WHAT?
As part of my own Professional Development around writing, I am given the opportunity to work
with our writing guru, Verity Short. She is currently developing a set of writing lessons that
support our journey on making our teachers and children better at writing. To make this work, she
comes in classes to trial lessons and give support to the teachers, by giving them taste of what
it looks like with their class. I was excited to see what she was going to do in my class. Verity
and I had worked together on making a slot for her in my timetable. It worked out that she was
to come in first thing on Thursday morning.
Being an early bird like me, she came into the class well before the children and put a
set of objects under a towel and had it covered so there was an air of mystery. She instructed
the first child in the class to guard the towel and make sure that no one stepped on it or
looked under it, and she left the classroom. I hadn’t seen what was there either so I was
as intrigued as the children. I could answer the children honestly asI really didn’t know
what was there.
Once the morning chores such as roll, milk and bus list were completed, Verity came back
into class. The children had their writing books ready and she set about setting the scene
for writing. She told the children that she knew they were great writers and observers and
that today they were going to learn how poets see the world in different, fresh, and unusual
way. She shared with the children called the Safety Pin. She asked the children to read it
with their eyes, using their fingers on the words as she read the poem aloud. She asked them
to pay special attention to the poet sees the world in a fresh new way and what they noticed
how the poet saw the safety pin. She exclaimed surprise at how the poet had described a
simple safety pin, and that if she looked closely could see a little shrimp as had been described.
Verity discussed how the poet had used her imagination. She also invited the children to share
their favourite part of the Safety Pin poem.
She then invited the children to describe the ceiling using their imagination and what did they see.
She used pace and encouragement to get a range of ideas from the children. All ideas were
accepted and acknowledged. What I noticed was that she was giving names to the writing tools
that the children had shared such as ‘that was a smilie’, ‘I liked how you used personification’.
She said that we can describe any object, she had an electrical kettle sitting waiting that
she plugged in. She hadn’t turned it on but she told the children that it was their turn to write
with a poet’s eye. It was their turn to write and record their ideas.
When she turned on the kettle, she prompted them to share, “What does it remind you of?” As
they were sharing, she was encouraging them to write as well by saying, “Quick, get that down!”
The children were madly writing and listening as well as watching. One child zoomed in on the
red light, “..it looks like an alien’s eye..” Verity asked the child to tell her what the eye was
doing, and again after listening said, “Brilliant! Quick, get that down!” She was full of enthusiasm
and it was brushing off onto the children.
She asked the children to stop writing and asked if they could do what she had asked and she
reaffirmed with them that they had some fabulous ideas that really created a picture for the
reader and used imagery, the writing tool she was working on. After a very quick sharing about
the kettle, she pulled away the towel from a bunch of random objects and talked about being in
a museum and how fascinating everything is look at. Her selection of objects were things like
pinecones, pens, pencils, paper clips, marbles, feathers, a whisk, and other bits and bods. She
picked up the scissors and told the children it was their time to explore any object they wished
and to write down what it reminded them of, she demonstrated that the scissors looked like a
pair of lady’s legs dancing. She invited the children to take something and go away from the
mat area and write.
The children were very engaged with the writing and again she told them that they needed to
write without talking and to think hard about what they could see. She gave them 10 minutes
and brought them back to share each sentence that they had written, again with pace. Her
praise was quick and specific, …”Great comparisons!” “Nice simile!” “I can hear that you have
activated your nouns!” The children had written down some amazing ideas and were very
excited to write more. She then told them to stand up, bring their books and pens, as they
were going outside to explore the area outside. She took them away on an adventure.
SO WHAT?
In the debrief afterwards, I spoke with Verity about my next steps and what I noticed about
the lesson. What stuck most was her ability to quickly reaffirm the writing tools that she was
looking for and how that builds knowledge for the children, she also shared the word
comparisons over and over again. At the end of the lesson, she had shown the children
the difference between scientific writing and writing from a poet. She had an anchor chart that
she had shown the children to illustrate the ideas as well.
Scientists Notes on a Leaf | Poet’s Notes on a Leaf |
One inch long, three inches wide Sawtooth edges Dark green on one side Veins stick out | Tiny enough to be a tree for a village of snails. As if someone scissored the edges to make them pretty And painted on a deep forest green. |
She was continually scaffolding what she wanted from their writing without creating a success
criteria, when I asked about this she said that this was only the first part of the lesson, exploring.
It would be my job to co-construct success criteria with the children later when I had looked
into what they had written and see what the needs were. Did they need more activated nouns?
Structure to their poems(line breaks and where)? Had they used imagery or where they stuck
on the facts?
NOW WHAT?
The books are what I need to check to see what the children need after the lesson. Verity also
had told me to have another exploring lesson with random objects so the children had a range
of ideas that they could expand on and stretch, getting down to the minute details.
I am excited to expand on this lesson as I could see the engagement and the possibilities
open for my children, especially for my more reluctant writers.
“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.”
~Edgar Allan Poe
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