COL meeting #2: 18th March, 2021

COL#2: 18th March, 2021

Today we had our second COL meeting at Pt England Primary school.  It was lovely to see the team for the first time in person this year.  Below are some of the notes I took from my meeting. 

Think about a size that is manageable and measurable.

What causes our kids to have a reading problem.  Not enough vocab?  So what?  What's the inquiry?

Teacher feedback or impact makes the most impact on a student.

Has to be something that we are in charge of.

How would we hone down things like engagement?

Kotahitanga - Dr Russell Bishop said 'kids do well if they get on with the teacher'.

“Something in the deliberate acts of teaching that could make a big difference”. Teachers might be doing it the wrong way or not doing it enough.

How do you know whose getting what and the right amount?  

We can measure the lunch programme - if they get the same stuff, how come boys are lower.

Control groups not always fair. Not compulsory.

Agree around some commonality but see the difference

Collaborative Inquiry is a “can do”

A group could agree to use a common tool 

They may end up using a different approach or could combine and try the same approach (may be a benefit in more numbers)

Still needs to be based on the evidence from various classes i.e. variations in content in response to learners.

In order to develop an intervention it’s important to know why is that happening?

Discussion time - find others who are doing similar inquiries.

https://christinetupou.blogspot.com/

https://potofaalili.blogspot.com/

I had an awesome discussions with Poto and Christine and how they want to focus on empowering the learners through the teachers that teach them.

Key takeouts:

• We share the fact that our Pasifika kids respond to their Pasifika teachers better
  
• Identity is a key factor that allows our learners to feel valued.

I had always felt that sometimes my inquiry is too focused on the how what I could do would change literacy and numeracy when the reality is, what needs addressing is teacher practice.  My passion is our empowering our Pasifika learners and after talking to Poto and Christine, I feel committed to continue my line of inquiry.

Inquiry Question #2: Inquiry Focus

Inquiry Question2 : From what you know already about your classes and your school’s profile and leadership goals for the year, share a possible inquiry focus.

My initial inquiry draft#2 is:

How does taking teachers on a journey of growth in Tapasā affect their pedagogical implementation?

Our school is made up of at least 68% Pasifika students.  We have strategies that we think we know and use around how to be culturally responsive to the needs of our students but there hasn't really been an inquiry to show how we can better adapt best evidence practice when engaging our Pasifika learners.

Part way through 2020, after reading a document containing student voice from our school, I decided that I wanted to turn that voice into action.  From this has came the Tamaki College Pasifika Initiative.  There are multiple levels of the initiative and one key aspect has been to implement the Tapasā into our teaching and learning.

I have been thinking about how to support those staff who are not Pasifika in implementing the Tapasā.  In saying that, there is an assumption that Pasifika teachers know how to teach Pasifika kids and although this may be true, relying on Pasifika staff to 'deal' with our Pasifika students.  So I'm am broadly thinking about who I would want to work with.

My inquiries in the past have focussed on a class and how I would implement interventions to accelerate achievement.  And these have usually been positive.  From my experience, I have noticed that as a Pasifika teacher myself, the students can relate to my teaching style and therefore respond positively.  I feel I am 'good' at teaching Pasifika students and therefore doing another inquiry whereby I teach the students I am inquirying into isn't condusive to the bigger picture.  We know that students engage with people who look like them and can connect with them.  My wonderings are: how can staff who don't look like me (ie. Pasifika) teach kids who look like me (ie. Pasifika).

I feel as a HOD and a passionate advocate of Pasifika education at Tamaki College, I would like to support non-Pasifika staff to connect with our Pasifika students better using the well documented and value added strategies shared in the Tapasā.  

My style of teacher support is to understand my teachers underlying assumptions and beliefs and to collaborate on a ‘framework’ that will allow them to look at their perceptions of our Pasifika students differently and build a repertoire of skills to support the learners in front of them.

