Inquiry evaluation for 2020

My inquiry question: Will an integrated literacy programme with a focus on Learn, Create, Share accelerate the writing achievement of my target learners?

The Learn, Create, Share pedagogy was definitely strengthened in my practice this year. Reflecting back throughout this year, the students and I have been on a constant push to create and share DLOs about what we have been learning. There is still quite a bit of work to do with the quality of the create activities. The students are very camera why and would happily create posters, Google slides to share their learning. I have been encouraging them to create DLOs where they can be heard and seen presenting their learning so their audience can see their passion and excitement about their create activities.  

I feel the integration of Reading and Writing together was a success. The learning activities and discussions were much more powerful. The quality of discussions were rich and this was evident through the responses of the students through their verbal discussion and their independent activities. I also noticed when the students had to present in front of an audience, they were confident to speak and present. The topics were learnt about this year were discussed and analysed from different perspectives. Through the supporting texts and challenging texts, I was exposing students to reflect and evaluate that they too can have a different perspective on topics not only in learning but in their lives. I believe this is a very important aspect of teaching. Teaching students that they too have opinions which matter.

Moving forward, I have been reflecting on student agency in their work. I feel this is an avenue I would like to look into next year. I also have identified I need to do more research in literature to inform decisions I make in my practice. 

Celebrating student success in their writing

My class have been receiving Toitoi publications for the last couple of years. This year, we were very proud to find out one of the writing pieces from one of our students was selected to be published in the next Toitoi publication. 

This piece of writing came from a narrative unit. The students enjoyed the unit because they were able to express their creativity in their writing. We linked our topic studies of Science with our narrative writing for the unit. 

Having one writer publish his writing in Toitoi has encouraged the rest of the class especially boys to set a goal to have their writing published in Toitoi too. 

Building on rich vocabulary

Exposing students to rich vocabulary through authentic texts has expanded their vocabulary about topics they are writing about. 

Manaiakalani_Student Achievement Data Sense making Feb 2020

Through texts my students have been reading about topics we are studying, I have found they are confident in using the vocabulary they are reading in their discussions and their writing. The ideas presented in topics are discussed in detail and the students make connections with texts by critically thinking about texts and questioning the ideas in texts. 

For example, this term our topic is Garden to Table where our class are learning about horticulture and also making a community garden to share with our community. Through their reading materials, the students have been reading about seasonal planting, the horticultural industry, how technology is improving the harvesting of fruit and its consequences for labour work and employment. 

During the reading discussions, the students explore the main ideas in texts. We then as a group dig deeper into the text by critically thinking about the implications of what we read. In one text Kiwifruit growing spills beyond Bay of Plenty to other regions the students discussed the impact technology has on kiwifruit picking, the technological aspect of the invention and also how this could impact people who are employed by farmers to pick kiwifruit such as the seasonal workers brought in from the Pacific Islands. In one text, the students explored so many perspectives in their discussions.

Through these rich discussions, I observe the confidence the students have in sharing their ideas, exploring ideas which are new to them and using vocabulary related to the topic.

When the students move on to writing, they already have many ideas about the topic and are now learning to organise their writing in sequence by brainstorming ideas and expanding their brainstorms into paragraphs. 

One of the activities we do in class to help students with brainstorming ideas is a vocabulary activity where we collaborative use a Google Doc to write down vocabulary related to the topic we are writing about. Most of the vocabulary the students use come from their reading materials and some from their personal vocabulary. We then elaborate on the vocabulary in the brainstorm by adding detail about the vocabulary. By doing this activity, the students are supported in using the vocabulary from texts in their writing. It also helps them by planning paragraphs for their writing. 

The power of rich discussions in reading which translates to writing

I have been seeing a lot of improvement in the writing my students have been producing. The genre they have been working on is argument writing. It is wonderful when you see the confidence in students to voice their opinions and put their thoughts into writing. 

