What is my class landscape today? How is it different from 3 weeks ago?

What is my class landscape today (End of Term 1)? How is it different from 3 weeks ago?

Three weeks ago most of my students were at home. Only one student has been at school all term, unaffected by covid. The rest have had between 0 (some students not returning at all) and 4 weeks at school since the start of the year.  On average 6 students attend each day with the makeup of students different on any given day.

The upside of this situation was the ease of developing relationships with my students. The small class size meant each student got more teacher time. One-on-one time meant it was easy to assess their learning formatively and get to know them as individuals. This was so different from the usual start to the year where it takes a term to really get to know your students.

It was easy to do 'spare the moment', 'teachable moment activities', and to target individual needs as this I feel is sometimes where the best learning happens. For children with additional learning needs, they had my full attention which is much harder to give when you have a full class. 

By week 5, most students had been back to school for at least a couple of weeks, so most had learned our class routines. The downside was teaching routines up until this point was difficult with each day being like Ground Hog Day, having to reteach routines each time a new student arrived back at school.

Also, the inconsistency of attendance meant that students would start to learn things like the letter sounds and high-frequency words, then without having time at school they would forget what they had learned. It was like taking two steps forward and one step back all Term. This was challenging as my students had not attended school since before lockdown and prior to that had only had a couple of months at school, catching my students up on all the early literacy and maths knowledge and skills they had missed out on was something at the top of my mind. 

From Day 1 this Term, my team and I had the determination to put all our energy and effort into working with the students in front of us. Making the most of every moment that we had them with us. Covid has taught us how precious this time is and the impact we can have on student learning when we are face to face with our learners.

Today I have 12 out of 16 students back at school. The classroom is the noisy happy place that we have missed so much. The anxiety evident on students' faces as they returned to school has been replaced with happy excitement to be back at school learning with their peers. It is super strange to feel the excitement of the beginning of a school year right at the end of the first term, but that is exactly how it feels. Instead of feeling exhausted and ready for the holidays, we are feeling energized and excited about all the possible learning opportunities ahead of us. 

As each student returned to school I assessed their knowledge of letter sounds, the number of high-frequency words they knew and their number knowledge. With the exception of 2 students, they knew between 0 and 10 letter sounds, between 0-5 high-frequency words with the majority not recognising any and most students had knowledge of some of the numbers to 10. Except for 2 students, the rest of the students were at the pre-writing stage of making marks on the page. So it was safe to say most of my Year 2 students were working at a new entrant level. 

My goal from day one this term was to spend Term 1 jump-starting their learning by using dose and density to accelerate the acquisition of knowledge of letter sounds and the most common high frequency words. Most of my students now know the letter sounds ad with support can write at least the first sound of words during writing. They are still finding it difficult to remember high-frequency words. I'm really happy with this as learning all the alphabet sounds in a Term full of in attendance is I feel a great accomplishment. 

A major difference I have noticed this Term is our home school partnership with whānau. Our relationship is relaxed and communication free-flowing and easy with so many different ways to communicate. We used to have to wait to come into school a couple of times a year but now we can talk anytime. 

We are working together in terms of student learning. I feel this is a direct impact of lockdown whereby we had to find many different ways to connect with whānau and became so used to working together. We gained such a greater understanding and respect for our students within their whānau (not separate from them). For the first time in my teaching carrier, I feeI truly understand the power of strong home-school partnerships.

Yes, there is no doubt, my students, our at least a year behind where they would be expected to be at their age. But moving forward from here, what will make the biggest difference for our students as we catch them up to where they should be if covid hadn't happened? We are set with an amazing challenge of accelerating our student's learning, our students are hungry for it, excited to be back at school, and ready to learn.

What Assessment Data Shows In Terms Of Oral Language Acquisition

I have the most amazing group of learners in my class. They love learning and are 100% engaged and excited about whatever exciting learning experience is in front of them. Already we have created a culture of writing to share our learning and ideas and thirst to want to learn. 

The feel in our class is one of happiness, positive relationships, and trust. The students were quick to form relationships with me and each other. 

The class is extremely inclusive of each other and happy to be at school each day. 

What a great position to start an inquiry into changing my practice to better meet the needs of these beautiful little learners that have incredible potential within and ahead of them. 

My target group consists of 9 Year 1 and 2 students. I sampled these 9 students based on my teacher judgment and assessment data of those students with the lowest levels of oral language and foundation skills. 

With a focus on developing foundation skills in our student's first few years at school, a key element is oral language.

To assess the areas of challenge students had in terms of oral language acquisition I used the Dr Jannie van Hees CombiList (2013). 

Only two out of the nine students showed competence in any of the factors of language development described in the combilist. The other 7 students all only demonstrated these factors sometimes or not at all. 

The greatest areas of the challenge were: 

-Giving elaborate responses to open-ended questions from the teacher.

Open ended questions are met with shoulder-shrugging, "I dunno." or silience. Students look uncomfortable and at times will freeze rather than give a response. It is hard to know if they don't understand, don't have the words, are not used to thinking at a more critical level, or are not confident speaking.

-Sustaining expression of their meaning, ideas, and intentions.

One or two words are shared when expressing their thoughts. The vocabulary is low-level and directly linked to their own direct experiences with very few content-driven vocabulary. Sentence structures short and missing structural words. Ideas are not elaborate and very few details are given.

Video snap snots of students show that some students use one or two-word utterances in play situations with the use of very little concept vocabulary.

Two boys playing with dinosaurs showed them hitting the dinosaurs together shouting "arggggggh, arggggggh, die, die, argggggh, argggggh" with no other vocabulary used.

-Thinking before they speak so as to express at a higher cognitive level.

My hunch is that thinking before they speak ties in with low impulse control, saying the first thing that comes into their head or repeating something someone else has called out. These students also have difficulties with impulse control in the physical sense. They quickly 'do' without stopping and thinking. Would improving the physical improve the verbal aspect of impulse control or vice versa? 

-Continuing their meaning and intentions, and picking up and using teacher examples and models.

The difficulty students have listening to the teacher or each other is obvious through their body language and questing them as a response to what has been shared verbally. Also, 4 of the nine students lack confidence speaking if they feel they may get it wrong and have moments of shutting down. 

-Talking to others, not only the teacher.

I have observed the reluctance of students to speak in group situations during mat time e.g. group discussions. It is common for them to sit back and let the more confident students speak. This, however, isn't the case when they have physical activities to do as they seem engaged in the doing and talking comes more naturally.

All students are reading at Level 1 or Pre Level 1 and Writing at Pre Level 1 of the New Zealand curriculum. and writing at pre 1B. 

Analysis of Student's Writing Samples

I have used an analysis of my student's writing samples as baseline data to measure progress over the course of my inquiry. This analysis also includes the picture plan which gives clues to the developmental stages in terms of body awareness (drawing of people), fine motor skill development, and spatial awareness. 

The student understands that marks on a page represent writing and is beginning to form some letter shapes, however, is unable to retell their story. The people in the picture have separate heads and bodies and the drawing of a cat is discernable.

They use strings of letters to tell a story. They could say the sentence that they wanted to write. With support could record 3 letter sounds. This was with prompting and support from the teacher to find the sound on their ABC card. Drawing of people shows arms and legs coming out from the head with no separate body. This type of picture is common in children between 3-4 years of age. 

This student uses the picture box for text and picture. Marks on the page are beginning to look like letters (symbolic mock letters). Although the 3 people in their picture are basic each looks different. They are able to retell their story to the teacher. 

