact on writing such as poor pencil grip and disinterest in writing letters or drawing.

Beginning of school observations and testing

Student 1: Initial phoneme 1/10, Letter sound recognition 3/10, phoneme blending 4/10

Happily writes own name and can spell this but with one backwards letter.

Student 2: Initial phoneme 5/10, Letter sound recognition 3/10, phoneme blending 4/10

Unable to write own name and does not enjoy writing or drawing. Pencil grip needs correcting.

Student 3: Initial phoneme 3/10, Letter sound recognition 2/10, phoneme blending 2/10

Unable to write own name when first started school but did enjoy sitting drawing & colouring.

Student 4: Initial phoneme 0/10, Letter sound recognition 4/10, phoneme blending 3/10

Unable to write own name, but did make great effort to learn to write within a few weeks.

No 1: Teaching as Inquiry 2023

 This year my Teaching as Inquiry overarching question is:

How will incorporating structured literacy principles to my whole writing programme effect my Year 1 learners?

INTRODUCTION

In October 2022 I completed professional development for the Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA). This year two other teachers at Oruaiti School are undertaking this Professional Development with a Year 2 focus. This is really exciting for me because this will benefit students to continue in a systematic approach as they continue learning at our kura.

I saw vast benefits of this approach for my learners in 2022 and 2021. However, despite feeling competent in my new reading pedagogy, which has a lot of cross overs into writing, I still felt that elements of my writing practice need upskilling. 

For my teaching as inquiry I will use Timperley's Spiral of Inquiry.

SCANNING

As a new entrant class in a rural school my class began with nine students, expecting to reach 20 students by the end of the year. Three students have carried over into this class from last year, two of whom had made reasonable progress in reading and writing using a structured literacy approach. One student began with almost a complete knowledge of alphabet names and could write many without a letter chart prompt as well as spelling several personal names correctly. The rest of the class could attempt to write their name, with few gripping a pencil correctly.

PACT training

 We explored how to make teacher judgements today using the PaCT tool. Reviewing what we have already covered reminded us that we need to remember to look at what we are taking away from each lesson.

Take aways:

1. It is important to view the illustrations provided to get a really good idea of what the big ideas really mean for each set/ signpost.

2. If you think a student(s) is displaying evidence at one signpost then read the descriptions above and below to double check the level of sophistication fits.

3. The illustrations are also really great ideas for teaching a big idea.

4. You don’t need to review each student for each set. You would group students to think about where they are to decide your deliberate acts of teaching for the next steps, one aspect at a time.

5. We will rotate our specific focus each term on reading this year as we familiarise ourselves with these learning progressions. It would be impossible to be thinking about all the aspects for R, W and M constantly!

6. As always we would use OTJ from a number of evidence sources to decide where students are.

7. The focus should be less about where students are in terms of giving them a ‘level’ and more about “What do I need to teach, and them to learn next”. 

We took a sample of students work and then looked at each aspect and used the blurb and the illustrations to help us place a student on a sign post. 

A good discussion happened at the end of the hui regarding E-asttle v's PACT tool for end of year assessments. Below are some of the things we took away from this lesson. 

We have noticed ...

...with practice I will get faster at this and more confident with making judgements

…need to change year levels of some students, classes have been set up with names to use now, look at notifications

… writing LPF is good to use. Want to use instead of asstle this year as doubling up. Maybe can for yr1-2??

...… would be really valuable to go to experts on staff to moderate with my tricky judgements

… PaCT tool - taken lots away. Talking with others about what our kids are doing at different levels, useful to collaborate

… Feel confident with it and I want to finish putting them in

… just get it in! You know more than you think you do with your first sense.  Calm the farm a bit - you can’t teach it all

… after so long thinking about it, procrastinating and not doing it. Getting stuff in has been beneficial. SO many opportunities to double check and triple check, so it’s robust and thorough. 

Distance Learning - Learning from Lockdown

Once again we found ourselves teaching from home. As a school we tweaked a few things such as only one google meet in the morning. I had the advantage (or maybe disadvantage) of having a class site up and running this time. So I was able to focus on the learning I thought I could achieve through lockdown and then present it on one page. It was good to collaborate with syndicate colleagues just prior to starting distance learning. Having two sons in two other junior classes gave me a great opportunity to see and steal good ideas, particularly as we had unit planned together and had similar themes happening.

I was particularly glad that Sarah had suggested sunshine online was a great app and this time round (even though it was a web browser and no longer an app) it did prove to be a lot easier for students to use at home and then teachers to listen to online.

It did seem that we weren't overflooded with heaps of suggestions of activities and websites to use which was a relief. It did seem though that outer education organisations realised it was still an opportunity to carry on professional development. And so I have utilised a great deal of any extra time preparing to implement the Better Start Literacy Approach. 

I took a gamble to run a parent workshop online. It helped me to understand the importance of whanau involvement in learning to read but the lack of attendance online from parents means I still will have to do a lot of other stuff to get whanau involved in our new literacy approach.

Once again, having Hannah during google meets was really good to carry on the consistency from class of having a sound of the day. Also, she had to step in to keep things going a couple of times when things popped up at home, such as screen freezing.

What will I carry on into the classroom?

I enjoyed using one class site page with links and being planned one day at a time. I had a general plan for each learning area but adapted activities based on buy in and what my own sons enjoyed doing for distance learning. So I will have a go at using this style as a daily plan.

I am hoping that some students have used sunshine online enough to be able to use and teach others how to do this independently.

Also, some of the tweaks to phonological activities I did during google meets I will continue to use in class.

I will also print out some of the NZmaths pages that were used so those students who did use them can be experts on Fun Day Friday.

LPF training

 Working with Sue Arrowsmith on learning how to break down the aspects and sets on the PACT tool. was a really informative workshop that got us preparing a mini lesson plan for reading.

Focus on WALT's and Success criteria.  and explanation as to why we are doing what we are doing. We also addressed having questions prepared prior to lessons. 

Example:

Learning Intention: Kei te ako matou ki te….

Why? TIB it helps us to understand what a text is about and to quickly see if it has the information we need to find for research or for pleasure, or to find exactly where the information is, saving us time when reading. 

Success criteria: WILF

1. I can find sentences or words that talk about things:

1. in the past

2. In the present

3. In the future

2. I can find dates that help me to work out when things happened

3. I can place events in the correct order

TASKS:

1. Round Robin  - words that give us clues to things happening in the past; present; future

2. Pairs - read and highlight 

3. Reciprocal reading (a - dates, b - past words, c - present words, d - future words)

4. Timeline (draw pics/ dates and words/ poem)

5. Individual practise

6. Peer assessment and feedback

Tulevai and the sea

Which things do you know will be happening in the future and how do you know this?

On page 4 what word tells you that the sea wants to do something to Tulevai in the future?

On page 12 how many words are there that show things happening in the past?