INQUIRY GOAL - 2014

My Inquiry Goal:

To give students a sense of audience and purpose in their writing to increase achievement results.

To incorporate ICT into classroom writing programmes to increase motivation for target students.

Rationale:

Many students showed that that they were disinterested in an initial survey I gave them about writing and motivation (Asttle).

When I spoke to the group of high achieving students that said that writing was boring because “we only write recounts’ and its always the same.

Target Children:

Those children who indicated they were disinterested in writing.

Those children who lacked creativity in their writing and needed to focus on sentence structure and vocabulary.

Those children that I felt were achieving lower than they should be in writing, based on their other academic results.

I am going to do this by:

• Looking at real-life scenarios to use for motivation for writing.
• Focus on elements of writing which does not confine the class to one text type per term (vary the type of writing they are doing)
• Use multiple types of ICT to increase motivation for writing by giving them more purpose.
• Focus on children receiving feedback from their peers and parents to help them increase their own writing.  This should also increase motivation if they have a wider audience.
• Vary the type of writing we do to target student interests (eg. Comics, narratives, letters)
• Use creative means of teaching writing to increase enthusiasm and motivation.
• Have mixed ability grouping along with guide grouping.
• Mark independent activities more focussed on the elements of writing.
• Incorporate more interactive writing (collaborative) in class time to increase the discussions about writing.
• Specifically focus on sentence structure and vocabulary through grammar lessons.
• Blogging tasks set for homework which incorporate independent writing tasks – encourage writing in a different context.

My history of blogging...the journey so far!

So...why blogging? 

The journey to get to this point has been a long one and my thoughts on the ways students communicate their work has changed so many times over the years.  In my 8 years of teaching I have has class blogs and class wikispaces - both which involved just me as a teachers contributing to them.

https://rm3brainwaves.wikispaces.com/home - Room 3, Meadowbank School, 2008

http://rm14brainwaves.wikispaces.com/ - Room 14, Meadowbank School, 2009

In 2009, I ventured on using my first blog but this blog had a very specific purpose.  As part of a Globalisation unit we sent Flat People based on the book 'Flat Stanley' around the world to collect global stories from friends, families and even strangers.  The game was a pass it on effect where the Flat Person would get emailed or snail mailed to somebody else.  The stories that were collected on the blog provided children with a huge understanding of different cultures.

http://rm14flatties.blogspot.co.nz/ - Flat People Globalisation Project, 2009

My thinking then changed slightly and I decided to get children taking responsibility for their own wikispaces page.  In the first year their posts were basic and the wiki was really just a way of publishing the end result of their learning journey...but hey, it was a hell of a lot better than just typing it up in a Word document, the Word document could not be put somewhere.

http://rm11brainwaves.wikispaces.com/ - Room 11, Meadowbank School, 2010 (Class Wiki)

http://rm11brainwaves.wikispaces.com/LIT+CIRCLE (Example of collaborative pages)

Don't get me wrong - it is important for children to publish and celebrate the end result of their work but I have now come to the realisation that blogging is about sharing the journey not just the end point - another blogpost about this later!

Wikispaces became addictive and I started to use them in different ways.  We had a workspace wiki one year where children did their school work and classroom activities on this page.  This was kept separate from the class wiki because I thought that the work that they were doing for a reading activity would be boring for readers and 'take up space' on their page.  Reflecting back on that I can see that this is exactly how my thinking has changed - parents and students want a record of that learning!!  Also for our science exhibition projects my GATE class had to make their own wikispace to advertise their product and show their groups learning journey through digital tools.  This was a really cool learning curve for me because it was teaching children how to get their heads around creating a blog or wiki rather than just consuming by adding to a ready established one! The results of their pages are in the links below.

http://rm13brainwaves.wikispaces.com/ - Room 13, Meadowbank School, 2011 (Class Wiki)

http://rm13brainwaves.wikispaces.com/SCI+TECH - Links to Children Made Wikispaces for SciTech Exhibition.

http://rm13brainwaves2012.wikispaces.com/ - Room 13, Meadowbank School, 2012

In 2011 and 2011, as ICT Lead I started on my journey of providing fellow teachers with PD around using blogs and wikis to enhance student learning and motivation.  With varying degrees of success all teams in the senior school had a blog or wikispace which they were using and on my release days I would provide professional development in a area of need.  

https://rm13brainwaves2012.wikispaces.com/Wiki+Links - Senior School Wiki Links

Wikispaces became the answer to everything and I was using them more creatively and exposing more and more of the community to them through the organisation of school events, communication of homework, notices and information boards.  It just seemed so logical.  This is where I realise now that this change in thinking is not for everyone and although I had buy in from many parents, it was partly due to the long journey I had already been on with children siblings etc.  Parents could see the added value.  This is not always going to happen straight away and this is something that I need to develop this year.

http://meadowbankrogaine.wikispaces.com/home - Meaowbank Event Wiki including registration page.

https://virtualtourmeadowbank.wikispaces.com/ - Meadowbank School Virtual Tour

Reflection and appraisal was another means of using a wiki to communicate my own personal journey digitally.

https://plc-reading.wikispaces.com/WaveneyB - Reading PLC Group

http://mathsplc.wikispaces.com/Waveney - Maths PLC Group

http://ee-ict-meadowbank.wikispaces.com/ - ULearn Presentation 2010

http://wbryant.wikispaces.com/home - Digital CV (first attempt)

When I started at Newmarket School they were/are hot on Cyber Safety and I looked at alternatives to Wikispaces.  Kidblog seemed like a forum which gave me the same benefits to a wiki which I was really familiar with but was also monitored more carefully and didn't give children the option to email to each other privately.  My first years kidbog was hard because the children had not really been exposed to blogging before so it seemed like 20 backwards steps.  Seeing the children get better at posting their work and commenting on the work of others was great and by the end of the second term they were getting really involved with the blogging process.  

http://kidblog.org/Room13-NPS2013/ - Room 13, Newmarket School, 2013 (Blog)

https://littlechickensnps2013.wikispaces.com/ - Room 13, Newmarket School, 2013 (Workspace)

This year my Kidblogging journey continues and I have not got my whole team using blogs to varying degrees.  My goal for my inquiry will be explained in more depth but involves working with my fabulous team (Sorry Belinda, Anna and Veni...you are the crash tests!) to provide them with professional development around the technical side of blogging so that as a senior school we can raise achievement levels and enthusiasm/motivation for writing (more on this in future posts)

http://kidblog.org/Room4-NPS2014/ - Room 4, Newmarket School, 2014 (Class Blog)

http://kidblog.org/NPSSeniorSyndicatePage/ - Senior Syndicate Page 2014 (Team Blog)

So in a nutshell...that is by Wiki/Blogging history to date! It has been a log journey but one that has definitely shaped my digital abilities and the way I think about learning and teaching.

Learning Journey to be continued...

Taking the plunge!

So...after much coercion from +Sonya Van Schaijik, I have taken the plunge to become a blogger.  After all we have to lead by example if we want to gain children's trust and develop citizens who understand that the learning process is ongoing and even when you become an adult the learning journey continues.

Having decided to present at #U-Learn14 has given me the push start to record my learning journey and actions which will shape our presentation.  +Eilleen Dixon and I will be looking at providing professional development for children, staff and parents to share and communicate their work and learning as a journey.  

The journey is exciting and I feel that this is helping to get my teaching mojo back - pushing myself outside the box is providing me with the challenge that rejuvenates the teaching and learning process for me...in short - my own learning is being continued with the help of colleagues and students!