2020 Teacher Inquiry

‘Will I accelerate the learning outcomes for my target students in literacy, by providing more opportunities for collaboration and student choice in learning, creating and sharing in literacy?

Scanning - What's happening for my priority learners at the moment in literacy?

I am focusing on six Year 4 students as part of this inquiry. All the students are boys and have had difficulty in literacy since starting school. All of the students are more positive about reading than writing. Although reading is challenging, the students enjoy reading sessions but only one student genuinely reads for pleasure outside of our class reading. Two of the six students write at home regularly with whanau support.

Poor decoding skills and/or lack of vocabulary/word acquisition means reading is challenging for these students.

Each of the students needs lots of prompting and support to get started on writing. This is a more difficult area for the students than reading. It has taken these students 2 terms to even attempt writing independently and writing output is low for most. Four of the students write 3-5 sentences per writing session.The difficulty often comes back to 'what do I write?' Even 'Free Writing Friday' needs encouragement for topic choice.

Two of the students write more but it often does not make sense and is hard to follow due to spelling errors.

All of the students do not recognise when their writing does not make sense or when they have made errors in their spelling or punctuation.

I have been reading the Woolf Fisher Research Centre 2017 Case Studies as a guide for effective practices (digital pedagogy in relation to literacy outcomes) to support further innovation in the classroom.

These are some of the slides that I thought would support my inquiry as well as the text 'Learning in the Fast Lane: 8 Ways to Put ALL Students on the Road to Academic Success' by Suzy Pepper Rollins.

Kahui Ako - Within School Teachers Day

The 'Achievement Challenges' of the Kahui Ako (22 schools): 

Goal 1: To strengthen students’ engagement with their schooling. 
Goal 2: To lift the achievement of all students in writing. 
Goal 3: To lift achievement at NCEA Level 2.

The goal has been to develop a 'Teaching and Learning' context across our kahui that is built on teacher inquiry around, ‘Quality Teaching and Learning.’ 

My role is the in-school Kahui Ako teacher and our school is part of the Quality Teaching and Learning inquiry.

In school role - bringing people together, promoting best teaching practice, collaboration, try to capture key ideas, facilitating inquiries 

My Inquiry - What am I learning? What changes can be made? How can I make a difference for my students?

Inquiry at Paparore School

Next Steps

• Paparore School Action Plan - shared Kahui Ako folder
• Staff Collaborative Slides - Snapshot of inquiry thinking right now
• Catch up with staff to discuss inquiries before the end of the term.

Sense Making Manaiakalani Meeting - Higher Leverage Practices - HLPs

The Woolf Fisher team (Selena and Naomi) joined our Te Hiku Manaiakalani Cluster on a google meet to help us to unpack the Reading data. 

Today we are exploring some goals and ideas for reading across the cluster as reading is the focus for the year. 

This is a video about High Leverage Practice from the Woolf Fisher Team.

Schools in the cluster shared some examples of high leverage practice examples (HLP) they have tried in their teaching. 



The teachers shared so many great examples of high leverage teaching practices shared today such as;

• T-shaped literacy
• front-loading
• modelling
• motivation and engagement of learners
• multi-level texts
• collaboration
• discussion
• language acquisition

It is fantastic to be part of the Te Hiku cluster with the Woolf Fisher data guiding our practice and learning from so many talented teachers. There are so many things to think about to improve the outcomes of our students in reading but it is clear that our cluster is on the right track!