MIT 19 - KPMG Meeting 25/3/19 - Evolving our Inquiry

Year 6 Boy Reading Progress is Low (1 year or lower movement)

On Monday the 25th of March we had our first collaborative meeting at the KPMG Office in Auckland.

To start the day we were asked to share what had worked well for us, and what had not worked well. I talked about discussing my inquiry with my team in Tåwhirimåtea and other teachers at Rawhiti School. They have been supportive of the inquiry and offered advice about texts and routines used in their classes with literacy circles or reciprocal reading. My team thought it would be beneficial for me to take the majority of the Year 6 students for reading.

I also discussed the PAT Reading Comprehension data we had recently gathered, and how this reflects the overall low achievement with Year 6's at Rawhiti School, and boys in particular.

Next, I discussed my first meeting with my students. This went reasonably well. They were generally open to the idea of using literacy circles and videos in their reading programme. Some seemed intimidated by the idea of the amount of reading I want them to do. Others were apprehensive about being on camera, however, others thought they would get an opportunity to be famous!

In terms of the things that had not gone well, my main issue up to this week had been one of time. Our studio has been busy with daily swimming, Year 5 and 6 Camp the previous week and the tragic events that occurred in Christchurch on the 15th of March. This had impacted the time I could spend with my students and making contact with a colleague of Amber's who has experience running a similar initiative to mine through Twitter. At this stage, I was stared away from using Facebook or Twitter as a tool (not that I had intended too) as it was not a safe or monitored forum, compared to the blogs and sites set up by Manaiakalani. 

Following a lovely morning tea, I worked with Sandra and Nicola to experiment and evolve our inquiries. Sandra discussed how she wanted to start her inquiry with her competition that assigned mixed ability groups tasks and questions based on the overall literacy of the group. She realised that she needed to take a step back to work out how to group her students to make the best composition of students. When she tried to group them there was a "revolt". One of the ideas she came up with was having her students buddy up with a friend, and then join pairs. I liked this idea as I can see it would offer a variety of student combinations for literacy circles, exposing students to ideas beyond their immediate social circle. We will call this 2 and 2.

I shared my plan. Starting with my problem, Year 6 boy reading progress is low, then moved on to my focus on improving reading engagement through literacy circles. I also hope to improve student self-perception of themselves from developing or dormant readers to capable readers. Considerations for running an effective literacy circle in the class include groups (2 and 2), roles within the group and creating a script or set of generic questions for students to follow as a guide. It was suggested that these questions could be a guide for student reflection after reading.

In terms of deliberate acts of teaching necessary for this to work there are many. These include lessons on running the literacy circles, possibly modelling with groups and using a fishbowl approach. Guided reading lessons would be needed to develop comprehension strategies. In particular, we would initially focus on vocabulary work, asking questions, summarising the text and synthesis. Lessons around how the Key Competencies operate within the literacy circle would also be necessary. 

I brought up how when students select their own texts they are more engaged. Generally, for literacy circles, the students read the same text. This allows for specific questions for them to discuss. I would need to develop generic questions if students are discussing their own texts. Ultimately it would be a combination of the two approaches based on student interests.

Groups for guided reading and literacy circles would not be the same. Guided reading groups would be based on specific gaps in fluency and comprehension. Literacy circle groups would need a stronger social nature to work. Students need to feel comfortable sharing their thinking with their peers. 

The tool I develop would be a site or blog where students could upload short videos summarising their literacy circle. There would be an area for teachers to explain the reasons why using literacy circles are effective at improving progress, and how they may operate in different classrooms. The main part of the site would be a catalogue of videos by various literacy circles. Students can watch these to find new texts and see how other students talk about what they are reading. There would be a place to comment so the content of the student videos becomes a dialogue outside of the literacy circle.

Later we shared our inquiry with the whole group. We had to defend our ideas. As a guide for our thinking, Anne gave us this set of questions.

Prototype of solution questions

What was the achievement challenge?

What was your purpose in designing this tool?

What were the gaps you identified in your prototype?

What is the point of difference with other tools already being used? Why yours?

How is this tool/approach/process going to have an impact on student achievement?

As a result of the feedback, you received today who else do you need in your team? What else do you need to do with your design?

What is the weak point or link in your design thinking process?

In the feedback that followed these concerns were raised that need addressing:

1. This reading programme is going to be very busy for the students. Where is the time for reading millage, the primary cause for improvement in a reading?
2. How will I identify the key gaps in students fluency and comprehension that has held these specific students back, and how will I address these? 
3. What are the options for different text types? Is there a place for digital content and audiobooks?

My immediate solutions for these concerns are:

1. Make the literacy circle and video creation part of a two-week cycle (one-week literacy circle, one-week video creation/ upload)
2. Use PROBE and eAsttle reading tests to identify needs. Group students based on their fluency and comprehension needs for guided reading lessons. Some students will need one-on-one teaching. A target group can have guided reading that follows an ALL approach. Again, this will also need to allow time for students to read independently to build their millage.
3. Visit the local library. Set up the class on Epic or other digital reading tools. 

These are my initial solutions, and other solutions will present themselves over time.