Inquiry Presentation

PART 2: During the past 3 weeks I have been looking at my 4 priority learners closely finding out what they are capable of and what they need support with? I introduced an EE activity on their iPads starting with alphabet letters (one a week) Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee; to write words beginning with that letter and then draw a picture of that word to connect with the meaning.

I have identified that their vocabulary has accumulated due to their participation in the Word Tree and weekly story writing.I have devised a tracking document which shows evidence of vocabulary accumulation over the 10 week period, and will review this every 5 weeks throughout the term.

 However, there is a current flaw and disconnect with my theoretical research as a colleague pointed out to me. As the priority children who are learning and writing these new words have no relevant context for them to make the “connect” with the content. I need to ask the children to use their newly accumulated vocabulary into their weekly story writing to show me that they have meaning of the word.

So in order to rectify this problem over the next 3 weeks I plan to ask each child to go to the Word Tree and find/ use words they know and tell me the meaning of them to create their own story writing for purpose. Hopefully this will help each priority learner to embed the knowledge and understanding of the word further into a concrete learning experience?

My long term goal: By the end of this year (Term 4), I would like to see each child to be able to write their own story independently by using a combination of their accumulated vocabulary and increased learnt sight words into a short paragraph (3 sentences or more) as expected by the end of Year 2.

The following document represents the tracking sheet used to highlight my priority learners accumulation of new words to their vocabulary.

Focus Inquiry for 2018

PART 1: What is my focus for the student’s learning? The focus for my inquiry is the acquisition of language for my priority children. Their vocabulary will be enhanced to enable them to write known words with a connection to their meaning which is transferred into written literacy such as story writing. What did I notice? I have four 6 year old children in my Priority group; (1.J, 2. J, 3. R, 4. W). I noticed that they all had limited vocabulary with very little alphabet letter/sound knowledge. At the start of the year (Term 1, Week 1) they only knew 1-2 high frequency words. This was probably attributed to by the "summer slide" due to the long holiday period children in New Zealand have from mid December to the end of January each year. A couple of the children have shy personalities and are not confident to share their ideas in a larger group situation. They copy their peers in the classroom and their social behaviour is limited.After completing their Writing e-AsTTle in February, it was obvious that these children who scored 0 need extra help and support with their learning in literacy. Even with having literacy resources available to them such as Yellow butterfly cards and practising making words using magnetic letters, there was still limited knowledge of known words and not being able to sound out words phonetically. Evidence of this: My initial OTJ (Overall Teacher Judgement) was that they are not able to share ideas on the mat. Two of the children were in my Year 1 class. So I have a prior relationship with them and an understanding of their social behaviours. What I plan to do: My short term goal is to support my priority learners in language and literacy over a term (10 week period). I plan to create a Word Tree with the children’s help and participation that is on display in the classroom. This will be an additional resource for the children to use when they are story writing. This will help aid and scaffold their learning to identify the meaning of words.