Teacher Inquiry 2010

Well the results are in! They are interest and ultimately inconclusive.

My Goal:

· To improve the engagement levels of 5male and 2 female reluctant writers

· To provide a range of purposeful and authentic writing opportunities

· To improve the surface feature achievement of the group from working at level 1iii and 2 up at least 1 level and improve their audience awareness, use of content, structure and organization.

· Develop some manageable strategies that are engaging in writing. The strategies will be focused on planning and presenting clear ideas with detail for the reader.

What I did:

• Taught spelling and grammar explicitly in a additional time to writing. This was in addition to how I normally focus on surface features during writing time.
• Used Lexia software to help identify needs as well as provide relevant practice activities.
• Had the children share their learning digitally and at time in analogue form to enourage the synthesis of knowledge.
• Used the class blog and other mediums to share writing, comments, learning etc. This was a place for authentic sharing as well as a place to stress the need for clarity in writing.
• Had the children as part of rotation, regularly proofread work using the COPS template as a guide.
• Used shared books for each writing group during teaching time to record learning.
• Regularly refer children to the school writing matrix, national exemplars, and school stage feedback sheets to assess and set future goals.
• Used Podcasts, keynote, blog posts, comic life and vocaroo to share writing to our audience.
• Daily handwriting practice and instruction all year to target the needs of children who had much difficulty forming letters and spacing them apart.
  

The Results:

• The children are more engaged in their writing and spelling. Spelling identified as one of their preferred tasks at school (Over Maths and reading). See last post.
  
• The 2 boys both improved in spelling age however only 1 made any real gains against their chronological age. The 2 girls both ended up with poorer results against their chronological age.
• Against the literacy exemplars again the results are the same with only 1 child improving up 1 level.

Outside of the target group

• Majority of the class improved in spelling age by 1 - 1.5 years.
• Spelling is found by all children one of the preferred subjects at school.
• Many children improved in their surface features against the exemplars

My Thoughts

Was it worth it? It was a lot of work planning, marking, preparing and there were many very good results in the class. Many of these children however are very competent spellers and probably would have made good progress.

I guess I am unsure whether such an approach was worth it. By spending 2 hours a week explicitly on spelling and the hour or so a week planning could have been spent on language experiences, whole language teaching, more enriched writing groups, etc. Apporaches to learning which have equally engaging results. The children are all well aware of their needs in surface features and how to improve so I guess this was a sound approach. But was it the best?

Student Survey

Wow. After the student survey results I have been really thinking. The results clearly showed that one of my little goals of making more explicit the success criteria in tasks has been achieved. The kids clearly show more awareness in SC.
The Results got me thinking. I came up with the idea to survey the kids using google forms to clarify the student voice. The results and implications for my practice are great. I generally survey the kids in my class every term. Asking them about me as a teacher my strengths and weaknesses. Using Google forms I believe I was able to get a more honest result. I also was able to target the student's thoughts and opinions around my inquiry this year.
Here are the results:





The children generally show more enjoyment of learning when using computers than other activities. They also believe that in spelling the use of LEXIA and possibly sharing learning digitally has helped them learning the most.

My target group were children at risk in surface features in writing. A link to the form can be found here

Questioning with Trevor Bond

http://ictnz.com/

Trevor raised some interesting thoughts about questioning. Curriculum delivery. Skills and values. The session was excellent and thought provoking.

I really appreciated the practical elements to his presentation. Below are my notes:


Questioning is one if not the most important strategy we should teach in our schools.


So What:
Facilitate more to encourage questioning.
Value of the teachable moment?
Teach the questioning skills.

The Questioning skills -

1. Identify the need or problem (write statements of need)
2. Identify the key words (relevant contextual vocabulary)
3. Ask a range of relevant questions (Open/Closed etc.)
4. Take them to a variety of appropriate sources
5. Persist, editing questions as necessary until they acquire the needed information.

What is a good question:

• Is relevant
• Gets the information that is needed.
• Can be taken to intelligent and non-intelligent sources. (People=intelligent Book/google=non-intelligent)

What is a poor question:
Questions that require an intelligent source to use the context to decode the intention.

• Where can I find it? What skills do I need? How do I get there?

