Professional standards project classroom-based investigation report

PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS PROJECT CLASSROOM-BASED INVESTIGATION REPORT
A Professional Resource

Module 14 of the PSP2 explored the nature and value of ‘assessment as inquiry’ in languages teaching and learning. As part of this exploration, the Teachers who facilitated the program, conducted an ‘investigation’, involving classroom based research into their teaching and their students’ learning. They analysed ways that assessment data can be used to draw conclusions about the assessment process itself and the ways in which assessment data might be used for enhancing professional learning. They explored the ways that data generated through the assessment process can be used to address gaps in knowledge about student achievement and growth of student learning over time.

The group of Teachers were required to produce a report on investigations that they had undertaken into their own, or their colleagues, practice. These reports are provided to the profession, as models or exemplars of assessment as inquiry. They make for very interesting study and demonstrate the high level of professionalism and commitment of those Teachers who undertook to inquire into their own processes of assessing and judging, and to share their investigation with their colleagues.
Issues of confidentiality

The Teachers were diligent in gaining appropriate approvals from students and parents and in assuring confidentiality. There are significant ethical issues that arise in investigating and making judgements about students, and the involvement of students in such exercises, and the extent to which students have access to the thinking and judgements of their Teachers. In order to ensure confidentiality and also to include the fullest commentary by these professional educators within their reports, names of schools and the Teachers who wrote the reports have been edited from individual investigation reports.

The following is a list of those Teachers who conducted and reported on their investigations. This list is provided to acknowledge their professionalism and to enable other professionals to engage further through contact with them.

Teacher	Expertise	Contact Details
Kylie Farmer	K-7, Japanese, bilingual programs	[e-mail]
Jane Macdonald	7-12 French	Castlemaine Secondary College
Amanda Pentti	Japanese, advisor to schools	Lutheran Education Queensland
Melissa Gould-Drakely	7-12 Indonesian, intercultural teaching	Macarthur Anglican School
Meri Dragicevic	Primary Italian	Yarralumla Primary School
Gillian Cordy	Senior High French	[e-mail]
Jill Bignell	K-10 Japanese advisory role	[e-mail]
Lidia Faranda Sarjit Ladd	Primary Indonesian	Plenty Parklands PS

Language: Italian Year Levels: 5 - 6

CONTEXT This school was established as bilingual Italian – English in 2009. The class I teach is a multilevel Y5/6 class. Some students came from another school where they studied Italian for three to six years while others enrolled in the program last year. One student in Y5 enrolled this year. There are 20 students, girls and boys. Three students are of Italian background but do not speak Italian at home. I started to teach in this school in February 2010. I work in a team with my English speaking colleague. We teach all the subjects within an Integrated Unit (e.g. “Matter” and “Democracy”) and students are therefore learning Italian through content in: Italian, Science, Social Studies, Mathematics, Informatics, Physical Education, Art, which covers 50% of the weekly load. They study English and Mathematics using English. At this stage we do not have a specific marking scheme or rubrics for the Italian stream but my English colleague and I developed one marking scheme to cover Early (EC) and Later Childhood (LC) Learning achievements, which we both used in writing students’ reports at the end of semester. I and my colleague collated samples of students’ work in their portfolios in each term. The samples represented student’s individual achievement in each of the subjects but not necessarily the same task for all students (e.g. in Mathematics multiplication or division, in Art a drawing in pencil or a mosaic).

FOCUS OF ENQUIRY Establish each student’s individual developmental stage and learning style - assessed through homework over a year. I decided to target students’ writing skills for these reasons: The whole school’s goal this year is improvements of students’ writing skills by implementing “First Steps”. I wanted to know about my students’ previous knowledge, which learning strategies they use, how much their writing skills will develop over time. I want to analyse those findings so that I can establish the best teaching practice to cater for students’ learning needs.

