Reflection SPARK MIT 2016

2016 has been a really interesting year in terms of the SPARK MIT Programme. Not only did I receive extra time and support to focus on my inquiry, but I had the opportunity to meet and learn from others in the programme. Out of a group of 10 from the Manaiakalani schools, there were three from Pt England School: Matt, Karen and myself. I knew some of the teachers from the other local schools in our area, but it was great to meet other teachers from the outreach clusters.

I enjoyed the time spent with the group as we shared ideas and reflected on our inquiry journeys at SPARK headquarters in the city. Lynne Le Gros, General Manager of the SPARK Foundation, was always available to listen and to share her stories, views and advice. We also had the chance to meet with Sera and Mary who are also part of the SPARK Foundation team.

I would just like to thank Dorothy Burt and Juanita Garden for their time, support and encouragement over the year. Thanks also to Lynne and the SPARK Foundation for the opportunity to focus on our inquiry. Last but not least, thanks to the teachers who shared their journey with me. All the best in the New Year.

SPARK MIT Presentation 2016 and Inquiry Findings

Inquiry Findings 2016 from SchoolTV on Vimeo.

This movie is about my SPARK MIT inquiry this year. It was based on the question: How to use film to improve writing achievements for students? I presented my inquiry at this years Manaiakalani Hui, ULearn (Rotorua) and at one of our staff meetings.

The movie also shares some results from the easTTle writing data. It was great to see that many students made shifts well above the expected national shift in writing.

Inquiry Term 3 - What am I doing differently?

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.  

Inquiry Reflection Term 2

During our last staff inquiry meeting at the end of Term 2 we were asked to reflect on our inquiries so far. I think that I have come a long way with my inquiry since Term 1. More was achieved this term with the use of film/movies to help improve writing skills. I hope that this will gain more momentum in Term 3 as I have a better idea of which direction to head towards in terms of using movies to help improve writing skills.

More Descriptive Writing Tasks

Here is another example of a task where students are asked to practice describing how to 'show' not 'tell' what a setting might look or be like.



In this task students were asked to use their senses to describe an experience (or possible experience). They were asked to practice writing using descriptive language. Some examples are included here.

Character Description Task

Character Description Notes from Lesson:

Character Description Task

It was interesting to note that most students in this group struggled with the task even though they are our extension students. I thought that it would be quick and easy but it wasn’t. Brainstorming some ideas around what the picture or footage was about was quite easy. Coming up with a couple of succinct sentences that could ‘show’ and not ‘tell’ me what the character might be about was a lot harder. It took a bit of time to explain, model and help craft their writing. Eventually they all completed the task with some help and hopefully they will be quicker when working on the ‘Setting Description’ task.

Next step:

Show before and after attempts (by students) when crafting to see evidence of the difference that careful crafting makes to a piece of writing.

SPARK MIT PLG #2 - Part 2

Inquiry: How to use film to extend writing achievement for our Extension students?

Dorothy shared with us a handy definition of an innovation in a digital context:

"An intervention that would not have been possible prior to the move to digital learning environments”

1. What innovations are you using to address the problem you identified?

Innovation: using online movie clips (e.g. from sites such as Youtube, The Literacy Shed) to improve writing skills. Students will write their own narratives and create movies based on their narratives. Create short movies as resources to show students how to improve their narrative writing skills.

Term 2 Goal: Combining topic based school wide theme (Art) with inquiry e.g. providing opportunities to improve writing.

Year 5 & 6 Extension:

Art theme will be based on Polynesian Warriors. The focus is on traditional/cultural tattoo designs and what they mean (Art Exhibition at end of term). Students will work on narratives about their warrior. At the moment just focussing on ideas for plot, structure of narrative, character and setting descriptions. Lots of group discussion and sharing of ideas. I have been trying to provide opportunities to develop narrative writing skills by using online resources.

Year 7 & 8 Extension:

Art theme is based on the work of author and illustrator Colin Thompson. Students will write a narrative that will inspire their artwork in the style of Colin Thompson. The focus will be on perspective and how to create the illusion of depth. At the moment we are still developing our ideas about characters and the setting.