Modelling is the most important teaching thing. We model poorly but get away with it due to the context!

Question Matrix
Trevor also introduced his question matrix (but my laptop battery failed so had to stop taking notes). Check it out here.

Digital Learning Pathways

Well I am looking back on notes from my first breakout. My first breakout was excellent in explaining the digital learning pathways.

(I had signed up for the breakout because I was quite upset about all my links being broken due to their new work at digistore).

I realised that they were working towards a collaborative resource but had little idea of what they were really trying.

The digital learning pathways are basically what used to be called webquests. This isn't exactly true but I will explain that later. They are resources which we can create using a range of digital resources to guide students through a learning journey. Here are a couple of examples:

Earthquake investigation

What caused the Canterbury earthquake?

Love New Zealand:Endangered Animals

The idea is that instead of getting a bunch of american slanted stuff when you type in webquest you have access through the school account to journeys that include the digital objects as well. The digistore provides us with an environment to share with other educators.

Now the as I was saying before these learning objects aren't really webquests as they are not just student activities. They can also be teacher planning tools providing you with a place to pool your resources for the up coming unit.

The Breakout was doubly excellent as it gave me a chance to share some ideas with the lovely ladies next to me. The gave me these links:

www.Smartkiddies.com.au
www.ICTgames.com
http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/

All in all a most excellent session!

Crockett Key Note 1 21st century fluency

Well my first reflection. www.fluency21.com

I found the keynote excellent and it really made me think about what changes are needed in our curriculum (that is what we teach not governement stuff) so as to prepare our children for the world we live in now and the future. It is scary to think we are now 10% into the 21st century.
Well here are my notes. I have briefly summarised the difference between traditional learners/teachers with digital learners.

Digital Citizens thus need Digital fluency:

Solution fluency
Creative fluency
Collaboration fluency
Media fluency
Information fluency

Ulearn

Wow!
What a fabulous experience for the team of us who went down.
I feel inspired, enlightened, invigorated, and exhausted.
Tomorrow I will start reflecting, for now I'm curling up in front of the heater to watch several DVDs.

Dance and the Blog

I am very proud of the kids at the moment they have all worked real hard to develop their own jumpjam routines.
I was particularly proud of my shy kids who got up in front of our team yesterday and shared their work. Something that they would not have done at the beginning of the year. And my boys who at the beginning of the year hated dance (some still do to be honest). The Kids all really enjoy working on dance now large because of the blog. They get to see themselves and I think most importantly they get to share their performances with their folks at home.
What 8 - 11 year old doesn't want to do that in some degree?

Cybersafety

The other day two kids came across some material that was inappropriate. They did exactly what they are supposed to and I was so proud. The material was mislabeled. It really brought home how important it is for them to know what to do when things get through.
As a follow up as a class we filled out a RAMs sheet together for when we go out into the world (cyber stylz).

The hardest thing about student inquiry!

I have discovered the hardest but most important thing about student inquiry. This thought has been building in me for a while. For a long time I have had an inclination that I was on to something, but I now know I've got it.

The hardest yet most important thing we can teach children is to learn how to change their mind about something.

Where else other than student inquiry do the children really get a chance to develop their thoughts and ideas along a path only to find that they are way off. The skill of developing a hypothesis, then proving or disproving it is very important. The problem is children are driven (Often Blindly) to prove that they are right because that's what people do. No one ever wants to be wrong.
The thing I have struggled to do the most tho this year is to help children change their mind without blatantly saying; "Sorry but that is wrong and doesn't fit with the rest of your research."
I am working hard at the moment to help the kids make these changes. It's been hard this unit particularly because we all thought we knew so much about being healthy.

Goal 5 Progress

Well I am coming to the end of the term and I am thinking about how my kids surface features are going. How engaged are they in their spelling learning. And How well can they identify what they can do and what they need to get better at.

The other night I had a terrible nightmare that the kids had not progressed at all and some had even gotten worse. It really shook me up for a couple of days. How Sad Is That!

Well The children are really enjoying their spelling lessons. See the attached videos of the kids.

Lexia gives the kids a clear phonics practise at the level they are at. They all enjoy working towards moving up levels. I have half of the class on Lexia now.