Although our specific blogpost is supposed to frame our focus as a desired change in student learning and NOT a change in teaching, I am still working out how supporting our teachers will enhance and/or accelerate student learning and whether this needs to be a focus.

Initial Plan

My initial Planning will be to:

• Invite staff to join my inquiry
• Share with them the purpose of my inquiry and how it could support them
• Make a plan to regularly catch up with them
• Capture learnings through voice recordings and/or video observations.
• Pick out and align learnings from the Tapasā. 
• Document carefully our meetings
• Look at the different models that we could apply such as the growth mindset and the iceberg model.
• Identify trends and patterns from our meetings and share with my team.

Inquiry Question #1: Collaborate

My task was to collaborate with my school's leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where my inquiry will make a powerful contribution to the wider school and cluster goals.

Goal number 4 of our school goals for 2021 is: 

All teachers at Tamaki College will be well supported so that their practice meets the needs of their students. 

We have aligned our department goals to this school goal:

By the end of the year, we will have developed relatable practical teaching and learning resources to support the varying teaching needs of our team to meet the learning needs of the students in our Social Science classrooms.  There is a focus on our Maori and Pasifika learners.  We will construct a Social Sciences framework with which we will apply the learnings from the Standards for Profession teaching using the Tapasā as a lense, to enable all Social Sciences teachers  to have a kete/bank of strategies to support our learners across each year level.

My draft #1 Inquiry focus that I discussed with my school’s leadership team and colleagues was:

Can I develop the capabilities of my staff to accelerate learning through understanding and applying the Tapasā in a year 10 Social Studies class?

At this stage, ‘develop the capabilities’ relates to:

• Me understanding in depth the Tapasā
• Understanding where my team are and know about culturally responsive pedagogy
• Understanding where my team are and know about the Tapasā
• Wondering if kids can learn in an environment where the strategies from the Tapasā is prevalent and at the forefront of the teaching and learning/

Specific Outcomes:

• A ‘collaborative framework’ for staff in my department to develop with my guidance and support
• A ‘framework’ for success in collaboration with students
• A positive shift in achievement data related to PAT or asttle writing (possibility)

Wider school goals: 

• School goal:  Focus on school goal #4, on teacher wellbeing

Cluster wide goals: 

• Manaiakalani Achievement Challenges
• Challenges identified by Woolf Fisher at our cluster wide meeting specifically reading 

Through formal and informal discussions, I have talked to the following people:

My school’s leadership team: 

• Our School Principal (Senior Leadership team).  
• It is an inquiry that is paramount and embedded in your practice
• This is part of core business and will help staff develop cultural awareness 
• It will be useful to the growth of the department meaning that it will shift achievement in some way.
• You won’t be reinventing the wheel and should not be more work then what you are currently doing.
• Heads of Department (related to curriculum).
• How can what you learn apply to other subject areas.
• Positive in the way it can support our students.

Colleagues:  

• HOD in another department
• The more strategies the better especially around managing behaviour.
• It would be good to support staff in having restorative and meaningful conversations
• Teachers in my department
• How much more work is required?
• Can it work in my classroom? Strategies and tasks that you can see works.
• We would like support in how to scaffold collaborative groups because we don’t do it enough.
• Teachers from other curriculum areas
• I can see the value in working across curriculum areas.  How would assessments and reporting on the class look?
• Sharing ‘knowing the learner’ in a consistent centralised place important

Professional Colleague with Language and Inquiry Experience:  Dr Jannie Van Hees

• This is in two parts and maybe too big to do.  For the meantime, don’t worry about affecting learning and achievement as yet. 
• Uptake of the journey to somehow be evident in the pedagogy and then we make a projection (after analysing blogging, logging, student voice and discussions) to see what are some trends.
• Think about how you can collect evidence and measure this. 
• I think It will be interesting to see how they (not giving them do this do that) but saying from that piece of learning, I might try this and I might try that, alright go for it.  With regular checkpoints, the support will be there.

