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.