My beliefs on spelling education rely on 3 key learning approaches.

1) Spelling patterns/rules/phonics.
2) Knowledge of words, their meanings and the effective use of them in context.
3) The knowledge of spelling some words just needs to be rote learnt because their spelling is not phonetic or follows traditional rules. eg. science, lamb, knight.

Lexia is helping to reinforce the teaching I am doing with their groups. The results are also informing my practice. The higher achieving students who do not need as much rote learning to reinforce the phonics rules are creating instructional videos on their spelling rules or concepts. This means they need to synthesise what we do on the mat. The engagement around this is excellent. with the only problem being that 1/2 an hour a week isn't enough time on the mat to get work completed quickly. But the paperwork practise and application they do in the other sessions I think is still very valuable.

Cybersafety

Yesterday I ran a session on Cybersafety in my class. Very Briefly this is how I do it.

Firstly I believe that running a one off unit in cybersafety at the beginning of the year is flawed for two reasons:
1) I don't have enough time to do everything else let alone another unit.
2) It's tough to expect kids to remember something now in September we did briefly in February.

So I integrate my cybersafety lessons into my reading program. Once a fortnight or so showing the kids a video or 'internet game' on cybersafey like you would a shared book. When I do this I make clear our WALT is what ever we are working on in reading.

Here are some examples:

WALT: understand the text better by making predictions
We know we have achieved this when we can…

1. Look for clues to the topic
2. Think about what we already know about the topic
3. Use what we already know about the topic to predict what we think will happen next.

3 pigs

WALT: understand the text better by making inferences

We know we have achieved this when we can…

1. Find the clues hidden in the text.
2. Remember our own experiences that are related to these clues
3. Make predictions about the implied meaning based on our own experiences and with the clues the author has given us.

WALT: understand the text better by making connections
We know we have achieved this when we can…

1. breaking the text into smaller parts (pausing every now and then)
2. Making text to self connections
3. making text to text connections
4. making text to world connections

CSI Literacy

Well I have had a couple of days to think about the session on Thursday about CSI literacy. It raised some interesting questions for myself and my beliefs about Comprehension instruction. Kylie did a fabulous job talking about how she implements the program.

The whole class verses group teaching debate was raised again for me. I had thought that this had been long put to sleep and group teaching was the way to do things. The argument that CSI could be a year long program with whole class teaching being enough is a little far fetched. What I do believe though is...

FINALLY! software/texts that focus on the reading strategies! What an excellent resource to support a varied reading program.

It has really made me think about the role of shared reading in my classroom. Shared reading depends on two things to me.
1) The teachers ability to model effectively reading strategies.
2) Resources that can be read by the whole class.

Shared books are clearly an effective tool in the junior classrooms in the modeling of effective decoding strategies so why would it be any different in the senior classroom when decoding meaning?
Big books in the senior classroom are really a joke. Not because of the the kids don't dig reading them but because there is lack of a variety suited to strategy instruction and senior students. Using online reading material is so much more work than it is worth, finding material appropriate for the students reading level, strategy focus, and content appropriateness. The only other method of shared reading would be in the group (with individual texts) or occasionally photocopying a text for the class. How often do we do this?

With digital projectors there is clearly value in having digital texts. CSI is one of the few resources for teachers I believe that has catered for the modeling of strategy instruction in the classroom.

Goals So far

I was looking at Kate's Blog and it got me thinking. I haven't clearly posted my Goals So far. So here they are to date. I will work to more regularly record them here in the future.

Goal 5: Improve spelling through the integration of Lexia in the classroom programme

Goal 4: Create a writing Blog to get more work published and focus feedback about writing

Goal 3: Get reluctant writers to present their work with podcasts

Goal 2: Students will write an explanation on a given topic and present with Garageband

Goal 1: To set up a purposeful class blog

Inquiry Session with Lynn

Had an excellent session today with Lynn. It was great to hear that we are starting to head down the right track now. Early on this year my understanding was all over the show. I now see that each term I get a better understanding of what I'm meant to be doing. It was also good to see some real next steps for myself in planning.

Walking the tight rope!