DESIGN As I started teaching in a primary school, where the focus is developmental, I was particularly interested to see how students perceived homework. I started with homework as designed by my predecessor (students received a textbook to take home and they were to read a passage according to their language ability and write five sentences using new words from the text). As students were familiar with this type of homework, I did not write specific instructions for them, but reminded them orally, in Italian, on what was expected from them. I also sent the Unit outlines to their parents outlining in general, in English, the importance and structure of homework. [instructions and unit outlines attached]

IMPLEMENTATION From professional conversation with my colleague at school and because I was not familiar with students’ abilities, previous knowledge and learning styles, and because for years I was teaching in college, I was aware that my teaching style was different and that it may be easier to follow as closely as possible the teaching method which these students were used to. My intention was, however, to change it when or if I saw that the other methods might be more productive or useful for students’ learning and achievement. Step1: Give students tasks for homework (very flexible as students could write any five sentences they wanted from the given text). As I am at school only three days a week, and a student may be absent on those days, to facilitate the process of lodging and collecting homework, I introduced a “Homework Folder” where students could lodge or take out their homework at any time during a week. I thought that this would provide them with a sense of responsibility and arouse curiosity to see my feedback before I return to the class the week after. Step 2: Correcting and giving feedback individually in writing (on student’s homework paper) and orally (not recorded) explaining what should be improved in their homework and how to do it. Also, I was seeking their feedback on how useful the homework was for their learning in determining how to design further tasks. (oral feedback not recorded, but some comment can be viewed on the attached students’ work samples) Step 3: Give constructive feedback to the whole class, as a result of a common mistake in some grammatical structure or wrong strategy in the use of a dictionary (not recorded and these were the ongoing comments). Step 4: Students were rewriting their sentences following my instructions or comments written on their paper. Homework placed in their portfolio. Step 5: I soon realized that the majority of students were not really engaging with this type of homework, their sentences were repetitive rather than increasingly complex, and they were using words which they already knew. It seemed to me that some were more interested in writing sentences in different fonts, colours etc. on computer rather than paying attention to the idea they were trying to convey or structure which they were supposed to practice. When I spoke to students about it some students said that they do not have a dictionary at home and were firstly using Google for finding words, then to “translate” the whole sentence. Some were surprised that their sentences did not sound Italian as they thought that they structured them quite well in English. This revelation was an eye opener to me and I decided to change the homework into a sustained piece of writing, hoping that it will provide them with a more challenging task, which would at the same time provide me a better feedback on their writing skills. [see attachments] Step 6: I introduced more structured task – I now specifically wanted to see students’ ability to retell the story using Past Tense (Passato prossimo). Some students had studied this previously but in their homework I noticed that they used it without a clear understanding (e.g. the use of verb avere or essere, structure of Past Participle) so I explained its structure and common use to the whole class. For the first homework I selected several different texts. I gave students to read at home different stimuli (according to their Italian language ability determined by the years of study) and asked them to write their responses (e.g. describe the character, describe their own character). [see attachments]This was also more closely related to their English study on how to write a narrative following “First Steps” method. Step 7: The second homework was to the write their responses to the same visual stimuli (the whole class watched twice a “Muzzy” video) and students were to rewrite the story as they saw and understood it. My focus was again on determining their ability to retell the story, capturing things which they remembered. In the meantime, during the classes in English and Italian students were scaffolding story writing. In Italian class we watched a video and read an abbreviated version of the written story “Tre porcellini” analysing the story to find the text which could answer questions Who? Where? When? Why? How? What? After that students in groups of 3-4 wrote their text following this basic structure. Then they adopted the text as a role-play and performed in class. Students were so pleased with their plays that in the end we used one of their stories and developed it into a whole class presentation for the school assembly at the end of semester. Step 8: The third homework was closely related to the Integrated Unit in Science (“Matter”). As the expected outcome was students’ ability to understand sequencing (cause and consequence) in scientific experiments, the task I gave them was to select a simple experiment which they would present orally in class. As the introduction to this topic I used the Italian song “Ci vuole un fiore” by Sergio Endrigo as introduced not only the topic studied but also the linguistic structure useful to give instructions (Per fare …ci vuole). I also gave several explicit lessons on Imperativo and students practiced using both options. The homework was to write the ingredients needed and the steps to undertake, using the language of instructions (Imperative was introduced during lessons in Science) but to use the Past Tense when explaining to others what they had done. As I modelled in class all these tasks (describing a character, retelling the story and presenting an experiment) I gave instructions for the homework to students orally in Italian (not recorded), and explained briefly to the parents in English in new Unit Outlines. Step 9: As stated above, I changed the first type of homework to a more sustained piece of writing, intended to provide a greater challenge and some students rose to the challenge. Some continued to write very short texts but at least the sentences were connected and I could better assess their writing skills in line with the “First Steps” and expected outcomes as outlined in reports. Step 10: As most of the students’ writing tasks are now in their portfolios I will be able to analyse and build upon them during the year. At this stage I am more interested to know all my students better rather than focusing on a target group or an individual (which may have been simpler for the purpose of this investigation). Step 11: I still do not have particular marking rubrics, but I intend to suggest to my colleague to extend the marking scheme which we established for the Integrated unit to the individual skills such as four micro skills (speaking, writing, and reading, listening to capture both English and Italian language development of students).