There have been a lot of discussions in Reading through the texts the group have been reading. The text Me, Me, Me by Renata Hopkins stimulated a lot of thinking about the use of devices and social media. The discussions were rich in sharing of ideas and exploring issues with social media and devices.

The supporting text was an article from Insight NZ was about the ban of phones in some schools. The supporting text discussion brought more insight into the challenges school and young people are having with devices. 

Through the rich discussions,  the students were able to brainstorm ideas to write their arguments confidently. I am really happy with the confidence the students have, to start their writing after being in reading discussions. 

The students have also been going out of the classroom to interview teachers and other students about their opinions regarding phones in schools. The joy they have in gathering views and opinions is just wonderful to see. Their use of technology in their learning is also very encouraging to their peers in other classes. 

Through rewindable learning the students were able to draft their writing using the brainstorm on the Google Slides. A lot of the students worked on their arguments from home and using the slides was essential in helping them with their writing at home.

Here are some writing samples the students in my class have produced:

Soane argument writing 

Richie argument writing

Meeting the author of our class novel

 Yesterday my class had the privilege of meeting Andrew Taafuli Fiu who is the author of a novel I am reading to my class. The novel is about Andrew's life and how he has overcome years of challenges from having rheumatic fever at a young age. 

Yesterday Andrew's message was about never giving up and always pursuing your goals. He counselled the students to work for their goals and to ensure they finish tasks they start. He also reinforced the importance of gaining an education as it is the key to success. 

He too really believes in being readers. Although he is not a trained writer, he decided to write about his life to tell his story. He had many challenges in writing the book and finding a publisher but he never gave up.

He told many stories about his life and was pleasantly surprised to learn how much the students knew about his journey as a child and adult going in and out of hospitals.

Yesterday's visit from Andrew was a powerful and meaningful experience for my class. They were just beaming with questions and excitement during and after Andrew's visit.

Watching the engagement of the students was a wonderful experience. Novel reading in my class is a time where we take a break and focus on reading for enjoyment.

Today's PLG reflection

 Today our CoL teachers had another online PLG. We had to share in small groups what we have been doing in our inquiries.

These are the questions Aaron asked us to discuss in our groups.

1.     Evidence about the monitoring of your implementation  - how you are collecting data and information with your changed practices?

2.     What is happening for students? How are you systematically tracking progress?

3.     What are you doing differently?

I shared that for each genre we write, I have created folders for students to put a copy of their completed writing in. This will help us analyse and view progress as the year progresses. 

I am collecting data by collecting how many words the students can write within a certain amount of time. A stocktake of how much they can write in a given amount of time. This activity is helping with their focus, independence to write and self assessment. This stocktake of a word count is done at least once a week. At the end, the students write how much time they were given and how many words they were able to write. 

I am also making notes on our discussions about the contribution of the students and their confidence to share their ideas in our writing discussions. 

Student blogs also have evidence of student work and their progress. I keep track of how many blog posts my students are making not only in Writing but all curriculum areas. 

With regards to question three, there are so many changes I have made to my practice. I am implementing T Shaped Literacy in my practice. I am constantly reading and going over slides from the WFRC to gain more understandings and ideas about implementing T Shaped Literacy. Another step I can take is to look at the sites of other school who are implementing T Shaped Literacy such at Pt England School as Danni shared today. 

As mentioned in previous posts, instead of having a Reading group then another Writing group, I have made literacy groups in my class. The students are in the same group for Reading and Writing. This is working effectively. Integrated learning with reading materials, genres, topics and discussions. There is also a lot of group collaboration. 

