PART 1:
As part of my writing I tried out using some of the writing ideas that we gained from Friday’s writing PD with our in-school experts. Both these teachers are passionate about teaching writing and you can see that they enjoy teaching writing and want writing in our school to improve. We were given some scaffolding on what is needed for the children (aims and goals), a breakdown on the steps within a good writing lesson and we experienced a lesson from Gail Loane. During the session I could see how I could make this work for my class, especially giving the children the exemplar beforehand and unpacking this with them, getting them to notice and think and then write. The point they both made was around the use of writing and helping circles with a whole class approach.
I gave this a try. I provided the children with a description of a place/setting. We worked as a whole class (8 children were out of the class), They read the piece, I asked questions about their understanding of any tricky words, as a group we discovered the meanings, we looked at the language features such as wow words, words that sounded human (personification), and some of the surface features like colons and hyphens. The children highlighted these and we thought of different places that we could describe. I gave the children time to discuss this with a buddy and then we watched a YouTube clip on personification and then we tried the visualisation technique that we were shown on Friday. My ideas for success criteria were wow words, using personification and write sentences using full stops and capital letters. The children were then asked to write for ten minutes about the place they had described to their buddy.
As part of my CRT time, I watched another teacher work through this same lesson scaffold. Her class sat in a circle, she gave them an exemplar, as a class they discussed it. She make connections for the children with the text by using a piece of writing about the Cross Country, she also reminded them of the skills they had been using and could they find these in the exemplar. She reminded them of the purpose and what they need to have. She asked for them to dictate the visual success criteria, although she already had a copy already printed that she gave out after their sharing. She also asked for vocabulary ideas, which could help those struggling with spelling. She then set them off to write 5 minutes to plan, then 10 mins to write.
What did I learnt.
PART 2:
For my next session, I wanted to improve on and add to where I was and what I needed to bring to the lesson so that my children would get the idea I was trying to teach. I reviewed the Youtube clip once more, as I had loaded this into Google classroom some children had reviewed the clip themselves in their own time (flipped learning). I had also added a old Powerpoint that I had downloaded some years ago on figurative language and I know there was within this step by step lot of examples that my children would engage in.
The children sat in a circle and buddy talked to and created a sentence using personification together, only one sentence but the powerpoint had pictures and possible words that they could use. The children wrote one sentence then using the 'pop sticks' I chose random children to share their sentence
"The washing machine ate my clothes."
"My alarm clock screamed in my ear to wake me."
"The sun glared in my face as I rode down the hill on my bike."
All of these examples were written in a minute (I used a timer)and possibly lacked substance but the children were all very willing even those reluctant writers.
The next part of the slideshow was the writing task which discussed the place of a setting - which is where I wanted total my children in the previous lesson. The picture was of an old wooden galleon being tossed in the sea by the waves with vocabulary all around it. The children gasped and were in awe of the "pirate' ship. After watching my colleagues lesson, I decided to get the children to close their eyes and image a ship being tossed by the waves - I used the prompts from the slideshow but didn't share these with the children.
After the visualisation, the children told what features and visual icons they wanted to use for their story, for the success criteria. I encouraged the children to share with a partner and gave them 3 mins to plan their ideas, using a brainstorm. I had also write words that they wanted to have on the whiteboard.
What did I learnt.
As part of my writing I tried out using some of the writing ideas that we gained from Friday’s writing PD with our in-school experts. Both these teachers are passionate about teaching writing and you can see that they enjoy teaching writing and want writing in our school to improve. We were given some scaffolding on what is needed for the children (aims and goals), a breakdown on the steps within a good writing lesson and we experienced a lesson from Gail Loane. During the session I could see how I could make this work for my class, especially giving the children the exemplar beforehand and unpacking this with them, getting them to notice and think and then write. The point they both made was around the use of writing and helping circles with a whole class approach.
I gave this a try. I provided the children with a description of a place/setting. We worked as a whole class (8 children were out of the class), They read the piece, I asked questions about their understanding of any tricky words, as a group we discovered the meanings, we looked at the language features such as wow words, words that sounded human (personification), and some of the surface features like colons and hyphens. The children highlighted these and we thought of different places that we could describe. I gave the children time to discuss this with a buddy and then we watched a YouTube clip on personification and then we tried the visualisation technique that we were shown on Friday. My ideas for success criteria were wow words, using personification and write sentences using full stops and capital letters. The children were then asked to write for ten minutes about the place they had described to their buddy.
As part of my CRT time, I watched another teacher work through this same lesson scaffold. Her class sat in a circle, she gave them an exemplar, as a class they discussed it. She make connections for the children with the text by using a piece of writing about the Cross Country, she also reminded them of the skills they had been using and could they find these in the exemplar. She reminded them of the purpose and what they need to have. She asked for them to dictate the visual success criteria, although she already had a copy already printed that she gave out after their sharing. She also asked for vocabulary ideas, which could help those struggling with spelling. She then set them off to write 5 minutes to plan, then 10 mins to write.
What did I learnt.
- I need to explicitly teach the skill first so the children can practise this without creating a piece of writing out of the blue
- I need to make closer connections to their lives
- I need to draw the success criteria and use a trophy word as I have done for quick writes.
- It will take time.
Where to next?
- Bring more ideas to the writing circle
- Encourage the children to help each other in the buddy chat
- Give more examples.
What am I uneasy about?
- That my passion for writing isn’t there
- I myself struggle with content and contexts that engage me as a writer, how do I get over this so that my children can fly in writing as well?
