Intervention: implementation & monitoring of new approaches

 

Intervention: implementation & monitoring of new approaches 

The 'worksheet' I had designed for my students to enhance their knowledge of how words are connected involved using phonemes that have the same sound, pictures to visibly see the difference of the sound, both familiar and unfamiliar words, an opportunity to define the words as well as being able to look for new words themselves.  Below on the left is my original worksheet and on the right the learners full in the rest of the words themselves and find the root words.  We had to do a lot of unpacking and defining for understanding so my students felt confident in finishing the worksheet. A teacher intentionally calls attention to specific vocabulary terms which heightens the student’s awareness of the new words heard or read (Manzo & Manzo, 2008).

After reflection of my initial concept of designing a word list to show the differences and similarities of phonemes, I realised that my students were still struggling with the beginning of the given words.  While having discussions in the talanoa time it was suggested that I not only make the words visible to my group but to also place a sound bite on each word so that my learners could hear the word.  The fifth framework suggests involving students in original investigations of word and word features.  (Ashlie R. Jack, 2011). When I was discussing how I was going to alter the way I would be doing the word sheet to my students, it then dawned on me that as well as working alongside words the students had searched to expand their knowledge they could place a sound bite on those words so I could navigate their learning by hearing if they are pronouncing each sound correctly that would enable them to have an understanding of how the word sounds as well as being conscious of how the word is spelt. 

With monitoring the trajectory of the understanding the students have with words they have been introduced to and observing how they have the confidence to look up new words to ensure they have not only the spelling correct but also an understanding of the definition given.  

I have really changed my thinking of the teacher teaches the unknown, to the teacher and students co construct through discussions or informal feed forward and feedback of what works for them and which words, sounds, chunks etc  they have difficulty with.

Causal Chain 2023 - Teacher Inquiry

 

My inquiry this year is to see if a focus on spelling conventions foster an environment where word consciousness strengthens connections to the learning? By creating a causal chain this helped me see what I wanted to focus on, where I was and where I wanted to end. This then helped me fill in the chain with my thought processes, data, strategies, interventions and outcomes. In short what is the purpose of my Teacher Inquiry and how can I change my teaching to foster the desired outcome. Working backwards in the map allows you to have a vision and work out step by step how you could get there. It is important to know that not everything will work but when that happens it is a learning opportunity, an opportunity to change your thinking and teaching practice and move on to the next strategy or intervention to get you closer to your inquiry focus.

My Causal Chain (backward map) is shown below.

Causal Chain Link

Robyn and I are doing a collaborative inquiry as we share a class. We have the same vision but we have different groups of learners which means our approach is different yet aligned. We have noticed the same behaviour overall from our learners. When writing they revert to words they either know or can spell rather than expanding their vocabulary by using unfamiliar words. Our hunch is that if our learners have opportunities to have a timetabled sessions of Word Consciousness - understanding the connections of the words, the chunks, decoding the words and spelling conventions, the learners will gain the confidence to begin to use the 'new' words with confidence in their everyday learning.

Qu 4: Collecting evidence and data...

 

Begin to collect evidence and data and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence.

For this inquiry I will be working with a core group of 8 students from a group of 21 year 7/8 students. My inquiry group consists of 3 x y7 girls, 2 x y7 boys and 3 x y8 boys. Looking at the Writing and Spelling data, these students were identified as those that had gaps that needed filling to accelerate them to the level of their year group.

  What I noticed when analysing my groups e-asTTle was that the majority of the year 7 vocabulary scored higher than their spelling, however the level of their vocabulary was lower than expected. Out of my 3 year 8 students, 2 of the students vocabulary was at a higher level than their counterparts, which is showing me they have used higher level language. This could possibly be because of the T-Shaped literacy programme we used last year as well as RFE Robyn introduced in LS2. The other year 8 student was not in our class last year which is evident by his lower vocabulary mark.  The difference in the year 8 and year 7 vocabulary has come with understanding how a basic word can be replaced with a more enticing word in their writing. This was evident with year 8 using words in their e-asTTle writing sample about a community facility like 'affordable' rather than 'cheap'.

My next steps are to familiarize the students with new words and expand their vocabulary knowledge along with learning the spelling conventions, essentially word consciousness. To aide with this I have looked at my hunches, talked to colleagues and have introduced both a digital resource along with each student having their own book to make their own word bank.

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.

Qu. #2 - Why we judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year...

Robyn Anderson was reminded of the Reading for Enjoyment survey she did last year to get to know our learners as readers. In a conversation with Robyn, she suggested that we could try to create a similar survey that would help us get to know our learners as spellers. Our Principal understands our concerns with regards to spelling abilities in our current class and is fully supportive of our proposed inquiry into word consciousness. 

The results of this survey are below.

