Developing Authorship in a Co-teaching Partnership - Part 4

 WHAT?

The focus for the first terms has been belonging. We haven’t really put enough effort into this so we looked into names and family names and their meanings and how they relate to one another. The children spend some time finding out what their names meant as part of an art activity.

Each part of the square depicted a different part of them using pictures - first name, last name, where their ancestors came from, their nationality and the members of their family including pets. The children were highly engaged in this activity and learnt about their own names.

As a follow on from this, we used the ‘I am from’ poem lesson from Terry Locke that I had used before. But this time I used a poem I wrote using all the ‘pictures’ from my own quilt square that I had used as a model for the art activity. This helped the children to scaffold their writing and shape their own poem.

Having a distinctive structure helped with the short stages of writing as well. The children were only required to write one stanza at a time using the prescribed success criteria. The first stanza being about where their family originated, and where they lived or had lived. The second stanza described their names - first and last, some even did their middle name. The last stanza and lesson, places and events that are important to their family.

I Am From Poem

I am from parents who came from a country far away

From a major city in the world, where the Royal family live 

I am from big cities, towns, farms, Maori kingdom, countries

From houses, villages, tall apartments and flats.

I am from the cabbage pickers, market gardeners

From witches and roaring motorbikes

I am from large lettered names

From a listening ear and voices that need to be heard

I am from a ship named after an island in the Waitemata Harbour

From a trip that took over 7 weeks, to get to a new country

I am from a large South Island family living in Christchurch

From a husband, a son, a daughter and their partners and grandchildren

The writing took two weeks worth of teaching, as we were wanting to display the writing for our belonging display. The children also had to publish their work using Google docs and share them before we could print them out. The children were very excited to share their writing with their family when they came in for their PEP meeting at the end of the Term.

SO WHAT?

Again having the experience of finding out about their names and ancestors for the art activity beforehand gave the children what they needed to be successful writers. Also breaking the lesson into ‘do-able’ chunks gave the children a sense of success and the effort was more deliberate.

We were very pleased with how the art activity and the writing worked together and the engagement of the children during this time. There was a sense of achievement and determination to do their best. This would be a great activity to do at the beginning of the year with new children to establish their class culture by getting to know each other and themselves.

 I am from 

I am from a mother who came from a country on the other side of the world,

From a father was born in the land of the long white cloud.

I am from the busy streets and roads of Lynmore,

From a good old house I have lived in all my life.

I am from the hazelnut trees in the orchards of New Zealand,

From the “son of Iver” (someone who called his son Iver in Denmark).

I am from an acronym (HAZ)which is half of my name,

From small lettered names.

I am from a flag that has only lines,

From a town that smells like sulphur.

I am from a plane flying to a capital city at the top of the land of the long white cloud, 

From another flag that has lines and stars.

By Hazel Iversen

NOW WHAT?

It is important that the children understand the ‘why’ when we ask them to complete a task. Having a sense of direction gives purpose to the activity and creates engagement for all. Also making a personal connection helps the children to write what they need to.

When creating a new writing plan, I need these ideas to be front and centre to enable my students to have continued success with their writing.

“People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.” – Simon Sinek

Developing Authorship in a Co-teaching Partnership - Part 3

 WHAT?

This year the school has decided to use a vertical structure to move away from silos that happen with - Senior, Middle and Junior school. The names of these Whare Ako are Hinemoa, Ihenga and Kupe. Part of the learning for the children in their Whare Ako is to learn about the respective names and stories that make them special to our school and our local curriculum.

We had been working mostly on building routines and classroom culture for the first term. Also in this Term, we had George from the Rotorua Museum coming to share the story of Kupe and his journeys as an early explorer. Kupe is the chief who is said to be the founder of Aotearoa. After the session with George, the children were able to read the retelling of the story in one of the School Journals and listen to the audio.

To start our writing the children were given a graphic organiser called  a ‘Bare Bones’, this helps the children to order the events and help them to have a place of reference as they write. I had listed the main points into the planner, for the first session of writing the children wrote sentences that helped them plan their story. They were encouraged to use precise word choice and vocabulary that was essential to the story.

The teaching of this writing project was broken down into 4 parts over 2 weeks. We used the whole class teaching to start each day and used the 4 parts but most of the teaching was after we had looked at the books and identified the needs of the children. Some of the strugglers were buddied up and some children were encouraged to come to the workshop. 

The Kupe writing used the whole writing process - planning, writing, rewriting, editing and proofreading. It was the first time for many of the children to use red pen to improve the message of their writing and using a buddy to read aloud to. This enabled the children to work through and write an informative piece of writing that was also entertaining.

SO WHAT?

Being a larger piece of writing than the children had tackled before, it was important that we did it in smaller pieces and that the children could see how paragraphs worked. There was a good ‘buy-in’ from our children, especially those who find writing a struggle. It also helped that the children had been exposed to the story of Kupe a number of times as well. It gave them the knowledge to draw on to help their writing. Having an audio file also helped the strugglers to go back and listen so they could organise their ideas again.

I have no doubt that through this period, the children learnt the story of Kupe and can now retell the story whenever asked. We illustrated the story, enacted the story (parts of it), read the story and wrote our own versions. One child even typed up her story and sent it away to the Toitoi publication to be published. She has been successful as well, pretty impressive for a 7 year old!

NOW WHAT?

I have seen the value of breaking the task into smaller parts so that the children achieve success. Working and looking through the books has enabled us to target specific children so that they get the help they need, be it through buddies or workshops. We need to be mindful of this as we plan.

Using a variety of media to build knowledge helps the children to believe in their ability to write as they know and have the experience, they aren’t pulling the story out of thin air.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”

- Aristotle