They were unable to hold their pencil correctly and the picture and text resembled scribbles without the fine motor skill control to create a discernable shape (The circle was drawn by the teacher). This includes a scribble for the picture of themselves inside the bubble. This may indicate a lack of body awareness. This stage is called controlled scribbling and is usually seen in children between 2-3 years of age. This student without prompting will use a cylindrical grasp of the pencil (developmental stage 1-2 years)

Spatial awareness is challenging for this student. Even with prompting and modeling from the teacher is unable to draw the picture in the box. Arms and legs come out from the head however, hands do have five fingers. Is able to articulate a simple sentence and with support from the teacher can find some basic words on the word card and copy them. This student has an understanding of the directionality of print.

These students are all within their first year at school. So what does the above data look like in terms of the Literacy Learning Progressions?

According to the literacy progressions at school entry children enjoy writing for a variety of purposes and can hold a story in their heads long enough to retell it. They may write marks on the page that represent letters or words. We also expect some children to be able to write their names, form some letters correctly and hold a pencil correctly. These student's writing shows some of these features, however, it also indicates some features of earlier developmental stages.

The progressions also indicate that from this 'entry point' there is then a high level of scaffolding by teachers to help students to develop the ability to: 

• hold an idea in their heads long enough to write it down (oral language/memory)
• say, hear and record the dominant sounds in words (phonological awareness), 
• write from left to right, leaving spaces between words (directionality, spatial awareness, concepts about print)
• form letters correctly (fine motor skill, directionality). 

My wondering is that is it possible to work on pre-literacy developmental stages whilst still teaching the progressions that are expected within a child's first year at school? Can we strengthen those foundation skills alongside exposure to the skills other students at the same age are developing? 

Preliminary Findings About The Nature and Extent of The Student Challenge

How important are gross and fine motor skills in relation to our cognitive processing? 

On a personal level, I realised the importance while doing 'boot camp. As I struggled to do a new 'activity modelled by the instructor that involved swinging a kettlebell around my body, crossing over arms and swinging it back the other way. Such activities take all my cognitive capacity to master. Is it just a coincidence that I have extreme difficulty in doing such activities when my peers can do it the first time, and that I struggle with sequencing letters within a word, words within a sentence or numbers within a string of numerals like phone numbers? How are gross motor skills related to cognitive functioning? 

Anecdotal observations of my students doing physical activity

As part of our schools work with Sport Auckland we had the opportunity to see our facilitator James model a series of physical games whereby I got the opportunity to take a step back and observe the students in my class move and work together in various ways.

There were two simple activities:

1. moving in different ways inside a space then getting into groups of a given number.

2. throwing bean bags to hit a cone in a relay-style activity.

These activities proved challenging for many of my students. Not surprisingly the students that found these activities challenging correlated with those students that were finding learning in the classroom difficult. 

I observed some students found gross motor skills such as marching, skipping, jumping with both feet, and throwing extremely difficult, for others it was working with others and problem-solving, and for two students it was joining in at all and they completely shut down and refused to participate. From the outside, it kind of looked like chaos. 

I hadn't anticipated these 'fun' activities would be such a challenge for my students and 'the wheels falling off' made me realise that I had been avoiding such activities, due to the 'difficulties it caused'. In my teacher management role of controlling the learning environment, I was doing my students an injustice by sheltering them and withholding vital opportunities to learn from doing. The limited PE opportunities I had been giving my students had not made me realise the skills my students needed in their development and how this correlated to their learning. 

In similar ways, my observations within the classroom show many of my students lack fine motor skills. For some using scissors to cut is extremely challenging, students are gripping crayons pencils and pens with their fists and just scribbling, people are drawn with a round body shape with sticks coming out for arms and legs with no head just dots for eyes and a line for a mouth within the body. 

Communication between students is also limited with some students using a few word utterances and not having the vocabulary to explain their understanding or how they are feeling. 

What is the significance of this in relation to the challenge of accelerating the development of the skills students need to be 'school-ready' within their first year of school?

If we are expecting our students to be 'school ready' we then need to be giving students the opportunity to develop the skills that are needed to be school-ready. How much of this am I currently doing in my day to address this need? What data can I gather to assess students developmental stages and measure progress? What can I do differently? 

