A summary of my BIG inquiry: Raising the achievement of boys' writing by implementing engaging contexts and effective writing strategies.

When I started my big inquiry this year, I had a desire to continue the work and research that I'd begun last year as an in-school COL teacher and my key focus then was 'How to raise the achievement of our boys' in their writing'.  When I think back to my WHY, I was driven by the desire to take on this challenge because I was disillusioned with our poor results in writing, especially for the year 9 boys.  At our cluster wide meeting in February, Woolf Fisher shared these results and I couldn't stand it anymore - my goal was to change those results! I felt motivated to figure out what was going on and find ways to solve the challenge.

My Big Picture plan

I started with a big picture plan and I was guided by two questions:

1.  How can I help/support/guide the most number of people to make the most impact in addressing this issue?
2.  What do I need to do/fix/start within our school that would support the implementation of effective writing?

From this plan, I focused on a number of areas that I wanted to engage with and implement as part of my 'Big picture plan' and throughout this year, I have developed these programmes with the support of our school and Manaiakalani, who have allowed me the time to get these initiatives up and running.

I want to share with you my reflections on a few of the things that I felt were the most successful.  I have tried to write briefly what I did and what the outcomes were below.

The Students 

• Designing engaging contexts

As part of designing engaging contexts for students in their learning, I helped to develop and implement the Rise Above: Parakuihi and Hauora cross curricula unit for a year 10 class.  This involved working alongside Jacquie Bay and Alvina Pau'uvale of the Liggins institute, as well as Rose Hipkins of NZCER to develop professional development opportunities for the teachers of the unit.  I also facilitated staff PLD and supported teachers in my department with designing lessons.  As the unit is currently being taught this term, we will be reviewing the programme with all of the team involved at the end of the year.  The initial feedback from teachers is that the students are engaged in their learning and can see the benefits in this type of integration.  This has been a good learning opportunity for me to see how to develop a programme such as this, with a number of key stakeholders involved from the start.  My hope is that the learnings from this unit could support a bigger programme next year.

10RMz are learning about healthy eating.

• Knowing the value of Asttle 

The TKI e-asttle 'Assessment for Learning' site describes ways to communicate the value of knowing about asttle to educators and explains the importance of sitting down with students to inform them of where they are at with their results and how to set goals to raise their achievement.  I recently wrote two blog posts about a writing plan that I'd developed to support our juniors in their recent exams (Year 9 post and a year 10 post).  Both blog posts gained some positive comments from educators in and around our outreach clusters, to schools such as Hornby Primary and I was excited to hear that their leadership team were going to try aspects of the my writing plan in their school.

Top tips for kids writing

• My Classroom Inquiry

This year I taught a group of year 12 boys who had never taken social studies before and most of them were there by default.  I utilised some of my learnings from my last inquiry and PLD from Dr Jannie Van Hees to focus on supporting their writing through engaging contexts and the use of effective strategies.  For each of the 4 contexts taught, I tried to get us out of the classroom, invite guest speakers in, use lots of different writing techniques, debates, role plays and student initiated learning to engage and motivate the students to write.  Our focus on 'Language in abundance' and the Talanoa has given the kids another avenue to share their understanding of knowledge and make meaning from their contexts.  Overall, students have enjoyed their learning journey and have made some positive gains in their achievement.

A few of my year 12's on our recent visit to the 'Are we there yet' exhibition.

The Teachers

• Our Social Science Department literacy goals

One of our department goals is to try and move junior students up at least one asttle score above their entry level in writing.  My team have a range of strengths and experiences in teaching literacy and a focus of most of our department meetings has been to share any writing strategies that we'd used to allow us to have a bank of strategies to draw from and to see which have been the most effective.  We also enlisted the help of Marc Milford, our literacy expert to guide us through identifying language aspects to support our learners.  Each teacher choose writing as a focus in their own inquiries and I was able to support them as a HOD and a COL teacher to guide them in their teaching and learning pedagogy.

The bestest department ever- Social Sciences team

• Our Write that Essay (W.T.E) team

During the term 2 holidays, I found a PLD that was being run by Dr Ian Hunter, the developer of the programme 'Write that Essay'.  A number of staff from different curriculum areas attended the PLD and on their return, I invited them to share their key takeouts.  We agreed on a number of strategies that we would use and over the year we have applied, modified and shared these strategies with our students.  We will be meeting again before the end of the year, to see how it went in the classroom and reflect on what we could implement school wide next year.

Our W.T.E team in action

• PLD opportunities for our teachers

The Learn, Create, Share model is a model that we at the college are purposefully implementing school wide next year and to prepare us better for this, we have been supporting Lenva Shearing on the Manaiakalani team, with staff PLD over the year.  Putting a name to something we are already doing is making the learning explicit and connects us more to our Manaiakalani kaupapa.  As COL teachers, we have also been supporting staff from other curriculum areas on their inquiries which has been positive.

Lenva in her element - sharing her knowledge at the Tamaki College Staff PLD

• Connecting with our Primary school teachers

One of the real benefits of being an across school COL teacher was that I got to meet with some really hard-working practitioners who generously gave me their time to share their knowledge.  At Glenbrae Primary, Elfrida Raj invited me to a number of their PLD sessions to see how they were incorporating writing in their PLD as a school wide goal and I was excited to be part of the planning with my insights into what we have found was needed at the college.  At Point England Primary, Rob Wiseman shared his writing strategies and units that we could link up with to connect common contexts.  At Tamaki Primary, Heather Collins discussed ways that we could be 'seen' and be actively involved more at their school and Prem Rankolowan invited me to meet some of our potential year 9 students who will be coming to the college next year and next week, Robyn Anderson from Panmure Bridge will be bringing some of her talented students to teach some of our kids how to use google drawing better.  These examples of the openness of staff in our cluster to share their practice, supports the theory that if we can build a relationship based on trust and respect, we can move towards being united in our teaching and learning journeys, whilst still embracing our uniqueness.  I look forward to working more proactively with our primary teachers in the future. 

A writing wall at Glenbrae.

• Connecting with teachers across the globe

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of meeting Wayne Poncia, the Chief Product Officer of Hapara who invited us to be part of a Global Colab project involving students from Tamaki College, Canada and the States collaborating on solving a global issue.  As part of the planning team, we have met online several times and have designed a programme that will use workspace for  teaching and learning.  This project kicks off in term 1 of 2019, and we are really excited to be part of it.

Wayne Poncia on the right, who has kindly blocked me out:)

My personal learnings

There is no guidebook or instruction manual on how to be an effective across school COL teacher.  I think back to where I've come from and yes, I have done some good things and started some cool initiatives but at the end of the day, will it help our kids improve their writing?  It's hard to say at the moment, as you can't put your finger on just one thing that might work but I hope that part of my plan has helped start a movement. 

There were days when I wasn't sure that I was doing the right thing or working hard enough and I felt like giving up.  But I had to remember to keep my eyes on the prize - helping our kids.  At the end of this journey of inquiry, I have recognised a determination in me that has grown out of what drives us teachers to work as hard as we do.  It had given me purpose and reaffirmed that our kids are at the centre of all we do.

Kia kaha, kia toa, kia manawanui.