Co-constructing success criteria in a new entrant - year one class

School: Owhiro Bay School

Year Level: Year One/New Entrant

Teacher: Deanne Daysh

Focus area:

Authentic Learning: to investigate ways to improve student ability to develop assessment criteria for key learning intentions.

Managing Self: to investigate ways to improve student capability to mange self, particularly their ability to use Learning Poutama.

Research Questions:

Question 1. Implementation: How can year 1 students be supported to learn how to use Poutama to develop independence within the classroom through the establishment of class expectations and routines at the beginning year?

Question 2. Engagement: How engaged were students as they developed and started to use a Poutama when establishing expectations and routines at the beginning of the year?

Question 3. Knowledge: For this research project the focus is mainly on engagement and the competency of managing self. However the students will need to have knowledge of the language of using a Poutama. So the knowledge question is ... Can Students use the language of a Learning Poutama?

Question 4. Competency: What impact does establishment of expectations and routines at the beginning of the year have on student competency to develop and use Poutama for self assessment?

Success Criteria for Competency

Expert: I am helpful and can help others do their jobs.I can listen to the teacher and do what the teacher says straight away.
Practitioner: I practice doing what the teacher says. I can do most things on my own with only a little help.
Apprentice: I listen to the teacher and do what the teacher says most of the time.
Novice: I do what they want and not what the teacher says.I am not helpful to others

Learning Story:

One of the main focuses for our school professional development for the year is for the staff and students to learn to use Poutama/ Rubric's to plan and assess with in their classrooms. Also for the staff and students to learn to use Poutama to self assess and plan next steps in the classrooms and for these Poutama to be co-constructed with the children.
So I wanted to 'give it a go' and see how effective the use of Poutama is in a class of New Entrant (five year old) children.

It was important to use a context that was relevant to both the students and the learning in the classroom for our first Poutama.

We chose to use the context of setting up routines and expectations in the classroom at the start of the year.

So what did we do?

In weeks 1 and 2 of term one we discussed with the students the class rules, expectations and routines. This lead to the creation of a class treaty.

Following on from this and also coming out of this discussion of expectations and routines was a list of “Things we need to do in our class to be good managers of self” so that we could get on to the task of learning.

The children came up with a list of four main things they need to do in the classroom to be independent learners who are ready to learn.

They were:
*Listen to the teacher
*Do what the teacher says
*Unpack/ pack your own bag
*Put away your reading book

At this stage I wanted to introduce the Poutama. However I was aware, having collected some baseline data using a questionaire, that none of the students had ever had any experiences with a Poutama before and had no knowledge of the meaning of the words associated with one e.g. they didn’t know what an Expert did, or a Novice, Apprentice or Practitioner. See the section below about data collection to see this data. So this became my starting point.

For a week I started using these words in the everyday tasks we did in class. Saying things like “You are such an expert at forming the letter ‘O’ from the top”, “You are a great Practitioner when you are pointing to the words in your reading book”.

Later that week I worked with the class to co-construct our first Poutama. After discussion,
these are the words that the students came up with:

I was excited and very happy as the students now seemed to have a good understanding of this.
The students were then able to self assess and place them selves on the Poutama.

As a class we were able to use this information to establish next steps for each child to work on.

We also referred back to the Poutama on a regular basis (and do so on going as well) to remind ourselves what we had to do to be an independent learner in Room 5.

The next step was to co-construct knowledge Poutama for our science focus – ‘Treasure or waste’.

Data Collection:

As I got started on this research journey I was aware that these New Entrant students had no knowledge of what a Poutama was. They also had a very limited understanding of what the ‘Poutama vocabulary’ was. So one of the first things I needed to do was to teach those words and vocabulary to them.

We developed an assessment form to assess their knowledge of this language.

The first assessment was done in Week one of the term.
This was done as a ‘Thumbs up/thumbs down activity”

The followng table records the number of students out of a class of 11 that knew what these words are/mean.

Questionnaire:
I know what a Poutama is… 0
I know what a novice is… 1
I know what an apprentice is…0
I know what a practitioner is… 0
I know what an expert is… 2
I know how to use a Poutama ... 0

We then assessed the students again two weeks later after they had been exposed to the language on a regular basis in the classroom.

Again we did this using a 'Thumbs up/ thumbs down' activity. The results were much different:
Out of the 11 students the following knew what they were/meant:

Questionnaire:
I know what a Poutama is… 11
I know what a novice is… 11
I know what an apprentice is…11
I know what a practitioner is… 11
I know what an expert is… 10
I know how to use a Poutama 11

A teacher assessment of the students engagement was also carried out at the beginning and at the end of the research. The data for this is included below.


Results:
Outcome 1. Engagement:

SCALE: 1 = never, 2 = not very often, 3 = about half the time, 4 = often, 5 = always

Mean level of engagement of students ...

Offered ideas - 2.9
Asked questions - 2.9
Listened to and thought about other's ideas and responded respectfully - 2.8
Used positive body language related to task - 3.2
Persevered in order to enact related task - 2.4
Showed evidence of being active learners outside school time - 1.4
Showed interest in directing their own learning - 1.0
Had behavioural issues that impacted on their learning - 1.2
Showed evidence of using what they have learnt - 1.5

Overall mean level of engagement of students = 2.6

Outcome 2. Competency:
Number of students who were ...
8. Proficient experts - at start 0; at end 2
7. Beginning experts - at start 0; at end 1
6. Proficient practitioners - at start 0; at end 1
5. Beginning practitioners - at start 0; at end 3
4. Proficient apprentices - at start 2; at end 3
3. Beginning apprentices - at start 3; at end 0
2. Proficient novices - at start 3; at end 0
1. Beginning novices - at start 3; at end 0

Competency effect size = 1.36
Standard error = 0.29

Conclusions:

Question 1. Implementation: How can year 1 students be supported to learn how to use Poutama to develop independence within the classroom through the establishment of class expectations and routines at the beginning year?

The regular use of the language associated with a Poutama in the classroom through many different curriculum areas e.g. handwriting, writing, reading has been most effective in establishing a culture of 'using a Poutama' in the classroom. Initially using a relevant context such as the class routines was an important aspect of the success of the research. The students could relate to this and found it easy to then put in their own words what they needed to do. What the expectations of them were.

Question 2. Engagement: How engaged were students as they developed and started to use a Poutama when establishing expectations and routines at the beginning of the year?

The engagement of students definitely increased once the students knowledge of what a Poutama was and the other associated language e.g. expert, apprentice, practitioner, novice was understood. The co-construction of the Poutama with the students absolutely helped to increase their engagment. After the co-construction the students understood what each stage was and were able to quite quickly place themselves on the Poutama and identify the next step for themselves.

Question 3. Knowledge: Can Students use the language of a Poutama?

This was vital to being able to carry out the project. Spending time developing, using and extending their knowledge of the Poutama language and then of how they could then rank themselves using a Poutama was very important. This needed to be done on a daily basis over the weeks and will need to continue daily to keep this knowledge current and relevant, especially as the class continues to grow with new entrant students arriving each week.

Question 4. Competency: What impact does establishment of expectations and routines at the beginning of the year have on student competency to develop and use Poutama for self assessment?

Having completed the research I have realised the impotance of having a context for the students to use (especially for the first time they use a Poutama) that is relevant to them and one they could quite easily relate to and be able to use each day. Choosing to use the expectations and routines of the classroom was a great choice of context as this was easily reinforced to the students through out each day they were at school. It became part of what we did and talked about each day. This made self assessing much easier for the students and they were also familiar with the Poutama by the time they did this assessment. The class are now ready to co-construct a Poutama for our next topic.