Inquiry End of Year Reflections

This is what happened for my students:

At the beginning of the year I did writing following Dr. Gwyneth Phillips writing programme. iPads were used as a resource to record students ideas and then replayed to write the sentence.down in their books.This approach showed an increase in children's confidence and some children moved towards becoming independent writers.
At this time I decided to change my inquiry group to students who were capable of writing a few sentences however I wanted to extend their ideas using rich topic related vocabulary. I decided to follow Dr. Jannie van Hees writing programme using visual images and gifting vocabulary and word groups.
The evidence that I have for this is:
The students writing in their books, class blog, individual blog posts, Class On Air Episodes books, e -Asstle data and Six Year Net Data.

This graph is a visual representation of data in the table above.

The data shows that overall most students in my focus group performed well.I am so very proud of them. They have worked hard this year.

Inquiry Term 4, Week 1

Term 4 has come way too quickly and it will be a busy term with testing, reports and prize giving items. This term our inquiry focus is "Telling stories through drama." We will be reading lots of stories and legends and then will be writing about some of them.
I will continue using a brainstorm to help children put their ideas in correct sequence.
I will use images and visuals as a resource to support learners. My focus will be on the  characters in the story and gifting lots of topic related vocabulary, word groups for characters or parts of the story.
A very useful resource:

I have used this resource in the past and I think it will be useful for my focus group. An exciting term ahead and will be interested to see how my students progress this term.

Inquiry Term 3, Week 10

I am continuing to use visual images for writing. some images are related to our Inquiry focus for the term which is "There's something in the water."

We start our writing with a whole class brainstorm:

What I have noticed in their writing:
- ideas are being repeated, words like " and , and then, because" are being repeated.
- ideas do not connect and therefore the story does not make sense.

What support did I give these students:
- each child had some one to one time with me - we brainstormed their ideas, broke them into parts, for eg what happened: first, next, after that, how would like to end your story.
- I wrote the words in their brainstorm and they used this as a guide when writing.
- children use the ideas from the brainstorm to help them write their sentences. They have to stick to it cannot change. Here in the brainstorm you said "they going to play hide and seek" "does that match with what you have written. This prompt is used in reading and DMiC which I find very helpful.

Results:

Inquiry Term 3, Week 5

I am quite pleased with the progress the children are making in my focus group. They doing well in both Reading and reading writing.

Reading Data:

Writing data:

What's working so far:
-Using visuals images to encourage rich conversation, children are able to share ideas easily and confidently.
-Working on blends, middle, sounds and endings every morning or whenever the opportunity arises has been very useful. We refer to them all the time and keep adding to the wall. For example I know ing now this says ang, like bang, clang, sprang.
-Having all the words for my sentence in my head, repeat it 3 times before I start writing.
-Using knowledge of known words to write unknown words, often this is linked to reading. For       example I know come so I can write some. I know the 'ar' sound now I can write g ar d en.
-Read my story to 3 before me.
- Working with the teacher to edit my work- Capital letters, full stops are used in the right places.
-My story has a beginning middle and end.

Over the next few weeks I will continue focussing on what we're working on.
I want to focus on
-Words I can write for eg. I know come so I can write some, probably start doing spelling tests again.
- Read my work to see if it makes sense and edit my work with support from the teacher.
- Use BAR key when writing
B-better
A-add
R-replace

Inquiry Term 2 Week 10

I have changed my focus group. I have five children in my focus group and they are all girls. Three of the girls have already turned 6 and they can write a sentence independently. They can spell many basic everyday words and are attempting to use their letter sound knowledge to write some difficult and tricky words.  One of the girls is reading at Green 1 L12 and the other 4 girls are reading at Blue 2 Level 10. They work well together however there are 3 girls who are quiet and shy. When prompted will share their ideas. They can have conversations and share ideas freely when in a small group.

Over the last few weeks I have been using pictures from books as a resource to help my class with their writing. I select images that will hook the children, engage them to have a rich conversation.
Sometimes images are from a story we read. I have been using Dr. Janie Van Hees gifting rich vocabulary word groups.
We start with a  visual prompt:

Who is in the picture- characters and giving them names- Baby bear, Mother bear, Mother hen
Where are they- in the deep dark forest, warm nest.
What happened- they are hungry, feeling scared.

