What strategies were most likely to help Christine’s students learn what they needed to learn?
The focus of the inquiry in this lesson was on purpose and audience in relation to poetry. Christine knew the students’ writing abilities from their past work in writing different genres. This meant that she was able to predict some of the challenges related to performance indicators of language features that her students might encounter, and therefore able to address those either with individual students, or with the class as a whole.
Christine analysed the class’s e-asTTle writing results and identified that the class had good ideas in their writing but were often held back by their technical writing ability. Therefore a class focus would be to generate ideas first before encouraging the students to enter into the process of writing.
Christine provided them with a poem/song from a known singer and invited them to adapt the song/poem to make it their own. This highly scaffolded strategy allowed the students who needed substantial support in their writing to gain confidence but also allowed the more able writers to move beyond the structure.
In the writing process, Christine provided feedback to the students but also encouraged them to use their peers to read, edit and feedback along the way. This meant that students could help each other generate ideas and check spelling and word selection.
The purpose of this process was to guide students to the point of publishing their poetry on their own website where they could invite others in the class, their family and Christine to read it.
What evidence did Christine draw on?
Christine drew on research that states a strong connection between publishing student work and increased engagement. "Motivation to Learn" by Monique Boekaerts 2002 is the 10th in the Educational Practices Series-21: Principles of Instruction and focuses on motivational theory to identify what behaviours influence academic achievement.
What evidence did Christine draw on from her own practice or that of her colleagues?
Christine’s knowledge of students at Tamaki, and discussions with colleagues, identified that students liked working together and liked to talk about their work together. The students also trusted student ‘experts’ in the class and were happy to share their ideas and work.
Students also valued their work more if it was published online, as it made their work more ‘real’.This gave the students a feeling that their work had value, as it was then accessible to students and their families.
Christine's class - learning inquiry
Published on: 26 Oct 2012
This booklet, Motivation to Learn by Monique Boekaerts, is the tenth in the series on educational practices from the International Academy of Education, that improve learning. It opens a new door, however, since it focuses on behaviour rather than academic learning.
