TAI #3 Change in Inquiry

A change in the challenge and my inquiry group

Covid-19 dictates changes in all walks of our lives which leave us with not many choices but to make changes in some aspects of what we do. I find myself having to make changes in my L1 to L3 NCEA English language assessment programmes because of covid-19, and that inevitably impacts a change in my inquiry. 

The L1 writing standard which I intended to focus my inquiry on became an online intensive focus for my year 11 inquiry group during the covid-19 lockdown period at the beginning of this year. I knew that most students would complete shortly after we get out of the lockdown, and therefore we'd need to go on to a non-writing standard. I decided to change my inquiry focus group to my year 12 English language class who had a writing standard timely coming up to be offered in their learning programme, and that will take them throughout the year. I feel that associating the challenge investigated in my inquiry and the learning programme offered for my inquiry group is a convenient approach to trace the link between teaching offered and the learning and achievement of the learners in writing proficiency.

In my previous post #2 this year, I alluded to a collaboration I had to identify areas for my inquiry, the area of challenge in the student learning I chose to focus my inquiry on, and my 'How' and 'why' for selecting this area of learning challenge. Those remain the same, except that I changed my inquiry group to my year 12 English language learners, which would slightly impact the specific domains or skills of writing proficiency that I would focus my inquiry on. 

The valued learning outcomes I choose as a focus are associated closely with the achievemnet criteria of an English achievemnet standard I offer in my L2 EL assessment programme for these learners - AS91101, 'Produce a selection of crafted and controlled writing'. This standard requires students to be able to first, produce a selection of crafted and controlled writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas to get an achieved, convincingly to get a merit, and effectively to get an excellence. Secondly, in producing these written texts, they are to be able to use language features appropriate to audience and purpose to create effects in order to get an achieved, to create with convincing effects to get a merit, or to command attention in order to get an excellence.

On that basis, my inquiry aims to increase my learners' writing proficiency in terms of: 

(i) producing a selection of crafted and controlled writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas.

(ii)using language features appropriate to audience and purpose to create effects. 

As part of this teaching and learning, I choose to modify a TKI resource called "....yeah, write" and use it as a writing task which students must do, submit, and assessed. Linked to this task would be the writing skills for the students to learn and improve onas well as teaching and learning activities for the teacher and students. 

Throughout the year, this assessment task requires students to produce a portfolio of writing based on the idea of a New Zealand identity. They can choose whether to produce formal or creative writing as well as the text type (for example, poetry, narrative, description, feature article, or monologue). Students must submit at least two pieces of crafted and controlled writing from their portfolio for assessment. They will then be assessed using the achievement criteria for achieved, merit, or excellence. This assessment and achievement grades would be indicative of the improvement in the learners' writing proficiency which is the valued learning outcome of this inquiry.

I feel that this English writing achievement standard and the writing skills required of my English language learners may be quite challenging for them. However, I also feel that this is an opportunity for these English language learners to develop and increase their writing proficiency.  

TAI 2020 #2 Challenge for Inquiry

Collaborate with your school’s leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals.

I want to begin this blog post by stating the obvious about the English Language Learners (ELLs) or English for Speakers of Other languages (ESOL). Because English is their second language, they are faced with the challenge of not only learning a new language but learning in it and through it as well (Pauline Gibbons, 2006). They have to learn and understand English first and then use it as a medium to do their learning or for social use. So while their peers with English as their first language are on point and hurrying ahead doing their learning, these ELLs lag behind with a few years in their vocabulary knowledge and English language skills. They have gaps that must be filled or they will become detrimental to their learning and progress. This is a real challenge for this group of learners. 

When these ELLs get to do the New Zealand Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), there are ‘add-on’ challenges. They are expected to be at certain curriculum levels in reading and writing in order to manage NCEA, they are required to attain a certain number of literacy and numeracy credits (depending on their year levels) for certification, and they are to attain a certain number of credits from all their subjects in order to pass level certificates. Their vocabulary requires them further to increase their knowledge of academic vocabulary, technical words, and subject-specific language. Again these are all English language-related so they further place challenges on these ELLs to wrestle with.        

As an ESOL teacher - ‘What do I do? Where do I begin? How can I do it?’ are very relevant questions that I grapple with continuously. Again and again I ask myself, how can I transition a migrant or refugee to my English-speaking classroom and steadily build their skills as English speakers and listeners. On top of that, how can I help the same in an educational and academic context to build their knowledge and skills to the point of adequacy for attainment of educational certificates. A challenge for both my students and their teacher.

Teaching as an inquiry has been a very useful approach for me in answering these questions and teaching my kind of learners. It is effective because it gets me to know my learners and their needs first, then appropriate my design and delivery to take them from where they are to where they should be, and then assess whether they achieve the outcomes or not. I also find this approach effective for my learners because it requires me to use evidence-based strategies which drives me to further learn and acquire knowledge and skills from the experts in the field and research. By doing this, I expand and enrich myself as a teacher for the kinds of learners that I have and hopefully enable them to progress.  

