COLLABORATION -What does the evidence tell us about what works?

Contributing to the collaborative endeavour 

What does the evidence tell us about what works?
Except for the Education Review Office

For a Community of Learning | Kähui Ako to develop and function effectively the participants need to shift both their thinking and practice.

• For some, the biggest challenge is to enlarge the focus to include not only the students in their own school but also the students in all the other schools. (In a Special Education setting, we know that this will be very challenging)
• Being part of a Community of Learning | Kähui Ako means accepting collective responsibility for equity and excellence across all the schools in the community. 
• Collective responsibility positions leadership differently. 
• Leading improvement across a range of diverse contexts can require different expertise and different ways of working. 
• Members of a community need to be clear about the purpose of leadership roles and the responsibilities they entail. 
• Effective leadership is vital if the joint work that goes into a Community of Learning | Kähui Ako is to contribute to collective outcomes. 
• Equitable allocation of resources, especially time and expertise, is essential for enabling a community to function in ways that grow capability and capacity. 
• To contribute to and benefit from a Community of Learning | Kähui Ako, each participating organisation needs to be able to provide robust analysis and interpretation of their outcomes data along with priorities for improvement. 
• Openness to learning and a willingness to share information and evidence is important conditions for collaborative inquiry that leads to improved professional practice and enhanced student outcomes.

Building collective capacity for improvement The framework below identifies what the evidence suggests is important in the development of collective capacity for improvement. This framework is a starting point for further developing the New Zealand evidence base. The sections that follow describe the components of the framework and include examples of effective practice.

Collaborative inquiry and working that challenges thinking and practice 

• In a Community of Learning | Kähui Ako, the focus of collaboration is on improving outcomes for students through changes in instructional practice. 
• Collaboration involves working together on shared challenges that have been identified through the use of evidence. 
• Effective collaboration engages participants in ongoing cycles of inquiry: 

1.  identifying what is going on for students in relation to valued outcomes 
2.  using credible evidence, identifying a problem of practice that will stretch existing knowledge and capacity but also be manageable 
3.  designing, trying out and testing changes in practice that are aimed at solving the identified problem 
4.  accumulating evidence of impact, refining or discarding ideas based on evidence of their effectiveness, embedding changes that prove to be effective into daily practice 
5.  identifying the next student-related challenge.

• Effective collaboration is characterised by dense, frequent sharing of knowledge among participants, with the aim of addressing the identified challenges. 
• They also connect outwards, to gain new knowledge that will complement what they already know and to maintain connections with, and actively participate in, larger networks.
• Educators experience increased efficacy and agency when leaders provide opportunities and support for engaging in collaborative inquiry.

Collaborative Practice in Special Education

Sommerville is in the process of building a new school. As a school-wide goal, the principal and staff would like to look closely at collaborative practice to improve learner outcomes.

For my Inquiry, I would like to focus on Collaboration and Co-teaching.

Collaboration is the process of working together to achieve a common goal. In teaching,
the common goal is always improved learner outcomes. Teacher collaboration involves:

1. Debating, planning, and problem-solving together
2. Inquiring together, using evidence and research to guide decision-making
3.Capitalising on each other’s strengths and working with each other’s weaknesses
4. Actively contributing to a respectful and supportive learning environment.

Active collaboration is particularly important for creating a growth-based learning environment and
for increasing student learning progress. Research shows that teachers who work together and
learn from each other are more successful in improving student outcomes than those who work alone.

I am in a position where I network with both staff and students from a mainstream setting and also
those with special needs. I am eager to inquire into the practice of staff at Sommerville base,
satellite classes, and mainstream schools as well as special schools across Auckland.
I work closely with staff from all special schools and would love to investigate their practices and
see what works well and what we would like to take from their setting.

Burst and Bubbles

 

Burst and bubbles presentation

All of the students I work with have Neurodevelopmental
disorders, some of whom have complex communication
needs and limited experiences of generating language, 

My inquiry was to  focus on How can we use the Key
Competencies to help motivate students with complex
needs and see a shift in their writing. 

Writing presents many challenges to my students with
complex needs. To develop writing skills they need to learn
to generate an idea, to think about language, think about the
words, spelling and controlling their writing tool ,etc. and
eventually students need to be able to do all of these, within
the one task, to become writers.  

