teaching as inquiry | The Caffeinated Teacher

A new year and a new focus.

Posted on January 14, 2018 by jaimelcoffey

It’s 2018 and, although I’m still on summer break, I’m already thinking about what I want to accomplish and what I want my students to accomplish this year.

One of my main focuses is to improve writing – specifically creative writing – but writing and editing in general. Ideas wise my students are normally pretty good. They can see the big picture but they struggle when it comes to incorporating their ideas into their writing.

Although my classes are not quite set in stone yet I have a rough idea of what my focus for term one is going to be.

Although this is subject to change my classes are looking a little like this:

9ENG (9English) 10APEX 1ENA 2ENG 3ENI

I’ve got two advanced classes – which might seem easy but from experience I’ve found them to be the more difficult and it’s the first time I’ve had two “strong” classes. The others will definitely have a range of abilities so differentiation will be another strong focus for my teaching.

Quick Reflections

Posted on May 9, 2017 by jaimelcoffey

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If I am honest, I am not entirely pleased with how my first TAI went. Of course there were positives. The structured nature of the do nows worked really well with my class and the students are starting to use some of the new vocab words in everyday conversation. A brilliant example of that happened today in my drama class of all places. I teach year ten drama as well as year ten English so there are some students who are in both classes. One of my students commented on how I was sitting and said I looked like a “contortionist” which was a word from last week’s vocab list.

I still need to re test the students and see if the do nows have had a significant effect on my students. This will involve doing another writing test but I do want to give them time to study some of the words.

TAI Part Three

Posted on May 2, 2017 by jaimelcoffey

For Part 1

For Part 2

Using the guiding questions from our TAI Booklet this is how my inquiry progressed…

1. How am I infusing my ideas into my classroom practice?

Mainly through discussion and through consistency. I have been reading around the importance of Do Nows and making sure that I stick to the routine. By having the routine in place it gives me more time to float around the class and see students who aren’t doing too well. It also gives me an indication on who is taking this seriously. I can see students how haven’t written anything and those who have completed and moved onto the next task.

2. What am I learning from monitoring student outcomes?

I am learning that there are some students who struggle with simple concepts and this has allowed me to narrow my classroom teaching focus. A great example was when students struggled with apostrophes with regard to one of the Do Nows and that gave me the opportunity to have a lesson that focused on that.

I am also able to see how students are challenging themselves with their vocab – even when they are using the words in the wrong context it is great to see them expanding their vocabulary.

3. What are the next steps I need to take? (Research, resources, activities)

My current next steps involved re-testing with regard to the writing test at the start of the year.

I also want to do some more research about how focusing on vocabulary and reading can improve students writing. I want to also bring in the writing frame in order to strengthen their writing further.

Teaching As Inquiry Part 2

Posted on April 30, 2017 by jaimelcoffey

Carrying on from my last post I decided to use similar themed Do Nows across all my English classes.

My main tools were the google slides that I had created and, because they were structured, I was able to reuse them with ease so it helped with regard to my time management and the students would be able to see the structure.

The way I implemented my inquiry in the classroom was through talking to the students from day one. I explained that our area of focus for this term would be building on our vocabulary and our writing. (Hence vocab words and creative writing). I explained that these were areas that everyone could use practise in and that it would benefit everyone in class.

The trickier aspect came with recording student achievement as term one our focus was on oral presentations – so, aside from the written speech, there was not much focus on writing in class. This was fine though because through the use of the vocabulary words I started to see an improvement in their speeches when it came to editing. I saw students trying to use the words that we’d focused on that week in their written work.

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

Posted on April 10, 2017 by jaimelcoffey

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:

What was the achievement like for the Maori boys in my chosen class?
Why do I think they didn’t achieve? What factors could be involved?
What is the issue or factor that I will focus on this term?
What data will help me identify the issue? What does this data tell me about the issue?
Who is the identified class? (Or who are the students)
What do the students say about the issue I’ve identified?
What are my ideas about the issue?
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.