Last year I found this to be true when I chose to focus on improving the reading proficiency of my year 10 English language learners in my inquiry. The shifts they made in their reading comprehension ability not only showed the effectiveness of this teaching as an inquiry approach, but I have done better in using evidenced-based strategies to teach reading to English language learners. This year I plan to change and focus on another English language skill but still working with the same learners except that they move to a year level higher. This year I want to focus on improving the writing proficiency of my year 11 English language learners, who are doing L1 NCEA. I would like to explore two main aspects of writing proficiency - developing and structuring ideas and use of appropriate language features when writing for different purposes and audiences.   

I feel this inquiry would make a powerful contribution to our school wide and cluster goals. Here are some of the reasons why I think so.

1) Developing students’ writing proficiency is part of our Manaiakalani achievement challenges.  

2) This will contribute to the achievement of our 2020 school literacy goal - ‘That 90% of Year 11 students will achieve NCEA Literacy’ - which is 10 credits from English achievement standards and some standards from some other subjects.

3) The aspects of writing proficiency I want to focus on are actual achievement or performance criteria for some English writing achievement standards as well as EL unit standards offered in L1 NCEA. My L1 English language programme is a combination of some achievement and unit standards.

4) These writing skills can be also cross-curricular needs and requirements. Some standards in other learning areas may require students to write essays, reports, or research with those skills. When these learners do better in these writing skills, they are transferable for use in other learning areas.  

5) As mentioned above, these writing skills are gaps that English language learners have and they to be bridged. These were shown in their last year’s and this year’s English language learning progression assessments, asttle writing, and drafts of their current writing. 

6) At a personal level, I feel that I can expand my knowledge and skills by doing this in this inquiry.
In closing, I like the idea of ‘English language Toolkit’.

I like looking at this inquiry as adding on a tool to a toolkit for purpose. A language toolkit for students involves teaching and providing them with knowledge on how to use certain language tools in a variety of contexts and for different purposes and audiences. It encourages them to explore and practise how language works in those contexts. For myself as a teacher, I need to increase and improve my ‘English language Toolkit’ so I can be more effective in helping my students. With this inquiry, a tool will be added to my students’ English language toolkit, hopefully. 

After collaboration, the following comment is indicative of how this inquiry is perceived to be contributing to the wider school and cluster goals.

"As a COL teacher, I feel this inquiry will make a powerful contribution to our cluster goals in the following ways:

* As stated in reason 4, the focus on developing skills that are transferable across curriculum areas is important in ensuring that learning is consistent. I feel the findings from this inquiry would support other curriculum areas who struggle with our ESOL students.

* I am interested in learnings from how students responded to extending their 'English Language Toolkit' and the implications of this moving forward."

TAI 2020 #1 Inquiry Stocktake

Use the 'Inquiry Stocktake' to reflect on and write about what you aim to learn about inquiry this year.

Using the 'Inquiry Stocktake' for reflection is a great form of self-assessment for me. It helps me identify aspects of teaching as inquiry that I learned and could use most effectively based on my inquiry from last year. It also enables me to identify aspects of the same which I would like to aim at in order to learn more about inquiry this year. In this blog I would focus on each aspect of the inquiry process, reflect on what I learned last year, and what I aim to learn and do better this year.

Identifying valued learning outcomes (VLOs) to focus on

Reflecting on my inquiry last year, I am pleased that I chose to focus on the curriculum objective of ‘making meaning’ for my year 10 English language learners. I chose as a  valued learning outcome to focus on improving the reading proficiency of these English language learners by improving my teaching approaches on the areas of providing extensive reading experiences for students, teaching reading techniques as part of an intensive reading programme, and providing incidental and deliberate learning of English vocabulary for my students. 

My year 10 English language learners made shifts in their reading proficiency. More importantly, I learned how to improve my teaching on those areas which I needed to change in order to improve the learning of my learners. Based on those experiences from last year, I feel that I should aim at another valued learning outcome (VLO) as focus of my inquiry this year. I am inclined to look at creating meaning as a curriculum objective focus, to focus on improving the writing ability of my year 11 English language learners as a valued learning outcome.    

I found the help and guide of WFRC support from the COL sessions contributed very effectively to the steps I took in implementing my inquiry. I intend to learn and do the same for my inquiry this year.

Profiling students’ learning in those VLOs

The profiling of students’ learning in the valued learning outcomes of my inquiry last year was very comprehensive and specific. I used both quantitative and qualitative data which included gathering information from standardized summative assessments commonly used by the school as well as formative information gathered from students’ interviews, questionnaires, observations, and surveys such as forms and ratings. I found that triangulating the data was very helpful in knowing my learners and their learning needs. Such helped a great deal in developing my hypotheses and designing my teaching and learning experiences for students. I feel, however, that I spent quite a bit more time on the analysis of data.

