Janet's Inquiry reflections

The following are some of my wonderings and findings during our Literacy Inquiry

Some I have implemented and others are ideas that I would like to try these next year.

During our inquiry it has become more apparent that many of the children 

•  lack experiences to write about
• language to use
• ability to physically write with any speed

These factors inhibit the desire to write

Why is this the case one may ask? 

I believe that many children do not have the experiences to draw from that perhaps previous generations of children have. Both parents are usually working and the TV, PLaystation Xbox etc are great forms of entertainment but they do not generate the rich oral language experiences necessary to promote confident writers. 

Many children arrive at school with poor sound knowledge

Inability to write and no understanding of rhyme.

Jill Eggleton firmly believes that Oral Language is the key.

Various ideas that teachers have found that help them

Ideas for struggling writiers

Limit frustration through Conferences -use of a peer partner or T/Aide or teacher to conference before writing. Jot down ideas as you/they are talking. This gives them a basis for beginning their story.

Use drawing as a tool even for able students this can have a positive effect on their ability to begin story writing.

Implementing a revising and editing table in my classroom has also helped build community. The revising and editing table is a dedicated space where kids go to revise and edit with a partner.

Focus on one learning intention e.g. adding fullstops

Oral language skills and literacy skills are closely linked. Jill Eggletons workshops firmly advocate reading big books and poems to children on a daily basis and  at every opportunity

.Using LEA 

What is LEA? Language Experience Approach
LEA is an oral language and literacy instructional strategy.  It’s designed to help get students talking about experiences that are personal, familiar, and meaningful to them.  It’s also intended to help children see how their spoken words can be turned into written words, and how those written words can be read 

(“What I can think, I can say.  What I can say, I can write.  What I can write, I can read.”)

LEA is also a great strategy to use with English Language Learners and struggling readers. 

Modelling as a tool.

Reggie Routman 

Firmly believes that children need to see teachers writing

• things from their past 
• stories that the children can relate to
• shared modelling of stories and ideas
• making writing relevant

Remember Poetry by Gail Loan from Something to write about is a great example of this type of thing. 

Sonya's Inquiry

After the scanning phase, we discussed as a team some of the barriers that we felt hinder our students writing ability.

• not knowing what to write about
• the mechanics of writing
• Poor oral language skills

After looking at the needs of the target students who were in my writing group I found the above were the most common barriers.  Ashea, due to his Autism, finds the mechanic of writing hard and will often sit trying to work out what to write about.

Bradley also finds it difficult to write.  But listening to him speak it is clear that spoken Oral language is his difficulty.

For D'Angelo spoken language was also an issue.  Progress has been compounded by poor attendance and I suspect immersion in an overseas foreign language school where he says it was very hard to communicate with others.

Therefore, my big question is

'How I can capitalise on Oral language Activities to support Achievement in Writing'.

Research Referred to

The Centre for Development of Learning http://www.cdl.org/language/
Explains the link between Reading, Writing and Oral Language

https://www.tcdsb.org/ProgramsServices/SpecialEducation/Speech/Documents/The%20Link%20Between%20Oral%20Language%20and%20Reading.pdf

http://go.grapeseed.com/rs/216-LZY-073/images/GrapeSEED%20WhitePapers.pdf

Initial Data

Bradley

Ashea

D'Angelo

Final Data collected to be analysed.

Bradley

Ashea

Ashea

D'Angelo

Rachel's Spiral of Inquiry

Writing Inquiry Spirals Of Inquiry

From the scanning phase, we see that students have quite a range of barriers to their writing. These included poor oral language, poor motor skills/handwriting, poor reading and spelling skills, dyslexia, ADHD, processing and ESOL learners.  With such a high number of needs, I wondered how we could apply strategies that may help most of our learners.  This brought me to wondering about the technologies that might useful to our learners.  For example, word processing/prediction programmes could help with spelling and recording difficulties.  

This led me to my question: How can assistive technology support low writers?

Assistive technology [AT] refers to devices and services that are used to increase, maintain, or improve the capabilities of a student with a disability.  It doesn't always mean computers.   AT be applications such as speech to text or iWordQ, or low tech items such as pencil grips and graphic organisers.  AT can help students to break down and achieve a task, or to bypass areas of challenge.  For example, Text to Speech software helps a student to listen to information, bypassing the need to decode it for themselves.

Computerised AT can help students to improve their writing, by bypassing some of the mechanical aspects that writing demands. For example, spell check and grammar features support areas of challenge, freeing students to focus on crafting their ideas.  AT can also increase a student's attitude and self-esteem for writing by allowing them to produce better work.   For example, word processing programmes allow students  to easily edit their drafts, resulting in better grammar, spelling, sequencing and neater publishing of writing.  