Tools/Measures and Approaches

In my previous post, I identified the challenge my inquiry will focus on as accelerative learning of developmental skills students need to be 'ready for school'. Creating a programme for our Year 1 students that will fit their unique needs and that of our community.

There are many programmes out there each. Each programme has assessment tools that measure the skills that those programmes teach. As our students' needs are so diverse and we will be researching effective teaching from across a range of programmes to best meet the needs/cultures of our students. Therefore, we have decided to draw from a range of assessment tools/measures from across different programmes to best fit our student's needs.

From my preliminary findings through observations of students behaviours, I will identify key areas to measure student achievement using existing measures from existing programmes that teach that skill.

My next step is to observe student behaviours to find areas of development students find most challenging. From there I will look at assessment tools that measure this skill/area of development. I will then use these tools to measure progress as I change my teaching practice to meet the students' needs.

The Beginning of my Inquiry 2021

This post marks the official beginning of my inquiry for 2021. The actual beginning was an exciting conversation two weeks ago, between myself and our Principal.

The conversation was a future-focused discussion to gain insights from staff voice about our current reality, as part of our school-wide self-review process. It was also an opportunity to discuss a possible direction for my CoL inquiry fitting with our school's strategic plan and Manaiakalani's patterns of student learning.

Our conversation was prompted by the question;

Moving forward, looking to the future, how might we be better? Or How might we strengthen our School/practice?

As my former 2-year inquiry had focused on creating an intensive oral language programme for junior students I already had seen the importance of oral language for building literacy across the curriculum. However, starting a new year with Year 1 students I had become acutely aware that oral language was just one facet of developmentally being 'ready' to learn to read and write. Students need gross and fine motor skills, emotional and social self-regulation skills, oral language, visual, hearing and good health.

My informal observations of students this year showed these were areas our students found challenging.

Thoughts I have taken from our discussion:

• If we are to accelerate students achievement in Reading, Writing and Maths our students have to first be developmentally ready to read and write.
• Many students are starting school displaying development age levels of two and a half years to three and a half years. I feel that we are expecting these students to jump over key developmental stages and start reading and writing at the 'expected level' and 'progress rate' by throwing them into 'formal' reading and writing programmes instead of creating programmes that meet their developmental needs.
• There is urgency. If students are already starting school two and a half years behind their peers we need to find the most effective way to accelerate the developmental progress within their first year of school so that they are then ready to learn to read and write. If not, how can we be expecting to accelerate learning to meet the level of their peers further along in their schooling when our students are leaving the 'ready for school' starting blocks two and a half years later than the peers.
• There are lots of programmes out there however, our students, community, school is unique and we need to find what works for our students. We need to create a localised curriculum to meet our student's diverse needs.
• We have an exciting opportunity to create a localised curriculum for our Year 1 classes that meet the needs of our students and accelerates their developmental progress.
• The development of a curriculum programme to meet the needs of our students and accelerate developmental progress will take time to create effectively and sustainably. We will learn about our students and their specific needs, research effective practice that is already out there, create a model that suits our students, whānau and community and share our findings throughout this process.

Therefore, my focus for my inquiry will be 'Creating of an effective learning programme to accelerate the developmental progress of Year 1 students to establish skills for school readiness.

Inquiring Into Specific Aspects Of My Current Teaching Practice

Main Learning About My Teaching and My Next Steps

To be reflective is uncomfortable. I'm a firm believer in those aspects of your teaching that you become defensive about are probably the aspects that most need changing.

I have observed three aspects relating to my teaching where that uncomfortable feeling rose from my gut. Indicating an area that I need to reflect on. Below is a description of those moments and what it has meant to me in regards to areas I can make changes to my practices.

Situation 1

During an observation of behaviours of students within my class, my DP observed two students rushing through their writing. We had a great reflective discussion regarding the possible expectations I have of these students. 

