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.