I mentioned today that my inquiry is about accelerating the writing levels of my students by using the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy in my practice and that it was working. After reflecting, I wanted to share in my small group that there is a lot of evidence from research and data collection that the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy does improve student learning but my inquiry is about will how I implement Learn, Create, Share accelerate the writing of my students? This is a good point for discussion I think because, we can attend so many professional development sessions or discussions and not implement what we learn in our classroom practice. Therefore, what I am doing differently this year is planning learning where there is visibility with the learning, creating and sharing. To do this, we are utilising digital technologies in our learning more than ever and I am challenging my students to explore other ways of creating their create activities. For example, instead of just using Google Slides, they can also add a screencastify where their blog viewers can listen to them discussing their learning. 

It is always a great learning opportunity to listen to the inquiries of other CoL teachers. Today Anna from St Pius shared her inquiry is around fostering a love of reading with her students. I was very excited and wanted to share that this was also part of my inquiry last year. From the work I did last year with my inquiry, I am still building on with that I did in Reading and integrating Reading and Writing together. I can confidently say that I have seen many of students enjoying reading for enjoyment. I am still reading a class novel to my class daily and also introducing them to other literature I come across which I think they will enjoy. I think it is very important to build on what we are doing in our inquiries and implementing what we know and learn every year. 

Having fun creating in our learning

This week, Room 7 are reading a story called Badge of Honour. One of the activities was to impersonate the school principal in the story and to address a student character in the story who has not been wise in his decisions. The story is a great read. It is based in New Zealand and the Room 7 students can relate to this story in many ways. 

Here are the slides Room 7 have been working through. You can also access the text from the slides.

Here is Soane's impersonation of Miss Latu the school principal from the story Badge of Honour.

The create aspect of the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy is a focus in my inquiry. I have a lot of fun thinking of activities where my students can learn and create at the same time. I love seeing their creativity coming through in their work and their confidence to take risks. 

Going back to Alert Level 3

The Alert Level 3 announcement although it was an urgent announcement, I am not in a panic because I am prepared with hangouts and work on our class site. I am however, worried that the amount of work my students can complete from home is not the same as what they can do in class. 

Going back to update the Home Learning page on out site, memories of the first lockdown were there from the daily reminders of hangouts, work completion and my screencastify recordings for the students to watch. My Bitmoji has been making a regular appearance on the Home Learning page too. 

Our first hangout felt quite normal. I was proud of my students for being so adaptive to the changes in learning environments. It is as if we just picked up where we left off in class and carried on. I am so grateful for our Manaiakalani cluster because it just makes digital learning, remote learning so easy with the systems in place.

Being Cybersmart is constantly being discussed in our hangouts. I feel my students area aware of why it is important to be Cybersmart and also the consequences and effects of their actions if they are not respecting themselves and others online. 

Here are some tips for hangouts from a veteran hangout teacher :) 

• Keep communication with your students going - emails, commenting on work, announcements on the Home learning page (screencastify, notices). You have to let your students know you are there supporting and monitoring their learning.
• Update the Home Learning page regularly - I use images, backgrounds for the dates, Bitmoji (good conversation starter)
• Talanoa, Talk, Chat, Share - my class and I love talking about subjects of interest to them and myself, current events, families, community, school...(we carry this on in our hangouts). Don't let the hangouts be a 'do this, do that act'.
• Have at least two hangouts a day - one in the morning to set the students up with work and clarify any work they do not understand, one in the afternoon where the students can report back on their progress
• Record the hangouts - in hangouts you can record, this is a good record of your discussions and also memories to look back on
• Very important - MAKE SURE WHAT YOU HAVE ON THE SITE IS VISIBLE. Imagine you are a parent trying to help your child navigate the site and you can not access what is on the site? Don't be that teacher!

Presenting my inquiry to our staff

Last week, I had the opportunity to present what I have been working on with my teaching as inquiry. I was very happy with the feedback from my principal and colleagues because it shows my inquiry is moving in a direction where it could help my school and colleagues. 

In discussing that my focus is in embedding the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy in my teaching, I explained that within the Learn, Create and Share aspect, each word has a lot of deliberate teacher actions involved. 

