Inquiry 2019

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

As I reflect on the year and my writing achievement, I am so happy with the confidence and direction I now have towards writing in the junior school. 

Reflecting on their eASTTLE testing, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of writing, especially with their structure and language, thanks to Jannie! 

Target students (unable to write independently or apply letter sound knowledge):

As I reflect on my writing programme from last year, when it came to the test I had students who did not know how to start a sentence as they were constantly prompted in daily lessons. This was when I made the decision I needed to inquire into my teaching practice in writing.

This year, I have had a big focus on getting every student writing independently. With the use of the iPad, this has been hugely beneficial for these students, where I supported them to voice their opinion and record it. For a whole term, we went over sounding out with the additional help of Mrs Fester and made sure they could at least attempt the initial sound they heard. This steadily resulted in each student being able to write a sentence independently. 

Pondering over my initial question.. I have altered my literacy programme to be culturally responsive with the use of the iPad to help support their development of oral language, the learning experiences that have occurred and giving explicit instructions when needed, remembering 11 out of my 21 learners are ESOL. The iPad started as a tool where the students would be practicing basic sight words and attempting to fill in the gaps of a sentence. I slowly built this up into 'I went to the ___' where they would locate the 4 words and attempt to apply their letter sound knowledge to attempt the final word independently. We continued doing this for the first 1-2 terms and by the end of term 2, the new goal was a sentence independently. This was through the students drawing a picture built up with a huge amount of oral language, discussing the image they drew and writing down words around the image. For example, as the student was telling me about the image I would draw the slide and write next to it 'slide' prompting them to use this language while slowly taking away the scaffold. By the end of the year, I was confident each individual was able to write a simple sentence individually with the support of classroom materials. Here are some of the tests from Term 1 to Term 4:

Students who were just below:

From my writing programme last year, I found a mismatch between their oral language and written story telling, where the students would have many ideas but this would be changed into words the students are familiar with and basic sight words they know how to spell. With the inclusion of the iPad, the students would say their sentence and voice record it - therefore they were unable to simplify it for themselves and had many challenging words to write, developing the use of their letter sound knowledge.

This year I have allowed for many opportunities of Student Led discussions which started off as simple as students sharing 'Weekend News' asking and answering each others questions. Throughout the year, not only have the questions improved but the detail they have added within their stories and the improvement of their oral language has been significant! This was due to myself being able to observe and asking students to re-voice their sentence again, fixing errors seen from their spoken language. This was steadily starting to show improvements in their writing, especially with the use of correct tenses.

Independent writers: 

Jannie's PD..

If a students idea is 'Grandma came over on Sunday' Expand on this by asking questions such as:

- What does she look like?

- Why did she come?

- Was it in the morning or at night?

- Were you excited?

- Who was home?

- Did she bring food or did you give her food?

Students begin thinking of 3 main ideas they want to express to the audience within the piece of writing and write these down. We then discussed what a paragraph is connecting this into their reading, looking at past texts. When looking at structuring and the organisation of the piece of writing, we need to make it clear with the students what they're needing to implement and giving them the correct strategies to successfully do this. Watching Jannie's way of continually gifting vocabulary while also pulling out amazing vocabulary out of the students was awesome and I'm excited to give it a go!

Teacher needs to talk the detail with the students - expand on students sentences on the conversation on the mat. Continually gifting words and ideas to the learners which the learners do understand. Students need to be aware that each contribution is valid and it is a safe learning environment. It is crucial the kids know enough detail to write their story.

It is very important for us as teachers to have ongoing conversations with the students giving them many opportunities to improve their oral language, not just written.  Allowing the students to participate in meaningful encounters and engagement with other learners, continually gifting the vocabulary to optimise the students learning and to help support the language is sticking to the learner. 

This time last year, I can recall myself pushing for good vocabulary and punctuation with my extension students, dipping into a range of techniques, unsure the direction I was needing to take to see the best progress. I am so excited to now have a great understanding of where these writers should be heading with their next goals set in place, writing for a purpose, focussing on quality over quantity.

Since Jannie came and did some PD with our team, I have heavily focussed on the structure of the students writing. These students became intrinsically motivated to do their best piece of writing and blog it, knowing they are sharing this with their whanau. I have worked on the students vocabulary and extending this through language experiences.  I introduced 'Editing' through a song which students were very excited about and loved editing their work. This was seen in their testing as you could see the fix-ups throughout the piece of writing and the coherency.

Where to next:

- In the future, I want to make sure I am explicitly teaching punctuation to my students as I feel like this is where fewer of the marks were received. 

- I will continue to be culturally responsive with the use of the iPad in the beginning of the year to set the learners up to succeed and support their development with oral language.

Writing became an exciting subject which was thoroughly enjoyed!