WHAT?
As part of our teaching this year, we have been asked to
make science a priority in our learning programme and ensure that the children
are experiencing change this term, in a range of contexts. I had been sharing
egg experiments with the class and my next experiment using an egg, was to
demonstrate density and help explain the preceding density experiment. So as
part of that learning, I decided that I would challenge the children and myself
to write up our experiments.
Again I used the planning template provided from Verity. I
used the egg experiment as my exemplar and showed how the experiment was set
out and what the structure was. I lead the children to notice the setting out,
sub headings and headings, diagram with labels and we highlighted the important
information.
When given the exemplar, the children were quick to notice
that the piece was informative and was giving instructions. As a class, we
again watched the egg experiment on youtube to confirm the information and
explanation within the exemplar. At this time I used our own photographs from
our experiment to help engage the children in what we were going to write
about.
I told the children that were writing up the second
experiment we did on liquid density, I again used youtube to demonstrate the
liquid density experiment. The children as a class, created a word bank of the
scientific words, labels and any other words that they deemed important.
I then encouraged the children to close their eyes and play
the movie as I read from my science experiment notes about what we did. I had
recorded the explanation on liquid density on my writing plan for reference
purposes. The success criteria was about using headings, technical language,
using a diagram and making sure that ‘good’ sentence construction was present. The
children wanted to work through writing up the experiment bit by bit and they
were all contributing to the structure of the writing.
I used the whiteboard and a writing workshop, stopping the
others with reminders on what to remember such as starting with action verbs
for each step, using labels on our diagrams and the actually setting out of
their writing.
SO WHAT?
The children were successful in writing up the experiment
and some were very proud of their diagrams and their use of numbered steps.
Most of the class was able to do this within the hour lesson, those who
struggled generally hadn’t joined in the writing workshop, and had been
distracted by each other. The technical language caused a few difficulties.
What I noticed was a reluctance to take a risk from my more
capable writers, as they were crowding the writing workshop. Those who needed help, needed encouragement
to be working as part of the class. My less able writers are always first in
the writing workshop, so I know where they are at, all the time.
NOW WHAT?
I need to build up the resiliency of those children I know
can write successfully so that they will take more risks with their writing. I
also need to be more aware of those children who are on the edge – I can do
this by being on top of my own marking, conferencing with them and set writing
goals. Some goals may need to be behaviour goals as well because I do some boys
who struggle to complete the task in the allotted time.
How can I encourage the children to connect with the
exemplar when it is not something they are interested in?
“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” -
Sydney J. Harris
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