Reviewing my 2018 inquiry

My inquiry into using blogging to support the social nature of learning was part of a larger school goal:

How might we improve key competencies for Year 10 in order to experience learning success?

In 2018, I have been conducting my own inquiry into this with my year 10 class (wearing my teacher hat) and leading a professional learning group of six colleagues on this goal (wearing my CoL/Mawhera Kahui Ako within school role hat). Many of the teachers in my PLG also taught my class, so we took advantage of opportunities to collaborate, whether through discussions, observing each other's lessons, or aligning vocabulary and approaches.

Last Monday all of the professional learning groups shared their journeys. Each group had a poster board on which we put summaries for each person for the following headings:

• Improvement Actions (What we did)
• New Learning (What we found out that supported our Inquiry)
• Shifts in thinking / practice (We started thinking x but now we think y...)
• Outcomes for learners (including target students)

Then we all had drinks and nibbles and wandered around reading the poster boards.  The mood was positive and genuinely interested.  Making the spiral of inquiry front and centre to our professional learning at Grey High was our big project as CoL leaders, so it was great to see so much thoughtful and effective work.  Below you can see some GHS staff looking at our poster board.

When I return to my own goal and inquiry process, I am both pleased and wanting to have achieved more. I used a blend of social inclusion strategies and scaffolding of tasks leading to blogging, in order to build a culture of deeper learning and sharing in my classroom.

Outcomes:

• high rates of inclusion in my lessons. Only two referrals in the year, and even for those two students, outside of the week of the referral, lots of evidence of growth in working with me or working with others or both. 
• Student voice (from circle time, restorative meetings, 1:1 interviews) very positive about the supportive environment in English.  
• Growth in students interacting positively with each other.
• Growth in students taking learning risks, both on their own and together.
• The research unit involved students choosing their own topic and sources, learning to evaluate sources, to summarise relevant information and to form conclusions.  I saw many positive effects of the high element of choice, particularly for students who don't love English (or school).
• Progress in students finding a "high school" mode for blogging.  Part of being a teenager is about creating a distance from childhood, and 'selling' blogging has involved creating a distance from primary school blogging.
• I didn't see outcomes reflected in amazing asttle writing scores.  In an environment where students responded best to high levels of choice, these norm-referenced tests were highly restrictive.  Students commented that they found it much easier to write describing the scene on the Greymouth floodwall (one of our practice tasks) than the asttle market prompt.  Of 19 students with beginning and end of year data, 26% made accelerated progress (3+ curriculum sub-levels), 26% made expected progress (2 curriculum sub-levels).  Below this, 21% made one curriculum sub-level of progress, 5% stayed static and 21% went backwards.  
• Even though the work we did as a class this year that I was most pleased with focused on reading skills, they didn't translate to the level of progress I am clear our students need in order to be successful in NCEA.  PAT Reading is a closed test which I don't think draws out the best in our students, but it is the one we have to work with.  Results below:

So, what next?  Two things on top for me that I can change:
1. To set up 2019 with a Friday blogging culture in my junior class, either weekly or fortnightly.  We had some blogging success, but it took quite a while and our frequency wasn't high enough to maximise the culture of sharing.  I need more contexts where the interaction will build deeper understanding.  One on layers of understanding in reading a film could be worth trying.
2. Reading!  Almost a quarter of students going backwards.  Our data across the whole cohort strongly suggests that we need to do more and try new strategies on reading, and think very carefully about our planning for reading opportunities.  Next week in our English department meeting, we are going to take some old paper (we do online testing now) PAT tests and chop them up and organise them according to what skills each question tests, which skills we think we are teaching now, and where there are gaps.  NZCER process a lot of very useful data on the results of the tests, but I want us to start with the student's experience.  Next year is definitely going to be about reading.