Inquiry Focus Term 3 2022

Inquiry Focus: Writing 

 I have 5 children in my focus group, 3 boys and 2 girls. At the beginning of this school year, students E and B were in Room 18, and later in Term 1, students E, R, and F joined us. Students K and B are bold and willing to try, whereas E, R, and F are reserved, timid, and insecure. Student F is soft-spoken and appears anxious while asking a question, and students R and E have had poor attendance the past however attendance over the past two terms has been consistent My struggles: The students in this group struggle to maintain the learning we have been doing in class and this is evident in both reading and writing. 

Writing 

We write as a whole class and the majority of my students need assistance. We have gone back to writing a simple sentence which is often a dictated text supported by a visual image. 

We have to do our literacy warm daily: 

 - Say the letter name, and letter sound and we also do the sign language for these letters. 

 - Vowels including short and long vowels, blends and middle sounds 

 - Add a new blend or middle sound weekly. 

 

 Follow-up tasks support our learning, these include: 

- Explain Everything activities on iPad, modelling book  and slides

- Letter names, words, blends, and middle sounds, this depends on the focus. 

- Whiteboards and paper to write words for eg food, tool, park, cat, shop, cheese etc. 

- Flashcards

Letter sounds

Blends and Words

Modelling Book

Explain Everything Activity

End of Term 2 Reflection

My inquiry focus this term has been going really well so far. I have been tracking my students letter sound knowledge and the results are quite pleasing.

The data shows that children in my focus have shown huge improvement in identifying lower case letter names and sounds.

Student F identified 16 letter sounds in term 1 and now is able to identify 25 letter sounds.

Student M initially identified 9 letter sounds and know knows 24 letter sounds.

The data shows that children in my focus have shown huge improvement in identifying upper case letter names and sounds.

What I have noticed?

Some children still had a few confusions like, b and d, c and s, g and j, i and e. I have noticed children pausing, stopping and noticing that there is something's wrong. Some students are beginning to monitor themselves and I am noticing this in their reading and writing as well. The visuals on the board are useful resources and I think that visiting these letter sounds on a daily basis will. help solve these confusions children have.

What's working and what have we been doing so far?
-We have been working on word families for eg. at family cat mat fat hat, the ay family way day may lay hay play, playing
- Word work-using known words to make other words for example, we he she me and my, by try fly shy
-Looking at blends wh th sh ch bl etc.

                                  

During our writing sessions:

When we come across a word we don't know how to spell we have been sounding out words slowly, stretching the word out like a rubber band writing the beginning middle and the end sounds.
I have been using Elkonin boxes to help students develop phonemic awareness. The focus is on segementing and blending the sounds in words. Segmenting is breaking a word apart into individual sounds. Blending is putting the individual sounds together to say a word.

Problems that I have noticed:
When students are writing and they attempt to write an unknown word they spend a long time sounding out the word and can't move on to the next  word/part of their sentence. 

                 

Next steps:
What I would like add to my daily schedule to go over different phoenemic awareness activities and phonis skills and practise applying them.

I have been following video's made by  Susan Jones and she suggests doing these phoenemic awareness activities on a daily basis.
The Phoenemic Awareness Activity:
Blending and segmenting different sounds.
When you want students to blend sounds together to make a word, they have to think of all the different parts of a word they're listening to and see how they come together to a make meaning.
I have to explicitly explain to children what we are learning to do:
1. They can blend syllables together:
Teacher says: I am going to give you 2 different syllables and you are going to put them together to make a word for example,   pen    cil     makes  pencil.
2. Blending sound:
- a. Blending onset+rime
Teacher says: We are going to practise blending sounds together to make a word.
Beginning and end of words, for example:
s    un   makes sun.
h   ot    makes hot.
- b. Blend all the sounds you can hear in the word.
For example:
h o t makes hot.
I will be doing all three activities each day for 5-10 minutes whilst children are eating their morning tea snack. By doing all three types of activities each day will help students understand the connection between letters, sounds, print and oral speaking. I hope to see a shift in both student's reading and writing results.


-I want to extend the writing by adding detail, topic related and interesting words- gifting vocabulary Jannie's programme.I want to use visual images and recycle the vocabulary, for example deep dark forest. sly sneaky fox. I will have to carefully choose images that will engage the learners, hook them into writing.

-Learn all the blends sounds and test and record scores.

- Start doing  simple spelling tests starting with 5 words  a week in Term 3. - this to to give students a challenge and for students to spell words "everyday used' fast and fluently, for examlple: friend with was saw because after etc.

