TAI Reflection

As a team we have worked together to make various changes all with the same goal  in mind: How can we increase engagement in writing for all of our learners?

We now have a much smaller group of students in our hub who are below national writing standard and no one in the well below group now. In March we had 6% of our students well below and in September we have 0%. We had 25% Well below in March and have reduced this number to 16% below in September.

Our 'At risk" list has diminished as these students have now moved onto being at standard. In March we had 20% at risk plus 39% of others at standard, and in September we now have 81% at standard.

We have a small group of exceptionally able writers who have demonstrated confidence and flair in their writing and have progressed, some who are even above. Our statistics showed 10% above in March and now we have 3% above.

Some things we have identified throughout the course of our TAI:
During term 1 we identified:

The research/ data from the previous year that had already been shared. We then looked critically and non judgmentally at the physical data board and discussed the identified children and what we thought they were capable of that may not have been obvious from what the data reflected. We combined our collective wisdom and gave consideration to various encounters we had already had with students. We then established a list of ideas to help increase engagement and collectively we planned how we would implement this.

After reflecting on students efforts with Term 1's writing we decided on Next Steps for term 2:

• Team teaching as Inquiry. Teachers have one overarching question and each teacher is trialing a different aspect in an attempt to increase engagement.
• Specific skill teaching based on observed needs (not just PBL eg Grammar, spelling)
• Free up some more writing time during reading.
• focusing on writing structured skills with specific attention to our "engagement focus".

At the end of term 2 we reflected as a team and thought that we addressed student outcomes by doing the following:

• Use of a timer with specific students.
• Sustained silent writing.
• Technology - eg popple, padlet,
• Chromebooks for writing.
• Some children preferring to hand write.
• Reading related to PBL.
• Linking literacy.
• Specific teaching of PBL related skills.

We thought it felt as though the last few weeks of term 2 improved in terms of getting children writing, the set up has taken the main focus. We had been able to focus on motivation to write increasingly towards the end of the term.

At the end of Term 2 our team decided that we thought the following things made a difference:

• Variety of workshops
• Two weeks on a topic
• Emphasis on engagement
• TAI focus
• SUW time - opportunity to write more often
• Variety of teachers
• Student voice: students enjoyed the variety. 
• Students more excited about writing
• Opportunities across the curriculum (PBL) to write, can prove their competencies 
• Feedback from all teachers 
• Students now want to write, they like to write.

We then created Next steps for term 3:

• Emphasis on engagement in Term 2 meant that surface features took a back step. This was made a higher priority for Term 3.
• Writing structure, paragraphing, editing became other focus aspects.
• Specific instructions, eg upgrade 5 words.  Choose a sentence and make it better. High light with green the part that you worked on - this is what the feedback will be on.
• Planning tools (Murray Gadd highlighted that we don’t use a big plan if you don’t need to)
• Use of exemplars.

When reflecting on writing so far this year we discussed that these results have come from some of the following:

• We have provided the students with a variety of fun writing experiences.
• Proximity teaching has provided students with smaller groups and varied workshops.
• We each found research to support our action/theory and worked in our PLG sharing this information as well as discussing what it was that other hubs did for writing. These shared experiences helped us gain knowledge as well as gave us opportunities to reflect on why certain things work and others don't so much.
• SUW (Silent Uninterrupted Writing) was an added incentive above and beyond the engagement strategies. The children considered this to be a big hit ...and  it was purely  “No strings attached writing”.
• Student voice collected showed that the children loved moving around the teachers for engagement workshops.
• High motivation from our wonderful students.

How we collated OTJ's

• We completed writing samples in Term's 2 and 3 and moderated across our team.
• Evidence from SUW writing, reading responses, thank you letters, prayers, PBL work and various other writing completed within the hub: blog posts.
• Individual goals highlighted by students in their writing and evidence of particular  writing where they have demonstrated showing they have achieved their goal.

Next steps for us as a team:

• giving students time to set their own goals and self-assess .
• allowing more time for one-to-one conferencing.
• maintaining interest and motivation by offering students choice of writing workshops ( this also assists gains in student voice) in Term 4, rather than repeating previous workshop ideas.
• create more sharing time of writing with a variety of audiences. 
• focus on increasing peer and self assessment opportunities.