I also shared what I have been trying to achieve with using the  SISOMO acronym with the creation of DLOs. I noticed my students are very confident in creating DLOs using Google Slides and Google Draw. At the DFI sessions I had been attending I learnt that SISOMO is when a digital object has sight, sound and motion. I have encouraging my students to use Screencastify on their devices for their DLO creations. They can still create a Google Drawing or Google Slide presentation but most of the explaining can be done by them using Screencastify. I will post up a few examples of what my students have been producing using Screencastify in my next post. 

In supporting my colleagues, I have sent a document where each teacher can explain how they are embedding the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy in their practice. After analysing this data, I will then plan a presentation to be presented at a staff meeting where we will collaborate as a staff to get a common understanding of how to embed Learn, Create and Share in our learning programmes. 

Student voice for beginning of Term 3

I wanted to find out how my students are progressing since their first student voice form. Most of the questions in the form stayed the same with the addition of some questions.

Looking at their responses, I am able to identify most of the students are more confident in expressing their reflections about their learning and writing. They are more specific with their answers. The growth in confidence is more evident in their responses.

Here are the responses on Google Slides

Manaiakalani Secondary Connects - English - Literacy

Today I joined a Google Hangout meeting for the Manaiaklani Secondary Connects with a focus on English and Literacy. 

As an intermediate school teacher, I am very keen to learn about what is taught in college so I am able to prepare my students for their upcoming college years. 

Aaron Wilson's presentation supported what I have been trying to implement in my practice with T Shape Literacy. 

T Shape literacy I feel is often mentioned in professional discussions but not often explored in deep details (deep diving). I am glad I joined the Secondary Connects today because Aaron shared some very important insights to support my understanding. 

Aaron shared during observations, the WFRC observed a lot of time was spent focussing on a single text which came at an opportunity cost for the students. He discussed a lot of time was invested in one text when the students could be getting exposure to many texts relating to the topic. 

This is something I have been implementing in my teaching. The use of different multimodal texts for students to read and make meaning from. What I learnt today was inclusion of Challenge Texts where students points of views are challenged by another text. 

T Shaped Literacy is often referred to as the Wide and Deep reading approach. The students read a wide range of texts with a deep focus. Aaron discussed today that the narrow focus is drilling deep into a specific aspect of the texts. I have been reflecting about this statement from Aaron. Often when we have a lot of texts, we as teachers want to cover all the ideas in the texts. With time management in the classroom, often this leads to surface level discussions just to cover all the texts. 

Below are the benefits of T Shaped Literacy from Aaron's presentation today.

Definitely added to my kete today. These connect meetings are very valuable. Moving forward, I will now analyse my implementation and modify using what I have learnt today. 

Using the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy in teaching Writing

My inquiry question is: Will an integrated literacy programme with a focus on Learn, Create, Share accelerate the writing achievement of my target learners? (Refer to 27 May blog post)

I have been putting a lot of focus on integrating reading and writing. The students have been using written texts for a lot of their learning materials in the last term. This term, I am working on using more visual and audio texts for their learning activities. 

I have been promoting the use of SISOMO (sight, sound, motion) when the students are creating their sharing tasks. I find using Screencastify is an easy and accessible app for them to use. The only struggle now is the noise level when the students are recording their screencastify recordings in class. We are working our way through systems where the students can break out into more quiet spaces to record their recordings.

With using SISOMO resources, I am promoting what I am encouraging the students to create. This term, we are starting writing with procedural writing. The two slide presentations are examples of the use of SISOMO learning materials for students. They are watching Youtube clips on how to make Hangi and Trifle, then they respond by answering response questions. In responding to the response questions, the students are unpacking what they  understand from the clips. This will help them shape their ideas when writing the procedures. 

The students are also using a planning sheet created for them to use. This will help them structure their writing. 

I am currently working through my deliberate acts of teaching to change aspects of my practice which I believe will change the attitude of my students to writing, bring about more fun in learning to write, emphasise the purpose of writing and the target audience and accelerate writing achievement in my class.