After discussing with the SLT and a number of colleagues and experts my draft#1 inquiry, I have decided to reframe my inquiry to focus on the capabilities of members of my department.  My Draft#2 of my Inquiry is along the lines of: 

How does taking teachers on a journey of growth in Tapasā affect their pedagogical implementation?. 

I will attempt to discuss this further in my next blog.

Evidence #1: A Quantitive Analysis of Student Writing

To find evidence of whether my inquiry (interventions) has shifted student writing, I discussed ways to do this with Dr Jannie.  She suggested that I carefully analysed writing samples from the beginning of the year, pre intervention, and compared it to their most recent piece of writing.

This is an analysis of writing for 3 students in 9PKr: (M1, R1 and A1 are codes for the students names).  What I did was to select 3 students who were low, middle and upper in their asttle writing and PAT results to start off with.  I then gave collected two writing samples (Time 1 and Time 2).  I then compared the following:

• How many Notions and Ideas the student had

• Examples of complex word groups used

• How well ideas were expanded and detailed under text development

• If the student was able to write in an academic style

Using the vocab profiler called ‘Lextutor’, I put in the sample writings and calculated the number of simple, compound, complex and complex compound sentences in the sample.  The vocab profiler also calculated k1 (1-1000) and k2 (1001 - 2000), which counts the most frequent English words that people should know (eg k1 is the first 1000).  AWL stands for ‘Academic Word List’.  In the last column, I counted how many sentences/phrases were topic specific.  

Lextutor

I have linked the collated results here and taken screen shots of the evidence below:

Here are the links to each students of writing:

• M1
• R1
• A1

Summary:  After an extensive quantitive process of vocab measuring comparing times 1 to time 2 in my students' paragraph writing and looking at qualitative student voice feedback,  I found that the higher the stanine of the learner, the more stand out are areas of uplift.  A1 has made significant areas of uplift too, mainly a greater density of ideas and notions, and complex word groups.  R1 and M1 did not make as much gain as I’d liked.

After doing the analysis, it has became clear it is that their lack of vocabulary and their inability to expand ideas was sitting inside their writing.  This was evident even after the interventions I had applied in slowing down the learning.  Overall they also lacked organisational skills.  

My learnings from analysing data/writing academically is that I need to do this more to understand the needs of the students more purposefully and it definitely helps direct a clearer inquiry.  Quantitive data combined with a qualitative approach gives a more realistic picture of where our kids are at and how my teaching can be guided and informed when planning my inquiry.  In my next blog, I hope to provide an overview of my inquiry process.

Intervention #2: Increasing the number of Iterations for learning

In a previous blog, I discussed my inquiry with Jannie who shared one of the effective ways to support my learners in understanding their learning.

"One of the Principles of learning is that you need a number of iterations.  You're building in those iterations.  Teachers are overlooking this need that we all have that you don’t learn things and do the same things over and over, you crank it so that in a different way or a little bit more challenge or you go back to it again, not only to your partner but to each other.  They are all ways that (you are) consolidating and creating iterations of their learning" (Blogpost, 10th August, 2019)

Research that supports these principles within my specific learning area of Social Studies, can be found in the Best Evidence Synthesis (BESs) report, commissioned by the Ministry of Education.  It was found that 'students need sufficient, related opportunities to revisit learning through a variety of activities that will embed that learning in their memories'.  (p12, Sinnema and Aitken, 2008)

I used these principles when I planned my lesson for my year 9's recently.  To put this into practice, I allowed for more time for learning and the context we were learning about was to understand what parliament does.  

When reflecting on my previous lesson, I used the ideas of slowing down the learning by focusing on key words and concepts, to guide my lesson.  To crank my lesson up slightly, I used lots of different images and simple definitions to support new words and concepts.

Lesson structure:

1.  Pretest and post test:  I created a pre and post test that asks students to connect a word/phrase related to parliament, an image to support the word and a definition or example of that word.

