Literacy skills

As senior mock exams draw near, I thought of how I can equip my students with literacy
skills and exam techniques that would better prepare them for an External Exam.

One exam in particular AS 91039 provides students with a resource booklet from which
students will digest through choosing relevant information to answer three sections in
the exams.

My first goal was to give them practise with being able to skim read and scan for specific
information to answer the question.

We started by analysing what was required of them to gain an Achieved, Merit and
Excellent.

I gave them an acronym CIGE (for some reason they would remember this) and POV
(as in salted meat Povi masima that we eat in the islands). Each of these letters would
represent the information they needed to skim and scan for to write the achieved part
of their essay question. C - Cultural Change I -individual G - Group involved E - Evidence
and POV - Point of View.

To make it more interesting, I asked the students to highlight specific information using different colours in the reading text and to work in pairs. The students seemed

 engaged with the whole process.

Inquiry 2018

Achievement Challenge

Achievement Challenge No. 2

Inquiry 2018

[insert 2018 Inquiry]

Thanks to Karen Ferguson for the graphic design.

Manaiakalani CoL : Teaching Inquiry Framework

Manaiakalani CoL : Teaching Inquiry Framework Template

Social Inquiry - Analyse current asstle date.

Friday afterschool at 3.30 I met up with Mark. The purpose of this get-together was to gain more understanding on the  Asstle reading / writing tests. We started by looking at the criteria on how Asstle was marked and we studied the results of 9KJs.  He mentioned that at Year 9 students overall National score should be between 4P and 5P. However looking at 9KJs'  current results, this was not the case. Many of our students were at level 3 if not lower.

                                                    9KJs Asstle results for March 2017

New Inquiry Focus - Astle Writing for Junior Boys Term 3 Week 9

Having spoken with my HOD I have now been moved to conduct an inquiry that looks at ways to improve our boys writing in Year 9 by using asstle data, Some boys, I find can  have a lot to say in the classroom but when it comes to expressing it in writing, they choose to keep it brief leaving out information and details. My first step is to have a better understanding of how student writing works, so I will meet up with Mark, (Literacy expert) after school to gain some knowledge there.

Social Inquiry

This year I teach three Year 9 Social Studies classes. In Term 2 all students sat a two-hour exam which was the first for most of our Year 9s. Despite having gone over the essay content during class time in order to help prepare the students for their exam, I was disappointed with the final results. I noticed that quite a few boys, particularly in 9PSd, had not attempted their essay section of the exam. 

I have decided that I would like to focus on perhaps looking at strategies that can develop boys writing skills. I thought I would start by getting them to write paragraphs each week about something linked to what they are currently learning about in Social Studies. At the end of term two, students had completed a research on a migrant country focusing on the reasons why people leave their place of origin to come to NZ. Students were asked to write a summary paragraph showing their understanding of key concepts covered in the migration unit. I provided students with a writing frame template that they could use. I was pleased with some of the responses written by some of the boys who in the past have shown very little writing.

Priority Student

This term I am working to try out new strategies that may improve the academic learning and engagement progress of Maori students. Student A is a priority student who I have chosen to focus on in my Year 11 Social Studies class.  Student A has been a challenge when it comes to focussing in class and completing classwork. He is easily distracted and often distracts others.

Towards the end of Term 1, I created a tracking sheet that closely monitored student progress for Achievement Standard 91042 Participate in a Social Justice and Human Rights action.

This sheet was made available to the students so that they could see their progress ticked off as it happens. I think this helped put a bit of pressure on Student A and others students to get their work done.

I also made an effort to give Student A more feedback, both written and verbal to continually put ongoing pressure on him so that he would keep working to complete his assessment.