WHAT?
Today I needed 5 children who had been away for the 'Changing Landscapes" lesson to catch up on learning they had missed. The children in the group were of mixed abilities and a mix of Year 3 and 4 s, girls and boys.
I began the lesson going through the exemplar, getting the children to analysis the language devices the author had used, activating the nouns and the precise vocabulary chosen to compare and then I asked the group to clarify. "Do willows weep?" There was a loud resounding no, I dug deeper, "Why has the author used these ideas?" The children said that it helped put a picture in your head about how the author wants us to feel about the pukeko leaving his home.
My next idea was to create a list of what people do that was in the poem. The group gave me all the correct ideas - whisper, weep, cry, hide. I gave a name to this technique - personification. One child said, "That word has person in it!" Then we as a group wrote all the names of things found in the wetlands. Because this has been our topic for inquiry, the list grew quickly. I then asked the children to give me a sentence using one of the nouns and make it do some a person does to create a picture of how unhealthy the wetland in Waitawa bush is.
I scribed their idea for the sentence directly onto the table we were working at. The children wrote the sentence into their books. As we wrote I checked off the nouns we used and I wrote less and less of a whole sentence. For the last sentence, the children used the last words and wrote their own sentence activating the nouns and chose words to say exactly what they meant.
SO WHAT?
By creating the list of nouns and checking them off as the children their sentences, it was a simple plan that ensured the children were covering what was needed. The children responded well to the scaffolding of me writing the sentence starter. Although by the end of the lesson, the children had picked up on using different sentence starters and were prompting each other to do so.
The type of sentences were mostly complex as the children used conjunctions to write the sentence they had verbalise together. The sentences, this group used more quality verbs to personify and compare what the wetland was like - even though this group didn't visit our wetland, I used prompts of what would you see in an unhealthy wetland.
NOW WHAT?
I need to be more deliberate in the way I scaffold for the children the word banks. It will help my less abled writers to plan and track where they are up to. When the children are writing I need to rove more to ensure that all the children are getting my help and my enthusiasm for their efforts.
I am looking forward to my next lesson which is another type of poem that builds on activating nouns, choosing precise verbs to say exactly what the nouns is doing, and adds onto where and when.
Today I needed 5 children who had been away for the 'Changing Landscapes" lesson to catch up on learning they had missed. The children in the group were of mixed abilities and a mix of Year 3 and 4 s, girls and boys.
I began the lesson going through the exemplar, getting the children to analysis the language devices the author had used, activating the nouns and the precise vocabulary chosen to compare and then I asked the group to clarify. "Do willows weep?" There was a loud resounding no, I dug deeper, "Why has the author used these ideas?" The children said that it helped put a picture in your head about how the author wants us to feel about the pukeko leaving his home.
My next idea was to create a list of what people do that was in the poem. The group gave me all the correct ideas - whisper, weep, cry, hide. I gave a name to this technique - personification. One child said, "That word has person in it!" Then we as a group wrote all the names of things found in the wetlands. Because this has been our topic for inquiry, the list grew quickly. I then asked the children to give me a sentence using one of the nouns and make it do some a person does to create a picture of how unhealthy the wetland in Waitawa bush is.
I scribed their idea for the sentence directly onto the table we were working at. The children wrote the sentence into their books. As we wrote I checked off the nouns we used and I wrote less and less of a whole sentence. For the last sentence, the children used the last words and wrote their own sentence activating the nouns and chose words to say exactly what they meant.
SO WHAT?
By creating the list of nouns and checking them off as the children their sentences, it was a simple plan that ensured the children were covering what was needed. The children responded well to the scaffolding of me writing the sentence starter. Although by the end of the lesson, the children had picked up on using different sentence starters and were prompting each other to do so.
The type of sentences were mostly complex as the children used conjunctions to write the sentence they had verbalise together. The sentences, this group used more quality verbs to personify and compare what the wetland was like - even though this group didn't visit our wetland, I used prompts of what would you see in an unhealthy wetland.
NOW WHAT?
I need to be more deliberate in the way I scaffold for the children the word banks. It will help my less abled writers to plan and track where they are up to. When the children are writing I need to rove more to ensure that all the children are getting my help and my enthusiasm for their efforts.
I am looking forward to my next lesson which is another type of poem that builds on activating nouns, choosing precise verbs to say exactly what the nouns is doing, and adds onto where and when.
“You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” – F. Scott Fitzgeral
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