WHAT?
I
knew that Gail Loane’s ‘I’ve got something to say’, Chapter Nine called
Character portrait would be my first place to get my planning sorted. Within
the chapter, there is a framework for character portraits. I had used this
chapter last year when I planned last years Father’s Day writing lesson. I had
thoughts about using a child’s piece as the exemplar because this worked well
for the ‘Hide and Seek’ writing.
The
framework from the chapter is separated into 4 parts so I decided to plan 3
separate lessons for each of the paragraphs. The character description needs to
have the first paragraph about the character’s physical description, second on
the character’s behaviour (how they act) and the third paragraph, the
interactions between character’s through dialogue.
For
the first lesson, I handed out the exemplar to the children to glue in their
books as usual. I lead the children’s focus to the first paragraph only. The
children shared their noticing on how the author has described her dad’s
physical features. I used question prompts, “What do we know about her dad?
He’s bald. He’s tall because he kneels down to get eye to eye. And he wears
glasses. How do we know these things?” The children had not been exposed to
show not tell as a writing device so I used a powerpoint presentation.
To connect with their lives,
the children faced a buddy knee to knee, and told them what their Grandparent
looks like/ their physical appearance - think of 3 and 4 features that
make them them. The children were very animated, I used the timer again to give
each child time to share what they knew about the Grandparent they wanted to
write about. The visualisation and co-constructing success criteria went
without a hitch. The children were happy to write.
Part of the success criteria
was to describe 3 features of their grandparent. As I roved I prompted the
children to imitate the exemplar if their grandparent wears glasses and use
what was in the exemplar. Some children successfully used these ideas and were
very proud of their success. I used the sticks to pick 5 children to share
their writing before lunch and that was the end of that lesson.
The next day, I started the
lesson by focussing the children on the next paragraph which described how the
author’s dad behaves, what he does. The children analysed the paragraph
together and the lesson followed the same direction as before, they discussed
with a buddy how their grandparent acts or what they do. I chose one child to
share with the class, this worked well and motivated the others in the class to
write there and then what their grandparent does.
The Helping Circle to finish
the lesson was a buzz with the children wanting the share their writing on how
their grandparent acts. Again I used the sticks to randomise the choice of the
children who were to share and it was good to see other children using red pen
to improve their own work as they heard others share. As part of the Helping
circle routine, I asked the children show how they have used the success
criteria by pointing to the words they have use precision with, using great
punctuation, and using show not tell.
The writing of the third
paragraph followed the same routine as before, I also used a powerpoint presentation
on using creative dialogue, an another writing device to show not tell. I
hooked the children in during the visualisation with my prompts - What does
your Grandparent say?- Do they have a favourite saying? Or do they say the same
things when they do something to you. Think of 3 and 4 things that they
say that makes them them. The success criteria that we constructed together
stated that the children needed to
use creative dialogue to show not
tell (describe their grandparent), describe 3 or 4 things that my grandparent
says and use different sentence starters.
The children worked
independently writing the last paragraph and I told them that the author had
finished her writing with the statement – ‘Even though my Dad is sometimes
strict, I love him.’ I encouraged the children to conclude their own piece on
their grandparent using a similar sentiment. This worked well and the children
used a range of sentiments to finish their writing. Once the writing was
completed, the children were asked to publish their writing using a Google doc
and I proofed and posted on Seesaw. I also printed a copy to be laminated and
put up on the back wall.
SO WHAT?
After each lesson, I had been
marking the children’s work and I noticed that their next step was to use different
sentence starters as they had used similar repeatative starts for each
sentences like we had in the ‘My Dad’ poems. So I encouraged the children to
notice the different sentence starters iin the exemplar during the analysis
stage and then the children wanted this to be part of their success criteria.
What I have noticed recently is that
the children are responding to writing a do-able amount and that they now
understand what a paragraph is – a group of similar ideas. This has helped with
the buy-in.
NOW WHAT?
All-in-all I am pretty proud of the development of my
writers and how my pedagogy has changed this year. I do have a few questions on
how to mark this writing when I am deliberately setting up the children for
success. Do I need to use our writing rubric to know where to next or speak to
Verity on how to do this?
Also I feel that my Year 3 children are doing so much better
at taking on the pointers and making changes to their writing than the Year 4s.
I need to get some data around this and see if my hunches are true and what
efforts I need to make so that Year 4s progess as well as they should.
“Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how
you want us to feel about the things you are describing. I mean, instead of
telling us a thing was ‘terrible,’ describe it so that we’ll be terrified.
Don’t say it was ‘delightful’; make us say ‘delightful’ when we’ve read the
description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous,
exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, ‘Please, will you do my job
for me?'” —C.S. Lewis
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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