Teacher Inquiry 2024

This year my area of focus for Inquiry is Mathematics.  This is the first year in many years that I have taught Mathematics in the classroom and I am excited about this new focus.

I have chosen to focus on a small group of six students, two male and five female. These students have all had one full year at school and are working around Early Level1 for their Additive Strategies.

My initial data for this group has been gathered from their JAM test taken in Term 4 last year. The data tells me what they have achieved on Level one of the curriculum. What I need to discover next is what they understand about maths concepts and the strategies they have been taught. This I believe is the key for this group of students.

My inquiry question; How do I best build retention of facts and support children to apply these in multiple contexts? stems from what I believe is a lack of understanding around maths concepts; Do the children know what they are trying to find out? What is the best strategy to use? What facts do they know that will help them with the problem?

My first step is to find out just what they understand about Math concepts!

Teacher Only Day Refelction

We began our Teacher Only Day by taking a look at the data collected across the cluster on reading, maths, and writing.  After breaking into small groups we looked closely at which student groups had made progress, acceleration, showed a shift and those that had gaps. 

The highlight of this very interesting and informative teacher only day with our Manaiakalani colleagues was the Little Mad Scientists Create workshop hosted by the very clever and talented teachers from Glen Taylor School. This was divided into three areas; the Living World, the Material World and the Physical World. We broke into three groups and did a hands on Create activity promoting young children's fine motor skills, creativity, cognitive development and language accumulation. They used provocations to promote student interest and then provided a range of hands on activities for us to participate in reminiscent of early childhood activities that are well set up and structured so children can learn by doing. 

End of year reflection.

Quick 60 uses Nonfiction content and therefore the programme caters well for the ESOL children’s needs.
Nonfiction texts offer topics that tie in with their personal interests and give them a broader vocabulary base. There is plenty of room for discussion and the comprehension elements of this programme mean that the children are engaging in thinking around the context and have many opportunities to acquire new vocabulary in a carefully scaffolded manner.

As part of my inquiry this year I looked at how I could improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/key competency using language symbols and texts, in reading using language acquisition. I adapted my tasks to enhance learning, enable access and improve comprehension. I used specific teaching prompts, encouraging the use of rich vocabulary and conversational oral language to strengthen comprehension by introducing follow up conversations to my lessons.

At the start of each lesson I have the children repeatedly read their known books to help them become familiar with text and develop fluency. After reading their new book to me they then do tasks that develop skills in looking for information in their text and answering both inferential and literal questions.

I hope to work more in this area next year as I saw good results from the children who improved in their EOY Running Record results as well as in their comprehension.

 

Target group mid year spotlight

 How are we going?

I started the year very excited about picking up my Inquiry focus from the previous year, this was meant to be the tidy year! No more lockdowns to interrupt the learning, better attendance, and better health! So far the only part of this that has happened is the lack of lockdowns.  

Poor attendance and health have been a huge obstacle for both myself and my students. Two bouts of COVID, an injury and frequently needing to be an emergency cover for other staff members has meant my programme has not been consistent at all. 

However, despite all this, the children have made fantastic gains! Discussing their progress both in class and on the programme with their class teachers has been very positive. The challenges we are all facing are the same but the children are making wonderful gains.

The graph shows the gains made between February and May. It shows that all children have made gains, the green bar showing the reading level gain is very exciting! Two of my focus children left before May.

Inquiry 2022

 My 2022 Inquiry Focus:

Using the Quick 60 programme, specific teaching prompts, and the use of oral language to strengthen comprehension, will I see a significant improvement in scores for both Running Record levels and comprehension question scores for the identified students?

The Manaiakalani CoL Achievement Challenge that I am basing my inquiry around is;

Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/key competency using language symbols and texts

End of year Inquiry Data and Success!

Many students made significant gains in their mid-year PM test. 

There were significant gains made by children who began at Level 14 (Reading age 6 years) (Chron age 8 years) who at their mid year test were reading at Level 21 (Reading age 8 years)

I have designed tasks that are specifically re-tell, prediction and making connections to the text as well as learning about specific parts of words.

In the middle of Term 3 we went into a long lockdown online learning period. This halted most of the progress these children made and many did not return in Term 4 for me to test. I can only use the mid year data and any running records I took in Term 3 to form a picture of where the children are now at.

I am happy with the progress they made and can only imagine how successful they would have been without the lockdown interruption.

Inquiry 2021

I have a group of children who didn't achieve as they should on their end of year running records due to the comprehension. They have very good decoding skills so I plan to use the Quick 60 programme and specific teaching prompts to encourage the use of rich vocabulary and conversational oral language to strengthen comprehension by introducing follow up conversations to my lessons. 

At the start of the lesson children will repeatedly read their known books to help them become familiar with text and develop fluency. 

They will do tasks after reading that develop skills in looking for information in their text and answering both inferential and literal questions.