Based on my experience from last year, I aim to use similar kinds of data in profiling students’ learning in my inquiry this year in the learning outcome that I aim to focus on. By doing that I would learn more information and get to know my learners better in their learning outcome of writing. I would also aim to use that data to improve my teaching approach on how to improve students' wriing ability.

Generating hypotheses (especially teaching)

Last year generating hypotheses (especially teaching) was an aspect of my inquiry that made me realise I had to seek help and advice from other experts as well as research in the area of English language learning. I found this to be an aspect that I spent more time on as I wanted to be sure that the teaching approach I chose would be effective in meeting the learning outcomes for my students. I developed my own hypotheses based on my previous teaching experiences and the teaching approaches I found effective, but I needed to verify that from those experts and research. I started to talk to Dr Jannie van Hees and read similar research on teaching reading to English language learners. Information I gathered were very helpful in generating hypotheses and approaches for my teaching.

Again based on that reflection and my experience from last year, I aim to follow the same process of generating hypotheses for my inquiry this year. What I aim to learn more about though would be on the area of improving their writing as a learning outcome. I would try to work more on time that I spend on this aspect and be more definitive on the hypotheses I would generate.

Testing hypotheses (investigating own teaching)

Reflecting on the testing of my hypotheses and investigating of my own teaching was the aspect of the process where I focused on teaching. I focused more on just teaching and doing activities based on my hypotheses, but not much on assessesing the learning of students. If I did more of that, I would have been more able to verify and test my hypotheses and the effectiveness of teaching approaches I chose to use. I did collect some information through observations, analysis of students’ extensive reading, and student voice but not constant or fast enough to inform what needed to change or tweak in my teaching. 

In my inquiry this year, I aim to improve that aspect as part of my teaching and learning experiences. I would like to make consistent assessments, both summative and formative, and evaluate my teaching as I implement teaching and learning experiences. Such would help in testing my hypotheses and or changing my hypotheses as well as in changing and tweaking my approaches to achive the leaning outcome of my inquiry. I aim to make assessment (summative or formative) and evaluation as consistent and intrinsic part of my teaching and learning approaches.

Using research literature and other sources to identify more effective approaches

The aspect of using research literature and other sources to identify more effective approaches for my teaching and learning of my learners was a challenging yet enriching aspect of my inquiry last year. This aspect was more a part of the aspect when I focused on generating hypotheses. The real challenge was the more time taken to read and do research as well as having to know where to look for the correct and reliable kind of research to use. It was helpful though having the COL release time to do this task. What I found enriching in reading literature was that my understanding in the area of my inquiry was deepened and the research findings I had supported my hypotheses. Relevant literature verified my hypotheses and consequently built my confidence in the approach I used for my teaching of reading as a learning outcome. What I needed to do more was looking for effective tasks and activities to use in my teaching.

As for my inquiry this year, I aim to engage in this aspect in a similar way to what I did last year but to limit the time spent on it. I do agree with the idea that a central “bank” where COL teachers could all add to so there is a breadth of reading being done and dip in.

Implementing new approaches & Monitoring (and tweaking) new approaches

Implementing new approaches and monitoring (and tweaking) new approaches to use in my inquiry last year was an aspect of the process I did not do much of. The time I had in the classroom was only enough for the teaching of the original approaches of my hypotheses at a rate appropriate for the low and slow learning ability of my learners. I also did not want to waste valuable class time with ideas that may not be successful, and so I only had sufficient time in the class programme to implement and maintain the approaches of my hypotheses. 

In my inquiry this year I want to learn how to be able to incorporate and tweak new approaches to my teaching if they help to improve the learning of my students to achieve the valued outcome. I aim to improve how I would monitor the implementation and progress of my inquiry this year. I feel that this could be related more to time and planning of my teaching and learning activities.

Evaluate shifts in own teaching

Reflecting on my inquiry last year, I found this aspect working well. I made shifts on my own teaching and remained focused there. The teaching approaches I chose to use were based on my hypotheses supported by information I gathered from literature. They convinced me that they were effective to improve the learning outcome of my students if I made shifts in my teaching and focused on them. The shifts were on the use of extensive reading, intensive reading, and accelerating the students’ vocabulary acquisition. The combination of those approaches were themselves shifts that I made in my own teaching.

In my inquiry this year, I aim to take a similar approach and make shifts in my teaching based on the learning needs of my learners identified by data from the profiling aspect of the inquiry process. I aim to increase my knowledge on acquiring the most effective teaching approaches to use in order to achieve the valued learning outcome of my inquiry this year, the improvement of students' writing ability.

Evaluate shifts in student learning

I think students making shifts or not in their learning outcome was the most important aspect of teaching as inquiry. In my inquiry last year, I tried to identify whether there were any shifts in student learning by reassessing the students at the end of my inquiry using the  same quantitative summative assessments which I used at the beginning to identify their - ESOL ELLP, PAT reading, and Accelerated Reader reading test. These were standardized summative tests commonly used by the school to test the juniors' reading proficiency. I also collected qualitative data using again questionnaires, interviews, and observations to identify whether there were shifts in the students' attitude toward reading.