Halfway through the year!

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

The students writing test takes place next term and the kids will not have access to their iPads. My inquiry states 'Increase achievement in standardised writing testing.'  This leaves me questioning what to do and how to do it effectively. I am having to slowly eliminate the iPad throughout the term while still hopefully getting the students to write what they were previously capable of without the iPad.

After discussing this with teachers in my Inquiry Group and teachers around the school, I received a number of great ideas to slowly take away these scaffolds such as:

- Talk talk talk

- Gift some words to the students with the removal of the iPad

- Memory games!

Talk talk talk...

I have actively used this tool throughout the year during writing but I plan to try and extend on this, allowing students to generate it and hopefully myself standing back. I will lead the beginning of the session, explaining the set task and gifting vocabulary, followed by the students hopefully doing 'Turn & Talk' and sharing their ideas with each other followed by sharing back. With my students who struggle to generate their own idea, supporting the students to come up with an idea or build on their simple idea (hoping to eventually take away this scaffold in the next coming weeks). 

  Gift some words to the students with the removal of the iPad

It would be a huge challenge to completely remove the iPads and expect them to produce an idea, memorize it and be expected to write it independently. In order for this to work, I need to be scaffolding this carefully, making sure I am giving the students enough gifted words to be confident to write a sentence independently. This will be once we have a korero on the mat, checking in (with the students who need the extra support) to see if they have produced their own idea and put it into a sentence. If not, I will support and scaffold by writing key words on the board that may be challenging for them with an image next to it. The use of the image is to support the learner to remember what that word means so they can identify it and write it. Thanks for the awesome idea Mrs Nua!

  Memory games!

I plan to start the lesson off with my target students who are not yet capable of remembering their ideas, supporting this through the use of engaging memory games. I am hoping this slowly eventuates to the students remembering 1-2 sentences for their piece of writing.

My group who is learning to come up with their own ideas will focus on drawing pictures prior to writing - hoping this will begin some ideas and lead to the students being capable to attempt their own sentence using sight words identified from the resources around the classroom.

Before discussing where I am with my inquiry to my colleagues, I was quite worried about 'Where to next?' Especially with the test coming up next term. I am so thankful for the amazing ideas my awesome colleagues have shared with me at school and cannot wait to trial these out in Term 3!