Click here to read the findings from the student interviews!
Thursday, 15 August 2019
Tuesday, 13 August 2019
Method for student and teacher interviews about reading
For each of your hypotheses, explain how you will test it and what evidence would support (or refute) that hypothesis..
Hypotheses
Across the Manaiakalani cluster, schools are not as good at teaching reading comprehension as they are at writing. I hypothesise there may be little shared language of reading instruction across schools as there is now established for writing (e.g. recount, narrative, adjectives etc). I also hypothesise that reading mileage - time actively spent reading or comprehending - may not be as high for reading as it is for writing.
Method
Interviews will be conducted with as many of the 31 accelerated students and their Year 8 reading teachers as possible, and a very small sample of online class timetables and reading programmes will be explored. As time is limited, this will be done as a random selection of teachers, terms, weeks and reading groups. Qualitative analysis of interviews will be done via heuristic coding, and when drawing conclusions links will be made to existing literature. Finally, suggestions will be made.
Hypotheses
Across the Manaiakalani cluster, schools are not as good at teaching reading comprehension as they are at writing. I hypothesise there may be little shared language of reading instruction across schools as there is now established for writing (e.g. recount, narrative, adjectives etc). I also hypothesise that reading mileage - time actively spent reading or comprehending - may not be as high for reading as it is for writing.
Method
Interviews will be conducted with as many of the 31 accelerated students and their Year 8 reading teachers as possible, and a very small sample of online class timetables and reading programmes will be explored. As time is limited, this will be done as a random selection of teachers, terms, weeks and reading groups. Qualitative analysis of interviews will be done via heuristic coding, and when drawing conclusions links will be made to existing literature. Finally, suggestions will be made.
Student interviews - Method
By the time I conducted student interview in late April the number of Year 9 students enrolled at Tamaki College from Manaiakalani feeder Primary schools had decreased. Therefore, the number of students who had made accelerated progress in their reading from T1 to T4 in Manaiakalani schools in Year 8 had also decreased: from 38 down to 31.
Interviews were held as six focus group sessions with between three and four participants. Of the 31 students who made accelerated improvement in reading comprehension in 2018, 18 were available to interview. These took place between 9am and 12.50pm on Monday 29th April. Two interviews were located in a classroom, two in the library, one on a stairwell and one on a bench outside. Participants were an equal split of girls and boys. I currently teach three of the 18 participants, and therefore am almost a stranger to the other 15.
Interviews began by introducing myself and explaining why I would like to talk to students about their reading last year - that they had made big improvements in their reading in Year 8! Bigger than most of New Zealand! And I would like to find out how. Students responded to this with a mixture of surprise, disbelief and pride. One said she would tell her Mum, and her Mum would “probably buy me McDonald’s tonight.”
I also offered students the opportunity to go back to class - and let them know they absolutely didn’t have to talk to me at all. A few students first checked that nobody would know who they were, before agreeing to stay for the focus group.
Questions asked during the focus group interviews were:
- Where are you most likely to read?
- What sort of things do you read outside of school?
- When do you most enjoy reading?
- When does reading really frustrate you?
- How did you get ready for the PAT tests last year, at the start and at the end?
- When you were in a reading group last year, what sort of person were you? (At times this question was followed up by what sort of role did you take in the group?)
- Can you please describe a really common reading lesson or activity that you did in Year 8?
- What do YOU think caused your big improvement in reading last year?
Teacher interviews - Method
Russell Burt emailed Principals of Year 8 teachers who had sent at least one student who accelerated in reading to Tamaki College. After permission was gained, teachers were then approached for an interview. I was able to speak to 7 teachers from across Panmure Bridge School, Glen Innes Primary, Glenbrae Primary and Glen Taylor Primary, for which I’m very grateful as these busy teachers took time out of their day to meet with me. Another teacher from St Patrick’s School who had left Auckland was willing to answer my questions via email, as did one of the teachers from Point England School. All other open-ended interviews were conducted in person.
