Formulating an Hypothesis (Hunch)

 A hypothesis is a tentative answer to your research question that has not yet been tested. 

How to formulate? The simplest way is to use this form: if...then…

1. “If I encourage my students to write for real reasons, then they will be motivated to write.”

2. “If I focus on extending their 'on-task' behaviour with strategies to manage themselves then they will improve their writing.”

3. “An emphasis on behavioural and cognitive engagement as well as teaching social skills will enhance my students’ ability to focus and increase their writing skills.”

I spoke with 2 school leaders to receive feedback about my hunches - 1 Deputy Principal and 1 Head of Department.

Generate a minimum of three hunches from what you have learnt so far about your students and their learning environment.	Further conversations with colleagues, school leaders.
If I give my students more confidence in their research reading, then they will be able to use the information they are reading about in their design work in a more useful way.	HOD - Allowing students to set at least a few of their learning goals may result in increased engagement. It is also the cause and effect relationship between increasing student confidence in researching and their ability to apply the information into their design work.  DP - Any and all strategics that we can employ to increase students’ confidence in research reading is to be commended.
If my students have more understanding in their research reading, then they will have the motivation to complete their work to a good standard.	HOD - Information transfer. The students' relationship with their understanding of the research material and their motivation to produce quality work can add value and may motivate the student to research further.  DP - Motivation is key with our students and  their increased confidence in research reading will contribute to this.
If my students have more confidence and motivation in their work, then will this encourage them to attend the lesson on a more regular basis?	HOD - If the opportunity for students to choose how they demonstrate their knowledge or a range of topics in which they can explore is allowed, this can provide opportunities for small success early. Feedback can also have an effect. (Constructive and encouraging)  DP -  Experience tells us that ‘Confidence and Motivation’ go hand in hand, which can only lead to positive results and increased attendance.

Readings - Supporting English Language Learners

 

12 Ways to Support English Learners in the Mainstream Classroom

10 Strategies That Support English Language Learners Across All Subjects

6 Essential Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners

Innovative strategies for teaching English language learners

What can I apply now?

• I already do help videos that I make myself, so I am going to look into how to create the closed captioning on YouTube to support them. I have noticed that this can be done on TikTok, but the captioning that I have seen in action on there is terrible and does not get the words correct a lot of the time.
• I am already aware that when I get excited about a topic, I talk too quickly. I am also aware that my accent from the north of England is also a barrier to understanding sometimes.
• I have had feedback from teachers of English and our literacy specialists that it is a good idea to have subject specific vocabulary on show in the class as a help / support to learn new words. This is mentioned in these readings a lot too so that is a really easy, quick one to work on for the classroom.
• I have been trying to include a multi-modal approach with my class site and workspaces so the information is given in multiple ways for a while now so it is reassuring to see that mentioned on these lists.
• I have been talking to the language specialists in order to get some instructions translated.
• The students are able to write the analysis of their work in their own language as there is no stipulation at NCEA for it to be in English. This will help them get the depth of analysis that they need and not worry about writing it in English.

Tools, Measures and Approaches

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. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

Link to Google Drawing

CoL Inquiry Thoughts for 2024

What achievement challenge are you considering as an area of focus in 2024 and why? Include in your WHY both evidence and your own passion/expertise

Achievement Challenge 3 - Lift the achievement in reading for all students.

This was my inquiry focus for this year. I did a lot of learning, research and trialling before working with my inquiry group on the intervention. We focussed on a very particular piece of research to support, which was materials research. This meant that the actual intervention time was quite short. I would like to start next year using what I have learned this year straight away. I can then use this time to work with Marc more to learn more reading support methods. He has talked often this year about skimming and predicting. I want to know from him if this is something we can do with the research we have to do about artists and design eras.

I will be able to try. any new learning next year in two different curriculum areas - Design and Visual Communication and Visual Art.

In both areas, the students need to do a lot of reading about designers, artists and design eras. Their knowledge of these things is then used in their own work so a solid understanding is needed.


What learnings from the 2017 - 2023 CoL teacher inquiries have informed or inspired your thinking.