The end of a wonderful DFI journey

It has been a wonderful, full on term with DFI learning every Tuesday. I have learnt so much during the DFI days. 

My confidence in using digital tools in my practice has increased and my appreciation for digital tools and how we can use these to empower our learners is stronger than ever. 

The exam was a good challenge. It was also fun to put what I had learnt to action and also challenge myself to problem solve. I was very happy today when I received the results from the exam. What a great way to finish off the term.

I am very grateful to Dorothy and the DFI team for their support and awhi during the DFI journey. Special thank you

to our bubble leader Mark for his help and support too.

Where to now? Is there a DFI for level two? To anyone considering going through the DFI journey, I strongly suggest you do. It is an empowering opportunity for you as an educator. 

Inquiry in action

Earlier in the term, I made the change to have three literacy groups in my class. Prior the students were in different reading and writing groups. Now in literacy groups, they are in the same group for reading and writing.

It has been an effective change. There in coherence in our discussions from writing to reading and the students are working very well together in their groups. I also find the flow of the lessons and rotations between groups are really effective.

With learning materials, I have a main text, then supplementary texts to support the main text. There is a lot of exposure to different texts at different levels. The students who struggle to understand some texts are finding support from their peers and also from listening and asking questions in our discussions.

With rotations, I have one main discussion group each day, then a mini discussion with another group. Each group has one main discussion and a mini discussion with me each week. With the integrated literacy groups, I find what we did not cover in reading discussions we can also catch up during writing discussions as the materials are linked between reading and writing.

For students with extra learning support needs, this integration is working very well for them. They are not having to think of which group they are in and what time they see the teacher as the rotations between groups are very well executed.

Where to from here? I am focussing on the quality of discussions. These are some of the questions I am constantly thinking of after group discussions.

How much of the discussion was led by the teacher?
How engaged were the students?
Did we achieve the goal of the discussion?
How much of the learning materials did the students understand?
How were the less motivated students encouraged to participate?

There are so many other aspects to my inquiry which I am working on. I am happy with what I am observing and working on so far and persevering to make more changes to my practice.

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 7 - Devices

Another full on day of learning today. I am enjoying the opportunities to learn then create a DLO to share my learning.

The focus for today were devices. I had the chance to the a Chromebook and experience what it is like for my students to work on a Chromebook. Learnt some shortcuts which I did not know before. Below are the slides I worked through to familiarise myself in working on a Chromebook.

We also had to work with using ipads today. Devices which the junior school students use for their learning but it was good to use Explain Everything again. I have not used Explain Everything for a while and I can see the many learning opportunities the students can gain from using ipads. 

For my last create activity today, I chose to use screencastify to create a movie about one of the Cybersmart areas. I chose to focus on Smart Footprint.  I used the information on from the Cybersmart Site and created my DLO using google slides. After creating the google slides, I used screencastify to talk about the content of the Smart Footprint lesson. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 6 - Enabling Access to Sites

I have to say today, I did the most practical work I have ever done since starting DFI. It was great to look at other sites to get ideas from. When we had to share our sites in our small bubbles I was shocked to learn some of the pages were not linked properly to the buttons. A little help from our facilitator Mark fixed this. 

The rest of the day I worked intensely on making my site more appealing and user friendly for my students. The buttons on the site were horrible with the background still visible. I changed this by making new buttons using Google Draw and ensuring the buttons were downloaded as PNGs. Below are the before and after screenshots. 

Before

After

I also changed the buttons and added dividers for the subject pages on my site. Before, I had all the buttons for the terms on the page. Now I have added new buttons and separated the other terms using a divider. I also did this for Writing and Maths. 

Reading page with new buttons and other terms separated

There are many more changes I want to make to my class site but for now I am very proud of how my class site looks now. 

"You can't CONNECT if you won't share" (Dorothy. Burt). 

