#4. Summarise your key findings about the nature and extent of the student problem

#4. Summarise your key findings about the nature and extent of the student problem i.e. present your baseline student data and evidence.

The problem that I thought was a key problem is that students feel disconnected to their community because they don’t see themselves in it or belonging to it.  I found that a key reason could be a lack of focus and distractions away from their learning which has a big impact but also the lack of enjoyment in the learning is a factor. 

Distractions:

As part of our Tapasā surveys conducted at the end of last year, we asked 100 Pasifika students what did they think were the barriers to their learning and among other things the biggest result was ‘Distractions’ with 35%.  

When broken down further, the majority of distractions occurred externally from forces outside the learners control.

I did a similar survey with my year 9 students and asked them ‘Are there any barriers to your learning in my classroom’ and although the majority said ‘No’, 24% of them said the biggest barrier was ‘Distractions’.  

When thinking about my inquiry, how can I limit distractions in my classroom as it is a major barrier to learning?  

Whanau discussions:

As my Social Studies class is also my mentoring class, I have called and discussed student lack of engagement with parents as we look to support their child.  I’ve had a number of conversations where parents welcome the support and understand the difficulties in the classroom.  My learnings from having these conversations and seeing the students the next day, is that they change in their behaviour, always for the positive. I need to ensure that I am keeping the connections up and focus on sharing good news as well. 

Connecting with other teachers.

I have on-going discussions with all of the teachers of my kids to develop personalised learning plans with our more boisterous students but also shared good practice.  With one of my students in particular, I expected similar experiences with that student in the class but a their English teacher shared a strategy that I had not tried before.  We then had an in-depth conversation about how they came to use the strategy and I also visited their classroom to have a look at their learning environment.  I decided that I would like to replicate aspects of their learning environment too as I wanted to break down a barrier that says we don't share good practice across the school.

I will continue to share my findings as I continue to work through the nature and extent of the student problem.