Teaching As Inquiry Term 1 2017 – What is my Inquiry?

Our school wide goal for term one has been to look at Maori boys achievement. In order to narrow down our focus we were given a series of focusing questions that began with:

Step One: Identifying Students Needs.

First I decided to focus on my Year 10ENG class which has a range of students with varying abilities but, on the whole, the students are capable performers who, with a little time and effort, could easily be gaining Merits and Excellences in their written work.

The questions are as follows:

1. What was the achievement like for the Maori boys in my chosen class?
2. Why do I think they didn’t achieve? What factors could be involved?
3. What is the issue or factor that I will focus on this term?
4. What data will help me identify the issue? What does this data tell me about the issue?
5. Who is the identified class? (Or who are the students)
6. What do the students say about the issue I’ve identified?
7. What are my ideas about the issue?
8. What evidence will help me to confirm or disregard each of my ideas?

So, for the first question I looked at last year’s results where I found that there were a few scattered Not Achieves but the majority of the class did really well with everyone passing and some at a high level.

With regard to question two the main factors I would attribute for the grades would be: attendance, confidence, low vocabulary and limited general knowledge. Most of this information came from looking at attendance on Kamar and observations of the class. I could see students who were quick to engage with the language features I mentioned and others who would wander away from a task or struggle to identify common words.

Also, many of my students would say things like “I’m cabbage, miss” or “I’m dumb.” So building confidence was definitely a key focus.

With this in mind I decided that I would focus on raising general knowledge and vocabulary through a series of structured do nows. 

 

 

 

 

Mondays = New Vocab Words

Tuesdays = Reading – where I would choose an article, poem, or short story to help build their general knowledge.

Wednesdays = Creative Writing

Fridays = Revisiting Vocab Words

Through doing this I hoped that the new vocabulary and reading would lend itself to their writing. I was also confident that by introducing a range of different texts that I could begin to build their confidence in their reading.

So my Inquiry was/is:

How can I support the Maori boys in my 10ENG to RAISE LITERACY by using STRUCTURED DO NOWS.

End of part one….