Some questions I reflected on:

Do I have lower expectations of these boys who find it difficult to stay focused and complete tasks to the same level as other students? Thinking back to lockdown these were the boys who refused to do online learning when their parents asked them too. What is causing this divergence? If I up my expectation of these students will they persevere more with their learning?  One of these boys is a fidgeter and struggles writing his letters in sequence. Does observing these tendencies lower my expectation of writing output? What would happen if I lifted the bar? How can I motivate them to write more, for longer periods? How can I use self-directed learning and student agency to accelerate progress with these students?

Situation 2

Every now and then we come across a difficult situation that takes us by surprise and makes us evaluate how we see the world. My second reflection on my teaching practice is not actually directly related to my teaching. It was a cultural misunderstanding by me that made me reflect on the value of Whanaungatanga and my understanding of what this means. 

My instant reaction to a conflicting situation that arose was to stand my ground in what I believed in, but I was wrong to do this. I needed instead to look at how others see the situation to truly learn from the experience. The situation that arose (without going into details) could easily put down to miscommunication, however, I believe the real problem was my own lack of knowledge of Māori culture, values, and the Tikanga of Whanaungatanga. I am on a personal journey to grow my understanding of Te Ao Māori and this highlighted important new learning for me.

The situation made me reflect on how I have been brought up. I have grown up in an English family who are insular in our ways. We are not part of a large community, we don't go to church or have large family gatherings, I didn't play team sports and although I will do anything to help I often need to be told what to do. Whanaungatanga is something I am having to learn.

How much do my Pakeha beliefs and values come into my daily teaching practice that I am not even aware of? Of course, they are going to, but I truly believe I need to acknowledge my culture and put it to one-side and embrace Māori and Pasifika culture, to teach Māori as Māori and Pasifika as Pasifika in culturally responsive ways. I'm sure I will not be successful all the time and I will make cultural mistakes (as indicated above) but if we are putting students in the centre of teaching and learning, then expecting them to assimilate to Pakeha culture is not the way, it is putting us in the centre instead.

Situation 3

The third learning about my teaching is how easy it is to revert back to the comfortable, the well-established ways of teaching. Looking at my learning site during lockdown is an example of this...

There were great things I was doing on my site to engage learners, make learning accessible for those students that were working independently without adult help and continuing with ways to accelerate language acquisition through our work with Dr Jannie Van Hees. However, the one thing that slipped away was culturally responsive teaching. This tells me that that I have a long way still to go until culturally responsive teaching practice is a natural way of teaching and a part of all that I do. When the hugeness of lockdown happened and we had to change how we taught and students learned in many ways. That is the one thing that dropped off. This tells me that there is so much more work, learning, changes to my everyday practice that I need to make to ensure culturally responsive teaching is at the forefront of my practice.

Summary

• High expectations for all students. Student agency and self-directed learning to engage, motivate and encourage perseverance amongst the boys in my class.
• Acknowledgement of my own culture and putting my culture perspectives aside to truly learn about and experience Te Ao Māori and increase my cultural responsiveness.
• Keep the changes I am making to my practice in terms of PELP and culturally responsive practice at the forefront, even when times are challenging and you feel yourself reverting back to past ways of teaching.

TAI20 Professional Reading; The Oral Language Book by Sheena Camaron and Louise Dempsey

The Oral Language Book; Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey

Traits of Effective Teachers of Oral Language

• Explicitly teach speaking skills
• Engage in dialogue not monologue
• Model, scaffold support and guide speaking and listening learning in the classroom
• Create a safe respectful talking environment
• Explicitly teach listening skills
• Explicitly teach vocabulary

What am I doing already? What can I do differently?

