NZEI Pasifika Teachers Fono 2024 - Day 1

 During the first week of the school holidays, I had the privilege of attending the NZEI Pasifika Teachers Fono. It was held over two days at Waipuna Conference Centre in Mt Wellington. This is a slideshow sharing some of my highlights during the first day. I attended with Ms Va'afusuaga, Mrs Ilaoa, Ms Teleso, and Mrs Sio. Mrs Tele'a also attended. I am very grateful to our school and Board of Trustees for helping to subsidise the cost of the conference. 

COL - Spiral of Inquiry

 

Spiral of Inquiry Model

This is an image of the spiral of inquiry model developed by Timperley, Kaser and Halbert (2014). It is a framework for improving teaching and learning, and is based on the idea of continuous inquiry. Educators gather evidence, analyse it, and make informed decisions. There are six main stages: scanning, focusing, developing a hunch, learning, taking action and checking.

I will be using this model to help develop and implement an intervention to improve reading outcomes for my students.

Professor Graeme Aitken wrote an article titled ‘How to undertake Teaching as Inquiry’(Education Hub). He states that ‘teaching as Inquiry is one of the most powerful forms of teacher learning and is a vital strategy to improve student learning.’ I am at the ‘developing a hunch’ stage at the moment.

COL - Profiling

A crucial first step in any inquiry is understanding students' individual learning strengths and needs. This process, often referred to as profiling, helps to tailor instruction effectively. Effective profiling was discussed during one of our Manaiakalani COL sessions. Our principal Russell Burt talked about using EdPotential which is available to all teachers in Manaiakalani. This is an effective resource which is used to track student learning, whether individually, in classrooms or across schools in our cluster. 

To gain insights into my students' literacy abilities and requirements, I employed the following strategies:

1) Spent time during Term 1 getting to know my students e.g. through discussion and via tasks e.g. writing (‘All About Me’) and personal mihi and pepeha.

2) Gathering data and information from their 2023 and Term 1 2024 results e.g. PAT Reading and STAR data, Running Records or Probe.

3) Collecting data from EdPotential - tracking achievement for individual students in reading, writing and maths - to get a sense of their overall performance in these areas.

4) Student survey in reading - to gain insights into their reading habits, interests and strengths in reading.

COL - Analysing STAR data

 After analysing the results from my students Term 1 STAR Tests, I have noted down some of the key areas that I need to work on when planning for literacy in Term 2.

Teaching and Planning Strategies:

• Vocabulary:
  • Varied activities (image matching, writing definitions) based on reading and topics.
  • Build a word wall and hold regular quizzes (e.g., Kahoot!)
• Sentence Comprehension:
  • Focus on inference, vocabulary, and diverse texts.
  • Practice cloze activities, multiple choice, and writing for mechanics (e.g. proper grammar and punctuation) and clarity (e.g. sentence structure to ensure their writing is easy to understand).
• Paragraph Comprehension:
  • Teach strategies: skimming, summarising, identifying key words, and testing logical flow.
• Vocabulary Expansion:
  • Explore synonyms, antonyms, and word families.
• Decoding Advertising:
  • Discuss persuasive language techniques used to influence consumers.
• Writing for Audience:
  • Analyze titles, identify audience, and understand formal/informal styles through diverse writing exercises (fairy tales, news, job applications etc.).

COL - School Leaders Discussion

I initially decided to focus on tracking only one reading group for my COL inquiry. There are eight students in this group who are all reading at 9 years old. However, after some discussion with our Acting Principal Toni Nua regarding the recent Reading PAT and STAR test results, I will now focus on two of my reading groups. The second group are reading between 8 and 8.5 years old.

In total, there will be 16 students in my target group for my inquiry. This will allow for a larger sample size for my inquiry and hopefully better data collection. The discussion with Toni Nua was very valuable as she has a great wealth of knowledge and experience around teaching Year 7 & 8 students (She was the Intermediate School Team Leader years ago) as well as expertise in the literacy curriculum.

The next step will be to analyse the data from the PAT Reading and STAR test to identify where the student strengths and weaknesses are.

COL Data: PAT Reading and STAR Results Term 1 2024

PAT and STAR results: 

I used a table to track the PAT Reading and STAR data for 16 students who are in my potential target group for my COL inquiry this year. I initially thought about just tracking one reading group (around 8 students) but after discussion with Toni Nua (Deputy Principal) I will be tracking 2 reading groups who are reading at a similar age. 

Some Key findings: 

* The results from the 8-8.5 readers were quite similar to the 9 year readers. 

* PAT Reading range: Stanine 1 - 4

* STAR range: Stanine 1 - 3

* Word Recognition in the STAR test was a strength compared to the other sections. 

* Student weakness in STAR was: Vocab, Advertising language and Writing Style.

COL (Community of Learning) 2024

COL Inquiry 2024

Welcome to my professional inquiry blog! This year I have the privilege of being a member of the Manaiakalani COL (Community of Learning) for 2024. Last week we had our first COL meeting for the year. It was an opportunity to meet all the other COL teachers in our cluster as well as the across-school COL leaders. When we were interviewed towards the end of 2023 for COL we were asked what our inquiry focus might be. We needed to relate it back to one of the 6 main goals of Manaiakalani as follows:



This year I have decided to select achievement challenge 3 which is to:

'Lift the achievement in Reading for all students, with a particular focus on boys and Māori students (both genders) years 1-13'

I have selected reading as my area of inquiry because most of the students in my literacy class of Year 7 & 8 students are reading below their age. I have 30 students in my literacy class. Their reading ages range from 5 years old (ESOL student) to 11 years old, so there is quite a range. The first part of our inquiry involves gathering data. This will enable us to form hunches around what the real issues are regarding our students learning needs.