The piece that I decided to use from the PD pack from Verity
was called ‘Hide and Seek by Vernon Scannell,’ I wrote up the lesson plan again
using the editable planner. I also referred to the lesson plan from Gail Loane’s
–“I’ve got something to say’ and wrote my own plan. I had use this text with a
previous class and had experienced success.
The children were given the text, we read it together,
cleared any roadblocks but it was also a day for a fire drill so we didn’t get
to analysing the piece as deeply as I would have liked. So I amended the plan
to include a piece of text from a child who wrote with success last year. I
also labelled this copy with her name and her year level.
So our next try, the children really engaged with the text
and enjoyed sharing what they noticed – activated nouns, verbs to create a
picture in the reader’s mind, the use of personification and the deliberate
choice of vocabulary.
I used a powerpoint presentation to help the children to
understand how to write personification and the children were encouraged to
write a sentence to practice using this writing device. The children enjoyed
writing to describe the picture of the sailing ship in a storm. They then
shared with the class their success and how this could be used in their writing.
I chose to finish the lesson here and start again the next day.
Continuing on from the previous lesson, the children reread
the text written by a Year 4 child. I encouraged the children to share a time
when they had played hide and seek. Again they used the THINK-PAIR-SHARE
technique, turn in and knees touching, the timer ran for 2 minutes for each
person. The next part was to use the visualisation to help the children capture
that experience like a mini movie in their heads.
Before the children wrote their memoir poem about Hide and
Seek, as a class, we co-constructed the success criteria – using dialogue,
using senses to describe, try personification and use precision in their word choice.
The children were then encouraged to write. I worked with my struggling writers
and wandered the class to check in to see how the others were going. To finish
the lesson, the children gathered in the “Helping Circle”, I used the sticks again
to randomise the 5 children who would share with the others.
The writing was done over a couple of days and all in all
the writing shows how far they have come. I gave the children time during
reading to publish their writing and I added it to their Seesaw portfolio. Below is one of my successes, a Year 4 boy who is a reluctant writer, what I am most pleased about is his sincerity and personal voice.
SO WHAT?
Having a fire drill at the beginning of the lesson did not
help to motivate the children to engage with the text from Vernon Scannell. It
was lucky I remembered the success from the previous year and asked the child
in question to share it with me once more. I know that it if the piece is
written by a child of similar age, the children in my class are more than
likely to connect with the text.
The personification practice using the powerpoint
presentation was a great way to break up the lesson and gave the class an
opportunity to write quickly and share their ideas. For my visual learners, I
have also added this powerpoint presentation to a Google classroom where they
were able to access the information over and over again.
By using a timer on my screen, the children were able to
share their experience for the same amount of time and add detail that they may
not have though about earlier. The children have become better at visualising –
I think it has helped them by using the prompts, “run the mini movie in your
head so you know what to write about.”
The children’s ability to record their ideas has developed
so much this year and I believe this is down to the deliberate acts I am making
to help them connect with the text and their own bank of knowledge to do with
writing. Now creating success criteria with them often comes from what they
notice during our helping circle time and as well as what I see when marking
their writing.
NOW WHAT?
My next challenge is to get the children to be able to write
across the curriculum and not just using memoirs and descriptions. Also I need to
roam more around the class as I feel that some children are using the exemplar text to
imitate too much and not to innovate on it.
How can I build on what they children know about writing to
help them realise that we write all the time to record our ideas and that when
master these skills we have the ability to transfer them into any writing genre.
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
- William
Butler Yeats
References
Loane, G., & Muir, S. A. (2010). I've got something to say: leading young writers to authorship. Aries Publishing Company.
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