Bursts and Bubbles 2021 - A time to celebrate the invaluable Inquiries we have all delved into this year.

Proud to be  part of the Manaiakalani Cluster within school Community of Learning, and presenting our our Bursts and Bubbles Celebration. What a year of challenges, opportunity and learning.  

Tena koutou Katoua, Ko Anita Taku Ingoa. This is always my favourite part of being a Manaiakalani CoL within school leader, where we come together (virtually this time) sharing learning, feeling proud and privileged to belong to such a rich learning community. COVID has caused disruption to our learning this year, which has meant learners and whānau and have had to quickly had to adjust. It has certainly encouraged me to adapt my learning design.

My Inquiry this year has focused on increasing writing achievement for students. I identified writing as my focus when I noticed there were gaps in learners' oral language skills, they had limited vocabulary and therefore lackinging in ideas when writing.

To build a rich picture of my students’ learning I collected the following evidence: ongoing writing samples, EASTLE writing samples, vocabulary tests, and collecting student and parent voice. With the adjustments of suddenly going into lockdown it has been challenging to get end of year match data. Although, Mid-year writing samples and vocabulary tests have shown an increase in vocabulary and ideas in learners' writing.

My impact has been to build teacher capability to design rich, authentic, hands-on learning opportunities. For example, making fairy bread, growing cress, writing letters to the community and linking writing to science, resulting in providing learners to have the desire to write. 

Once learners acted on the feedback and saw their improved writing capability, I knew my students' path to progress would increase. I enhanced this further by involving whanau in the feedback process

I created a series of writing flexi connects where the child and I were on one end of the google hangout at school and parents would be on the other end either at work or home. Their child shared what they had been working on, what their feedback was and how they were going to work on their feedforward to improve the overall quality of their writing.

Then COVID hit! Which opened an opportunity for writing flexi connects to look different. Learners were in the driving seat with parents, conducting a writing flexi connect with me on the other end. Learners were using the same framework to share their feedback and feedforward.

The hardest thing for me to change was feeling comfortable to interject at the different parts of the writing process planning, crafting, refining and publishing. By delivering feedback and feedforward at different points.

Overall I would rate student learning has improved by learners knowing what feedback is, and how to apply it to their writing. The evidence for this is in writing samples collected during distance learning, parent survey results state that regular flexi connects have helped them to support their child, by co constructing next steps with the child. 

The most important learning I made in my inquiry was that feedback can be effective in a range of ways. My wondering is rather than writing flexi connects being an organised event, could it happen more organically, especially while learners are in the crafting and recrafting phase of their writing? 

I invite you to see our CoL within School Inquiries