Gwenna

16 June, 2012

My inquiry is about promoting the motivation of one of the children in one of my ESOL groups. This child avoids reading, writing and art work at all costs but plans to be a computer programmer when he grows up. He came to our school this year from a kura kaupapa and has been included in the ESOL group to raise his reading and writing skills in English.

Working on the theory that technology and working with others is motivating, I discussed it with my school’s ICT lead teacher and he put me on to Scratch. [] Scratch is a simple, if time consuming, piece of software that is about programming. One of my other students has used it before and the boys are working together to produce a movie for the Digi-Awards.

I have read two conflicting articles on using ICT to motivate students. The first, //Kids speak out on student engagement// (Heather Wolpert-Gawron, 2012) encourages working with their peers, working with technology, connecting to the real world, etc. The second, //Why Twitter and Facebook are not good instructional tools// (Paul Barnwell, 2012) argues that technology still needs to be used meaningfully and requires strong teaching and purpose behind it. Barnwell suggests that we fall under the spell of new technologies and risk them being gimmicks rather than useful tools.

Although the child is beginning to get interested in the task he has been given, he is still reluctant to do any of the writing and tries to force his buddy in to doing the work for him. As I am also the Reading Recovery teacher of the school I have decided this child needs a burst of solid 1-1 teaching to give him the confidence and skills to be able to tackle tasks. Although this goes against the theory of ICT motivating children to do tasks, I feel that it is a combination of both solid teaching and motivating tasks that will best meet this child’s needs.

The Observation Survey showed up a number of letter confusions, letter order difficulties and lack of noticing errors. They are all markers for dyslexia, although they could simply be a lack of being taught these skills. Time will tell. The child did well at his previous school but has struggled at this one, as there has been so much for him to learn. He is also on the Lexia programme, where he is working on Level 4. He is getting a great deal of support in the school but still avoids work. He assures me that it is because he is lazy and not that he is scared of making mistakes, which suggests the direct opposite is true.

I have spoken with colleagues from other institutions about helping this child. They suggest lots of talk, lots of photos to write about, using Photoshop and using colouring books. The colouring books will help him learn how to form lines to make pictures as he will draw over top of the lines rather than colour them in. This should help him gain skills and confidence in art work. By taking photos, we will be able to write about things he knows about.. By processing them through Photoshop, he will be able to make beautiful things without fear of making mistakes but will also come to a point of frustration where he will ask, “How can I make this better?” By becoming engaged in hypothesis children will be more motivated.

Another suggestion from one of my colleagues was that, if he is a visual learner, such as the survey suggests, then I need to have him learn the shapes of the words rather than relying on letter/sound matches.

My ICT buddy pointed out the need to include a lot of oral work with the child to meet his cultural needs, as he would have experienced a lot of this in his previous school. When choosing software and books I will need to remember this.

At this point in my inquiry I have formed the hypothesis that the best way to meet this child’s needs is not to expect the motivation of ICT to kick start his reading and writing but rather that strong 1-1 teaching to quickly improve his literacy skills will then allow him to access motivating software that will have him then wanting to switch on to learning.

More to follow.

28 August, 2012

The child has had a lot of support from a number of people. His class teacher continues to work with him, another teacher has him using Lexia http://www.lexialearning.co.nz/ and I have continued to work with him on his reading, writing, art and skills of interacting with his peers.

My ICT buddy told me today that the Kura Kaupapa would have had the tuakana-teina model working, which is why the child is so good at tutoring and supporting younger children. She recommends I use this to encourage his learning as much as possible. When he works with younger children he loses all nervousness and becomes a confident reader and writer. He monitors and corrects the work of his younger buddy in a gentle way and shows no stress, compared to when he is asked to read aloud or write. My buddy suggests I extend this by using Maaori myths and legends within my ESOL group so he can be the expert and support the others. Interestingly, when working with a peer instead of a younger child, his behaviour tends to be more puppy-ish and I am having to deal with this strongly. It was only today that the child really knuckled down willingly for the first time. He brought his homework to class and provided a writing sample to proove to a group-mate that he did it and not his mum; he willingly read his work out to the group and he sensibly got to work with his buddy and rewrote his Scratch script so it is more audience friendly for the Digi-awards.

My latest reading is //Exploring the RE-creation of a CALL innovation// by R Debski (2000). This paper can be summed up in that although computer assisted learning can produce a lot of positive affects such as high interest and motivation, sometimes there is the negative affect where on person will sit back and let others do all the work. I have seen this with the child where he will argue about the project but won't contribute effectively to it. Today, on the other hand, he took the pen and organised the storyboard. He intitiated the work. He worked in collaboration with his buddy instead of as his foil. I can't say that this is soley the result of the use of ICT in the programme, but rather through a combination of good teaching, good buddy, interesting task and his class teacher organising a parent interview with his mother.

If we can maintain the momentum for the rest of the year, he will be ina good place when he heads off to intermediate in 2013.