2.  Powerpoint presentation:  I created a powerpoint that had limited wording, an emphasis on key points and big images and pictures.

3.  Video:  On the powerpoint, there is a short video discussing what I will be talking about on my powerpoint. 

4.  Mix and match exercise:  I cut up the words/phrases related to parliament, the image that supported the words and a definition or example of that word and asked students to match them together by turning the cards upside down and playing 'go fish'.  

5.  Kahoot!: I created a quick spot quiz on Parliament in kahoot.

6.  Blog post:  I wanted to get kids to write a blogpost on their learning. 

7.  Survey:  I created a survey that asked 4 questions: 

• Did you enjoy today's lesson on Parliament?
• What part did you enjoy the most?
• Is there anything else that Ms Apelu can do to help you learn better next time? (write one thing if you think there is something)
• Is there anything else that YOU can do to help you learn better next time? (write one thing if you think there is something)

Actual lesson:

I made the kids do the pre and post test on paper and supplied their pens and pencils for ease of collection.  I asked for devices to be off and to focus on my explaining the powerpoint.  I emphasised the key words and sounded out words that students may not understand.  I tried to use phonetically sound out key words and write the words on the board.  I made the students say it out loud, clap out the syllables and turn to a partner and say the words to each other.

When we moved into doing the mix and match exercise students seem excited to do the activity.  Unfortunately my instructions weren't clear so some students lay all the words out and tried to put them in groups, others did 3 columns and other played 'go fish' (I know for next time to model what I want them to do and have it on the ppt).  Although lots of kids were doing different activities with the same words, I felt there was lots of mixing and matching going on and that students were mostly engaged.  The first student who got the answers matched up correctly was asked to go around and check other students.

The class really enjoyed the kahoot as they got to challenge each other - the boys were the most excited but the girls got the better results.  I noticed we had run out of time towards the end of the lesson and didn't get a chance to start the blog.  Just before the bell, students were asked to complete the survey and the post-test. (I will report on the results in my next few posts)

Quick reflections:  
I was pretty exhausted by the end of the lesson, mostly because I think I stood at the front and had to encourage the talking and rephrasing and modelling of the language.  There were so many components to the lesson that I had to keep track of the time, of the activity and monitor the behaviour of the students especially in the last 30 minutes.  Overall I think the lesson went well and judging by the quick survey answers, I can use their feedback to modify my next lessons.

Monitoring #5: Student feedback on our lesson on key concepts

Today I sat down with a focus group of students who are in 9PKr to show them the lesson I taught on key government concepts and to ask for their feedback on their thoughts of the lesson.  I also wanted to know if there were any other ways that I could support them in their learning.

I choose two boys and two girls from the class with mid to high levels of ability.  I did this because I thought they wouldn't be shy to share their ideas and because they seemed engaged during the lessons.  I have coded them as:  T2 and T3 = Male, M2 and A2 = Female.  Here is a snippet of our conversations.

Did you enjoy the lesson? 

M2:  Yes it was cool

A2: That was one of the funnest days because we actually worked as a class and everyone participated.

T3: We got to talk about words that we didn’t know and practice them heaps

Is there anything I could do to help you talk about your learning more?

T3: Make it a challenge and put us in groups. And whoever gets the answer right, gets a prize.  Us boys like challenges.

M2: Give us more things where we can move around and have to talk to each other.

A2: Yea like maybe do things where we don’t have to talk to the same people

Should we mix up the groups?

A2: Yes cause we’re always in the same groups

Anything else?

A2: Oh miss, can we try debating once in a while because we did it in Health and it was fun.  It we can hear from everyone even the quiet students.

Tell me more about that?

A2: We had boys against girls and it was fun.  We had to really about what to say because

T3: Have us in groups of 4 or how we had the U shape like when Ms Jannie was here cause it made everyone on the same level and we all had to contribute.