At Sommerville we have been fortunate enough to have
Dr Sally Clendon take professional development over the last
few years. As a result of Sally Clendon's guidance as well as
strong routines and behavior support, I was able to implement a
range of strategies and have noticed a difference in my student’s
writing skills. 

All my students are ORS funded and are working within level one

of the curriculum.

(If I used the traditional NZ  writing assessments they would be well
below their curriculum level for writing)

 

To assess my students, I  used the developmental writing scale

for beginner writers developed (Sturm, cali, Nelson and

Staskowski, 2012) adapted by Jane Farrall to see how my

students progressed.

 

 The scale has 14 levels and overall gives us information about

how to help a student move to the next level.

I used three different interventions for my students and was able
to see an overall improvement in their writing

One of the interventions was the use positive behaviour support

Due to writing being so complex, Motivating my students to write was
very challenging. I found that beginning a task and getting students to
stay focused is an ongoing issue. Students require lots of support
and motivation to just get started. I used a range of visuals.
All my students responded well to the FIRST-THEN visual Eg,
First writing -then choosing, This strategy worked well and
helped motivate them, as they knew they would get a reward as
soon as they completed their writing

Another intervention was-  Writing for real reasons

My students are not motivated to write, they need to know why they
must write, the purpose of writing and how is it going to help them.
(Eg talking about their weekend)

After looking at the research by Dr Sally Clendon, I encouraged
whanau to be involved. Each week they sent in a range of photos
from the weekend. These were events that the student could relate to,
they have had the experience and were more eager to share. 

It is authentic and students are more motivated. 

I noticed that the more involvement we had from whanua, the better
the outcomes.

For those whanua that were not involved we used Photos from daily
school activities.

The other intervention that was really useful, was 

Colourful semantics

The approach is used in stages and helps children develop
language and vocabulary in addition to grammatical structure.

Colourful semantics is an approach created by Alison Bryan. It is
aimed at helping children to develop their grammar but it is rooted in
the meaning of words (semantics).

It encourages students to use wider vocabulary and make longer
sentences

By using these three different interventions with my students I
could see the difference in their writing. They were wanting to
write more and were more motivated.

Students needed explicit teaching, the use of a device for writing
was not a motivator.

Out of my six target students Two students moved up three level,
Two moved up two levels and two moved up one level.

For the students and their whanau this was massive as
previously most of them made no attempt to write at all.

Summary evidence of key shifts

Evaluation of student shifts

Just to recap

The target group of students I am focused on, are at all different levels. They have many different challenges that I considered. I will used the developmental writing scale for beginner writers developed (Sturm, cali, Nelson and Staskowski, 2012) adapted by Jane Farrall (see previous blog post) to see how my students progressed.

Meet my target students  

• Student 1 (DH) - Is six years old and has Down Syndrome. He has also been diagnosed with moderate ASD, Global developmental delay, conductive hearing loss, hearing aid in both ears, Hypermetropia-wears glasses and dysphasia. Student1 is in a Year one class and has significant language delays.  He is mostly non verbal, in a one on one sessions he may share an experience about his weekend. He is not motivated to write due to his delayed language and  poor fine motor skills. He is just beginning to learn how to use a device. 

• Student 2 (SH) - Is eight years old. He also has Down Syndrome and moderate ASD. He has hearing loss in one ear, he has one hearing aid and wear glasses. He is in a Year 4 class and has significant language delays. He will sometimes attempt to write a recount about his weekend. He requires lots of prompting and motivation to get started with his writing. A reward system and a range of targeted resources is needed in order for him to complete a writing task. His lacks of motivation is due to his poor fine motor control and his language delays.

• Student 3 (RY)- Is eight years old and he has Autism, English is second language and he has Global developmental delays. He is in a Year four class. He has significant language delays and is not motivated to write. With support and targeted resources he will attempt a simple sentence about an experience he had. He still misses out the little words and always starts his sentence with 'His name'. He is confident on a device, but due to language delays, he needs constant reassurance before he can record a word.

