Inquiry Blog #1: The challenge of student learning.

1. Summarise the challenge of student learning you plan to focus on in this inquiry. Be as clear and specific as you can about the evidence you have about this to date.

My inquiry question take #1:  Could an effective change in teaching practice and pedagogy, by putting the lense on language and diving deep into text, develop critical thinkers, readers and writers? (TBC)

Summary of the challenge:
My year 9's often struggle to tell me (either verbally or in written form) what it is they have learnt at the end of a lesson and I am trying to figure out whether the way I am teaching them and what I am teaching them is too hard (or too easy) and whether this is leading to them not achieving personal or classroom success.  My hunch is that part of this lack of achievement is because I have become too complacent in my teaching and am not setting high enough expectations for each learner in my care.  Another hunch is that students need more scaffolding and work that is suitable for their level in the curriculum and that they find the work difficult.  

I need the students to be critical thinkers which is an important social science skill to have but also important for the big wide world awaiting our kids when they leave school.  Unfortunately, the reality for the majority of my year 9 kids right now is that they struggle to get one task completed during our class time.  This is leading to a lack of engagement by the less able students and a lack of motivation by the more able.  By 're-configuring' my pedagogy and forcing the lense on language, I could support my learners to become critical thinkers.

The light bulb moments of figuring out my challenge: My evidence to date!

1. Action vs Inaction
Recently, I taught a double period lesson for our year 9's to help them start their inquiry assessments. Basically it was 15 minutes of me emphasising the importance of the assessment, then explaining each aspect in a hope that they understood what was required of them. I then set them the challenge to complete two of the tasks which was to find at least 3 parts of background information and complete a map task.

Of the 21 students present, this is what I noticed:

• About 4-5 students went ahead to start. They were a mix of abilities. They worked individually and sat away from the majority of the class.
• A group of less able boys choose to work together although I needed to constantly remind them to focus.
• Another group of highly able boys, mucked around and had to be separated.
• A group of girls (who were my top students) refused to do the work stating they were being distracted and wanted to complete the work at home.

At the end of the lesson, less then half of the class had completed the two tasks. When I asked them what the issue was, most of them said they had been distracted. I found this really frustrating. Was it because they didn't understand the requirements? Was it too much or too little? I need to understand this more and figure out what was happening between my teaching and the students learning to cause this?

My wonderings:

• Is it the culture of my classroom? Are groups too distracting?
• Do I have low expectations of my kids (ie. you can do what you can, all good)?
• Is it the work? Have I set them up to fail?
• Is it the way I taught the lesson?
• Am I spending equal amounts of support time with all students or only with the ones I think need it?

2. Time vs no time
I co-taught a lesson with Dr Jannie Van Hees recently and I learnt alot about myself and what I thought was important for the kids to know (here is a blogpost about the lesson).

I had always thought that if kids could tell you at least 2 things they'd learnt in the lesson and showed it in a summary, then it has been a success. I realised after co-teaching with Jannie, that it was not about what they'd learnt there and then, it was more about what they could transfer to the next lesson and whether they understood the purpose of their learnings and where it fit in the big scheme of things. On reflection, this was one of the most engaging lessons that I have seen the kids take part in so far this year.

My key takeout from the lesson with Jannie is that if we rush the learning, we set kids up to fail. If we can slow the process of learning and put the lense on language, we can build the students' capacities to make meaning from their learning and apply these learnings across texts and contexts. I also found that not enough time is being spent on the learning language to understand text deeply and we very rarely share this learning through oral dialogue and verbal conversations, something that I am passionate about.

My wonderings:

• If I slow down the learning, will the kids miss out on other things they need to know?
• Can I teach myself to be patient? Am I really open to the change?
• What about my higher ability students, what are they supposed to do when we slow down the learning?

3. The damn data

In a blogpost recently, I introduced my students and shared data about their learning needs. The class is mixed from ESOL students to high level 6 of the curriculum readers and writers. This data supports my thinking that low ability readers are also very low ability writers. Is what I am doing in my teaching practice now helping or hindering student achievement? I need to find this out!

4. A taste of writing and reading

To understand how much they could read and write in these early days, I set the students a challenge. I called the activity a 'learning post'. They had to write a summary about Tokelau in 25 words or less and use 6 key words that they'd identified as important (this is a writing strategy they I had borrowed from the awesome Robyn Anderson a few years ago). I then asked them to record themselves reading their passage to me. The reason for the writing was to see if they could follow the instructions and to get a sense of how well they wrote and the reason for reading was to see if they could read with fluency and if this could possibly be an extra barrier to learning (blogpost to come).

What I found was that with the writing, a few (2 -3) students could write well and these same students articulated their writing in a good clear voice when reading their summaries. The majority of my class found it a struggle to understand the writing task which therefore made them feel pressure to spend less time on the reading of the summary. Most of them refused to have their faces shown, instead choosing to point the camera at a blank wall or at their computer screens and only have their voices recorded. One student though, choose to learn the reading off by heart and insisted I filmed him in my office away from his friends. This really surprised me and I have to give him credit for his efforts (short clip below).

My expectations were totally thrown off and the reality has reshaped my approach to my 'normalised' versions of teaching and learning. I will continue to collect evidence to support my inquiry because it is important to develop a holistic picture of what is happening for my learners and the impact of my teaching on their progress. In my next blog, I will describe how and why I have selected this challenge and I will attempt to locate my inquiry in the context of patterns of student learning in Manaiakalani overall.