Starter questions included:
- What did your reading program look like in Y8 last year?
- What sort of reading did students do last year outside of any set 'reading' time you had?
- What is your hunch about the cause of Student X’s accelerated reading improvement last year?
Tuesday, 6 August 2019
Reading comprehension literature review
Describe your process for developing hypotheses, e.g. what you read, who you talked with..
Click here to read my literature review on reading comprehension, with an initial focus on reading comprehension for low ability readers.
Friday, 2 August 2019
Baseline data
Begin to collect evidence and data and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence
For the overall challenge facing our cluster, see my previous blog post.
9PKr average PAT reading comprehension score from the start of the year is 3.55.
No students scored below 2, which is ridiculous because one student in this class does not speak or read English and is below a Level 1 in e-asTTle. The top reading student in the class was absent and no score was recorded for her.
The average pre-test score in Read Theory for the class was 1.77.
Motivation for reading questionnaire results are published below:
My baseline self-reflection checklist is also attached below:
Wednesday, 24 July 2019
Tools and measures for my inquiry
Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge.
Literature review:
Google scholar
Current data:
Y8 and Y9 PAT reading comprehension, writing and maths scores
Current practice:
Student interviews, teacher interviews, random sampling of Y8 timetables and activities online
Forming interventions:
Synthesised findings from literature review and current practice to identify opportunity for change and improved teacher practice.
Case study 1:
Motivations for reading questionnaire - pre and post test around intervention
Case study 2:
Read Theory pre-test and post scores
Case study 3:
Teacher self-reflection checklist pre and post Case study 3.
Read Theory pre-test compared to post-Case-study-2 as well as
Read Theory pre test compared to post (both) Case studies 2 and 3.
Comparison between shift caused by Case study 2 and 3.
Additional pre/post test data for Case study 2 & 3:
PAT Term 1 score and PAT Term 4 score 2019
Literature review:
Google scholar
Current data:
Y8 and Y9 PAT reading comprehension, writing and maths scores
Current practice:
Student interviews, teacher interviews, random sampling of Y8 timetables and activities online
Forming interventions:
Synthesised findings from literature review and current practice to identify opportunity for change and improved teacher practice.
Case study 1:
Motivations for reading questionnaire - pre and post test around intervention
Case study 2:
Read Theory pre-test and post scores
Case study 3:
Teacher self-reflection checklist pre and post Case study 3.
Read Theory pre-test compared to post-Case-study-2 as well as
Read Theory pre test compared to post (both) Case studies 2 and 3.
Comparison between shift caused by Case study 2 and 3.
Additional pre/post test data for Case study 2 & 3:
PAT Term 1 score and PAT Term 4 score 2019
Monday, 10 June 2019
Blog Break
Hi all,
For a few reason's I'm going to take a blogging break for a few weeks:
I've injured my finger at touch!
Also, as always, here are my goals:
To make time for my mental and physical health.
To carry out all my roles (teacher, HSA director and Across Schools CoL) to the best of my ability.
To support staff wellbeing.
To actively maintain a positive personal outlook.
It's nearing the end of Term 2 and it's always the most stressful term for me. In Term 2 I try to run a lot of internals for my seniors, and they sort of.. aren't feeling the pressure or any sense of urgency just yet. I take on board most of the stress! In Term 3 they realize it's crunch time and that it's basically their last term at school - it's the best time to teach exams because they see impending value in their learning - even if it IS just high-stake exams.
Term 2 means LOTS of feedback and marking, practice practicals, moderation, and I'm feeling a little snowed under. Pausing my weekly blog for a few weeks will give me extra minutes back to try and do the core of my roles!
I'll keep chipping away at my interviews of last Year's Y8 teachers (probably voice-recording interviews as holding a pen is a little tricky at the mo) and will start to analyse their answers soon.
See you in a few weeks.
Monday, 3 June 2019
Week 5... halfway?
To make time for my mental and physical health.
