Today we worked in groups to talk about our inquiry so far. It was a really useful activity to help redirect and refocus our thinking around our inquiry.
The questions that were used as starting points for our discussions are highlighted below:
If somebody from your group came into your classroom tomorrow what would they see you (not your students) doing differently from a term ago?
- Getting students to work in groups to create writing resources.
- Mid year testing - writing samples
- Weekly plan for the whole term - trying to use this as a guideline to plan ahead for the term.
Why are you doing this?
- Thought about letting students create resources, because last term they used film/movies to help inspire their writing.
- Marking writing test data to group students according to needs. Then teach strategies according to needs.
- Check to see if there has been any shift in their writing.
What has happened as a result?
- So far a bit of chaos with sticking to plan e.g. some changes have altered earlier plans i.e. I now want the group to work on Film Festival movie sooner rather than later.
- Writing data so far (from Year 5 & 6 Extension group) shows that some have improved, some have stayed the same, and one has made a huge improvement in writing (Q: is this because the student has better oral language skills which has now transferred to his writing? Support from home? More practice? Why aren’t others making the same rate of improvement?)
- Will be meeting with a writing expert (Juanita) soon for more ideas on how to plan how to teach effective writing strategies and work out ways to maximise learning opportunities for the Extension students.
- Thought about how to present data at upcoming Manaiakalani Hui and ULearn conference.