I have gained so much from the sharing of other teachers and facilitators in Manaiakalani and other clusters. The above quote from Dorothy really emphasises the importance of connecting through sharing of our ideas and work as teachers. 

This brings me to my next point of discussion. VISIBILITY. It is important to ensure what we put online is visible for our students, whanau and colleagues. This a lesson I learn't today and probably will never forget. Viewing Incognito is helpful to view what others can see when visiting our sites.

I am quite proud of the work I was able to do on my class site today. I am glad we were given the opportunity to share our site with others in our small bubbles and receive their feedback. I learnt a lot from viewing the blogs and listening to our small bubbly members share their sites. We are all at different stages in our teaching and also teaching different year levels but we were able to take ideas from each other.  

Below are some tips for creating successful sites. 

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 5 - Sites

Another great day with our Manaiakalani Digital Fluency group today. I was reminded of how important is it for our sites to be visible not only to our students but for our wahanau, colleagues and anyone else who would like to look at what we are learning in our classrooms. 

Kelly mentioned that the sites have to  be culturally responsive. I don't think my class site is very culturally responsive at the moment and that is now a goal for me to work on. I have to ensure my site represents my learners and the environment of our learning space.

We spent quite some time looking at Multi Modal texts today. The wide and deep reading approach as suggested by the Woolf Fisher Research Centre is one where we can really utilise digital technologies. The digital affordances are great but there is still the very important need for the teacher to ensure the students are engaged in using and understanding the resources. 

Our create activity today was on creating a site using resources our group collected. My group used a resource from the Connected series. The main text is called On the Move. We used Jamboard to collaborate in collecting our resources. When we finished collecting our resources, each of us had to make a visible, eye catching and multi modal site. 

Here is the site I created today for On the Move. My next site I will create is for our Mana Whenua unit at school. 

On the Move Google Site

Responses from my learners about their learning.

It was interesting to find out what my learners think about themselves as learners. I made the form about their learning as a whole and not just focussed in Writing. The reason for this is because, through my inquiry, I hope they will gain more confidence in other areas of their learning or use their strengths from other curriculum areas to accelerate their progress in writing. 

From reading their responses, I could also see some of them were not very confident in unpacking themselves as learners. This will be another aspect of my on going inquiry. Scaffolding my students to be self reflective in their learning. 

Below are the information from the students. Very rich data for myself for my inquiry.

My inquiry plan

Inquiry focus on Writing

My focus for my inquiry this year is on Writing. As mentioned in my previous post, Writing has been identified as an area of concern for our school. This was concluded after our senior management team analysed our data from last year and the previous year. We as a staff also analysed the data and agreed that Writing will be our focus area for our Teaching as Inquiry this year. 

Inquiry design

My inquiry design has many aspects which I have been thinking for quite some time. As I listened to my fellow COL teachers present at the 2019 Burst and Bubbles evening, I decided my inquiry this year will have a lot of focus on the Creating and Sharing aspect of the Manaiakalani pedagogy. I feel the Learn part was covered quite well but the Create and Sharing needed more focus. 

Another aspect for my inquiry design I have reflected upon was the integration of Reading and Writing. As a teacher I often hear the words integrated curriculum and I have been thinking about how well am I integrating curriculum areas? What specific learning activities am I designing to ensure the students are working across the curriculum and integrating their learning skills? 

I will put a lot of focus on planning learning activities where the students are learning content and sharing their learning by creating DLOs (digital learning objects) to teach their peers and their blog audiences about what they are learning. During the lockdown this year, I feel my students and I have gained so much more confidence in using digital tools to share our learning. I am also in the Manaiakalani Digital Fluency programme and this is empowering me to help my learners in using digital technologies for their learning.

This year, I have changed my groupings from having separate Reading and Writing groups to having Literacy groups. If I am to integrate Reading and Writing, then I feel the students staying in the same group for literacy will enable the students to work through their integrated activities. For example, reading materials which are linked to the writing genre we are focussing on as a group. 