For my next session, I wanted to improve on and add to where I was and what I needed to bring to the lesson so that my children would get the idea I was trying to teach. I reviewed the Youtube clip once more, as I had loaded this into Google classroom some children had reviewed the clip themselves in their own time (flipped learning). I had also added a old Powerpoint that I had downloaded some years ago on figurative language and I know there was within this step by step lot of examples that my children would engage in.
The children sat in a circle and buddy talked to and created a sentence using personification together, only one sentence but the powerpoint had pictures and possible words that they could use. The children wrote one sentence then using the 'pop sticks' I chose random children to share their sentence
"The washing machine ate my clothes."
"My alarm clock screamed in my ear to wake me."
"The sun glared in my face as I rode down the hill on my bike."
All of these examples were written in a minute (I used a timer)and possibly lacked substance but the children were all very willing even those reluctant writers.
The next part of the slideshow was the writing task which discussed the place of a setting - which is where I wanted total my children in the previous lesson. The picture was of an old wooden galleon being tossed in the sea by the waves with vocabulary all around it. The children gasped and were in awe of the "pirate' ship. After watching my colleagues lesson, I decided to get the children to close their eyes and image a ship being tossed by the waves - I used the prompts from the slideshow but didn't share these with the children.
After the visualisation, the children told what features and visual icons they wanted to use for their story, for the success criteria. I encouraged the children to share with a partner and gave them 3 mins to plan their ideas, using a brainstorm. I had also write words that they wanted to have on the whiteboard.
I worked with my boys who were recording their stories using Google docs, and I used the visual icons on their plan before they wrote.
Using the timer, the children then wrote for 10mins and the children were very engaged, they knew what to write, they wanted to write and the scaffolding supported them to write. After the timer went off, children were encouraged to finish their last sentence and using the 'pop sticks', certain children were able to share the sentence that used either/or 2A sentence, personification, action words and the trophy word.
Next we need to work on improving their writing and being more concise and not to waffle on.
What did I learnt.
- That the children need to have something that they can make connections to
- I need to encourage the planning stage and the brainstorm bubble.
- Teach the skills first then work on the NOTICE/THINK of the exemplar
- Only look for 1 or 2 features within the exemplar
Where to next?
- Find images, stories, music that they can connect to.
- Use the visual icons when unpacking the features in the exemplar
- Use an exemplar that builds on what they know and add one new idea.
What am I uneasy about?
- The speed that it takes for less able writers to actually write more than one sentence even though they were very happy about their efforts.
- That the children are still working on knowing where to next.
Part 3 - Late August
Writing, this week was all about using 5 senses to show the reader not tell them what was happening. Hide and Seek was an exemplar given to the children to discover what good writers do to create picture in the reader’s mind. One child was able to ‘get’ this.
Hidden
I see nothing but darkness.
The grass crumples under my feet.
The air is damp.
I can hear the wind whistling.
I have been hiding for 10 minutes.
“Are they coming?” I wonder.
I stumble.
The taste of grass fills my mouth.
They’re coming, I hold my breath.
I feel the the wet grass under my feet.
Phew, they leave.
I hear the hedge moving.
I wonder what time it is?
A torch flashes in my eye.
They’re here!
I duck as they search.
They found me!
The sound of whispering fills my ear;
I freeze.
It’s all over!
I see nothing but darkness.
The grass crumples under my feet.
The air is damp.
I can hear the wind whistling.
I have been hiding for 10 minutes.
“Are they coming?” I wonder.
I stumble.
The taste of grass fills my mouth.
They’re coming, I hold my breath.
I feel the the wet grass under my feet.
Phew, they leave.
I hear the hedge moving.
I wonder what time it is?
A torch flashes in my eye.
They’re here!
I duck as they search.
They found me!
The sound of whispering fills my ear;
I freeze.
It’s all over!
Year 4 Child
There were a few others who were successful but all in all, not what I was hoping for. To assist the children with this more I ran a workshop where we worked on creating sentences that showed the audience such as, “His eyes grew wide as he heard the teacher coming towards the class.” The children worked really well on this and there were many fantastic sentences to show how the character was acting.
My next step was to incorporate the learning from the exemplar and the workshop and for the children to write a piece with more independence. We use a picture prompt for 365 Pobble called ‘Under the Bed’, the children had some brilliant ideas, there were even applications of AAAWWUBBIS and creative dialogue but not ‘Show not Tell’. Thursday was back to the drawing board, we worked together on a shared piece to write 2 paragraphs on what was under the bed. The children were amazing how easy it was to use good describing language, use what they could see, feel, hear and even smell to create a picture in the reader’s mind. So it will be more writing to see if we can do this ‘Show not Tell’.
After reading Gail Loane - I've got something to say - the part on guiding the children on writing character descriptions, she discusses the bit by bit approach of using a smaller part of the exemplar and teasing it out so the children are working in bite size pieces. These parts are physical description, actions revealing personality and behaviour, monologue and dialogue and how the character affects others. I think this will work for my slower writers as they can see that it will come together as one piece at the end.
What did I learn?
- Bite sized chunks will help with engagement
- There needs to be a connection for all
- Loads of practice on one topic will help cement the learning
Where to next?
- Keep working on using exemplars - good examples of good writing
- Make the lessons sharp and snappy
- Encourage them to help each other
- Use Success criteria in the form of visual check list.
- Use the 5 senses to achieve SHOW NOT TELL
What am I uneasy about?
- The lack of enthusiasm - do the topics work for all
- Is this taking too long to 'get it'?
Refererences
Loane, G., & Muir, S. A. (2010). I've got something to say: leading young writers to authorship. Aries Publishing Company.