Reflections:  As they watched, I could see they were interested more in what they were doing during the lesson rather than what I was doing.   I think one of the things that I have learnt from showing them the lesson was that as they got to see what they were doing and how they were responding, they became a bit embarrased and they were surprised to see themselves behave the way they did.  From time to time a few of the kids called out, made comments that could be heard on the video or distracted others from their learning.  Although this was not how I intended to use the video, it was interesting for me to see their reactions and I feel that this could be a useful tool to do from time to time to keep students in check.

Next steps:  I enjoyed listening to the students' feedback and found that by giving them a voice, I could hear how they wanted the lessons to go.  I want to use some of their ideas in our next lessons to support their learning more and find more opportunities to sit down with different students in class to ask for feedback as a focus group.

Monitoring #1: Results of my pretest and posttest

As part of the lesson I did with 9PKr, I gave them a pre-test and a post-test on the 7 key concepts that we'd learnt in the double period.  I decided to make it a mix and match exercise.

Here are the comparative results:

The students either stayed were they were with results or made positive gains in the tests.  I found that the boys especially made the biggest gain in their results and it was pleasing to see this in the tests.  I think it may be a combination of slowing the pace of the lesson to focus primarily on the concepts but also the opportunity kids had to test themselves individually, in pairs and in groups to ensure they got the learning.  I hope also to examine whether it was my teaching approach that impacted on this shift in my next blogs.

Dr Jannie suggested I show the results to the students because the more times we can showcase their cleverness the better.   I want to give them the test again at a later date to see if they can remember the terms more easier.  I also want to vary the way I monitor them by changing the tests for example I might try an emoji system asking how well they know words like the one in the image below.

Intervention #1: Focus Lesson on key concepts

Evidence for a need to 'shift' my teaching.
Last term, I taught a unit on our community with a focus on significant places in our community.   At the end of the unit, students had to complete an assessment essay to show their learning from the unit and the many of the students answers were basic or did not reach an achieved.

When reflecting on why the kids essays were below standard, I wondered whether my teaching was part of the reason for these failures.  I don't think my teaching style had changed much as I have taught the unit many times in the past.  Although I used a number of strategies to support my learners, they were more for the scaffolding of reading and writing for the learners rather then looking at ways I could support my learners in my teaching approach.

This term, I want to implement strategies that I'd used at the beginning of the year whereby I purposefully and deliberately took away time spent on the context of a topic and used it to slow down the focus in a lesson to learn key concepts properly.  I also want to look at talking more about the learning too rather then trying to focus on having the kids write something down to show their learning.  Recently, I taught a lesson with these aspects in mind.

The Context
My year 9 Social Studies class are starting a new unit on understanding the Government and how decisions can impact on people and places.  There are a lot of different concepts that are complicated and challenging to understand and I wanted to use a technique that Jannie had taught me earlier this year to slow down the learning on new concepts and to discuss knowledge around the concepts.

Planning and preparing for the lesson.

The lesson time was a double period, 2x 50 minutes and it was after morning tea and before lunch.  To prepare for the lesson, I created a slide that had the concepts and their definitions on it.  I also wanted to test whether there was a shift in their learning, so I created a pre test and a post test that was mix and match exercise to measure if there was a shift in learning for the students (I will talk about the results in my next blog).   

Collecting evidence
I want to collect evidence to support how my change in teaching practice helped my learners to learn and understand key concepts in a more verbal and oral way.

Formal:

• Pre and post tests - I created a snap 'quiz' where students were provided with the 7 key concepts and had mix and match the correct definitions with the words.  
• Videoing myself - I want to watch the video to see how I teach in this style.  I have video evidence of me teaching in my default style of teaching (the old me) and I want to see 

Informal

• My observations of students - I want to observe the engagement of the students through the lesson and make mental notes of who is making a genuine effort as compared to previous lessons.  
• Student verbal feedback - I will catch up with students at the end of the lesson to talk about how they felt about the lesson.