While listening to Robyn Anderson talk about how she gifts words to her students and they have to use these words in contexts throughout the session, it got me thinking about the very specialised, subject specific words that the students come across in all their subjects at secondary school. I must be quite overwhelming at times when they are coming in to secondary school behind where they should be in terms of words that they know then to have all these really specialised words used in lessons all the time. This has got me wondering how I can think about this in DVC. I had started this year to pull out some of the words that were in a specific reading and we looked at them in advance but I see that i need to be much more purposeful in my use of technical jargon. One of the things that the HOD English said to me at the start of the year was to have a focus on subject specific "jargon"


How would your work support Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa?

There is a Manaiakalani wide focus on literacy,  reading and writing so my inquiry focus would fit in well with this. Trying to have a more cross curricular approach will help the students learn how to apply approaches across all of their subjects and not just think that is an "English" thing.

Which elements of the extensive Manaiakalani research findings inform or challenge you as you think about this?

The first thing that my Year 11 and Year 12 students do when they start DVC is a research project. They have to do a lot of reading. They are coming out of the junior school with lower than the national average PAT and asTTle scores so they are not in a position to cope with the demands of NCEA Level 1 then Level 2. The Manaiakalani research shows the increases that the students have made in Manaiakalani schools compared to non Manaiakalani schools but it is still hard for them. when they get to NCEA below where they should be.


How would you like to be supported in 2024 as you undertake this inquiry?

I would like to be able to work collaboratively with other teachers to create reading activities and could benefit more subjects areas. I am thinking this could be within Tamaki College and across different schools.

How would you plan to support your colleagues in your school with their inquiries and/or teaching in the area you are exploring?

This year, the CoL teachers at Tamaki College have been presenting our inquiry every term to the whole staff. During these sessions, we have been trying to get the staff to think about inquiry in a more open and unthreatening way.

All my planning work goes onto a public website and all my inquiry findings go onto a blog.

Inquiry 2023 - Question 3 - Tools, Measures and Approaches

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. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

Link to Google Drawing

CoL Inquiry Thoughts for Next Year

What achievement challenge are you considering as an area of focus in 2023 and why? Include in your WHY both evidence and your own passion/expertise

 Achievement Challenge 3 - Lift the achievement in reading for all students.

 The projects that my senior students have to do involve a lot of literacy work. They don't realize this when they sign up for DVC as they think it is all about drawing. They have to write a lot of analysis of their own work and read a lot to do the required research. To be able to apply what they have learned in their reading to their own designs is where this falls down as we have not been reading for understanding.

As a department, we have started working with Marc Milford, our school literacy specialist, on reading strategies. I had started trying them out a couple of times in my Y9 class, to get them to read the recipe for the following lesson’s practical session. I would put the resources together on the class site and send it out to them to access before the lesson and they would come to the practical session not knowing what they were going to do as they had not read it. Since working with Marc, we have been using the single session on a Friday afternoon to do the reading exercise to prepare for the following week. I have been taking the method from the recipe and breaking it down into an information transfer table as Marc showed us. I have also tried this with my senior classes with one of the materials research activities that they had to do. I combined it with the work on SOLO taxonomy that I have been doing for a long time. 

 Blog post about Year 9 reading information transfer

Blog post about Year 11 and Y13 reading information transfer using SOLO

 

What learnings from the 2017 - 2022 CoL teacher inquiries have informed or inspired your thinking.

 Robyn Anderson’s Reading for Enjoyment this year was great. It took the emphasis off the reading and put the focus onto enjoying what they were doing. 

It got me thinking that if I made the focus of the reading activities a more supported one, then they would get more out of it as it will be fulfilling a purpose and helping their project. I have been guilty of thinking I was being helpful by giving them links of where to do the research and readings but not supporting them in getting the most out of what was there.

 

How would your work support Manaiakalani pedagogy and  kaupapa?

 There is a Manaiakalani wide focus on literacy and especially reading at the moment so I think that it will fit in well, with a slightly different emphasis on reading for research purposes.

Which elements of the extensive Manaiakalani research findings inform or challenge you as you think about this?