End of last term I selected very short Youtube clips of a setting (forest and old cottage), problem (being chased by a bear), resolution/emotions (being reunited with family). We used the clips to think about what we could see, hear, feel about the clips. Lots of discussion about this. Brainstormed ideas.

Spent time collecting resources - Link

Students are expected to keep a writing log (links to their blog posts) and post regular book reviews. Reading and writing go hand in hand and reading mileage will aid writing.

1. What is going well?

This term I have a clearer idea about what I want to achieve. I know where most of the students are at in terms of their writing. I’ve analysed their writing samples and identified individual as well as group strengths and weaknesses. I’ve collected resources and ideas that might help to motivate students to improve their writing skills.

2. What are some of the challenges?

Managing and organising my time so that I keep up with what I want the students to learn and achieve. Lack of time is always an issue. Interruptions in the school programme mean less time with students less time working on their tasks.

I would love to focus purely on improving writing during Extension, but I also need to be mindful of school wide needs e.g. Art Exhibition at end of term. No other choice but to compromise, but the digital learning environment means that students can access resources and information anytime, anyplace and anywhere.

Next steps:

Ideas to manage inquiry:

How to have an effect (make an impact) as time is split between art and writing. Only 2 opportunities to write.

Use an MIT day to complete artwork?? Create resources?

Homework - set each week - mini writing task so when students get to class - work with scaffolding a group. Focus on aspects/elements of writing eg punctuation.

SAMR@SPARK MIT PLG #2 - Part 1

Today the SPARK MIT group met for the second time to touch base on where we were up to with our inquiries. First of all we looked at the SAMR model and discussed our thoughts about this. Several links helped us to decide whether we thought this was a useful model or not.

The SAMR model explained by students - This was a good clip explaining what SAMR is in an easy to understand way.
Wheel on SAMR and Bloom's Digital Taxonomy - Great graphic which combines SAMR ideas and Bloom's Taxonomy.

Taking a dip in the SAMR swimming pool - I enjoyed reading this interpretation of the SAMR model. I also liked the analogy of it being like a swimming pool. Teachers can test the water by creating tasks which are more at the substitution and augmentation levels (shallow end of pool) until they feel more comfortable creating tasks which are 'above' the line (Modification/Redefinition) in the deeper end of the pool.

I think that the SAMR model is a useful tool to help teachers plan tasks for students which will challenge and extend their critical thinking skills. It allows for planning of tasks which have the ability to be 'transformative'. The affordances of technology should make this happen a lot easier.

How to combine inquiry with Art focus?

This term our school wide focus is on Art ('as i see it'). I decided that the easiest way to focus on my MIT inquiry (how to raise student achievement in writing) was to combine Art with storytelling (narrative).

This is the plan for the Year 5 & 6 Extension students this term:




Here is the plan for the Year 7 & 8 Extension students:

SPARK MIT Inquiry 2016

Today the 2016 SPARK MIT (Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher) Group met at SPARK Headquarters in Auckland city. We were each given the chance to introduce ourselves and share our inquiry ideas. Quite a few of us have decided to focus on improving student outcomes in writing. However, it was interesting to note that we had different problems that we needed to specifically identify (regarding our group of learners) and share with the group. It was actually a little harder than we thought to actually verbalise what the root of the problem was. This is what I narrowed down to be the problem for the Extension group:

Problem: Only a small number of Pt England Learners are progressing beyond the mean in writing even when they are classified as our more able or 'Extension Children'. 

Hypothesis: These learners appear to be unclear about what is expected of them and do not appear to have clear goals to strive for in order to achieve well above the national standard in writing. 

Evidence: 

Fig 2. (below) is a table of performance in e-asTTle Writing from November 2015 of the Pt England Extension Children.

Year Group	Below Mean	At Mean	Above Mean
Y5	3	1	9
Y6	6		6
Y7	2		8
Y8	1		9

You will note that there are a significant number of learners above the mean but very few of those are actually outside of the ‘box’ that is grouped around the mean of e-asTTle Writing.