I have been doing some readings online and I came across this from an educational facility in Australia called Arrendell Education. 

Research has found that when children read extensively they become better writers. Reading a variety of genres helps children learn text structures and language that they can then transfer to their own writing. In addition, reading provides young people with prior knowledge that they can use in their stories. One of the primary reasons that we read is to learn. Especially while we are still in school, a major portion of what we know comes from the texts we read. Since writing is the act of transmitting knowledge in print, we must have information to share before we can write it. Therefore reading plays a major role in writing.

Retrieved from https://www.arrendell.com.au/importance-integrating-reading-writing-learning-process/

The WFRC (Woolf Fisher Research Centre) will be a vital source of information and support for my inquiry. The practices in the image below are actions I worked on implementing last year in my inquiry. This year I will continue to focus on these practices with a more robust inquiry plan. 

I am quite eager to see the effects of integrating Reading and Writing in my classroom practice. Some might question if I have not been integrating Reading and Writing earlier. The answer is yes to some degree but the students were in one Writing group then they would be in another group for Reading with a different set of peers working on other tasks. Integration will look like reading together, discussing together and creating together. 

There is also the focus on specific skills in writing. Below are the key characteristics of the writing standard for Year 8 students. For the Year 7 students, it is very similar the only difference being the level of control the Year 8 students need to have on their writing. My planning will ensure the standards are incorporated into activities.

My inquiry question is: Will an integrated literacy programme with a focus on Learn, Create, Share accelerate the writing achievement of my target learners?

I have made this Google Drawing to map out my inquiry design. I know there will be changes along the way as I work my way through my inquiry. I am also eager to receive some feedback or ideas from my blog viewers. 

I will finish this blog post off with a quote I heard during one of our DFI sessions. It will be the essence of my teaching inquiry this year.

Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Day 4 - Data

As Dorothy said today, 'sharing has been happening since time began'. I totally agree. Thinking about the Manaiakalani pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share, why create if we do not have the opportunity to share? We create so we are able to share what we have learnt or experienced. For myself, I post a lot on my social media because I want to share with my friends and family what is happening in my life. I share on my professional blog to show others what I am experiencing in my teaching practice. Therefore, I totally tautoko that importance of Tohatoha. 

Another important learning I gained from the Tohatoha deep dive is sharing as we learn and not sharing when we are finished. I will be putting more focus on this in my classroom practice. Students need to understand that sharing is in the process of learning. 

I use Hapara to manage student work, devices, log ins, activities but it was interesting to learn about other features I did not know about. One of the features was creating groups in Hapara. I am creating a group in Hapara for my target group with my Teaching as Inquiry. 

I have some confidence in using Google Forms. I use Google forms for surveys and also for quizzes. My students enjoy completing quizzes because it gives them their marks at the end of the test. I once created a quiz last year where I did not tick ONE RESPONSE ONLY. The result was me going through multiple entries from some students who wanted to get 100% for the test. Validity of data gone out the window! Learnt my lesson from that mistake. 

For our create activity in Google Forms today, I created a short quiz to refresh my students' memories about our class novel. We started the novel then stopped during Lockdown. 

Here is my Google Form:

The Google Sheets session was really helpful today. I totally agree that looking at data tells a story especially after my profiling mission last week with my target group with their writing results see blog Profiling by digging deeper blog post 

In completing my profiling last week, the content I learnt today about Google Sheets would have made my task so much more easier. I did not know about Conditional Formatting. That would have cut the time I spent formatting my sheets to a fraction. 

Our create task today was to analyse blog posts in student blogs. I first analysed one student from my class. I learnt last year, she did not make as many blog posts as she had the year before. This year, she has made more than double the amount of blog posts from last year by the middle of this year.