 The fact that the students are coming out of Year 10 with a lower than average PAT reading score than the mean / norm for the country does not set them up well for attempting everything that NCEA throws at them. My students coming into Y11 next year will be below where they need to be in terms of their reading ability and understanding so everything that I give them to do in regards to research will be extra demanding for them. The first thing that my Y11 students do is a research standard where there is a lot of reading of information found about a chosen designer. I give them links to read through but this research has made me realize that is not enough support. They will need me to structure how they are reading this information so their understanding of what they are reading grows.

 

How would you like to be supported in 2023 as you undertake this inquiry?

 I always get a huge amount when I visit the classrooms of other teachers in Tamaki College and the classrooms of other schools in the CoL. Watching how literacy elements are approached by specialist teachers, both in the TC English department and intermediate schools. I have visited Robyn Anderson in the past when she was specifically doing literacy elements with her class.

Here are all the blog posts that involve Robyn's class.

The support that I would like would be the ability to visit a wider range of schools and age groups as they go about reading activities.

 

How would you plan to support your colleagues in your school with THEIR inquiries and/or teaching in the area you are exploring?

 All of my inquiry work always goes onto my blog so it is available for anyone to read and access all my resources. We are doing literacy / reading work within the department so my experiments and findings will be shared weekly in the department meetings. Sharing to all staff via emails of blog posts and presentations will be done throughout the year.

Acknowledging that while literacy is not the main focus of the subject it is an integral part of reaching those higher achievement levels. We all need to work together to help the students to realise that literacy / reading / writing is in every aspect of school / work / life.

Inquiry 2022 - What is Motivation

 My inquiry this year is about motivation. I have been round the school with a note pad asking staff and students what they think motivation is, how they motivate themselves and how they motivate other people.

Staff

• Something that makes me want to do something. The will to do something and the enthusiasm. When you reach the point of success or whatever your goal is.

• Be encouraging and positive towards other people. Thinking about my why and mainly my who. Being thankful and grateful.

• Impetus and having a reason to do something. It depends on what the end result is and if it is needed. Getting something going, pushing.

• Have a reason to get up in the morning. Family.

• Providing structure, day to day and big picture. Enjoying what you do even if it turns to custard occasionally.

• Taking on passion projects. Focus on things that I am passionate about. The ongoing success of these helps me to stay motivated.

• The burst of energy to do something but you need discipline to keep it consistent. Talk to the students about their interests to establish a connection. Are they in the mood to motivate themselves? Asking how the teacher can support them. Getting them to reflect on themselves with goal setting - what motivates them? Ask them about their why.

• Motivation can be cultivated with a classroom culture of hard work and excitement. 65% of it has to come from the students themselves with their buy in to what you are doing. Curiosity and wonder is the place where you need to start. Get them excited to learn and use this to get them to a place where they get to make what they want. Student agency - your planning needs to be flexible to incorporate their interests.

Students

• Inspiring - both the environment and someone's energy. Having a challenge.

• Consistently striving to do something that you desire. I remember situations where I felt helpless and weak and strive to be better than that. I try to be encouraging. I get them to seek help and guide them to places where they can grow further.

• It is difficult for me to get motivated. When I am on my phone I am on Youtube and TikTok. These keep my attention as they have interesting stuff. I learn things from them that I did not know before.

• I think about the past and how I was last year and I want to be better. Teacher nagging helps me a lot. I don't like it at the time but I know it helps me.

• My dreams for the future. I want to keep doing things that I enjoy and use them for a future career. I think back to the small version of me from the past who liked drawing and making things and I don't want to let that version of me down by not doing my best with it.

Inquiry 2022 - Teaching Actions likely to Accelerate Student Learning

"Form hypotheses about teaching actions likely to accelerate student learning."

Thoughts after student feedback :-

• Link what they do future plans and how they can use DVC as 60% of the student replies said that it was an important aspect as to why they chose the subject.
• Do mindset activities as a lot of the students do not have a good mindset in regards to their abilities in DVC
• Build skills slowly to give the students confidence
• Let the students choose to work together on a research activity or by themselves, depending on how they best concentrate and focus on their work.
• Give regular feedback as to how they are doing as some of their replies are about not knowing where they stand.
• Build in practice time with activities so it is not straight into the assessed work. This could prove difficult as the students do tend to. get a little too focussed on whether an activity is for credits.
• Make work available in multiple places.
• Make clear step by step support material.
• Teacher made exemplars were more popular than the NZQA ones. I will also pull out past student projects for them to see Tamaki College exemplars.
• Work one to one with students. This is important as all their projects are slightly different so they all. have unique problems to overcome.
• Have rewindable resources as the students particularly did not like being told how to do something once then being expected to get on with it.
• Make sure their is the planning there and the time given for them to aim for the higher achievement levels.