Inquiry Focus Term 1 2021

I have a lovely class of Year One students. All of the students started school last year so they all have a well developed idea of school and learning. They have formed some good relationships with each other because they have been in an open learning space environment in the previous year.

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.

I will be working on building phonological awareness, teaching students how words work so that they can read and write efficiently.

I have 6 students in my focus group. They can identify high frequency words, some alphabet names and sounds.They have interesting ideas to share and can write a sentence with support.

Over the last few weeks I have been working on identifying letter sounds. During our writing

session we have been writing a dictated sentence. This is a simple sentence which includes

many high frequency words and just one or two unknown words.

Below is a presentation showing examples of the writing we have been doing thus far.

I have been using visual images to support the dictation which has been working

really well thus far.

                            

What I have noticed:

I have noticed that I may need to change my writing programme as this does not cater for my higher ability and independent writers.

For the next few days I will be grouping the children in class according to their abilities and have a focus for each group.

Most of the children in my class have common confusions when identifying letter names, for example: d b p q w m letters sound confusions for c and s , g and j.

My focus for the next 5 weeks.

-Teach the mouth formation for each letter sound.

For Example,

When you say the sound for b your lips are together.

When you say the sound for d sound your lips are open and your tongue is on the roof of your mouth.

You can use a mirror so students can see their own gorgeous faces forming the correct sounds associated with each letter.

-Alphabet flashcards - focus on letter names and sounds for letters b d s c j g w m p q.

-Letter array- sorting letters into groups.

-Letter sorting.

End of Year Reflection

This term has been a very busy term with testing and getting things sorted for the end of the year. The children in my focus have been coming to school daily and have improved in their reading. 

 What’s has been working: 

 I have been consistent in using the Gwenneth Phillips prompts and following what Helen Squires suggested at the PD at our Teachers Only Day. 

 - Giving a short introduction to the book and then giving the children the readers to read. - Looking at vocabulary and meaning of words. - Giving children multiple opportunities to share and discuss what they have read. 

 - Comprehension and inference questions for eg. the author mentioned that “Kitty cat was naughty.’ What do you think? Is Kitty Cat really naughty? Prove it. Where is the evidence? Where does it say that in the text? 

 - Giving children time to notice the errors they making and self correct their reading. - Using the prompt ‘you know a word that ends like this’, can ran. Prior to our instructional reading, I would remind children to listen to their reading, check to see: Does it look right, does it sound right, does it make sense? If not, then they got to fix it up. 

 I am pleased with the children progress. In term 2 they were reading Red 1 Level 3 and now they reading at Blue 1 Level 9. All four students can confidently monitor their reading by asking themselves, does it look right, does it sound right, does it make sense? They are attempting unknown words by breaking them into parts, looking for known words and looking for clues in the picture. They are also looking at the beginning, middle and ends sounds whereas before they would just look at the initial letter and guessed a word they know starting with that letter. All of my students got support from home with their learning and this made a big difference to their learning and progress.

Inquiry Focus End of Term 3

On returning to alert Level 2. 5 not many of my students have come back to school. In saying that I am pleased that the children in my inquiry group have all been coming to school everyday. Student:TT and student TH joined the Google Meet Team sessions as well as accessed learning on the Class Site completing the lessons every single day. With their parents support at home they completed majority of the tasks on the slide deck as well as shared their learning by blogging their work. Student IM is very shy and found the meeting sessions overwhelming however completed all the learning tasks.

Over the past few  weeks:

- I have been consistently using Gwenneth Phillips prompt by keeping it on my table so that when students made an error I could support them using that prompt.

- The students are beginning to make connections and this noticing, fixing, self correcting is used in other learning areas as well for eg, maths, writing, engage programme games, 

-The voice recording of the lesson is a terrific idea as I can replay the lesson and plan accordingly.

- I have to write down the error made on a piece paper really quickly because at one stage as the child was checking I forgot  the error was made by the child- so that did't go as expected however as he checked along with me he managed to self correct himself.

- The children have made progress in their reading as well as have confidence in themselves to have a go. give it a try before asking for help.

-  I realised the importance of giving students time to work out the unknown word(waiting time). Students would look at me and I would quickly pretend to be busy doing something else. They had to think of strategies  to read the unknown word- attempt themselves and most of the time they got it right. This in turn boosted their confidence and self esteem. It also. made me realise not to jump in too quickly to help the.

Next Steps:

-Woking on the next prompt of finding and fixing:

Inquiry Focus Term 3

My inquiry focus has changed this term from the Engage Programme to a school wide focus on Reading.

