Impact Burst - how my inquiry has impacted on students.

My teaching inquiry has been around my masters project - how to accelerate vocabulary acquisition in a digital environment. One child has made accelerated progress in reading (18 months so far this year, and has really struggled to make progress in the past), due in large part to her involvement in the Quick 60 lessons. She has always had excellent oral vocabulary however has struggled with reading and writing. As we have focused more on vocabulary and the use of "powerful words" she has begun to see herself as a capable reader and writer who has ideas to share. She is still caught up in the technical and motor skills of reading and writing, however her attitude about her capabilities has changed. Here is some evidence of her work:

   

This learner has been able to harness the affordances of the technology to help her to succeed. She uses the iPad voice dictation, prerecorded instructions, and symbols, to learn create and share in new ways that are not restricted by her reading and writing abilities. 

She has become an empowered learner, as she realises she can learn in different ways.

Ready to intervene...

Back to School (as a student)

I'm back to school! And this time I mean as a student. 

In 2014 and 2016 I completed two papers through the University of Auckland towards a masters degree. I did this with the cohort of MDTA beginning teachers and mentor teachers. It was hard work to say the least, working as a full time teacher and studying in 2014, then full time teaching, being a team leader and studying in 2016. I swore never to do it again.

However I was very lucky to be supported by Pt England School and receive a Teach NZ Study Award for 2017 to complete my dissertation and masters degree.

I have always been interested in language, language acquisition and vocabulary. For several years, Pt England School staff received professional development in this area by Dr Jannie van Hees - a passionate and respected researcher at the University of Auckland. She was enthusiastic, confronting, challenging and determined to help us to develop the oral and written language of our students. I, like many others, was a convert, however with the demands of the job, the theory was not well implemented into practice. It did, however, start me thinking about future research options.

In 2016, Dr Rebecca Jesson agreed to provide reading professional development to the Pt England teaching staff. She already had a strong relationship with the school and the Manaiakalani Cluster (now CoL) as she has been the one of the primary researchers into the efficacy of the digital innovation taking place in this cluster. 

One of her strongest messages in the development of our reading programme was the necessity for targeted vocabulary teaching and the possibility of combining this with the affordances of the digital technology in order to accelerate the reading achievement of students. This resonated with me, but I, like the rest of the junior school teachers, struggled to implement this into my teaching. It seemed possible with older and more advanced learners, but not for our young readers who were still struggling to decode text.

And so my research project was born. How could we as junior school teachers in a 1:1 iPad environment, implement a targeted vocabuarly programme that was additional to our generally successful guided reading, and used the affordances of the iPad?

My research questions are thus:

1. What influence does the introduction of a novel digital vocabulary acquisition programme have on the pedagogy of a junior primary teacher?
1. What opportunities does a digital vocabulary acquisition programme offer teachers who are looking to accelerate the vocabulary acquisition of Year 3 students who are reading 6-18 months below national standard?
2. What challenges do teachers face when introducing a novel, digitally-based vocabulary acquisition programme into classroom literacy classes?
2. What impact does a novel digital vocabulary acquisition programme have on the metacognitive processes of low-decile school students who are reading 6-18 months below their expected reading in Year 3?
3. What impact does a novel digital vocabulary acquisition programme have on the attitudes of low-decile school students who are reading 6-18 months below their expected reading in Year 3?
4. What impact does a novel digital vocabulary acquisition programme have on the behaviours of low-decile school students who are reading 6-18 months below their expected reading in Year 3?

I have been going through the involved process of getting ethical approval for this research and I hope to begin observing the intervention in two weeks. I have completed a literature review, and will now spend time designing the intervention based on vocabulary acquisition research and the affordances of the iPad. The research will be conducted in a Year 3 class at a Manaiakalani school in Auckland, NZ. 

Coming back down to earth

So it's not all about me....

Of course I know this, but when I began thinking about my professional teacher inquiry for this year, I thought about all the things I was interested in doing. In my past life, I have really loved all things creative so my immediate ideas were around how to increase creativity and independence in literacy activities. 

However... I came back down to earth when I was reminded that my teaching inquiry must be based on the actual needs of my class.

When I looked at my reading data from the end of last year, I could see a group of students who sat around the blue-green level, who I had found very difficult to move. This year I have a number of Year 2 & 3 students at this same level, who I would like to focus my inquiry around to see if I can make a significant shift with them.

Firstly I will look into decoding strategies for this level, and then get into word work. I will talk to reading recovery teachers and an RTLit to get advice, and construct Explain Everything projects to reinforce the learning done during group direct instruction. 

Any ideas are more than welcome - this is not something I am an expert at!

Data Analysis

Right at the end of 2015, I went through a personal journey which took my thoughts and energy away from school. I did my job, loved my students and sent them off at the end of the year with my mind elsewhere. I completed some of this data analysis at the end of last year, however due to the aforementioned circumstances, it has taken me until now to think about how to present this information on my blog.

Reading Data

I analysed the reading data of my class and my team, looking specifically at how much progress each student had made. As a team leader, I was pleased with the general trends and progress of our students. However as a classroom teacher, I was saddened to see the lack of progress of some of my students. Still, the real value in looking at data is thinking about the story behind each class, each teacher, and each student.

As a team, 54% of our Year 2 students achieved AT or ABOVE the National Standard for reading based solely on their Running Record score. This is promising, but still something we would like to work on. I believe that we will have more success at this in 2016 as less time will need to be assigned initially to teacher and student learning of iPad skills and routines.



In my own class 40% of students achieved AT or ABOVE the National Standard for reading. I did not get acceleration from the number of students who I would have liked to see accelerate. Three students made more than 1 year of progress from December 2014 to December 2015. Next time, it would be interesting to include progress from February to December in a single year.



Impressively, one teacher in my team achieved acceleration from 13 of her 24 students (54%). This is something to be celebrated. Looking at this difference in acceleration, I believe the largest contributing factor to this was the difference in special and behavioural needs between our two classes.

I wrote earlier in this blog about my realisation (with the help of a friendly observation from my Principal!) that I was trying too hard to extend my students' learning (using creative tasks, changing tasks frequently, having very high expectations of them). While I will always continue to believe these things to be important, I think I lost sight of the value of repetition, consistency, and independent learning.

My class in 2015 had a number of special needs students who took a lot of time and energy. I loved them dearly and wanted to give them the best chance of educational success as possible. However, looking at the class as a whole, I think it is also very important to be cognisant of how your time is spent - are you using it wisely? Are all students getting a fair deal?

In 2016, I plan to be more aware of how my time is getting spent and which students are using the majority of it. I want to create tasks which build upon one another, so that the learning is not always new and unfamiliar to them. If I have Team Leader Release timetabled in the morning, I would like for my core programme to carry on with the release teacher, rather than have a completely different programme.

OTJ Data

My OTJ data from my reports shows good steady progress across the class. Each individual story needs to be told, however, to fill in the gaps that the data can't present.

My class data:



A number of the students who were still WELL BELOW the National Standard at the end of the year have special learning needs. These students have had individual learning programmes, as well as specialist support and teacher aide support. In 2016, I want to prioritise the students who are just below the National Standard in reading, writing and maths to see what kind of shift I can make with them. Furthermore, I would like to focus more too on the top groups of students in each area to see how far they can be extended.

Year 2 data: