Inquiry Update Term 1 Week 9

Will culturally responsive practises improve writing motivation and in turn increase achievement in standardised writing testing?

As I reflect on the last month, I am beginning to see changes with my students ability to write simple sentences.

I am creating follow up activities on the iPad around alphabet sounds to support the students who are currently solidating this. Some days they do not write and do this as their writing task instead. These students are struggling to record 1 clear simple sentence on their iPad and the sentence is usually far too challenging when they have recorded it themselves. We have been working on writing 'I like to ___ ' & 'I went to the ____' where the students know they can find these words on their helper cards around the room, identify the correct word and write it. I plan to start recording the sentence for them to copy and hopefully build words into their vocabulary throughout the year.

My students who are identified as below (majority of my target students) are already making huge changes in their writing, from writing 1 simple sentence to attempting 2-3 sentences where they have attempted to sound out the initial sounds and the following sounds if they're able to. These students sometimes record a very long story which can have a negative impact on their work ethic once realising how much they are needing to write. I am going to start monitoring what they are recording prior to giving the students their books and make sure it is achievable.

My students who are writing independently were doing this for about 2 weeks before I noticed it was limiting the students ideas as they had to copy word for word what was in their recording and the students started to lose interest within writing as they felt their ideas were almost caged if they didn't say everything during their recording, because then they wouldn't be writing it. I have removed the iPad from these learners and it is now used to support them to sound out words as they record the word and listen back to identify the sounds.

I need to remember to let the students have discussions with each other about their ideas, building up their oral language and knowing once they leave the mat, each student has an idea they will be writing about. It has been awesome to see students attempting to spell unknown words and being excited for writing.