Week 3 Term 2 - Teacher Practice: Inquiry 2023: The journey so far... (May 08 - May 12)

 At the end of Term 1, I finalized my teacher inquiry goal for 2023. I wrote a reflection on this (see Alby Blog post entry - 02/04/23) My inquiry goal for this year is to How I can help improve reading and writing engagement with my Year 9 students through creating mixed ability groups within my Year 9 class. In this post, I am going to share on what I have done so far this term with my inquiry goal. 

READING GROUPS

My plan for Term 2, was start with grouping my Year 9 students into their reading ability groups. My focus class is my Year 9 English class (9TKl). I have gone through the PAT Reading data for Term 1 and I have had look at the reading levels across the class. I have organized my students into 4 reading ability groups. The 4 groups are based on the reading levels from the class (Level 2, Level 3, Level 4 and Level 5). I have allocated a color to each group (green - Level 2/3 group, grey - Level 2/3 group, pink - Level 4 group, yellow - Level 4/5 group) 

Inquiry focus class: 9TKl - 4 reading groups

I spoke to my students about the groups and why I have placed them into their respective groups. I wanted to make it clear that this approach is to help them work in their individualized ability group and to encourage collaboration and safe discussion around the learning and texts that we we will cover this term. The student's response to the groups has been positive, we also have our awesome Teacher Aide - Mrs Jenson-Jones, working with us this term (in particular with the green and grey groups). 

TEXT FOCUS + ASSESSMENT FOR 9TKL - TERM 2

This term, our focus is a short text study where we will look at different short texts - poetry, short written texts, short films. The theme that we will look at is 'Our Voices' - looking at how writers and creatives use their voice to express their opinion in their respective art form (performance, written and oral). The hope with this thematic study is that will give the students across all reading levels the opportunity to explore different types of texts and to learn how to identify the writer or creator's voice - identifying what language features they have used. The hope is that the students can use the same language features when they craft their text. Ultimately, I want to expose different types of texts to all the reading groups and give the students the opportunity to study them in their groups. 

Some of the short texts that 9TKL will cover this term. 

The focus CAT (Common Assessment Task) for this term is Creative Writing. The students will craft a text (creative writing) - a short story - producing a short text online book via the app Book Creator. 

We have started to look at the poem and spoken word performance of 'P.O.W - Prisoner of Words' by Alicia Keys. The students have spent time watching the performance (as a class), we have read the text together and they have started to look at the following features of the poem:

Pronouns - identifying what the pronouns are, where are the pronouns in the poem and what is the impact of using them in this poem?

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

• For our first text study of P.O.W - The students will then choose ONE stanza/verse from the poem and write their own version of the verse. They will write it individually, share it amongst their group (feedback session) and then create a poster for their verse via the app CANVA. 
• For our next short text 'Sometimes I cry' Tupac Shakur - I want to read the text as a whole class and then provide different 3 level guide questions for each group (according to their ability). I will get the students feedback to their groups about the text. 
• For text 3 I will mix the groups up. The purpose of this is to encourage collaboration and learning across reading levels.