Well I have been able to gather a lot of interest in my blog. The kids really enjoy reading our blog and the blogs of others. On an average post I can easily gain 10+ comments. What's more there is a range of children commenting. Admittedly most commenting takes place in class, before school, lunch times or during reading time. I am now beginning to walk a tight rope.

About once a week or so I am offering prizes for the best comment. Sometimes its a chocolate bar. Sometimes a greenie. The kids are highly motivated, but now I am beginning to point out spelling, and fundamental grammatical errors in the judging process. The thought behind this is that surface features (my inquiry focus) are extremely important in getting your ideas across to others. For too long I think my kids have been able to explain their way through errors and on a blog you can't.

So here is my tight rope trick. pointing out the areas where understanding can be lost while at the same time maintaining highly motivated young writers.

P.S. this is a great little story that has a book

Questioning using Wall Wisher

Wonderings On-line

Well today I think the previous terms work is starting to pay off. We did some wonderings and well I think the quality on a whole isn't looking to bad. Obviously some are better than others but the work we did earlier in the year around the question tree and levels of questioning has meant the children are thinking harder about what they want to find out.

This time I have used my classroom wall and wall wisher to display our wonderings. On Wall wisher it was much easier organising the questions into their levels. Tomorrow morning I will get the kids to see where their wonderings are and if necessary move their little heads on the tree up a level or so.

Purposeful Blogging

Well I have been thinking about my blog and the blogs of others in the school and cluster today. I found the below video on blogging in the classroom which gave me lots of ideas. This link tho made me really think about why I blog. As a school and probably cluster I think we have a range of different thoughts about why we should blog. after reading these points I came up with an action plan or GAP analysis on purposeful blogging. I would Love to know what others think about it.

To See a copy of My Action Plan Click here

I am really thinking about how people can be clear and happy about blogging in their classroom.

Blogging

This video is very dry but full of great information about blogging. It made me think about how I could be using blogging in the classroom.

WEB 2.0 Wonders

Well today I now have a few new things I'm going to work on. The big thing for me now is to not rush out an d do everything. I'm going to make a real effort to stop, think and integrate. Really making my ict integration explicit. I think in the past I have always rushed in done one or two one off pieces of work and then moved on to the next wonder.

This term I have focused a lot on pod casting in different ways in writing and a little bit in maths. I am going to continue with this building on what the children have learned this term.

IT IS SO HARD!

There is so much I want to try after todays sessions, voicethread, goanimate, etc.

I will keep up with perfecting my craft for now.

Blogging Magic!

It was really good to see the blogging successes people have experienced today in the two sharing sessions. People have been really doing amazing stuff in such a short period of time.

Some key points were:

1. Questions are important for prompting and scaffolding comments
2. Bribery is essential for engaging parents
3. Linking the tools into the commenting and posts has encouraged the thinking.
4. A rubric for commenting may facilitate greater quality of comments.
5. Blogging should be a process.
   

How do we sustain the commenting.

Miriam Tuohy

Miriam raises some interesting points:

1. There is a real need to teach children to search and discriminate information they need.
2. It is important for us all (especially the kids) to recognise info sources that have affected our thinking. It helps us go back and check it, share our understanding, and the whole recognising the author.
3. Sharing the information and our findings are really effective and purposeful.
4. As teachers we need to assess/ reflect on how good/useful our information sources are.
5. The purpose of research is to create knowledge and understanding is not merely *more* information.

I found these points really interesting and made me think a lot about the planning that I am doing now for term 3. How am I going to make sure that I am doing this??????

Am I putting enough fuel on the fire?

Well my question at the moment is during the ignite should I be teaching more? We have done a lot of engaging, focsing, and though provoking activities.

Should we though start the units with a series of focused teacher directed lessons that provide fuel for the kids to ignite?

(I think my analogies and metaphors are all getting a little confusing)

Podcasting Success

Well today podcasting went really well. To be honest it went well yesterday only I had other things to do last night.

By implementing a very visual behaviour management system to manages the noise level and expectations I have been able to utilise the three i-macs in my class and not rely on the laptops. It was a huge success. The other expectation I asserted today was if it ain't recorded by the end of the session, it ain't happening! This was really effective in encouraging my boys to work efficiently and not find reasons to re-record their work 20 million odd times.

