With the New Zealand education system aiming towards future-focused learning, and aiming for students to be prepared to live and work in an era which we cannot foresee, as teachers we need to be looking to transform our teaching practice to build innovative and engaged learners.
Bolstad, Gilbert, McDowall, Bull, Boyd & Hipkins, (2012) talk about a new era for the education system and the necessity to change from feeding in information to empowering children and their dispositions, to be flexible, adaptive and creative. One of the themes that emerged from their review was the need rethink learners' and teachers' roles. They discussed the need for teachers to discover children's strengths and develop their potential, in turn supporting the learning (p.9.)
My inquiry is based around using ePortfolio's (Class Dojo) to increase student's engagement in writing and improve home/school relationships. When I consider the audience for this, outside of school and whanau, I need to look at the wider picture of who else are the stakeholders in the wider community. National academic results show that writing is the weakest area in terms of achievement for the core curriculum subjects, with almost 30% of Year 1-8 students under achieving. (Gadd, 2019). My inquiry looks to address this trend, and play my part in improving the writing statistics for New Zealand children. During his research, Gadd identified the main components of effective writing practice which include learning tasks, responding to students work, and self-regulation. These are important aspects of my inquiry and integral to its success in raising achievement for New Zealand students.
Gadd (2019) found that careful selection of writing topics is essential for engagement and motivation, and that students were more successful when they had a say in constructing the writing task for the day. Gadd identified that students who were taught to be self-regulators showed greater levels of engagement and achievement, and that student voice in the learning topics and tasks increased self-regulatory habits. When looking at my approach for writing this term, I reflected on what motives boys in particular as they seem to to be harder to engage. In line with Gadd's research, I have left many days open for students to choose their own topic, genre and medium for which to present their published work. He also discussed the need to learning goals to be identified with each student, with clear process and outcome objectives, and that feed back and feed forward targeted their specific learning goal. At the start of the term I conferenced with each student individually and we identified a logical next learning goal. As the students complete each published piece of work they then type a reflection which is published on Class Dojo, as a means to stimulate a conversation at home about their specific learning goal.
The National Education Monitoring Report 2010 found that there was marked disengagement in writing when comparing attitudes in students in Years 4 and 8. The link between attitude and achievement appears to be related to the student's perception of their writing ability and how good they think their teachers and family think they are. After each piece of work is published on Class Dojo and the student has reflected, I then type in feedback and/or feed-forward related to their goal, and ensure that I find many aspects to praise their work. My intention is that those who read the comments at home will in turn begin to praise and discuss their students learning journey in more detail.
References
Bolstad, R., Boyd, S., Bull, A., Hipkins, R., Gilbert, J., & McDowall, S. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning & teaching —a New Zealand perspective. Ministry of Education.
Gadd, M. (2019). What's critical in the effective teaching of writing for Years 1-8?
Gilmore, A., & Smith, J. (2012). NEMP, Writing, Reading and Mathematics Report 2010. Wellington: Ministry of Education.
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