BP1 : Areas where my Inquiry will make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals

by - 18:51

Collaborate with your school’s leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals.

My target group of learners for my Inquiry 2021 will be my Year 12 NCEA Level 2 class. This group of learners were my target group from my 2020 Inquiry.


The area that I feel my Inquiry will make a powerful contribution is in Literacy.  Literacy and Numeracy are part of the School Goals and Technology Department Goals for 2021.


School Goal 2 Literacy and Numeracy

By the end of Year 10, 80% of students will be reading at or above the expected level


By the end of Year 10, 70% of students are writing at or above the expected Curriculum Level.


By the end of Year 10 70% of students are achieving in Mathematics at or above the expected Curriculum Level.


That 90% of Year 11 students will achieve NCEA Literacy.


That 90% of Year 11 students will achieve NCEA Numeracy.



Department Goal 2 Literacy and Numeracy

Background - To develop an ‘Explanation Writing’ display poster.


Next Steps


As a department, the next steps is that we review the process, discuss the feedback and comments, and discuss what we would like to retain, adapt, change or remove, in order for this approach to be effective, and for literacy skills to improve for Technology students.


  1. What is the most effective way of utilising the Explanation Writing posters, with Technology students throughout the year?


  1. What is the most effective way of communicating shifts in achievement of Technology students, that reflects the use and application of the Explanation Writing posters and learning process?




I consulted with Marc Milford, Literacy Expert and Extraordinaire, as well as Karen Ferguson, fellow CoL, Techie and whose previous Inquiries have had a Literacy focus, about their thoughts around how my inquiry would make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals.

Marc has been asking for Year 11 assessment tasks to critique, to help align current student writing at Tamaki College with NCEA Level 1 exemplars online.  Having previously provided me with support around literacy for my own practice, as well as the Technology Department, Marc is very keen to see my 2021 Inquiry continue along the Literacy focus, in alignment with both the School and Department Literacy Goals.  Marc is also keen to continue supporting me with my inquiry this year, which I believe will be instrumental in gaining critical feedback from somebody who is an expert in this field.

As the original developer of the Explanation Writing Exemplar, which is contributing towards my Inquiry focus this year, it was important that I spoke with Karen and gained her insight and feedback into my inquiry ideas around literacy.  Through our discussion, Karen could see how the ideas I was floating around, could offer the learners steps of support for literacy, by chunking down bigger concepts into smaller ones that learners could get their heads around.  It also helps that Karen's approach in many literacy learning activities, often start from the Unistructural (Yellow) section of the SOLO Taxonomy poster, and the activities staircase up from there.  Karen shared me a folder of learning resources that she has experimented with, to demonstrate various approaches with her learners.  

Although I understood that Literacy is a current and relevant area for Inquiry in terms of supporting student learning, it has helped to talk to others about their perspective, knowledge and experience working on literacy as well.









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