I have created a writing blog page for our work and am very excited about adding to it. Check it out here.

The work to be honest was not extremely well honed but it was accurate of the kids. To what degree should work on the blog be crafted??

Graphic Organisers

Well I have been using some graphic organisers to 'sort' the kids learning. recently and I have to say that when you get it right it works well and when miss the mark it becomes difficult and just an add on. I think one of my goals at the moment in my inquiry will be developing my repertoire of thinking tools for the sorting out phase.

I wonder tho...

Are certain thinking tools more suited to certain curriculum areas than others or is it more about where in the inquiry process you are up to e.g. wondering, finding out, sorting, creating. Perhaps people who are more along in their inquiry journey could shed a light.

Inquiry Oops!

Well the inquiry process has gone really well this term, I think. We did not get too caught up on the wondering stage and made a good effort on the finding out stage.

HOWEVER....


Where was the science? I feel that we have done some good social studies work but not a lot of science investigations for the science fair. I think this is going to be one of the main issues of inquiry as inquiry is very much a social studies slanted approach to learning.

What do you think?

Inquiry Success

Wow what a fabulous session. The kids are really humming. All but one group are on track and are at the creating stage of the process.

I guess it is just about them coming to terms with the process. It really does take a few sessions for them to get the hang of it.

Inquiry

Yesterday I let my kids go on their inquiry. It was pretty full on! Books, computers, printouts, things were flying everywhere.

Ive been using thinkquest library for material that is easy to read for my kids.

The kids also used wiki answers and after a while I was able to show them how find other information sources. They were very nervous to use google I think. It takes a lot of work to work out which websites they can read and understand. That evaluative skill ended up becoming a real teaching point.

I wonder how todays lesson will go. I have about half the kids so I normally do so it should be good to help out those kids who need it.

Connect, Collaborate, eLearn

Well Today was really interesting. I enjoyed the relaxed but very thought provoking feel of the conference. Also my new pen-drive rocks!!!
So where to from here? How do we make a change? Well I'm going to take Tony Ryan's advice and revisit my notes. (yes I took notes).

Suzie raised some interesting questions about setting up online digital learning environments. And I wonder have we discussed enough about all the long term things like when teachers move on etc. I think the idea of saying explicitly what the purpose of blogs are (educationally) and then creating a brief action plan was a really good idea. I guess alot of us have done this though with our teacher inquiries.

Tony Ryan made me think about the importance of engaging the kids and getting into their world of infotainment. I think his ideas about teaching paraphrasing and self-talk were extremely good and my goal is to give it a go this week!

My two breakouts were with Suzie Vesper and Nick Rate. Suzie explained how she uses googledocs and a couple of other web 2.0 tools.

http://educationalsoftware.wikispaces.com/
http://learningweb2.wikispaces.com/
http://suzieslinks.com/

Nick talked about e portfolios but also the purpose of them. This really made me think. I love the idea of a process portfolio but I am so in the showcase mindset!

Lead Teacher Day

Today we had our lead teacher day. It was a great chance to hear what people were doing at their schools.

It was awesome too, to share some bits and pieces.
Big ups goes out to Kylie for pointing out wall wisher. For a along time I've been trying to work out away to brainstorm etc. on a blog and wallwisher looks like the answer.

http://www.wallwisher.com/

At the end of it tho man I was tired. those intense thoughtful sessions always leave me beat.

My Inquiry Focus

Well this year my inquiry is motivating reluctant writers in my class through ICT and in doing so lift their achievement levels.

My first real goal, apart from getting my blog up and running, is to use garageband to publish the kids writing.

At the moment the kids have written tonnes and tonnes of stuff. (I guess it is motivating).
but...
They are spending way too much time on the computers trying to publish stuff. None of the other kids are getting a turn. I am thinking that now I will not get the whole class to make them and just focus on a few at a time.

I'm wondering how do others manage this sort of thing?

My First Reflection

Well this is my first reflection. I have a little challenge at the moment from Lyn Ross to post something here every day for a week. I don't know how I'll go as diaries/blogs/facebook/and all their kin are really not my thing.

But here it goes...