Anita's Teaching as Inquiry Blog

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.

 Collecting Data on what learning connections are being made? my question is how is the learning process  Split digraph a-e and ng Split digraph a-e, ee and ss Split digraph i-e and ea Student Voice: We are building our knowledge by practising our split digraph. Learners are taking action, referring to the Learning Process, and identifying the thinking skill. In this case 'Practise' to continue their learning. Taking agency to know their gaps and work on them.  Learners feeling proud of their learning when taking action to practise.  When looking at this qualitative data, I can see that the phonics we cover is transferring in most learners' writing. The noticing and reflection of this are when some learners might be writing with a different teacher and phonics are covered in reading with another teacher, can the explicit connections be made? 

  Our recent communication on our  Knowledge Builders | Tupu Mātauranga cards shares how parents can use these cards at home. Taking this a step further by engaging our whānau with the learning at school enables our whānau to feel empowered with how to use the cards. I am using these cards during reading and writing times, to provide ore practise for learners to read and spell these sight words. Learners can use these games and activities at home with their whānau. 

  Research Read a great article recently "The importance of Teaching and Learning in the Classroom" 2021 Some things really resonated with me. The 'Tools for transforming themselves and their world" When I think about the learning process and how it helps our learners, it is about providing tools and and a vehicle to drive learning. The next paragraphs explain that if learners are to experience success we need to consistently be reflective about what is going to help student learn best. What is going to help our learners connect to the knowledge, teach them how to think and reduce barriers to learn new knowledge.  Learning Principles “Good students are those who  learn . Whatever their preconceptions, barriers or deficits—whatever their story—they take new information and new experiences, and to the best of their ability, make them tools for transforming themselves and their world. And at last I’ve learned that a good teacher is someone who can recognize and connect ...

Feeling refreshed and revived and ready for and new Term. Our Hub Inquiry last over the last two terms has lead to a collaborative effort to Notice - Recognise and Respond.  We have been fortunate to be fluid with our groupings. Responding to Covid times has meant that we have been more isolating to one group for all our learning areas. This term we are changing it up.  Our Writing and Maths groups are with our Guardian groups, mixed ability groupings allowing us to do buddy learning, small group, whole group a range of fluidness to meet the needs of our learners.  Our reading groups are more based on ability but allowing us to be collaborative between groups. Our Concept and Breakthrough learning is with a range of mixed learners based on learners needs and interests. I am feeling as though a weight is lifted off my shoulders and I am feeling free in my learning design to be deliberate and cause learning.  Bring in the Learning process!  To help our learners ma...

Holiday Time has arrived. Our mid year data across the Y1/2 cohort showed that we needed to target more of our learners to meet the national writing standards.  To cater for this need I created a 'writing ideas for home' slide to support whanāu who would like more support with how to help their child at home. Parent feedback is asking for suggestions, easy take aways and tips that can help at home. 

The Learning Process helps us to engage and think in our learning  We use the thinking skills to identify what we are doing to learn. Learners can talk about how they use the learning process in Writing. In summary, they comment that we use our senses to sound out the tricky words. We use 'what we know',  'notice' using the letter sound cards around us and word banks It helps us in reading when we are stuck in the Learning pit with those tricky words.  We explain how the thinking skills have helped us in writing. When I ask learners how the learning process helps you in your learning they refer to the three rocks. They have a good understanding of building knowledge. My goal is for learners to understand that the nature of working in the learning process is very fluid and not stationary in one rock. By making the learning process interactive, learners have a grater understanding of the transferability when using the learning process.   

Writing related to the Term 1 Concept of Well being From drafted to publised writing. Where learners are seeing the purpose and process of writing. The opportunity here to share this writing further with our Whānau for them to know where their child is at in their writing and what they could continue to support them with.  Some noticings are that learners are becoming more determined to write the sounds they can hear, knowledge of letter recognition and sounds are continued to be worked on.  The baseline data shows there are some gaps in knowledge of letter sounds and recognition. Which is a good to see where our gaps are in their phonological knowledge.  In School Talk we are a gap analysis shows there is a morning learning to do in all areas Deeper Features and Surface Features in writing.  DData and photo evidence is highlighting the opportunities and the content we can share with our whānau.

  Surveying my parents based on the Writing Flexi Connects - Collecting Data For parents the experience has been worth while It’s useful for me to know how I can support my child and what they should be focused on improving. It’s been especially useful over lockdown It was a great opportunity to see my child's writing and hear them understand their next steps in their learning. It is also great to have this chance to regularly touch base with their teacher to see how they are progressing. It’s does work to improve **** writing and give him chance to express his thoughts to describe It creates the connection between school and my child. It keeps the routine almost the same. comments taken from survey Reflecting on how I have made an impact for these learners and their whānau The connects have enabled me as a parent to work with my child and assist in ensuring she in working on the right things. Charlotte’s writing has really improved recently with her using more interesting words in...

  Language Experiences not only motivate our learners to write but it gives them a purpose and helps them to understand why we write. We write for an audience and as a part of a process. As Murry Gadd 2021 supporting research states by engaging language experiences help students see the relevance of writing and can make connections. These experiences help our tamarki to understand what has been asked of them through scaffolding the process of writing.