What am I already doing?	What can I do differently?  Ideas are taken from Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey's The Oral Language Book
Explicitly teach speaking skills
Encourage students to speak in sentences, not one-word answers.	Modelled and shared, guided and independent speaking and listening approach gradually releasing responsibility (Pearson and Gallagher, 1983)
Engage in dialogue not monologue
Say and do activities	Think-pair-share instead of hands up…. I still need to work on ‘no hands up’ Think, pair, walk and talk
Model, scaffold support and guide speaking and listening learning in the classroom
Provide devices and opportunities for students to record and listen back to themselves speaking. Model correct sentence structures, encourage students to use correct sentence structures.	Scaffold speaking and listening using talking strips  Doughnut circles
Create a safe respectful talking environment
Really listen to students and encourage students to really listen to each other. Value and encourage the use of heritage language in the classroom. Allow for think time and allow students to work with a partner or in small groups.
Explicitly teach listening skills
Engage Games with focus on listening carefully	Barrier Games Construct charts describing what good listeners do
Explicitly teach vocabulary
Drama and role play Retelling	Word pictures

Cameron, C & Dempsey, L (2016). The Oral Language Book, Auckland: S&L Publishing Ltd.

CoL Teaching As Inquiry; Student Voice- Pre Intervention

Student Voice

This is the student voice collected from Year 1 students within my Target Group (Maori Pasifika Boys). Student 1 (S1) and Student 2 (S2) are Tongan, Student 3 (S3) is Samoan, Student 4 (S4) is Cook Island Maori/Maori.
Initially, I was going to use survey monkey to create a survey for students to answer, however, due to the fact that students have low oral language and can read yet I opted for students to answer questions through an informal discussion with a teacher.

I am good at reading/ writing - yes/sometimes/no?
S3- ”Sometimes I don’t do well because I'm tired.”
S1-” I’m good I write on the word.”
S4 - "I write my sister’s names.”
S1- “I can write it good, my pirate one. I could write so many words.”
S4- “I need the word card.”

When I can't do something it is easy to ask my teacher for help- yes/sometimes/no?
S1- “Ask 3 people before the teacher, ask your friend then you go ask the teacher.”
“Ask your friend (repeated by all 4)”

My teacher listens to my ideas - yes/sometimes/no?
S2- “Everyone always talking, she picks the people who are listening, who get to talking.”

Do you like talking about your ideas? Why or Why not?
S1-” Yes so you can get smarter.”
S3- “You know what the answer is and you put your hand up.”
S4- “I sit quietly because I want to listen.”
S2- “I want to sit nicely at mat time.”S1j- “I like reading so I can learn.”
S4- “I like reading cause it's my favourite.”

What makes learning hard/ easy at school?
S1- “People block. (Hard)”
S2- “I like writing the ABC.”
S3- “Maths and learning.”
S4- “Writing on ABC card.”
S1- “Word work games so I can learn my words.”

What makes learning hard/ easy at home?

S2- “I practice my word, I practice my sounds on my iPad.”
S4- “I write on my iPad.”
S3- “I use my letter card at home.”
S1- “I read my book.”

Do you feel okay to talk in your own language at school? Why or why not?

S2- “No I want to practice my language at home, I have to learn it from my mum. It is hard to write in Tongan. I would like to talk more in Tongan at school.”
S1-"No because people are Maori. People keep saying Maori to me.”
S3- “I speak Samoan with my friends.”

What do you want your teachers to know about you and how you learn best?
S2- “Tell my teacher about at writing, about pirates”
S4- “I like maths, soccer, cooking.”
S3- "Bikes”
S1- "I like to cut coconuts.”

First Thoughts After Listening To Student Voice

All the students say they help each other with their learning. They mentioned ‘See 3 before me’ which is a management strategy I use while taking guided reading groups. This could mean that they feel unable to ask the teacher for help which means I need to ensure there are opportunities for students to approach me for the help they need, or it could also mean that getting help from their peers helps them with their learning. If the later is the case ensuring that there is always opportunities for students to work together and talk about their learning is important. Also to me, Tuakana Teina and creating opportunities for students to learn from and with their peers within a shared learning space is important.

Students are aware of classroom resources that help them with their learning e.g. word cards, word work games.

I thought it was interesting that mat time was mentioned as a time when you sit and listen. Put your hand up if you know the answer and that people talk and the teacher picks people that are listening. How could mat time become a powerful opportunity for open conversations to take place? What culture needs to be built so ‘teacher talks and asks questions and students listen and answer with a hand up’ is replaced with student talk in abundance.