There are an enormous range of writing ATs available.  For example, text-to-speech - speech-to-text, word prediction and graphic organisers, built up grips, larger / thicker pencils, word prediction, word processing, talking tins etc.  For the purpose of this Inquiry, I will focus on experimenting with electronic AT programmes that I think may best support my target learners.

* Need to find article and site

Who are my target writers this term?

Jayden Kilroe:  Writing Level 1B (should be 2B).  Jayden has recently been diagnosed this October with ADHD.  He is unable to construct a sentence, without teacher support.  He struggles with speech, focusing, sequencing ideas, spelling and handwriting. 

Programmes that may help: STEPS, Word Q (How WordQ can help ADHD students), you tube clips for motivation, teamed with frequent breaks and teacher aide support.  Also to continue with Multilinks, PM Readers etc.

Plan: Writing sample of a recount week 1 of Term 4.  Then introduce the programme to him.  Teacher Aide to support Jayden in accessing the programme initially.

Will Fraser: Writing Level 1P (should be 2B).  Will has some processing issues.  He is reading (but not always understanding) at the expected year 3 standard.  Will struggles with ideas and intermittently zones out. Mum says there is dyslexia in the family, and wonders if he he is on the spectrum. 

Programmes that may help: STEPS, WordQ, providing Youtube clips to describe. Text to speech to read back writing to check for sense. 

Plan:  Writing sample of a recount week 1 of Term 4.  Then introduce the programmes to him.

Bradley Archbold: Has ideas, but struggles with structuring and recording his writing.

Programmes that may help: Word Q/Word processing programmes. Youtube clips to inspire and describe. Text to speech to read back writing to check for sense.

Luke Boyd (secondary group): Writing level 1A (should be 2P)

Luke has strong ideas and fantastic vocabulary, but he is challenged in recording his ideas due to dyslexia.  Luke is keen to write when he has been inspired by a topic.  He is challenged with behaviour that stems from anxiety, particularly around literacy time.

Programmes that may help: Word Q/Word processing, Text to speech to read back writing for sense.

Investigating Programmes

WordQ Assistive Technology for the Classroom

WordQ is assistive technology that helps students to write by predicting the words you they need.  WordQ has a pop up window that offers choices of words, based on the other words in a sentence.  WordQ provides the writer with examples of a word in a sentence, so that students are able to identify the correct spelling of the word they need.

WordQ is simple in its function.  It will read words back to you as you type, and it reads back the sentence after you type the closing punctuation.  Students can also highlight the text, and click the read button to hear their story read back to them.

Refining our Inquiry

During Term 2 we have worked on applying ideas and understanding gained through attending the Jill Eggleton Course.  This was really beneficial PD, even though some of our Team had attended a similar course previously, as the experience gave us all a common foothold on which to basis our ideas and hunches while trying out some approaches in our collaborative writing groups.

This Term we have had several meetings to confirm our target group.  It has been really beneficial clarifying our views of students needs and how these can be addressed.

In our final meeting we identified our Team Moana students who were working well below the National Standard.

After deciding that this group of students was too large for our Target Group we sorted these into a more manageable focus group.  We did this by discussing each student in turn and addressing their specific needs.  It very quickly became apparent that some trends started to appear e.g. poor spoken language structure, difficulty recording, specific learning issues.

The Target Group students that we have decided on are shown below. 

A secondary group also appeared and we will work to be very aware of these students in our learning environments.

Assessment has shown that some children struggle to write a proper sentence and find punctuation challenging. Sentences structure often reflects poor understanding tense as children change from past tense to present tense verbs.
How do children know what is a sentence? How do we teach these skills?

Our research focus will be:

Rachel - How can technology best be used to support struggling writers?

Sonya and Janet - What oral language opportunities and learning experiences can be used to best support struggling writers?
Sonya is going to look at children working on collaborative buddy writing.
Janet is keen to teach sentence structure and also do some research on Story Telling.

Term 1 Reflection

Continuing to Focus on Writing this Year.

A big highlight was attending Jill Eggleton's Course relating to teaching writing.  We are excited about how we will teach writing this year to improve the language and quality of work.  Jill made it clear that as teachers we should be focusing less on Text Types and more on short pieces writing focusing on specific skills.

So far this term we have taught alliteration, metaphors, onomatopoeia and sentence hooks.  We have incorporated these skills into recount writing through responding to picture prompts and video clips.

We have noticed that we have changed the language that we are using in the classroom e.g crafting and re crafting.

Our next steps are to

• retain a socio-cultural environment (this will be a research focus)
• publishing and giving an audience to our writing
• take advantage of writing opportunities e.g. being Part of Get NZ Writing.  We showcased Team Moana's work in assembly.