Burst and Bubbles- Celebrating success

With one of my boys refusing to even sit an easTTle writing test at the beginning of the year and repeatedly say I hate writing, to where we have come today , its been a long way and I wish my students could be here this afternoon to share their awesome attitude change towards writing as well as their accelerated progress..

6/6  boys were not working within their writing curriculum level. Most of them, had the potential to make accelerated progress in their writing. My challenge was to change their attitude towards writing.

 I had strengths in teaching TESSOL strategies,  and If I could hear from my students what their real issue was, and somehow change my practice to suite them, then we would be a win win situation.l.

The changes I made in my teaching were focusing on strengthening my students knowledge on each of the different components of writing. An intense vocabulary building programme, lots of mini lessons often enough to help scaffold and build on what they had. 

I came across Steven Williams’s writing titled, “Using spaced repetition with ESL classes”, and he said this is basically a way to ensure vocab is constantly revised in class, rather than consigned to a vocab notebook and left to rust.

Overall I would rate the changes in student learning as extremely encouraging. The evidence for my rating is that:

• 4 boys moved from not working within the writing curriculum at the beginning of the year to working within the curriculum at the end of the year which I would say was very encouraging.
• 2 boys moved from not working within the writing curriculum at the beginning of the year to actually exceeding the curriculum level at the end of the year which I would say is acceleration.

• When I learned that my boys don't like writing whole stories, I changed my programme to focus on shorter writing. They asked me, “mister can we do more hamburgers?( that's the model we used a lot to teach paragraph writing) and I said if it’s going to help you, why not?

• Their student voice said , mister when we do reading, the words are all there and we just have to read it, but with writing, we have to think of which words to use and its hard for us. So I changed my teaching to build vocabulary. We amplified the language by providing high quality vocabulary and through a process of spaced repetition involving a variety of activities, students were able to acquire those vocabulary words and make it their own.

 The most important learning I made about inquiry was:

• That you can change the attitude of boys towards writing

• Just as training builders to become confident in building each part of the house, which leads to a better quality house, so too if our students get  Intense teaching in the different components of writing, so too will they be happy to write a complete story and do a good job at it as well.

• No matter how exciting your lesson is, if you do not use a very basic teaching teaching principle of spaced repetition, your students will quickly forget what you have taught them. So introduce them to it today, bring it up tomorrow and again next week  and even next month and students will enjoy it and even remember it.

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TWEAKING MY PROGRAMME

Has spaced repetition helped my boys master vocabulary and improve writing skills? I am convinced, both in the way my boys react positively to writing as well as the results that are coming from the tests, that it has made a significant impact.
Spaced repetition has become a part of my teaching strategy across the curriculum as students understand content better if it repeated a few times, rather than just being exposed to it once. I know teachers try their best to make learning interesting, but if that content is not repeated in different ways, there is less chances that it might be understood and remembered.

WHAT HAVE I FOUND OUT FROM MY MONITORING?

I recorded and analysed the attitude of my students towards writing from the easTTle writing test. Certainly I could tell that there was a huge improvement, but was there true evidence of that?




I also recorded and analysed the writing scores from the easTTle writing tests over the past 3 terms and this is what I found.

I was really pleased that the entire class showed a greater level of excitement when  spaced repetition was used.
The level of engagement in the lesson was much better.
The ability of the students to set learning goals based on where they are at, as compared to where they should be with their learning was much better. They could all tell you the curriculum level they should be at, at the end of the year for Y5/6, and they could also tell you where they are at present.
Having them graph their results over the past 3 terms made it clear as to where they are, and how far off they are from the curriculum level they should be at.

How would I monitor shifts in my students' learning?

My inquiry focus was to find out if spaced repetition of vocabulary building led to improved outcomes for boys' writing.

I will use the following to monitor shifts :

• Record and analyse students' writing data (easTTle)
• Record and analyse students' spelling data ( Spelling list no. 1-9)
• Record and analyse students'  attitude towards writing (easTTle writing  attitude)
• Record and analyse students vocabulary knowledge through multiple choice questions

On a lesson by lesson basis, I will closely monitor:

• the level of excitement among students when  spaced repetition is used
• the level of engagement in the lesson
• the ability of the students to set learning goals based on where they are at, as compared to where they should be with their learning

CELEBRATING SUCCESS

It's time to celebrate the success in writing my boys achieved over the past 2 terms, but the cherry on top for me was to celebrate the fact that one of my students(HP) who hated writing in March,(someone who refused to write his e-asTTle test in March in my class , and who had to do it under the guidance of the team leader) actually enjoys it now. He made progress up 2 levels in his writing from 2B in March to 3B in July. HP loves writing sentences using vocabulary words. There were days HP would refuse to go out for a soccer game( something he loves doing) just to complete writing his sentences. Another thing he loves doing is writing short paragraphs rather than long stories. By listening to my students , I have been flexible in allowing them to do work on paragraphs at a time and finally put them together. It has worked and it's such a great success story.

TIME TO CELEBRATE HUGE LEAPS IN WRITING

I was blown away at the huge progress in writing over the previous terms. It was something I could feel as pupils were happier to write, but to see the shift in writing levels, this was just so rewarding. The use of rich vocabulary( many from the list we worked on) was truly evident in the recounts they had written. 3 boys went up 1 level, another 3 boys went up 2 levels and finally 1 boy went up 4 levels. Full credit to the change in my teaching towards a spaced repetition method focusing on vocabulary building. I will wait anxiously to compare the improvement in vocabulary from the first test in March with the last one in November. Watch this space.

MY CHANGED PRACTICE WITH VOCABULARY BUILDING

I looked at the data from my PAT vocabulary tests and seeing that my students didn't do well, I thought that I should look at the PAT reports and use the list of words from the test as a starting point.

I know that my focus is vocabulary, but now I am going to use spaced repetition to get my students successfully knowing what those words mean.

I created large flash cards with the words, and had sentences on another card. We would work each day with 5 words, making sure students could easily match word with meaning. I would then put them up on the classroom wall,(large enough for students to read) so that they has access to those words whenever they wanted to. Before introducing the new words, we would go over the previous day's words, and with smiles on faces, students would be thrilled to participate.

I worked through the Y5 vocab list first.

Once I was happy that my students showed confidence in the y5 list, I did the same with the Y6 list.
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Furthermore, students had access to images and vocabulary prior to writing on topics as shown below.