Qu 3: Building an accurate profile of students' learning - tools, measures and approaches...

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

Word consciousness encapsulates many aspects of how we look at words. use the words and ultimately being able to follow the conventions of spelling the words. This is where I have noticed that my learners come to a standstill. Writing to them means having to put pen to paper and visually seeing they can not spell the words they can verbalise. This process is a detriment to my learners as they are not able to express fully what they are wanting to say. When asked, many of my learners said they would use an alternative word instead of spelling the word they wanted wrong.  Rather than a learning opportunity, it is looked at as a failure.

Robyn and I are carrying out a collaborative inquiry this year but have chosen at this point to work independently with different groups. I have chosen to work with the students who find spelling a challenge which has left Robyn with the students who are more able spellers. Having collected the baseline data and captured student voice (shared in an earlier post on Robyn's blog), we have decided to adopt the strategy of divide and conquer. Our ongoing conversations about the spelling hurdles we need to 'knock down' have opened our eyes to the fact our students who struggle with spelling need a different intervention than those who have some understanding. We want our students to take risks but are fully aware that those who see themselves as 'not good at spelling' need to revisit the basics in a safe space where they feel empowered. 

The tools/measures/approaches:

Planning changes:

Prioritising is important in a full packed timetable full of equally important areas of teaching. For this to succeed we had to ensure that Word Consciousness was timetabled so it was visible and seen as important to us as teachers as well as the learners. In my group I have a mix of group word work and individual digital program work.

Student Voice:

Student voice is an essential process when developing teaching plans for our learners. This gives us an open and honest reflection of what our students are thinking, where they think they are in the learning journey and where need to go and what we need to do to enable our learners to make connections to the learning.  Robyn and I produced at Spelling survey which will be completed at the end of each term, giving us an opportunity to directly see the changes throughout the term.

Peters/e-asTTLE Assessments:

Analysing these results gives us a clear picture of what our students can do and where our knowledge gaps are.  We will use these results to inform our planning and identify shifts in achievement. 

Next steps:

• Explore creative and fun ways we can grow our word consciousness culture in our class
• Make word consciousness visible in our class
• Explore success in our school, other schools and other clusters 
• Professional Readings/ PLD
• Use student created DLOs as exemplars 

To sum up, we think limited word knowledge is the problem and now need to find out why it is the problem. It is not about weekly spelling lists, but rather meeting, noticing, unpacking, understanding, exploring and using a wider variety of words across the curriculum that will hopefully strengthen the spelling ability and word consciousness of the students in LS2 2023. Looking forward we feel that by addressing this now we will open the doors of learning wider when it comes to the transition into Year 9.