Anita's Teaching as Inquiry Blog

Hub Padlet - Sharing Home Learning This is an intervention to strengthening parent partnerships by creating a three-way level of communication; whānau, child, and teacher. A parent focus group suggested a Hub Padlet to not only share their child's home learning but to also get ideas from other parents about how to support their child. Teachers comment on the learning, provide feedback, and feedforward. The next step in my leadership is to measure this impact at two points in the year, beginning and end. Also, to continue share this practise the influence it has - help others to make this their own. Breakthrough in Reading - Project lead A passion lead breakthrough set up during reading time to extend those learners who are more able and are making accelerated progress. This initiative was set up to keep these learners engaged and motivated through real and authentic learning. This is still a work in progress, through my change in leadership role, it has changed the level of flexibi...

My Causal Chain summarises how the different elements of my Inquiry connect together to work towards l ifting student achievement in reading through strengthening parent partnerships and teacher capability. The keywords that spring out are: learner achievement, learner engagement, parent partnerships, and teacher capability. The big next move is the implementation of these initiatives and measuring the impact they are having on student achievement.

The interventions to take place here on my end is to supply readings for our teachers based on engaging in communicating with whānau. Support alongside teachers to support parent communication. The initial step of gaining parent insights has been helpful. Parents asked for pallets to share home learning ideas, and add home learning on School Talk. This has already been added.   

A positive and informative parent meeting. It was wonderful they took time out of their day to come along. The parents all gave some great suggestions for how we can help our parents to help our children at home.  They felt we communicate learning progress as a school well and in a timely fashion. The next step is the incidentals and information on how to support their child at home.  Parents said that our teachers do the following things well... Know our children well, parents feel well informed by this and confident that they are doing the best they can. Provide an open-door policy.  Running workshops are effective - would like to see a portal for all the recordings of these workshops for future reference. Could this sit in the Home Learning Site? Some of the big takeaways from this parent focus group are.. Through a digital and hands-on lens. Utilise our Home Learning site, and send home writing books with an area for parents to comment and leave their voice.  

Achievement Challenge 3: To lift achievement in Reading for all students, with a particular focus on boys and Maori (both genders) I'm going into this Achievement Challenge by enhancing whānau engagement I will measure this in two ways: Teacher capability to engage with our whānau. Measure the level of engagement of whānau with their child's learning and progress in Reading. The areas to investigate are ... What are the capability levels of our teachers, and how I can have an impact on supporting teachers to build their capability. Measure the level of engagement of our whānau through the Kotahi Whānau Tool and other ways to record this data. Across our Cluster, our data is showing that the rate of progress is slower as learners move up the color bands of where their expected reading levels should be. School Data... Another view is from School Talk over all levels for reading levels Beginning of Term 1 Hub 2 Y1/2 Learners' overall reading levels.  How can I engage with Wh...

Aligning the models; Manaiakalani - Learn, Create, Share with Stonefields School - The Learning Process to base my Inquiry on strengthening whānau partnerships to lift student achievement in Reading in particular Māori and boys.  When I look at this Adaptation of 'The Educutural Wheel' Mc Farlane 2014 Whanau engagement in the education model I can see the connectedness to our Stonefields School Strategy Goal of fostering Whanau engagement and this model. The TKI MOE Website Foster whānau engagement  s uggestions for implementing the strategy ‘Building strong community networks   is a wonderful resource to give me insights on what strategies have worked,  there is a whole chapter on practical strategies to implement. I look forward to making meaning in my Y0-2 village and across the leadership team to see what is going to give us stronger whānau engagement and build relationships. 

My child loves reading, but writing is so much harder for them. I can teach reading, but not writing. They are just not interested in writing  If they don’t know a word should I tell them or do I let them guess? Kia ora, Great to be back here to share my 2022 Inquiry. whānau voice is asking us to partner alongside to help them support their child in writing,  The data collected from earlier this year, EASTle, Overall Teacher Judgements, Gap Analysis in School Talk, Our school-wide data, and tracking attitude and confidence show there is a dip in progress and learners are not making the expected rate of shift or are below standard in writing. I saw this as an opportunity to strengthen relationships and educate whanau on how to help their child at home.  I led a parent writing workshop to upskill them on how we use the LP and to engage their child in writing. We unpacked writing samples to notice what is happening to their child. At Whānau day learners shared their writing ...