My inquiry will focus on the CoL Achievement Challenge:

#3. Lift the achievement in Reading for all students, with a particular focus on boys and Maori students, with                         particular focus on boys and Maori students (both genders) Years 1-13.

The knowledge of phonics helps children to  work out  “ how to say the printed words”. In other words, it refers to the learners understanding which letter(s) make which sound. The learner can then use that knowledge and phonological awareness to encode(spell) and decode(read) regular words.This initial learning process is the building blocks or the foundation that children need to have to begin to read on their own and build their fluency and text comprehension.

This term our school wide focus is on Reading. The focus is to lift the achievement of students who are below the expected achievement level. Teachers have been given Professional Development (PD) to support us with this inquiry.

My Focus Group:

My focus group consists of three students,(student: T, student: KM, and student: IM). Student KM and IM started at the beginning of the year and the student T started school last year in October. They are all presently reading at Level Level 5 (Red 3).

What are my learners doing during our reading session?

I noticed that:

- Learners were engaged during the orienteering of the reader and were developing the confidence to share similar experiences as in the text. They would chat/discuss about what the picture “was telling us”

- When student IM and T would come to an unknown word they would look at only the initial letter and guess the word. Eg for home, they would look at the h sound and say here because the word here is a known word.

- All three students would sometimes just appeal or stare at me silently waiting for me to tell them the unknown word.

-When I was not looking they would skip that word and continue reading or sometimes make a few muffled sounds under their breath.

- They know most of the high frequency words and would look at the pictures to support them.

- They were confident and fluent in reading a familiar reader (previous day’s reader) and read that book with fluency.

-They have letter sound confusions for e.g. b and d confusions.

- Capital letter and little letter confusions for e.g when a sentence starts with a capital letter, And This, they are unable to read the word.

Working on over the next few weeks:

- Using Gwenneth Phillips Prompt consistently:

-I will use a voice recorder to record the reading lesson to get some input or understanding of what strategies children are using,  listen to ‘what am I saying’ and then plan accordingly.

My Inquiry Focus for 2020

This year I have 10 students that started school last year and 8 students started school at the beginning of the year. I have 11 boys and 7 girls. During the first few weeks of school my focus was on establishing rules and routines in our classroom.Over the past few weeks the children have formed good relationships and friendships with each other. They come to school happy and are excited to learn and be with each other. 

My inquiry will focus on the CoL Achievement Challenge:
#5. Improve the achievement of students with additional needs in the learning areas of English/key competency using language symbols and texts.

My focus is using the ENGAGE programme to teach skills to help children self regulate behaviour so that they can manage themselves.

I will use the engage programme, focussing on Literacy in Terms 1& 2 and Numeracy in terms 3 & 4.

The engage programme has three domains:

1. The Emotional (Feeling) Domain-RED
Recognising and regulating emotions, calming through breathing and movement, mindfulness.

2.The Cognitive (Thinking) Domain-Orange
Listening and playing attention, remembering instructions, blocking out distractions, fine and gross motor skills, controlling speed of movement, balance, etc.

3. The Behavioural Domain ( Doing) Domain- Green
Controlling impulses, patience, turn taking, delaying gratification.

I will be focussing on two of these domains looking at a group of children however the games will be played by everyone in the class as every child will benefit from these games. Two games are played for 10 minutes over a period of 4 weeks and them the students are assessed.

In Term One, Week 1-4 we played did:

1. Deep Breathing: Emotional/Feeling Domain

Children learn to control their breathing by filling their stomachs with air like a balloon and then breathing out slowly.

Prompt-Things you can say:
This helps us control our breaths in and our breaths out."Big slow breathing can help us to feel calm and relaxed."

Deep Breathing

Smell the flower. (Breathe in slowly)

Blow out the candle. (Breathe out slowly)

2.     Relaxation: Emotional/Feeling Domain
A fun exercise that encourage children to tense and relax different parts of their bodies according to different instructions.

Prompt-Things you could say:
"We need to relax ourselves"
"We need to take big breathes when we relax"
"It helps us to feel calm"

What have I noticed:
Playing these games consistently do help children self regulate behaviour. They look forward to playing the games. Children are beginning to use the prompts with each other for example: when working in small groups I would hear a child saying " you need to wait for your turn." After lunch eating the children would come into class and find a spot and lie down to calm themselves down."
We were reading a the story called " The Three Billy Goats Gruff." We were discussing a part of the story and the meaning of bad-tempered troll" One children said " I think the troll is angry, maybe he needs to calm down and do breathing like us." The children are making connections which is pleasing to see.

Next steps:
I will introduce two new games for Weeks 5-8. I will continue to play the breathing and relaxation games especially after playtimes or when the need arises.