CoL Data Crunching

When I began my year as a CoL teacher I thought that each week I would be able to create and share resources and/or videos of bright ideas about literacy from almost any primary teacher in our cluster to the secondary teachers of my school, as I regarded them all as literacy specialists in comparison to me, (and probably all secondary teachers like me), who always try our best but didn't receive the same formal literacy training during our PGDips as the Primary trained teachers did. 

However, I've had my reigns pulled in. And that's not a bad thing at all, because what it means is that I'll be more targeted and scientific in my approach to sharing literacy strategies, instead of charging around like a bull in a china shop. On the other hand, it does mean I have less tangible help to deliver to my secondary colleagues each week in return for my time out of class each week. I'm very conscious of this. Everything I do this year will be through the lens of sharing what I learn to help others, and with a focus on literacy and science. 

So here is the outcome of the first four weeks of my year: 

• I've had three meetings about the steps that I must take to walk the best path into schools of the cluster, and also to shape and focus my inquiry. 

• I've been working with Aaron and Kenichi from Woolf Fisher to access the past data of the Year 9's who arrived at Tamaki College this year. 

• I conducted data analysis and creating a presentation to share at the first CoL meeting of the year. 

• I presented the start of my inquiry to the CoL meeting and have asked Kathryn for time to present at the next big staff meeting, to try and share more than just via this blog. 

Here are the findings around Writing and Reading Comprehension of students who arrive at Tamaki College from schools in the Manaiakalani cluster:

• I have identified that Writing is a great strength of the Primaries. 
• Reading Comprehension is an area that all Manaiakalani schools can improve. 
• 111 of the 149 Year 9's who arrived at Tamaki College did not make accelerated progress in Reading Comprehension towards the norm during Year 8. 
• Only 7 of our new arrivals are working above the norm for NZ in Reading Comprehension - meaning that acceleration in this area is vital across ALL years, as we're all playing catch-up together. 
• 38 students arriving at Tamaki College DID make accelerated progress in Reading Comprehension! 
• Some of that progress was really significant - Trent made 17.9 points of improvement in his PAT scale score for Reading Comprehension, and the norm improvement was 5.28!