It is easy to assume that students do most of their learning at school, however, I was surprised by the clarity in which the students could talk about the learning they did at home and how this learning happens. All the students talked about how they learn literacy at home. This instantly made me consider the powerful influence strong home/school partnerships could have on student learning and the amazing possibilities that could happen if we share more openly with whanau, share resources and work together.

CoL Teaching as Inquiry: Tools, Measures and Approaches To Gain An Accurate Profile Of My Students Learning

To gain a more detailed and accurate profile of my our student's learning in relation to Learning Challenge 2; Lifting the achievement for boys' writing Years 1-10, I am using a range of tools, measures and approaches.


The Combilist- Dr Jannie Van Hees (2013)

For students entering school oral language is measured using JOST, in which our school data shows our students entering school with low levels of oral language. However, I wanted to a tool to delve deeper into the specifics of oral language development of students in Year 1-3, and that could also measure progress in the development of oral language to support my inquiry. The Combilist (2013) developed and used by Dr Jannie Van Hees measures significant factors involved in language development.

These include:

• Willingness to communicate
• Communication with teacher/adults
• Participation in discourse
• Contribution to the discussion or discourse
• Benefits from feedback

This tool can be used as a measure when taken prior to intervention, during the intervention and post-intervention.

All teachers across Years 1-3 will use the tool to measure individual students language development.


Pasifika Early Literacy Project (PELP) Assessment Data

Tamaki Primary is lucky enough to be participating in PELP. The PELP Project supports teachers to utilise dual language books and bilingual approaches in primary schools. It supports teachers working in bilingual and multilingual ways to open up the learning opportunities for our students.

A requirement of the project is to measure student progress to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching in linguistically and culturally responsive ways.

The data that is collected through the Pasifika Early Literacy Project (PELP) will also be useful indicators of the effectiveness of changed practice through Teaching as Inquiry. This data will add a deeper level.

PELP requires us to collect data through three methods:
Running Records (June and October)
Record of oral vocabulary- one on one, 2 minutes in English 2 minutes in the student's first language
Record of written vocabulary completed as a whole class, 5mins, per language.

Although PELP requires us to just assess Pasifika students, the assessment we will include Maori boys as they are target students within our inquiry.

Collecting Data Through Connecting With Whanau; 
Finding Out About Students Language, Culture and Identity.

Are the records we have at school a true representation of home language and culture. My hunch is that they are not. Far too often we use this data to inform our teaching without having conversations with whanau to better understand their cultures and identities. Genuinely connecting with the whanau, getting to know our families, as opposed to superficially, would give us a better understanding of how best to meet the needs of our students. The box on etap that indicates the students first language is filled in at school entry and may or may not be a true representation of the diversity of language used outside of school. Secondly, what other information other than the first language option indicated on etap records, do we need to teach in culturally diverse ways? Fono with families will help us to gain information about students language, culture and identity, the information vitally needed for linguistically and culturally responsive teaching practice to take place.

Student Voice

A sample group of students will be used to collect the student's voice. Who better to ask about students' learning than the students themselves. Gathering student voice will help me to build rich knowledge of the learner and an understanding of how to make learning accessible to them. It gives students a chance to say what school is like for them and will enable me to take their views into consideration when implementing change.

The questions/prompts asked will relate to students oral language, progress in literacy and student/teacher relationships

I am good at reading/ writing - yes/sometimes/no?

When I can't do something it is easy to ask my teacher for help- yes/sometimes/no?

My teacher makes it easy to understand things- yes/sometimes/no?

My teacher listens to my ideas - yes/sometimes/no?

Do you like talking about your ideas? Why or Why not?

What makes learning hard/ easy at school?

What makes learning hard/ easy at home?

Do you feel okay to talk in your own language at school? Why or why not?

What do you want your teachers to know about you and how you learn best?

These questions will hopefully give me valuable insight into students perspectives.