Writing Inquiry (T4 2017)

This slide deck is my writing inquiry for Term 4 2017. Although I had previously been compiling reflections and evidence through my blog, I had to change as our school had to send our inquiries to ERO and they wanted everyone to do it the same way.

Each week we documented, reflected upon and had evidence for what we did.

	BOY 2016	MOY 2016	EOY/BOY 2016/2017	MOY 2017	EOY 2017	Comment on success
Joshua		AT L1	AT L2	BL2 Below	BL3 At	Joshua needs support to stay on topic and task, but when focused, can write an story appropriate to the task.
Stanley		BL2	AT L2	AT L2 At	BL2 Well below	No shift. Stanley is at school maybe 1-2 days a week. When he is here, because he wasn't here the day before, he doesn't know what is going on. He struggles to do work independently because he doesn't have solid routines of being in the classroom.
Reign	No data	No data	No data	No data	BL2 Well Below	When he is focused, Reign can write a 1 page story that makes sense. He has a lot of techniques built into him from previous schools that are weird and hinder him from focusing on his writing. I think he would benefit next year from having visual aids/checklists to help him remember what he needs to put into each story.
Ariki	New stu	BL1	BL2	AT L2 At	BL3 At	Ariki can write confidently independently. He has only been at school for about 4 days in the whole of term 4, so BL3 is an OTJ. He takes on board feedback and can reread his work to check it makes sense and knows how he can improve it.
Paula	No data	No data	No data	No data	L1 Well Below (ESOL)	Paula came to school and couldn't speak, write or read in English. For him to achieve L1 is a huge deal. He can now write independently.
Lopiseni		AT L1	BL2	AT L2 At	BL2 Well Below	Lopiseni hates writing. Maybe one out of every 5 writing sessions he will actually do any work. For him, I think he needs to work on confidence more than actual skill. He has skills, just refuses to use them.
Sosaia		AT L1	AT L2	AT L2 At	BL3 At	Saia has made the biggest confidence shift out of all these kids. He can write 2-3 pages independently, brainstorm his ideas, reread his own work and check it. He has learnt new literacy skills and I can see he is trying to use them in his writing.

Although only 3 students are 'at' for National Standards, I think they have all made progress towards achieving their goals, which were;

Goals

Write more than 5 sentences independently.

Use full stops, capital letters correctly without reminders.

Use speech marks and paragraphs correctly with limited support.

Remember to elaborate and give detail without T reminder.

Gain confidence - be able to write without 1:1 T support.

Things I think made the most difference to students

- Teaching them how to edit and make changes to their writing
- Getting them to talk about their ideas first, then write independently, then check with a buddy.

Things students think made the most difference to their learning

- specifically showing how to use dialogue (Stanley)
- writing the words for me to copy and telling me the spelling (Paula - ESOL)
- teaching us new words in reading, then we can use them in writing (Ariki)
- buddy marking to make a story better - teaches us to look for mistakes in our own writing so we can fix our mistakes in our own writing (all)
- kids WANT to try little groups where they have different skills to focus on instead of whole class writing (all)
- kids WANT to do spelling next year to learn new words and how to spell them (all)

Things I think I could do better next time

- using visual aids for checklists or brainstorms

- having writing groups every week. A lot of the time we did whole class stuff, and I would pull these students down as a group. Maybe having set groups would have made more of a difference.