To carry out all my roles (teacher, HSA director and Across Schools CoL) to the best of my ability.
To support staff wellbeing.
To actively maintain a positive personal outlook.
- Visits to the gym this week: A.. half. I didn't sleep well one night and had a terrible day (likely as a result) and after a passing chat to one of the school's social workers, decided to go to the gym to cheer up. I tried to do a class and accidentally chose the hardest class I've ever been to. Think I made it about 3/4 of the way through before deciding that was enough!
- McDonald's eaten: none.
- Casual sports games played this week: 2 games of touch, one with no subs so that was good.
- Books read: Vladimir Putin continues.. I am making my way slowly through the book.. it's very dense and factual but fascinating. I would recommend it! I also ended up watching a short series on youtube of him being interviewed about Russian interference in the American presidential election.
- Teaching highlights:
- Going in to set up the plant investigations with Panmure Bridge Year 8's - they describe their perspectives here:
- Another period I enjoyed was one of complete concentration (and dead silence) as Year 13 attacked their massive booklet of readings for their upcoming assessment. The reading pack includes 2-3 newspaper articles, a welfare report, three completely full-on scientific peer-reviewed journal articles, and a herd book. It's ENORMOUS. Students requested it be on paper for them, so they could highlight and annotate, and quickly flick back and forth.
- It is quite incredible to me that the kids arriving in Year 9 struggle to focus and read five paragraphs at a time, and yet if they want to go to university through Biology, then this is the level of reading that's expected (for Excellence) in Year 13:
- This is also a comment on the rigours and demands of biology as a subject. I think it's unreasonable to expect students to work THIS hard for just THREE credits in Biology - there are certainly 'easier' subjects to take that still pathway to university! And the standard is just getting higher and higher; I have friends in two different schools who have dropped two different standards because external moderation came back at a ridiculously high - Stage 2 or 3 of University - sort of level to be awarded an Excellence.
- It feels like someone out there is actively TRYING to scare kids away from Biology! The NZ Biology Teachers facebook page said the same thing after the Scholarship-level Human Evolution exam last year, and the impossibility of sitting three exams to Excellence in three hours. Even as a university graduate and a teacher of Biology, it took me 2 hours and 45 minutes last year to write just 2 Excellence-level scripts - I found it physically impossible to read, (barely) plan, and hand-write/scrawl out answers in the given time.
- Anyway, that was a small tangent! My kiddies spent a full 50 minutes slowly reading and highlighting the texts and creating drafts of the shape their assessments will take. I was really proud of them.
- Probably my FAVOURITE teaching moment in the whole week was Laite requesting a new thriller from my class library. Then Jen requested the book Laite had just returned. Then Gloria asked for a book too, so I gave her one narrated by a very witty and sarcastic djinn. Then Jeff quietly asked for a book - he turned down the true survival story of a guy chopping off his own arm and instead took away one of my teenage favourites; City of Masks. I feel like that one teeny after-the-bell interaction was maybe the most impact I've made as a teacher in this entire year. If I can get kids to enjoy reading, I will consider myself successful :)
- CoL things:
- I interviewed another two teachers about their class' reading comprehension in 2018.
- Attended the after school CoL teacher meeting on Thursday.
- Health Science Academy Things:
- Took the class off to the Careers Conference. One of the students report she enjoyed herself because she got to see different careers, although there were none that were 'new' to her. She now knows that podiatry definitely isn't for her, but enjoyed the physio demonstration and having the experience of using a wheelchair with the occupational therapist. More than anything, I think she enjoys the connections with other schools and feeling supported. The students have created their own instagram chat group to keep in touch, which fires up around the time of meetings.
- Teacher well-being support:
- This week was the 'Brown About Town' Pub quiz. Alex is too good at pub quizzes, so he was banned from playing and given the Quizmaster role instead! We had two teams vying for first place, and in the end Karen, Vaughan and I (supported for a time by Graham and Aman) came out on top!
- Gratitude emails sent: none this week.
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