Link to presentation

We judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year as the results here affirm our initial thinking that a deficit in word consciousness and a 'fear' of getting words wrong, limits the level of vocabulary used in independent writing, and causes meaning to be lost in reading. It will be interesting to analyse the self efficacy rating and the spelling level given when the e-asTTle writing assessment data is complete. (NB: Our plan is to look at the current and historical data of the e-asTTle writing, PAT Reading and the Peter's spelling test to identify trends). 

Question 1: Student Inquiry Focus

 

This year Robyn Anderson and I will be undertaking a collaborative inquiry. What this will look like exactly at this stage is still in the early stages although we do know our purpose. This year we want to find out if a focus on spelling conventions will foster an environment where word consciousness strengthens connections to the learning.

We teach a Year 7/8 class with 40 learners, all who bring different connections to the conventions of spelling to the table. We know from observing students from past years and  noticing the actions of our learners this year stop writing completely as well as stop reading and avoid sharing back to the class when they lose the connection to words needed to continue to make sense of the learning. There are many reasons as to why this happens but rather than focus solely on that, we want to focus on how we can prevent this pattern from continuing as time goes on and being a challenge that becomes too much to overcome. Our thinking is that if we begin to develop these skills and understandings, the transition to language of instruction used in Y9 may be strengthened by stronger connections to word knowledge.

Once we had decided on our inquiry focus this year, Robyn and I spoke with Anna Salmon, our Reading Recovery teacher about the barriers children in the junior school face with spelling, and how she helps the students she is working with to overcome these barriers. We came away from a very rich learning conversation with lots of ideas to pull together a tentative pathway forward. Here are the notes we made to help us formulate a plan going forward.

'Word consciousness involves being aware and interested in words and word meanings (Anderson & Nagy, 1992; Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2002) and anything new is a matter of linking this new knowledge in some way with the already known (Laurence R. Sipe, 2001). Individuals who are word conscious are motivated to learn new words and able to use them skilfully '(Sourced here). Our challenge now is to find out why their is a gap in their knowledge and how we can close that gap. Robyn and I co-constructed a survey that we plan to use to get to know our learners as spellers. To do this we will be looking at shift or change in:

• Disposition
• Data
• Word consciousness
• Student voice
• Strategies used to make sense of new or unfamiliar words

Further Reading/PLD to grow my own knowledge kete:

• Supporting students to become competent and confident spellers - Louise Dempsy

• The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth
• Invention, convention, and intervention: Invented spelling and the teacher's role

2022 COL Interview

 What achievement challenge are you considering as an area of focus in 2023 and why? Include in your WHY both evidence and your own passion/expertise

Achievement Challenge 2  (Lifting achievement for boys writing in years 1-10) is the area I would like to focus on through my 2023 teaching inquiry. I work in a shared learning environment with Robyn Anderson and we have realised the benefits a joint inquiry can have for both us and our learners this year. It meant we had a shared vision and gave a shared message, no matter who was leading the teaching. We decided we would like to do another collaborative approach next year. After looking at our EOY data we found that a focus on spelling was needed in our class. That got both of us talking about spelling when we were at school. I remember as a child I wanted to use the words I could say in my writing but the sense of failure each red line brought with it meant I didn't. The fear was real.

What learnings from the 2017 - 2022 CoL teacher inquiries have informed or inspired your thinking.

Since I have been at Panmure Bridge I have had numerous discussions with Robyn about her inquiry and other CoL teachers' inquiries which have informed my thinking, often this was because she said ‘I saw such and such you should try it’. In 2019 my inquiry was based around NE essential spelling making connections with their comprehension.  Relooking at that inquiry after looking at our data has inspired me/us to look more closely at spelling, only this time on a different level with the focus on increasing both our learner’s confidence and skill level.

How would your work support Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa? 

Learning, creating and sharing is vital for increasing our learners' engagement. Collaborating with colleagues will give them a greater sense of empowerment when working through their inquiry.

Which elements of the extensive Manaiakalani research findings inform or challenge you as you think about this?

With reading being the focus of Manaiakalani this year, it was evident to me that there were many words our learners came across when reading their books that they didn't know the meaning of.  We realised that our learners almost always didn't know how to spell the words.

How would you like to be supported in 2023 as you undertake this inquiry?

The support I would be looking for as a first time COL teacher will come from the CoL meetings, discussions with other teachers, opportunities to make new connections along with the continuing support Robyn promised me. I am looking forward to being open to hearing new ideas and strategies that will help me change my own teacher practice. 

How would you plan to support your colleagues in your school with THEIR inquiries and/or teaching in the area you are exploring?

Robyn and I have talked about this and if we are both successful in getting a CoL position, as I would be new to this role, I would support the teachers new to our school and Robyn would support the more experienced teachers. This is my first time applying for this role so guiding the newer teachers would allow me to learn alongside them. I’m excited to take on this new challenge and know that I have the full support of Robyn.