The Lesson
As the students entered the classroom, I handed them the pre-test and a pen and said we will be discussing our learning today through 'talanoa' (discussions) and to leave their devices in their bags.  The students were given 5 minutes to complete the pre-test at the start.  I collected the papers in, then I asked them to draw their attention to the presentation. 

I started by reminding them about the brain being like a muscle and that when they energise their brain through learning new things, they are making them 'smarter'.  I also reminded them that we will be verbalising our lesson through 'talanoa' learning and that I hoped they will become confident speakers by the end of the year.

I asked them to read the instructions and we went through each one carefully for understanding.  I then put the slide with the 7 key concepts up for 2 minutes, where they individually had to say the words, then 2 - 3 minutes to a partner, then a group.  I then called for volunteers to stand up in front of the class and say the concepts fluently without stopping.  I modelled to them how I wanted them to say the words, with good posture and in a confident manner.

At the end of the lesson, I did a quiz exercise which involved asking students to tell me answers to the concepts, to further learn the concepts and to get them to say out loud the answers.  I then handed the post-test questions to students who completed them before the bell went.  I have recorded parts of the lesson below.

Reflection
My initials observations of the students as I taught them, was that they were engaged and motivated to give the learning a go.  I felt I had minimal behavioural issues and students were willing to try the concepts and learning out, and for the most part seemed happy.   I think this was because I was confident in my approach, I took time to allow students to try things out and gave them different ways for them to try out the learning.
Feedback from a student is that she felt it was a fun lesson and enjoyed the interaction with her classmates.

Next steps:

• I will collate the data from the pre and post test.
• I will watch the video of my teaching and analyse what I see
• I will try and collect feedback from students about the lesson.

Inquiry blog #6: My patterns of teaching

In March, I wrote a blog where I talked about what the most important and catalytic issue of learning was in my classroom.  I reread what I wrote and found that I hadn't actually identified what the issue was with the learning, but more of what the problem was with my approach to teaching. 

After identifying my preliminary findings and gathering important data and evidence, I've decided the biggest issue in learning for my students was that 'my students struggled to write a summary about a text that they have read to show their understanding of the text'.  To come to this point, I have had to unpack my findings, to develop a worthwhile hypothesis.  I want to explore likely barriers for these findings and identify what key teaching actions I could use to accelerated student achievement in reading.  

 

Link here

1.  Developing a set of hypotheses about patterns in my teaching that could be change to more effectively address the student learning focus.

My students are struggling to write a summary because I may not be:

• spending enough time ensuring students understand the text more deeply
• allowing them to verbalise and discuss their learning more deeply
• teaching enough skills and too much content
• focussing on essentials like vocabulary 
• skilled in supporting the lower/higher ability learners
• differentiating the reading and tasks
• focussed on the process
• showing them the end result

2.  The process for developing these hypotheses.

To come to this conclusion, I am taking into consideration the following:

• my observations of my students
• my conversations and lessons with Dr Jannie
• what my colleagues say about the students and their learning
• student voice surveys
• relevant research

3.  The hypothesis about teaching that I have decided in the MOST worth testing

Spending enough time ensuring my students understand texts more deeply by putting the lense of the language (reading, writing and oral).

4.  Testing my hypothesis and evidence I may use to support my hypothesis

• Practical theories/strategies
• Dr Jannie Van Hees, putting the lense on language and deep diving into text
• Literacy expert Marc Milford's reading plan
• Successful strategies from primary schools and previous junior classes
• Critical discussions with colleagues
• Collaboration across curriculum areas such as English
• Pockets of excellence teaching within our department
• Relevant research
• Best Evidence Synthesis in Social Sciences
• Key words: Asttle, reading, acceleration, ZPD
• Gathering evidence of tests overtime in asttle reading and writing 
• Student voice survey and learning discussions.

As I unpack the impact of my teaching on student learning, I am able to understand and formulate an intervention or set of interventions which will hopefully support the learners to achieve success.