How my Inquiry fits in with our Achievement Challenges.

The Achievement Challenge that I am inquiring into relates to achievement challenge number 2, which aims to:

Lift the achievement of boys' writing in Years 1 - 10.

The students I am focussing on are the year 9 students in my social studies class, with a focus on the writing achievements of the boys.  I want to look at effective writing tools that will engage my learners and raise achievement.

My aims are:

• To increase engagement and motivation for writing
• "I want to write because I like to write"
• To improve and shift achievement in writing 
• "I want to write because I know how to write"

I had a hunch:  That transitioning from year 8 to year 9 can be pretty scary and sometimes overwhelming for our kids - lots of teachers, new students from other schools, new ways of being taught.  What can help with the transition?  What skills can they transfer over?  How can we better connect and track their writing from one year to the next?  These were the questions I had at the beginning of my inquiry.

Just recently, I completed a quick survey of my year 9 class and when asked if they liked school, 100% said yes.  When I asked them what they liked, the common answers were 'meeting new people and making new friends, having different classes and doing new subjects'.  These responses were surprising to me and I have to give our kids credit.  They've taught me that yip change can be scary but we (as teachers) need to accept that they will step up and accept it and we need to respond to what they like rather than what we think they like.  More kids voice, less teachers me thinks!!

To read more, have a look at this inquiry presentation that will show what I've been up to so far!