I have also talked to the class about a BME:
Your story must have a:
Beginning
Middle
End
Some children in the class are beginning to understand what this all means.
Over the last few weeks my focus group with my support have been writing sentences with a BME.


Findings:
When writing independently:
I am noticing:

Ideas being repeated  - words being repeated,
Confusions and therefore lots of mistakes- children keep changing their ideas or cannot hold onto initial idea or does not have that entire idea in their head before they start writing.
They dive straight into what happened-  for eg- she is hungry.
It has to be their idea and I need to give them waiting time which can be a bit difficult with 14 other children in the classroom.

Next steps:
Work in small groups or I walk around as everyone writes.
Continue using our i-Pads as a resource to record our sentences- Say my sentence- listen to it and now write the words for my sentence.
Children that have a good memory can work on holding one part of their story in their head.

Activities in the classroom:
Play memory games.
Puzzles
I spy games

Inquiry Term 2 Week 5.

In my last presentation I said that I was going to investigate using Elkonin Boxes to support my students when they writing unknown words. I had a think about this and decided to put this in the later to do basket.
I wanted my learners to write a sentence. The challenges we faced were:
- remembering all the words in my sentence.
- what word do I needed to write next in my sentence
- having to look for the words in the my alphabet card and copying it in my book and still hanging onto all the words in sentence.

I decided to use DICTATION as a form of writing.
The children listened to an audio recording of a sentence and had to LISTEN to the words, SAY the words and WRITE the words.
We did this for about three weeks and now children are recording their ideas SAYING recording their sentence, LISTENING to it, REPEATING the words WRITING them down CHECKING to see if it matches to what they said - Rewindable learning.

I think this strategy is working for my students. Some evidence of this is the 6 year net testing. One of my students got tested and surprisingly did well in the dictation part of the test. The child was confident and attempted to record all the words in the sentence and wrote some sounds for unknown words.
I will continue with this for the rest of the term. I am thinking of changing my focus group for next term and want to focus on a group of learners who are capable of writing a few sentences and are working on adding more detail, rich vocabulary to their piece of work.

Writing Term 1 Week 10.

My Inquiry focus for 2019

I have a class of delightful Year One children.This year I have more girls than boys. Many of them started school last year and I have about new entrant children that started and the beginning of the year. They have formed some good relationships with each other because they have been to the same kindergarten and child care centres. 

My inquiry will focus on the CoL Achievement Challenge:
#2. Lift the  achievement for boy's writing Years 1-10.

Inquiry Focus: My focus is on writing a sentence:
Children will be learning to confidently share an idea to write about by speaking in full sentences to other children.

I will be focussing on two groups, three children in each group I will be following Dr. Gwenneth Phillips writing programme where we learn to write a simple co -constructed sentence. I will write this sentence in a modelling book and the children will help me write the words for our sentence. I will be structuring sentences in such a way that we
-learn a high frequency word in every writing session.
-DOS - direction ,orientation and sequencing of letters when writing high frequency words.
- HRS: Hearing and recording sounds-choose a word in the sentence where children will be taught how to use letter sounds to write unfamiliar words- teach children strategies like sounding out the word slowly letter by letter and then attempting to find letter that makes that sound on their butterfly card. Start with most dominant sounds in words.
- Syllabication: breaking words into parts.

Hunches:
-Many children in the group have limited vocabulary language structures to express what they wish to share.
They may utter a word, use gestures point or even shrug their shoulders.
- They have confusions between letters and numbers, letters and words, words and sentences, leaving a space, -
-Difficulty repeating the idea that has been shared, difficulty in recalling the words in the sentence that has been shared, difficulty with language structures especially if English is your second language. .

What might work: Dr. Gwenneth Phillips writing programme. The teacher is a role model and we share the writing process.

To investigate:
-Using i Pads to record the co- constructed sentence and play the sentence to check and see what word comes next when we writing.
-For the capable children who are already on their way and know a few basic words we can use the iPad to record those unfamiliar words we need to sound out.
-Make learning rewindable.Children at this year level find it hard to remember the words in their sentence. I want to trial using the iPads to record their sentence and later use this method when they are trying to write independently.


Presently:
I am working on the key competencies and setting up the norms when we are in a group lesson.
- managing self - focus on lesson and what is being shared.
- building confidence to share an idea (speak up so others in the group can hear your idea and add more)
- speaking in full sentences
-participation
-repeating other children's ideas.