• Student 4 (EP)- Is 11 years old and has Down Syndrome, Global developmental delay, conductive hearing loss,  and dysphasia. She has significant language delays and is in a Year six class. She needs lots of  motivated to write and she will only write if she had an experience. Due to her poor motor control and language delays, she finds writing difficult. She is only starting to learn how to write on a device.

• Student 5 (LL)- Is in a year eight class and has intellectual disability. She has extremely low adaptive functioning, serious Receptive and Expressive Language disorder and probable Neurological Disorder. Due to poor motor control and language delays, she finds writing difficult and is not motivated to write. She is aware of the fact the she is working at a much lower level than her peers. Even though she is very confident on a device, she requires a range of prompts and supports in order to construct a simple sentence.

My students struggle to focus for extended periods of time. They are not very motivated to write and require lots of motivation to get started and stay on task. 

Kindly click on the title link below to view my summary

Click here- Evaluation of interventions

Expanding sentences

Due to the complex needs of the students I work with, mastering a skill takes longer than other neuro typical students. We have been working on forming simple sentences for most of the year. It is great to see that the students are finally beginning to achieve this.
This student is able to form simple sentence and I am now working on expanding his sentence by adding adjectives . This is some of the work he produced. He felt very proud of his work.

Using Visual supports for writing

Last Friday we held a workshop here at Sommerville and invited SENCO's teacher's and teacher aides to participate.  My colleague Donna and I presented on teaching reading and writing to Children with Special Educational needs. This was well received by all who attended.

As part of my presentation I reiterated to importance of using visuals with our students.  I also demonstrated  how to use Colourful Semantics and showed the progress students have made using this programme. In my previous blog posts, I shared more information on Colourful Semantics, so please have a look.

In this post, I would like to share a WOW moment we had with one of my students who would not engage in writing. We have been using 'Who, doing what , where". Here are some visuals that we used.

This student , who has very complex needs, was not engaging is any form of writing, but after many attempts at using 'Draw and talk', as explained in my previous blogs and engaging the student with real experiences, the students attempted to write ' I want to go to the beach hotel". This was a huge moment for the student and celebrated by all.

He had gone on holiday and we used the 'real life experience' to encourage him to write about his holiday. He was not motivated to write independently, so we used the photos from his holiday and asked him what was happening in each photo. We also used , 'Who, doing what" This is what he said. I added it to clicker sentences and the student was able to put the sentence in the correct order. He felt really proud of his work and wanted to share it with his teachers and family.

Draw and talk

Draw and Talk

Uses drawing to ‘Sketching’ enhances the meaning as children draw.

Drawing is a complex sensory motor action requiring the selection, organisation and communication of visual material.

Drawing establishes a relationship between the child and the world.

‘My drawing is about______, because______’

This student has Down Syndrome and significant language delays. He is at the drawing stage, sometimes he attempts to write individual letters. Currently he is not motivated to use a device. 

He has some amazing ideas and even though his language is very delayed, he uses a combination of NZ sign language  and speech to convey his message. in the pictures below, the class was asked to create an invention. He decided to invent a self cleaning food bowl for his cat. He wanted to call it 'Doolalee machine'. He did all the designing and I recorded what he said. Due to the complexities of writing, this student wouldn't attempt it. He has the ideas.....by using draw and talk, the adult is able to record what he say.

Thereafter he made his invention. He often requires lots of motivation to get started with his writing, but because this was of interest, he got started immediately with the drawing. I wrote what he said. he was able to then make the invention. He was so excited to show everyone what he drew and made.

Real reasons for writing

Student's work

This student is also more motivated to write when he has had an experience. He needs to know why he is writing, in this case it is to share his holiday experience. 

During the holidays he visited the sky tower. Using visual supports this is what he wrote.

After explicit teaching of sentence construction, he is able to form a simple sentence. He is also adding more information to his writing.
More importantly, he is wants to share his writing with others at school and his whanau.
Beginning a task and staying focused is an ongoing issue. He requires lots of support and motivation to get started. He has a reward system in place to help him stay focused. 

Even though he responds well to this system most times, we had a few incidents regarding this students behavior. He finds it difficult to manage himself. We have used a range of social scripts to help him make good choices. Recently he hurt another student, We used this opportunity to write a letter to the people involved also showing him real reasons for writing.