DATA OR INFORMATION GATHERED As stated above, my intention was to know my students well as soon as possible to be able to contribute in discussion with my English colleague when we needed to provide the final reports for the semester. I stated already in my report that some students came from another school where they studied Italian for three to six years while others enrolled in the program last year. One student in Y5 enrolled this year. Three students are of Italian background but do not speak Italian at home. One student is of Chinese background, two have one of the parent of Croatian background, one is Aborigine and the rest of the class are of Anglo-Saxon origin. They all speak English at home. I did not discuss with my colleague the possibility to use this for my PSP investigation and did not record any of our discussion. Also, I did not discuss with my students or their parents the possibility that I would use their comments or evaluations. Later on I asked parents for permission to use their child’s work and most of them granted me that permission. For the purpose of my final statement about the whole experience (Investigation) I will consider gathering data and keeping a record during next semester, if I find time to do so.

FINDINGS I took over the class from my Italian language colleague and wanted to cause as little disruption to students’ previous learning style as possible, at this stage. Therefore I continued with the same type of weekly homework (as described above). I assumed that the students would challenge themselves by consulting a dictionary to find the meaning of the words which they wanted to use in their sentences. I also assumed that they would start writing increasingly complex sentences using new grammar structures introduced in class, and thus develop increasingly complex ideas (each at their own level). I expected that they would see this homework as an integral part of learning and that it would provide me with clear feedback of students’ progress. I was hoping that I would then be able to develop strategies in teaching them writing, in other words that it would support a developmental perspective on writing (which in my school is seen as a number one priority this year, following the ”First Steps”). I have learned that all students were more engaged in their second set of homework (sustained piece of writing rather than individual sentences). Excellent students performed at an even higher level, demonstrating their full potential, I believe. Students who were struggling at the beginning continued to write only short passages, but at least there was some cohesion in text. Students took some pride for their own work, which they demonstrated when reading their homework to other students in class. I confirmed to myself that the tasks need to be purposeful to students if we want to engage them and that they perform better when they are interested in performing it.

INTERPRETING THE INFORMATION The homework given to students provided me with enough information to competently discuss students’ achievement with my colleague taking into account that we follow the marking schemes provided at the Integrated Unit sheet and in reports. However, from my previous teaching experience in college where rubrics were provided for major tasks, and I found that very useful, I will try to encourage my colleagues to develop rubrics for major tasks, including homework in this context. Those rubrics were targeting each of the strands (speaking, writing and responding) with fairly clear distinction of what is expected for each level and grade. They were effective as two teachers working in the same moderation group had a common understanding of what was expected in each task and was not to hard to agree to which level the student demonstrated his/her achievement. I will think about what is included in the writing portfolio and: Include a “smiling face” image on each task for students’ own evaluation. Create an evaluation sheet to engage students in the process of their learning which will include questions: how they felt about responding to the tasks (e.g. because of content that they needed to cover or the language they needed to use), and what they feel was useful or would be useful for their own learning, for example; research sources of information to deliver a content, analyses of data collected, memorising a set of new words, revising some grammatical structure, planning the steps for the task, talking to someone about how to do the task, etc. as I would like to teach them to take control of their own learning and become independent learners.

EVALUATION I confirmed to myself that the tasks need to be purposeful to students if we want to engage them and that will be my target in next semester - developing tasks and rubrics which will help me to quickly establish student’s developmental stages. I am aware that the best teaching results come from a professional dialogue, therefore I will try to engage other colleagues in this project, but if they have other priorities, I will do it myself. I hope that I will have a chance to discuss my work with other teachers.

REFLECTION I did not volunteer to do this investigation, it was bad timing for me, as I had just started to work in a new school, where I had to learn so many new things. However, I am a teacher who often reflects on my own practice and likes to engage in dialogue with colleagues, therefore, once I had accepted to do the Investigation as a trainer for the PSP Stream C, I chose this Investigation as it looked the most urgent to deal with to improve students’ learning, and/or performance. I also thought that my findings from this Investigation would be a starting point for my professional dialogues with other teachers in school.