Inquiry 2022 - Tools, Measures and Approaches

 "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. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools."

The focus for my inquiry this year is motivation of the students and how I, as the teacher, can affect that motivation in a positive way to enable achievement.

Asking Questions

One of the first things that I have done in my inquiry this year is to ask people questions.

• Teach first teacher who is teaching DVC alongside me
• Relief teacher who had my class while I was away
• Student working from home
• Students in the class

I tried to ask questions that drew out what they found helpful in how teachers present the work to them and what is not helpful.

Content Planning Monitoring
I am using workspaces and a class website to present the work to the students. These are used alongside emails and calendar invites (which end up in emails).

I am monitoring how the students are interacting with the content, talking to them and listening to them talk with each other. Changes can be made quite quickly if any part of the planning is confusing or not supportive enough. For example, I host the help videos on YouTube and this enables me to see how many times they have been viewed. This gives me an idea about how helpful they are being. 

NCEA Credits and Tracking

As my inquiry group are my senior DVC students (Year 11 and Year 13), I will be able to see how they are tracking along with their credits.

I also keep a spreadsheet of all the tasks and colour code them green, orange and red. This is up on the screen for the students to see what needs finishing off at a glance.

Ongoing Student Voice

Motivation is quite a tricky thing to measure so I think my best bet will be to keep talking to the students and getting their feedback as we go through the year.

I am not sure that a Google Form. will be the best way to keep doing this as they do need a bit of a shove sometimes to get them filled in. I need to come up with a quick way for them to indicate how they think things are going.

Inquiry 2022 - Barriers to Learning

 

Reading - Barriers to Learning and How to Overcome them

Im my senior classes, I always have a range of students. 

• Year 11 - depending on the curriculum lines in Year 9 and 10, they may have had some graphics for both years, one year or non.
• Year 12 - they may have done NCEA Level 1 DVC at Year 11 or not.
• Year 13 - they may have done Level 1 and Level 2, they may have just done one of them or they may have done no DVC at NCEA level at all.
• Some have chosen DVC because they want to do it.
• Some are in the DVC class as there was nothing else on that option line that they felt like doing.

These situations create a wide range of experience and motivation in my students. I have a blog post about student voice about where they sit on this continuum here. I have students who want to do their absolute best through to students who are there to hang out and every where on the continuum inbetween.

1. I find that mindset is a huge barrier to learning in my subject. As soon as the words "I can't do this, I can't draw" come out of them, the student builds their own barrier and this is one that is the most difficult to get over.
2. Concentration is always a barrier to learning and being off task. Students are progressively over time having a shorter attention span and get sidetracked very quickly. I find this to be a problem as they have to spend extensive periods of time on the same project for DVC.
3. Students unable to come into school due to COVID restrictions and because they have had to get jobs to help their families has been a big problem. If they are not in the class but are still on the school role, then they are still on my list so my  responsibility to teach somehow.
4. Students having a very disjointed school, learning experience over the past 2 and a half years has meant it is very difficult for them to settle into the routine again.

My inquiry this year has its main focus on motivation. I will need to keep all the barriers to learning in mind when planning any interventions.

Tracking Achievement - Year 12 - When the first credits are entered.

 To help me to see if my intervention is having any measurable effect this year, I have been looking at the stats from previous years. I have already looked at when the credits were entered last year - Blog post here.

What I next wanted to check on was when the first credits for the students were entered into Kamar for NCEA Level 2 DVC.  This will indicate at what point in the year that the work was being completed.

I looked at the monthly spreadsheets that are generated by Mrs Moore over the last 4 years to see when the first credits appeared for the Year 12 students in DVC.

The students are doing really well considering that out of the 26 students, only 9 of them did NCEA Level 1 DVC last year.  Of those 9, 6 of them have got their first credits in already.