After working on Dwayne's blog, I decided it would be good for me to analyse how many blog posts all my students have made this year so far. First I gathered the data by finding out how many blog posts have been made in 2020. I then entered these data on a Google Sheet. I sorted the data from least number of blog posts to the most blog posts made. After that, I created a chart. Very easy to identify the students who have been doing a lot of blogging and the students I need to work with to give them more confidence and support with their blogging.

Here is the analysis for my whole class in a chart.

Great learning today and I am finishing off the day with a challenge to ensure the next time I analyse my class' blog posting, the chart will look much different to the one above. 

My profiling continues with collecting student voice

I created this Google Form to collect student voice from my target group about their strengths in their learning and also to gather information about their thoughts about writing.

I recall Aaron telling us to focus on what the students' strengths and use those to maximise their learning in our inquiries. 

I am really interested to learn about what the students view as their strengths in their learning and other information this form will collect from my target students. 

Here is the Google Form:

Profiling by digging deeper

Profiling

Aaron has emphasised time and time again the importance of profiling our students before beginning our inquiries. This year I have spent a lot more time and effort in profiling my learners. I have a group of 10 students who are in my target group. My curriculum area of focus this year is in Writing. 

What I wanted to know:

I wanted to know the story of the students and their writing progress for the last five years. I wanted to find out when they made progress, accelerated in their writing or even stalled in their progress. After all the data collection I wanted to analyse what has been happening and with which teacher and year level did major changes occur. 

Data collection:

I accessed through ETAP the writing results from the year 2014-2020. I wanted the beginning, middle and end of year assessment data in Writing. The data collection itself was not as challenging as I thought once I sought assistance from the ETAP helpdesk. 

Once I printed out each year's data, I collated the information on a spreadsheet starting from 2020-2014. After doing that, I realised, if I wanted to see a trend I was actually looking at the data backwards. I should start from 2014-2020. Therefore I made a copy of the first spreadsheet and started from the year 2014-2020. See table below and 2014-2020 Writing Levels Spreadsheet

Analysis

Looking at the above table, at first I thought well its is showing some progress and some dips in progress. I also thought, it is normal for students to start in the junior school at level one and progress to levels 2, 3 and so on as they move to the senior school. I also noticed that a few of the students in my target group did not have a lot of data on our database as they joined Glenbrae School later in their primary years. To me, that does not mean their achievement is not valid or unimportant. We will have to their first assessment entries as their baseline data.

Diving deeper into the data

However, as I sat at home that night, I kept looking at the data and thinking there is more to what I am seeing on the surface. I need to dig deeper. I was actually very eager to see what the data said and I knew I had to dig deeper. I had to investigate.  Therefore, I made yet another copy of the spreadsheet and started to identify the difference between each assessment point.

With that question in mind I started comparing assessment results by comparing if there was a shift from the last assessment entry of if there was a drop. 

After doing that analysis, this is what the spreadsheet looked like. I also wrote down my notes on what I was seeing from the analysis. Refer to table below and Profiling analysis and notes spreadsheet  

What did the data tell me?
The more I studied the spreadsheet, the more I was intrigued with what I was learning. I kept thinking as I was looking at the data, "What has been happening throughout these years for my students in writing?". Below are some of the findings I found analysing the data. I still feel there are some more trends I have yet to identify.

Now what?

With that I have learnt from analysing the data, one of my goals this year is to accelerate my students in writing and ensure they do not fall back on their writing skills and results. The how will be in another blog post but I am happy I took the time to look at what has been happening with my target group with writing in the past. I also plan to share my analysis with our teaching team so we are able to unpack and discuss what the data says and the trends. I always value the input of our teaching team and I look forward to what they can bring to the discussion. It will also be good for my colleagues to do an analysis of their own target student as I find there is so much value in profiling the students. 

Where to next?

I still have to gather student voice for my baseline data. I will do that early next week. After that, it is finalising my inquiry design by looking at student voice, professional development, staff discussions and whanau voice which I have to gather next week.