Raihania+-+Muritai

This is your space to introduce yourself and say what are your goals for using ICT effectively this year. At set points throughout the year, there is an expectation that you will update this page with information on how you're progressing. You might also consider the use of photos and other media to do this with. At the end of the year, we will be asking you to post a presentation to this space about your overall progress throughout this year. This could be easily achieved by making a presentation in Powerpoint/ Keynote and using web 2.0 tools to add it here.

Hi I'm Raihania Chadwick from Muritai School. A year 7-8 teacher.

I'm aiming to carry on using Wiki's and Blog's as a communication tool between home and school, stating the daily activities and work that occurs in the classroom.

I also would like to continue to integrate garageband, iMovie and other mac and pc software into my classroom programme.

My action research for the year will be integrated into our year 7-8 Literacy Target. It will involve the use of quality 'fat' reflective comments during mathematics and literacy lessons and whether the teaching of 'fat' reflective comments will transfer into the comments they place on our blog and wikis.

Here is a link to our [|learning log] and [|wiki] to see how we are doing.

How can a structured writing program around reflecting on learning (to publish to a learning log) help improve writing quality and accuracy and help provide support and information about learning for the children and the community.
 * Action Research**

The Senior School at Muritai have been focusing on accuracy in writing. To gather baseline data for writing for accuracy students were asked to produce a 5 minute written sample of work. This test was to enable us to assess a child’s fluency and accuracy when writing. Analysis and leveling of these samples, against the English Curriculum benchmarks indicated that a core group of students were working below the expected level for year 7 and 8 students. An extensive accuracy in writing programme has been created. My Action Research will be a component of this programme and provide reflection and professional development. I will use a wide range of ICT experiences within my classroom programme, however I will use the classroom learning log (blogspot) as the basis for my research.
 * Background Information**

=Action Research=

Find good models from other blogs and/or write a variety of learning log models Break class into groups of five based on writing assessment levels. The lowest ability group will be the sample group and will be the first group to go through this process.
 * Preparation**

Start on May 26th Five children from the class of a similar writing ability will write learning log posts for the blog from Monday to Thursday over a week. First group (weak writers) is the sample group for data collection. Whole class cycles through over 5 weeks. Repeat process first five weeks of term two.
 * Action Plan**

Over one week it would like this: __Monday morning__ As a class (with the data projector) or with the target group look at an example learning log post and assess it against rubric with teacher input. Perhaps have some deliberate errors that could be improved. Discuss impartiality when accessing entries. __Monday to Thursday__ Target group start to write a learning log entry either in books or onto their wiki pages (their choice) during silent reading time after lunch and are expected to have this finished for homework (lower homework workload) The children will meet as a group the following day (first thing) and assess the posts against a rubric. The post the children that is the highest rated against the rubric will be typed into the blog and saved as a draft. Raihania reviews the draft and copies and pastes the post into a document before editing as evidence of the quality and accuracy of the post. __Friday__ Raihania sits with the group of five and analyses their posts and the marking in their rubrics (have stuck in writing book?)

Take initial post writeup and last post write up of target children and compare for both accuracy and content (using rubric). Can you get feedback from any parents in the community about quality of reporting and usefulness of the information? Your own thoughts on the process and how you found it from a management standpoint. Interviews with the children involved about whether they thought this helped them to improve their writing. Numbers of children that use the learning log to support them with schoolwork.
 * Analysis Possibilities**

28/7/08 With so many things on it has been difficult having a consistent daily log but will be becoming much more consistent during the start of this term with the reestablishment of classroom routines. Here is an example of the changes tracked from a students blog post: